Looking for a good book

I've got a day off coming - what should I read?

[MatthewHSE]

Our family works so much that we've decided it's time for a break. Accordingly, we've decided to take off Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving. No work is allowed here on those days - it will be strictly relaxation! ;)

Unfortunately, the only things I know to do on days when I have nothing else to do are to goof off on WW, read up on PHP, and go through my SEO materials. I have been informed that this is unacceptable behavior and it has been suggested that I find a good novel to read instead. (I suspect my family is trying to protect me from myself...)

So, what's a good, long, comfortable read for two days off? The only book I've read recently that fits the criteria I'm looking for has been "The Black Arrow," which I enjoyed immensely since it was an easy read but had a decent plot. It would be great to find a book in the same genre, but so far I haven't been able to turn anything up that looks promising.

Hence, I'm requesting suggestions. What should I try to read over the course of those two days that has an engaging story, is easy to read, is long enough to keep a fast reader busy for the greater portion of two days, and doesn't contain profanity or "X-rated" themes? (Also, preferably written sometime in the 1800's.)

I'm getting a little short on time - I like to buy my books from used booksellers and they sometimes don't ship very quickly. If I don't find something soon, I'm likely to wind up spending my time off in my bedroom with a contraband copy of the PHP manual! ;)

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

The DaVinci code by Dan Brown a great read. It contains lost of clever stuff and it is very interesting and educational as well as being a good thriller. Just remember that it is fiction. Too many people read this and get the fiction that it contains confused with the facts.

[nancyb]

I can't personally vouch for this book since I haven't read it yet, but my best friend, who used to sell books, is always a good source. She just finised reading "Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini. And is raving about it, so much she says she will re-read it.

It's fiction about Afghanistan and the culture. The author was born there, moved to Paris as a child and then to the US. He is currently a doctor in California.

I always read whatever my friend raves about :)

[encyclo]

When you mention the Black Arrow, I assume you have already read Treasure Island? If not, then it is almost a must - a true classic. If you don't mind a modern book, I read Baudolino by Umberto Eco a few months back - a very rich historical tale that I would recommend.

[vik_c]

Read 'Kane and Abel' by Jeffrey Archer if you haven't already. Rated by a BBC poll as one amongst the 100 best books of all time, it's a saga spanning the better part of a century from the Titanic's voyage to the nineteen eighties. Unputdownable!

[ronin]

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is one of the finest books written in English during the entire 19th century.

Dracula by Bram Stoker is also very good. But it's a bit racy in places >;->

You might also want to consider one or two of Jules Verne's books - Journey to the Centre of the Earth or 20,000 Leagues under the Sea for example.

[zulu_dude]

Another vote for the 'DaVinci Code'. One of Dan Brown's other books, 'Deception Point' is pretty good as well. He's not the most intellectually challenging writer, but his books are great relaxing reading.

Also just finished reading 'The Heavenly Man' by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway. Excellent stuff, really enjoyed it as well.

[Jack_Hughes]

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Nice and short, easily digestable in a couple of days.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

Probably the best sci fi book i've ever read.

[Leosghost]

speaking of "Eco" you mightalso try Faucaults Pendulum ..one of the inspirations for the davinci code ..
or almost anything by Doris Lessing ..
"shikasta" would do to start :)

[digitalghost]

Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is pretty good too. Homeland by John Jakes is another solid read following the immigration of a young German into the 'New "World', complete with a sweeping historical backdrop.

[4string]

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Often mis-filed under Marquez -- should be under Garcia.)

He has an unusual writing style. Very colorful and some very long sentences. A brilliant book in my opinion. My personal favorite.

[Leosghost]

most anything by Leon Uris ..

"Gold" by Joseph Heller ( the guy who wrote catch 22 )..similar humour ;)

[PyrettaBlaze]

Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Ancestors of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
(those are the 2 I recommend from her entire Avalon series)
My Juliet - John Ed Bradley (**highly recommended!**)
The Rapture of Canaan - Sheri Reynolds
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown (thought I'd mention it, even though someone else did)

For short reads, I also recommend The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran and anything by V.C. Andrews

[httpwebwitch]

You read PHP manuals for "fun". I can relate to that, embarassing though it is to admit. I've been known to bring O'Reilly cookbooks to the beach.

So since you're like me, I'd comfortably recommend "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson. Premise: Charles Babbage perfects the steam-powered analytical engine and the computer age begins 100 years ahead of its time. Mystery and Conflict evolves around a set of foreign-made punch cards that calculate gambling odds.

re: above, yes Foucault's Pendulum is a fantastic book too. But not all Eco's stuff is that good, imho

[Leosghost]

thanks for correcting my spelling HTTP'..I wondered about it and as we have recently moved and I can't lay my hands on the book ( one of thousands that are in storage still )..

[pmkpmk]

I just finished "Going Postal" by Terry Pratchett, and it was kind of fun.
It's also the time of the year when I'm starting to read my Tolkien again.
A nice read for non-fiction is "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug - and it's even useful for our business.
Don't know if you have them in English too, but "Simplify your life" was a great non-fiction read too.

[Rugles]

Rivethead - tales from the assembly line
by Ben Hamper

This guy was in Roger and Me, the Michael Moore classic film that launched his career. It is especially funny if you have ever worked on an assembly line, steel mill or any other heavy industrial setting.
I highly recomend it, 2 thumbs up!

[Old_Honky]

If you want an enjoyable read that you can't put down until you finish you need quality science fiction.

I reccomend;
"Time's Last Gift" by Philip Jose Farmer
or
"Ringworld" by Larry Niven

[photon]

"The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary" by Simon Winchester.

Interesting reading....

[Junanagoh]

"The DaVinci code by Dan Brown a great read."

I agree with this, but Dan Brown's lesser known "Angels and Demons" is even better. Very easy, great read that keeps you hooked the whole time. Its based in modern times and is a fictional story with tons of real facts thrown in. Dan Brown is a great author. It is a great read.

[rocknbil]

While Koontz' earlier works had some serious flaws (most of them start off hot and fizzle out with a poor resolution) I was pleasantly surprised by his latest, Life Expectancy. It's a quick read, entertaining, with some great surprises throughout.

Rudy Tock awaits the birth of his first child in the company of an insane clown, also an expectant father. (Yes, a real clown, still wearing the face paint. And you will see he is indeed insane.) In another room, Tock's father, comatose and in the last moments of his life, awakes from the coma to announce five terrible days in the life of the newborn son. Five terrible days that will forever entwine the lives of everyone at the hospital that night. On the back of the only available paper - a ticket to the very circus the clown was from - Rudy Tock writes these five dates . . . . His father dies, and at the same instant James Tock is born, and born with syndactyly, also as the grandfather predicted.

You know you want it. :-D GREAT weekend read.

[hannamyluv]

Terry Pratchett

Pratchett is always fun to read. I just finished The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by him. It is a little less Pratchett as it was written for a younger crowd, but it was still fun.

[HRoth]

Not 19th-century but a ripping good yarn along those lines is The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling. This is a fantasy historical novel in which the world was hit by an asteroid in the 1870s, wiping out North American and European population centers, leaving only the southern bits of the British Empire and some of Russia and Japan. India has become the center of civilization. There is lots of great 19th-century technology, like a gear-driven computer and dirigibles as royal vehicles, and tons of historical detail. It's a great adventure story along the lines of Rudyard Kipling--all about honor and loyal companions, etc. Totally fun.

[Fiver]

Egad, can't we have a thread like this that doesn't bring up dan brown? I fail to comprehend the popularity of this man's writing.

If you want some outside the box suggestions, I've recently enjoyed:

The Screwtape Letters
letters from a senior to a junior devil
by C.S. Lewis

(I'm not religious, but I rather enjoyed this Lewis - it's an afternoon read)

The Dancing Wu Li Masters
an overview of the new physics
by Gary Zukav

(a book about quantum physics from the late 70's - facinating)

Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

(a book about mormonism - facinating... maybe I'm on a religious kick. I like Krakauer's other books also, and if you want a lighter read, his big seller 'Into Thin Air' is good)

Everything Is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safranfoer

(I found this in a book exchange in a hostel in Brazil - it may be more along the lines you're looking for as a weekend read... but the writing style is mmmm a bit odd, and it may not be for everyone)

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
by Mordecai Richler

(having just moved to Montreal, trying to grow a business, this book was a timely read for me. But it's also a classic)

Self
by Yann Martel

Martel wrote the best-seller life-of-pi recently, which I don't believe to be nearly as good as his first novel, Self. His is one of the most enjoyable writing styles I've come across in years. If you enjoyed Life of Pi but were a bit put-out by the ending, try reading Self. You'll either be satisfied or mortified by its ending.

[ronin]

I've been holding myself back... but can nobody recommend any 19th century literature?

George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, H. Rider Haggard, HG Wells, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, Emil Zola, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy...

Anna Karenina is the best novel in the world, for crying out loud.

Come on people, I was expecting better things from this thread.

[Essex_boy]

Man Buys dog by David Matthews.

A really funny non ficitional account of his foray it to Greyhound racing and ownership, I nearly cracked arib reading it.

[HRoth]

If it's 19th-century literature you want, IMO, you don't get better than Nikolai Gogol. I like his collected stories, especially The Nose (to me, the funniest story ever written) and The Overcoat (sad and funny in the trademarked Gogol way), but he also has a long novel, Dead Souls, which is a comedy despite its title, about a conniver who goes around buying up the paperwork of dead serfs in order to engineer a mortgage on a fictitious estate. Gogol has a reputation for darkness, but he is also really funny in an off-the-wall way, along the lines of Monty Python. Some people find his humor infuriating, though, and some of his stories are not funny but heart-wrenching. Very Russian.

If you like a more West European sensibility, then I would recommend Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, about the generation clash of the 1860s in the Russian upper classes. Great characters and some really funny lines. Most people can identify with the conflicts depicted, and it's pretty short, especially for a Russian novel.

I don't think Dostoevsky is really appropriate for holiday reading, although I really love his writing. If you want to read something by him, I'd go with Crime and Punishment, which is his most accessible work in that you don't have to know that much about Russian history to understand it. A poor student in Petersburg reads Nietzsche and decides it's okay for him to kill the local pawnbroker, a scruffy, nasty old woman. A weird relationship develops between him and the detective on his trail. Petersburg is presented in all its freaky glory. This is the first psychological novel. It got me hooked on Russian literature. Many people dislike Dostoevsky, though. As one of my friends described it, "He makes me feel like I am going crazy." Really, it's more like you are inside the student's head. He is an incredible writer.

Stories by Anton Chekhov are another possibility. His writing style is very West European. His stories are short, generally depicting the personal situation of someone who is having a difficult time--could be a poor peasant girl hired to watch the baby, a boy looking for his grandfather, a middle-class woman who has been used and jilted, etc. His stories often depict sad events, but there is nothing dark about his attitude towards people. His kindness always comes through.

I can't recommend any Tolstoy, because I hate his writing. Dostoevsky has a lot of moral concerns but is always wrestling with them, and that tension comes through in his writing. Not so Tolstoy. Tolstoy already knows what's good for you and beats you over the head with it. He is much easier to read, though.

I know they're all Russian books. I studied Russian lit, so I'm prejudiced.:)

[eskipii]

shadow of the wind

[MatthewHSE]

Thanks for the ideas everyone. Unfortunately I still wound up putting off the decision, until now I won't be able to buy a book in time anyway and our local library is already closed. Guess I'll look up the e-books for some of these suggestions and give it a go that way . . . it's kind of hard to read loose-leaf printouts in bed but it will have to do! ;)

Thanks again!

Matthew