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New Message Board Archives >> Jul-Sep 2003 >> Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
(Message started by: Hooter on Jul 25th, 2003, 2:51am)

Title: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 25th, 2003, 2:51am
Hello Folks

Didn't say thank you before my little holiday from the board for all your recommendations after our Top 100 Novels in history discussion.

My hubby LOVED "Lonesome Dove" and "The Perfect Storm" (I wasn't so keen on the latter), we both gobbled up "Into Thin Air" and then bought several more of a similar genre to read.

Sitting on the bedside now (waiting for when I actually do go to bed, which isn't often) is "To Kill a Mockingbird" and yet another one I missed off the list I told you of ones that had been written by Americans- unless I am mistaken "Clan of the Cave Bear" is by one of you yanks?? (This is nominated in the Top 100 as well)

Thanks for enriching our lives- big sentiment but I mean it.


Hooter

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by BobG on Jul 25th, 2003, 3:02am
Hope you're asleep by now. But in case you're not.....

Have you read Message In A Bottle? Me neither but the wife said it was one of her favorites.

My favorites include Hemmings Motor News, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and Street Rodder.

We have a place here called Hooters. Is it yours?

Good nite.

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 25th, 2003, 3:32am
Can't be asleep now , it's 10am here and I'm working!Hooter?? No, it means nose here in the UK and is a nickname that refers to that part of my anatomy only ;D

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by BobG on Jul 25th, 2003, 3:42am
Honker is sometimes used for nose here.

Hooter refers to another part of a lady's anatomy.

When I was in high school we had a teacher named Mr. Hose. Very bright guy, taught biology and had a huge honker. We refered to him as
"Nobody knows what Hose nose knows".

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by Opus on Jul 27th, 2003, 8:48am
Hooter,
  I couldn't imagine the world without England, especially the BBC. "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" started as a radio program on the BBC and end up with a wonderful 5 book trilogy by Douglas Adams, too bad he died before finishing the movie.  And what would life be like without Monty Python and Red Dwarf? I can't think of any more books by British authors but I am sure I read a lot in my life.

Opus/Paul

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 27th, 2003, 5:18pm
I loved Hitchhikers Guide as well. Still do, they repeated the radio show recently on the BBC. It still sounds great after all this time. Have to have a certain weird sense of humour to like it (and Monty Python and Red Dwarf come to that!) it often doesn't travel well, but you are obviously a weird Brit type humoured Opus!

We haven't voted on the No 1 novel yet here, but of the Top 100 voted for by the British public, loads were by American authors. I made everyone here try and guess which they were, and they were pretty good, so it shows we CHers do do something other than write stuff on here and whinge about our heads!
My votes for the Yankee books still go with Grapes Of Wrath and Gone with the Wind!

I'll let you know if an American author wins!

Hooter

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by catlind on Jul 27th, 2003, 5:21pm
My all time favourite classic would have to be Of Mice and Men.

I just love Douglas Adams as well.  Hell I love to read, just gimme the ingredients list on the shampoo bottle if I am in need of bathroom reading LOL

Cat

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 27th, 2003, 5:38pm
Bit Long but here they all are: Huge recommendation from me to read the first one by Paulo Coelho- it is a wonderful book!


FIRST 50 ARE

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
The BFG, Roald Dahl
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
Dune, Frank Herbert
Emma, Jane Austen
Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Holes, Louis Sachar
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 27th, 2003, 5:42pm
(sorry)

2nd 50 are:

headed by a really crap book written by a total wanker
Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
Katherine, Anya Seton
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien
Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
Magician, Raymond E Feist
The Magus, John Fowles
Matilda, Roald Dahl
Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Mort, Terry Pratchett
Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
Nineteen-Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
On The Road, Jack Kerouac
One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Perfume, Patrick Süskind
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
The Stand, Stephen King
The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Twits, Roald Dahl
Ulysses, James Joyce
Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame
Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

I'll stop now, that should keep you busy reading for the rest of your life!


Hooter

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by hdbngr on Jul 28th, 2003, 11:07am
Terry Pratchett is a great writer. If you ever need some humor in your life, he would be a first choice.  :)

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Roxy on Jul 28th, 2003, 11:45am
Try to read Seabiscuit before the movie comes out.  It's an awsome book, and like most books, I'm afraid the movie is going to ruin it.

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by ozzman on Jul 28th, 2003, 12:10pm
hdbngr,
I agree, I love Pratchett and Neil Gaiman as well. Good Omens is probably one of my favorite books of all time. Funny too. Really funny.

Ozzy

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by 9erfan on Jul 28th, 2003, 1:01pm
Memoirs of a Geisha was an EXCELLENT book!  I've passed that one around to SO MANY people.  But my fave is still The Godfather.


on 07/28/03 at 11:45:12, Roxy wrote:
Try to read Seabiscuit before the movie comes out.  It's an awsome book, and like most books, I'm afraid the movie is going to ruin it.


Roxy, the guys who do the morning show on the sports station that I listen to saw the Seabiscuit premiere last week (they also read the book first).  They went on & on about how great the movie was.

V.

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Brian_Y on Jul 28th, 2003, 2:13pm
No FAULKNER?

The HUMANITY...

Light in August
The Sound and the Fury--Genius epitomized..
As I Lay Dying

(One summer, I read the entire works of Faulkner...It was shortly thereafter I began wearing seersucker suits and drinking whiskey from a mason jar...Ah, wilderness!!)

Yeah, Catcher in the Rye is there.  As it should be.  I AM Holden Caufield.  It is my goddamn life if you are interested.  Which I am sure you are not.

Steinbeck is good, but a bit on the non-scholarly side.

Anyone on this board ever read Finnegan's Wake by Joyce?  I dare you.

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Brian_Y on Jul 28th, 2003, 2:14pm
O, and the Complete Stories of John Cheever.  

A MUST!!!

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by jonny on Jul 28th, 2003, 2:32pm
MAD magazine

........................jonny ;D

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by cootie on Jul 28th, 2003, 2:52pm
MAD magazine.......

Ha-ha-ha-ha.....finally sumone at my level for reading pleasure......that plus International Tattoo Art mag Brad got me for the LONG drive home from the convention (cool mag if ya like tatts)......that's bout it for me these days for now at least.....except I do read animal health and vet mags on the side. Pam that only looks at the pics  ;D

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by JDH on Jul 28th, 2003, 3:04pm

on 07/28/03 at 14:13:31, Brian_Y wrote:
Yeah, Catcher in the Rye is there.  As it should be.  I AM Holden Caufield.  


And all this time I thought "I" was Holden Caufield.
Anyway, that's my fave...just recently read it again.

btw, I didn't see Moby Dick on that list?
A tough read but well worth it.

Jim

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Brian_Y on Jul 28th, 2003, 3:14pm
Jim,

I see you get (read: understand) the Holden Caufield thing too.  I once knew a girl who told me SHE was HC.  She had these horrible tears in her eyes when she told me too.  It was a chilling moment.

Agreed on Moby Dick.  As a matter of fact, isn't that considered the "great American novel"?  And if you can get through the cetology parts, it is quite amazing.

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 28th, 2003, 3:37pm
Brian_Y
Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses- tried and failed!

Hooter

We have Mad here too, and also a fantastic mag called Viz which is full of botty humour e.g. Buster Gonad and his unfeasibly large testicles, and The Fat Slags etc etc


Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Tom on Jul 28th, 2003, 3:37pm
...and nobody likes Harry Potter.
:'(

Thomas

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Opus on Jul 28th, 2003, 6:35pm
Great list Hooter,
  I've read a lot of those. I also have the whole Hitchhikers TV show on tape, my 8 year old daughter loves it, we will read the books when we get through the Lord of the rings trilogy. I also like not so twisted Brit shows like Kiss me Kate and A fine romance.

Cat, I've done the same thing.


Opus/Paul

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by JDH on Jul 28th, 2003, 9:09pm

on 07/28/03 at 15:14:52, Brian_Y wrote:
Jim,

I see you get (read: understand) the Holden Caufield thing too.  


LOL, not sure I understand Holden but I can relate to him in so many ways.


Quote:
Agreed on Moby Dick.  As a matter of fact, isn't that considered the "great American novel"?  And if you can get through the cetology parts, it is quite amazing.


When I read Moby Dick it was almost like I read it twice because of all of the re-reading trying to figure out wtf he was saying...sheesh, it was like trying to read the Bible.  ;D

Jim

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 29th, 2003, 12:42am
Paul/Opus

8 years old and likes Hitchhikers Guide! Shit! Wow! a genius child (or weird like her Dada  ;D)

It isn't my list (wish I was that well-read!), it is what the great unwashed British public reckoned were the greatest novels of all time.
In the Autumn we vote on which was the greatest of all, which seems a bit pointless to me.
If I were French I'd be insulted that some of their great novels don't get a mention and something as appalling as Kane and Abel does! But we don't like the French much over here, I know you LOVE them in the USA!

I am a bit fazed by 'Kiss me Kate', believe it or not, it may have come from over here, but I've never heard of it! If you like'Brit' humour, ask Fu about "The Office", funniest thing I've seen in years, but I didn't think anyone outside the UK would get why it was funny as many people here don't.

I must be a Yankophile though because my favourite film and almost my favourite book of all time is Gone with the Wind, and my favourite TV programme is E.R.

Life would be perfect if I had time to read every day, but I hammered 8 books on holiday lying in the sun. Bliss!


Hooter
P.S. Has anyone read Cider with Rose? My great uncle by marriage wrote it. (Dead now of course)

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Brian_Y on Jul 29th, 2003, 7:52am
Hooter,

Finnegan's Wake is an impossibility.  When I was in grad school, we had a group who got together each Wednesday night and "read" it.  The group was comprised of folks who knew at least one other language.  I was fluent in French and have a working knowledge of Latin, so I was pegged for that unseemly part of the novel.  We even had one guy who knew Russian.  We gave up after about 8 weeks.  Mostly due to the fact we drank too much scotch while we were TRYING to partake in a serious discussion.  We failed.

I have read Ulysses, tho.  And like it quite a bit.

As to the French.  I am disappointed they are not there too.

Candide
Madame Bovary
Being and Nothingness (philosophy text, but O so much fun)

And for the record, I hate the French too.  Voltaire is spinning in his grave the way those surrender monkeys act these days.

Va te faire foutre!!!

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by hdbngr on Jul 29th, 2003, 10:02am
Tom:

I like Harry Potter, although I am surprised it was on this list....

Anyone out there read all four of the Harry Potter books and be willing to admit it?

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Brian_Y on Jul 29th, 2003, 11:12am
I read all the Harry Potter books (not the latest tho).  My wife and I were like 12 year olds when the new film came out.  I love it.  There's no reason why one can't read existentialist theatre one night and Harry Potter the next.  It's fun....

Altho, there are arguments it's a Christian allegory....

sorry...hangs head in shame...

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Hooter on Jul 29th, 2003, 12:42pm
Shame here too :-[
Read them all and loved every moment.
If you want Christian allegories, they don't come better than The Narnia series. Can't wait to read all the great children's books to my boy when he is older.

Hooter

P.S. Reading Joyce drunk probably helped as I expect he was drunk when he wrote it!

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Big_Dan on Jul 29th, 2003, 1:32pm
... the only books that can hold my attention have X-wings and lightsabers on the covers...


-Big Wookie  ;D

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by Opus on Jul 29th, 2003, 2:41pm
Hooter,
  She's not exactly a genius, IQ 120, but she is smart, she loves Monty Python too especially The holy Grail and of course the Spam skit. I have been keeping her away from Harry Potter and subsituted Lord of the rings instead, She doesn't need to learn how to cast spells. The Cronicals of Narnia will be read too some day. I have read all 5 books, Also good was Lewis's Perlandrea trilogy, once you get through the first two chapters of each book they start to get really good.


Opus/Paul

Title: Re: Improving my mind- thanks (Books not CH)
Post by ZAIRA on Jul 29th, 2003, 2:51pm

on 07/28/03 at 15:37:59, Tom wrote:
...and nobody likes Harry Potter.
:'(
Thomas



TO ME...! ;D


Ciao carissimo, Zaira




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