Favorite Book? - Favorite genre?

[Borincano]

What are your favorite book(s)? What is your favorite genre(s)? :)

[genniva]

My favorite genre is history. Anything from alternate history (Spinrad, Dick, etc) to stiff scientific works about, say, the specifics of Northern Gothic architecture.

But then, I dropped out of both history and art history studies in three separate universities . . .

(Edited by genniva at 9:38 pm on Nov. 14, 2002)

[anti machine]

I enjoy philosophy, whether it be political or theological. I feel stimulated when I take in the ideas of great thinkers, especially Nietzsche and Marx. My favorite books are Kesey's ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH. I love CATCHER IN THE RYE and 1984 too.

[Valkyrie]

Mine is Science, particularly physics; as there is always something new on the horizon there. And Philosophy, eveything there except linguistics. Philosophy -- I read, take in, then discard most of it.

[canikickit]

Music.

My favorite books are

People Funny Boy - David Katz, Lee Perry's biography.

Bass Culture - When Reggae was King - Lloyd Bradley, the story of when reggae was king.

I think it unlikely that anyone cares, or has heard of them, but hey.

[Umoja]

I'm gonna be an old ball here. I love books about anyone who is Black, possibly because I am. My currents favorites are-

Man Child in the Promised Land- By Claude Brown

Assasta- By Assata Shakur, even though I just started it.

[Zippy]

My favourite book is:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
~Stephen Chbsoky

If only life could be as beautiful as this book. :)

Favourite genre; i'm a man of many sections. I love rock biographys, fiction, history, loads of stuff.

Zippy.

[ComradeJunichi]

My favorite genre has to be history, preferably military history. I enjoyed Stalingrad, Berlin, and such. I have shelves and shelves of military history books, great stuff.

[Emmanual Goldstein]

I love 1984 (big fucking surprise) and books like it, i.e. Bread and Wine, Farenhiet 451, Darkness at Noon, Brave New World, The Iron Heel, Animal Farm, and The Case of Comrade Tulayev.

I also go for the opposite, like Looking Backwards, News from Nowhere, etc.

[anti machine]

oh, I love Farenheit 451!

[Socialmalfunction]

yeah definitely farenheit 451, 1984, god there are soo many others. black boy changed my life, lord of the flies. i guess i just love books that show the down side of the extremes of government, whether that is too much power in gov or the lack thereof.

[canikickit]

i just love books that show the down side of the extremes of government,

You must love reading the newspaper so.

[captain anarchy]

my favorite book would have to be hamlet or romeo and juleit i like shakespeare's plays.

[mentalbunny]

I love fantasy when I want to escape, although I find that Tolkein tends to drag. There is an incredible trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts about Mara. There called daughter of the Empire, Mistress of the Empire and Servant of the Empire and they are bloody good reads, bit of romance, loads of tactics, bit of war, suspense, all of it and very vividly written.

I also love Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

On a more serious note, of course I loved 1984 and Brave New world. I also read Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Kate Atkinson) in the summer and that was incredible, if you ever see it, grab it and devour it, a real page turner.

Also I love the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, and the Narnia books are classic.

[suffianr]

Narnia!

I grew up on an unhealthy mix of C.S Lewis, Tolkien and Shakespeare and I am still an uncultured fiend.

[mentalbunny]

My only problem with CS Lewis is the end of The Last Battle and his christianity.

[anti machine]

C.S. Lewis was a great mind. I still love to pick apart MERE CHRISTIANITY and expose his flawed process.

[canikickit]

There is an incredible trilogy by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts about Mara. There called daughter of the Empire, Mistress of the Empire and Servant of the Empire and they are bloody good reads, bit of romance, loads of tactics, bit of war, suspense, all of it and very vividly written

Yeah, I loved those books when I was a bit younger. i tried reading them recently and I wasn't really enjoying them, but still...

You should check out all his other books (hers were crap). Like Magician, and ah, I forget the other ones...with that guy, Erik...

[buteo]

Have you guys read any books by Charles De Lint? He's a great author and I thought yall might like his book Svaha because it deals with a post-capitalist world in 2094.

check a review of it out here:
http://www.greenmanreview.com/svaha.html

[kingbee]

george orwell- down and out in paris and london, coming up for air
albert camus- the outsider
frantz fanon- black skins white masks.

[Doshka]

i love reading.novels i cant stand documentaries...i dont really have one specific book as a favourie...i have authors...deffinetly my favourite author is Isabel Allende...AMAZING! she can sweep you off your feet...the tales she tell surround you and atack you..you become a charactor with an bservant part...i STRONGLY recomment her books:
Eva Luna
Daughter of Fortune
House of Spirits
Of Love and Shadows
The Infinite Plan

Also Gabriel Garcia Marques is excelent..the same style of writing though i rather Allende...i like salman Rushdi's Midnights Children...and wasnt that such bullshit about his other book??

[Hampton]

My favorites are:
Henry Miller- Tropic of Cancer
Huey Newton- Revolutionary Suicide
George Jackson- Soledad Brother
Dalton Trumbo- Johnny got his Gun

[canikickit]

Down and Out in Paris and London -

Yeah, I love this book.

[Hoxhaist]

Imperialism and Revolution by Enver Hoxha

He basically predicts the future when it comes to China and its relationship with the West. His keen mind and sharp thinking is apparent in this Stalinist perspective of a world where Stalinism only survived in Hoxha's Albania and had been replaced by Khruschevite or Titoist revisionism and Maoist opportunism

[couch13]

Fiction Genre: Fantasy
Fiction Book: Lord of the Rings
Nonfiction Genre: A strange melding of Social Sciences and the Humanities
Nonfiction Book: The Civil War in France

[Cynical Observer]

i like anything with a strong philosophical undertone, doesn't matter if i agree as long as the theory is presented well in the text. So Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is my favorite book even if it does disgust me. A Brave New World by alduous huxley (sp?) is amazing, as is 1984. Clockwork Orange is good. Oh and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, and The perks of being a wallflower by Stephen Chbsoky

[x359594]

I'm gonna be an old ball here. *I love books about anyone who is Black, possibly because I am. *My currents favorites are-

Man Child in the Promised Land- By Claude Brown

Assasta- By Assata Shakur, even though I just started it.

If you haven't read Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go and In Dubious Battle are must reads. His crime novels are also terrific, especially Run,Man, Run.

[Soviet]

"And Quet Flows the Don" by Sholokhov - the best book about the civil war in Russia.

[Angry Young Man]

Sula by Toni Morrison. I've said before that, for a liberal, she certainly writes well in a socialist vein (black oppression, poverty, wage slavery and sexual politics.)

Plus I love Shelley, hence the avatar. I thought Shelley'd be a cue for me to get into romanticism, but only Shelley's any good, aside from the odd Blake or Coleridge poem. Shelley seems to have alot of love on the left.

[Hoxhaist]

besides the works of Hoxha, VALIS by Philip K. Dick

[Random Precision]

Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruíz Zafón
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
1984 by George Orwell
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Demian by Herman Hesse

[Kassad]

Love All the People: The Essential Bill Hicks
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

[MarxSchmarx]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Dialectical Biologist by R. Levins and R. Lewontin
Language Truth and Logic by A.J. Ayers

Favorite genre? Although I think the above are my fav books, my favorite genre is popularized and occasionally wonky history, of which the best example I can think of is the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

[Vincent P.]

I'm a big lover of Nietzsche's work, both for its philosophical and poetic achievements, and I may learn German soon to be able to read it in its original version (if I got enough free time). I'm also a big fan of classical french litterature, some of them are very political (Zola's Germinal...) and more recently poetry (early to mid 1900's french poetry is just incredibly good - and deeply socialist). As for english-speaking litterature I love Poe and Lovecraft, but I didn't have the opportunity to dig deep in the american classics.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Catcher In the Rye and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I suppose my favourite genre are sort of books with a central main character which is written in the first person.

[superiority]

SpecFic rocks my world. Big fan of Michael Moorcock (also: read this (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/moorcock.html)), Pratchett, China Mieville, Ursula le Guin, Iain M. Banks. The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad is a work of genius, if only for the essay at the end. I own a fair bit of history (Thompson, Carr, and Hobsbawm usually) which I don't read a lot of, though I like it when I do. I don't know if I could really say I have a "favourite" book, though.

EDIT: Also: funnybooks. Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Art Spiegelman. Have several GB worth of comics on my computer. Can't get enough of 'em.

[Hoxhaist]

seeing the movie Watchmen has made interested in getting the graphic novel

[DesertShark]

My favorite book is: Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk, who is also my favorite author. I'm not sure if I have a favorite genre because I love reading all different types of books.


1984 by George Orwell
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Excellent choices in books. My favorite Vonnegut is God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

[scarletghoul]

My favourite book is Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai. Favourite genre is either poetry or japanese short story.:lol:

[Angry Young Man]

Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruíz Zafón
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
1984 by George Orwell
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Demian by Herman Hesse

Apart from Hesse (I was given Narcissus and Goldmund as a present and the prose was just...), You and I have much to talk about, boyo ;)

[Trystan]

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Cracking good fun, among other shit.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.
Germinal by Emile Zola. A good workerist book.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski.
The book of W.B. Yeats's poetry I have.
And finally, The Idiot by F. Dostoevsky.

[Angry Young Man]

While you're here, which Yeats poem has 'things fall apart' in?

[Trystan]

Well that is 'The Second Coming' I thinks. Why do you ask?

[Angry Young Man]

Just curious to read it. I fancy I could get well into Yeats.

[Incendiarism]

I'm not sure what my favorite book is, probably still Anna Karenina though Tolstoy is no longer my favorite author(that distinction belongs to Goethe).

[saintlysocalist]

My fav genre is history and science fiction.
My fav book has to be Warhammer 40,000's "Gunheads" by Steve Paker.

[Oktyabr]

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Doctor Zhivago (I haven't even finished it, buts pretty damn good) by Boris Pasternak

[Cymru]

History and Politics mainly, used to read alot of True Crime aswell.

Can't pick a fav to be honest, although i did read Travels with Charley by Steinbeck, which was an absolute wonderful book