what is the best book you have read for entertaining?

[tomsakic]

My favourites are Ursula K Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, brothers Strugacky, Virginia Woolf, JM Coetzee, and many more... I am studying literature Entertainment - I read SF or something totally new. I liked Hyperion Canticles by Dan Simmons, or Australian literature - The true history of kelly Gang by Peter Carey, then Salman Rushdie. It seems that i have big crash on postcolonial literature.
tom
Glad I found one Le guin fan. She is a genius for me.

[Linda]

Never read the Grapes of Wrath or heard Bruce Springsteins song; I like him and have listened to a lot of his music but don't recall that. I have read Of Mice and Men. I also like the classics Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte. I haven't done a lot of reading in the later years either, actually the computer is to blame for a lack of reading time. That and reading Nursery Rhymns

[Pete]

'Flatland: a romance of many dimensions' by Edwin A. Abbott, 1838-1926

'This work is dedicated by a humble native of Flatland in the hope that even as he was initiated into the mysteries of three dimensions, having been previously conversant with only two, so the citizens of that celestial region may aspire yet higher and higher to the secrets of four, five or even six dimensions thereby contributing to the enlargement of the imagination and the possible development of that most rare and excellent gift of modesty among the superior races of solid humanity'

Pete

[Kush]

Linda.....I would very much recommend Grapes of Wrath. A slice of history. I'm positive I referred to the Bruce Springsteen song elsewhere, it is the title song The Ghost of Tom Joad in the album of that name. It is Springsteen's finest effort and unlike anything else (perhaps the Nebraska album comes closest). It sorta sounds like Songs From a Room. But not introspective, mostly narrative. Tom Joad was the principal character in the book.
Pete....your abovementioned book has piqued my interest.

[lizzytysh]

Pete ~

Is this how Leonard came by his modesty? [only half-joking]. This interests me a lot, too. Likewise, The Ghost of Tom Joad. I've always liked Bruce's "honest"-sounding voice. The "narrative" Songs From a Room sounds worth getting.

~ Elizabeth

[Linda]

Yes, Kush I think it high time I take the time to read The Grapes of Wrath. I am the sort who can't put a book down once I start reading, might be a nice respite from the computer.

[jurica]

hmmm... i figured i can only name one book, but since everybody else shared more... here's my list:

poetry: T.S. Eliot, G. Leopardi

prose: T. Pynchon, P. Roth, N. Mailer, G.G. Marques, J.L. Borges, H. Boll (but i only like his short stories and The Clown), J. Updike (S. is my favorite)

non-fiction: E. Fromm, S. Freud, N. Chomski (he's always interesting, but i rarely agree with his ideas)

comics (these are VERY important to me): Miguel Prado, Dave Sim's Cerebus, Frank Miller

[peter danielsen]

The best book I've read is called :"tonight the king is weeping", and I wrote it.

Peter

[John the Shorts]

Partisan

I have read Feist (but not Faust) the listing I gave was the books I am currently reading (1 in each room and a paper for the train and lunch breaks)

Unfortunately my pace of reading never seems to keep up with my purchase of books - very similar to my Video & CD collections - so much to do, so little time.

JTS (So little storage space as well)

[Paula]

What a brainy bunch you are. I feel totally inadequate in my reading material. I used to read a book a day before I had my children I very rarely read books now and when I do I like to dip in and out of them so I normally read non-fiction.

Some of the books listed I am amazed that people actually read them thru choice. A lot of the classics I read as a schoolgirl and they were enjoyable but to sit and read some of the tomes offered here - well I am in awe of the people who read them for enjoyment.

I will read and enjoy books like Bob Marley's or Bob Geldof's biography but I take my hat off to the heavyweight readers here.

[lizzytysh]

Paula ~

Were it not for you, me, and others like us, the accolade "so well-read" would have no meaning. We serve both a functional and lofty-in-its-way purpose . I'm still thinking......

~ Elizabeth

[Pete]

Paula,
I, also, am not a 'heavyweight reader' so join the club. My favourites are biographies but do not always find the time to read. Having said this, I've just read my first book for quite a while..'Losing my religion' by Craig Thomas... a local writer whose life as a soccer fan mirrors my own experiences. I managed to read Fever Pitch but that was only after seeing the film.
As regards 'Flatland'..............
'Flatland' is a book I read about 30 years ago and have just bought a newer edition, together with a sequel 'Sphereland' by Dionys Burger translated from Dutch. Flatland was written in 1880 and Sphereland in 1960. I'm not sure that there should have been a sequel.
Kush and Lizzytysh have both expressed an interest in Flatland;
some extracts from the forward:
'It was a book written for amusement by a grave and serious Shakespearian scholar. So exuberent was its demonstration of imaginative power and so Swiftian its satirical description of an alien society that it achieved a popularity that has never diminished......
Flatland gains further significance if it is viewed not merely as a matter of dimensions, but as a study of the human mind and its attitude toward limitation generally......
This book should lead us to question the limitations we set to our universe generally, not only those that are mathematical and physical, but those that are sociological as well. How far are our assumptions justified, and to what extent are they merely careless, or self-serving, misinterpretations of reality?......."

I'm afraid to report that the women are inferior in Flatland and consisting of one straight line rather than the polygonal males. This can make the women very dangerous if they approach you point first, so they are ordered to approach others by wavering and emitting a sound so that they don't pierce you. The women stay this way but the males gain more sides to their shape until becoming a perfect circle.
You do not need to be a mathematician to appreciate the satire.. there are diagrams to help
Well. I've either deflated the interest or raised it
Better go, my wife has just prodded me in the back
Pete

[Byron]

Paula. I hated Shakespeare and Dickens at school. The Sunday afternoon play on BBC was always something by Dickens and they were always so miserable and left me feeling miserable as well. We only had one BBC and one ITV channel, which made for hardly any real choice. Oh! and they were the days of black and white, so that didn't help either. I was 46 before I discovered the truth of these two writers. The road to this discovery is a long and twisted one which would bore the pants off anyone. But, I had good teachers who made all the difference. I was ready to learn and in the right frame of mind and as they'll tell you, teachers love a willing student. (Don't they Pete?)
Human nature is the keystone for literary development. Even Pete's Flatlanders have personalities. I was very lucky in finding teachers who 'enabled' me to enter a world which I had thought to be dull, heavy and uninteresting. It's like the adverts they ran on the TV last year, in which famous sportsmen and women, and politicians and actors, were all able to give us the names of their favourite teachers. The ones who had influenced them the most. You'll be thinking of one of your own right now?
I've rambled on like 'Ramblin' Sid Rumpo' again, so I'll shut up.
Byron 'sends his regards'.

[Paula]

Byron you are so right about teachers, Mrs Quentin was our English teacher and it was she that quenched my thirst for literature as she lived and breathed it and it showed.

She made us learn poetry, Joan of Arc's speech, Kublacan (sic) that was 28 pages we had to learn and recite, The Listener and loads loads more.

It was her love of words that inspired us. I have never been able to spell and no matter what I do I think I will always be a bad speller.

Lizzie you are correct if it weren't for people like me the well read would just be "read" that is a good way of looking at it

[Sandra]

ohhhhhhh!
Im very glad with your answers........I will begin finding those books...