read any good books lately?

[TheDrake]

Here's one just for you, Lambert.

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.

Nearly every time you see him, he's laughing, or at least smiling. And he makes everyone else around him feel like smiling. He's the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, a Nobel Prize winner, and a hugely sought-after speaker and statesman. Why is he so popular? Even after spending only a few minutes in his presence you can't help feeling happier.

If you ask him if he's happy, even though he's suffered the loss of his country, the Dalai Lama will give you an unconditional yes. What's more, he'll tell you that happiness is the purpose of life, and that the very motion of our life is toward happiness. How to get there has always been the question. He's tried to answer it before, but he's never had the help of a psychiatrist to get the message across in a context we can easily understand.

The Art of Happiness is the book that started the genre of happiness books, and it remains the cornerstone of the field of positive psychology.

Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Howard Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life's obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace. Based on 2,500 years of Buddhist meditations mixed with a healthy dose of common sense, The Art of Happiness is a book that crosses the boundaries of traditions to help readers with difficulties common to all human beings. After being in print for ten years, this book has touched countless lives and uplifted spirits around the world.

[DJQuag]

...Newt Gingrich...has a new book now, "Burning Down the House" (https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Down-House-Gingrich-Republican/dp/1594206651)

...We were just all talking about books and stuff. Or maybe how audio books are *censored*. Let's not politic it up, yeah?

Public it up? Are you unable to understand what you read and write? Almost everyone here who responded in this thread talked about quality of writing and the authors' predilections. One of us wrote about the novelty of the concepts. How the characters may be cardboard and sexist, the dialog atrocious (huge amounts of poorly written dialog); tons of really bad inner dialog; mediocre plotting; etc.

I guess I shouldn't have brought in the publishing houses and how they put out some of those bad books while ignoring better writers? Sorry. How does a writer like Samuel R, Delany write hundreds of pages of stream of consciousness with no punctuation or capitalization and get the editors to put in all that "techie stuff?" I find that interesting. Most people cannot read [i[Dhalgren[/i], yet the few readers I've come across that read it to the end saw something in it.  Contrariwise, no one ever read Jim Wright's book and said it was a real attempt at anything but a paycheck.

I just don't like that some librarians and publishers use their political biases to artificially raise bad books to best seller lists while obstructing better books from even getting published.

A different thing is what happened to Peter Wright, the Britisher who was the first intel scientists a lá "Q" in James Bond. His book, Spycatcher was actually banned in Great Britain, and he had to go to Australia to publish. His book has since been judged totally accurate and truthful with no government secrecy violations., and is now legal in the UK. He was there at the founding of MI-5 and MI-6, and besides running all the scientific areas, was put in charge of ferreting out moles that penetrated all the way to Downing Street. Incredible read, but hard to get published. He had to write the book to survive, because when he was first asked to move his career into Intelligence, he was promised a generous retirement income, but since it was a handshake agreement, the government reneged when he retired. His book allowed him to buy a little farm and have a life. Highly recommended.

Yes. Exactly. You *shouldn't* have, yet you did anyway.

[DJQuag]

And if you wanted us to read something, you should have just said, "This writing was good, check it out guys!"

You know the best way to *censored* up a non political discussion?

Walk that *censored* in with how the Dems tried to kill Jesus or something.

[cherrypoptart]

For audiobook performers, the people I've liked best are Roy Dotrice with The Game of Thrones series, Marc Thompson who read Solo, John Glover who read Star Wars Red Harvest, and The Flight of The Eisenstein read by Jonathan Keeble. Red Harvest was alright but it doesn't stand out that much for me but Glover's performance was memorable. All of the other books were good and the narrators were excellent. Thompson did Wookie voices and his Woody Harrelson voice made me wonder if they had actually gotten Harrelson to dub in his own dialogue for a while there. I remember Dotrice standing out so much that when I started listening to one of the later books that was done by another narrator I stopped and looked it up to see what was going on and found that Dotrice had been brought in afterwards to do his version of it too because of fan demand so I got that one and listened to it and was a happy camper.

Of course I can't neglect Stefan Rudnicki who did Ender's Game. If you've only read the book and have never listened to the audiobook, I'd recommend it and Mr. Card recommended it in the audio format as well.

[NobleHunter]

Can I remember any of my favourite narrators at the moment? Of course not. I do wonder if some authors use black magic to get their narrators, though. Mary Robinette Kowal reads her own books and is quite good at it. She live streamed the recording of The Relentless Moon. It was highly enjoyable and informative.

I just read Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles, a historical gay romance set in London immediately post World War One. It's pure fluff but still entertaining.

[yossarian22c]

For audio books, I do enjoy the podcast Levar Burton reads. Its a podcast of short stories from different genres. I can't just sit and listen but great for long drives or when I'm doing chores or exercising.

[msquared]

I will have to look it up, but there was a guy who was doing the Stephen King Dark Tower series on audio and he was great. Even King said that when he wrote the books, this guys voice is the one he heard inside his head.

I think he got cancer and died. It was a great loss.

[DJQuag]

You know when I think on it the Dark Tower series is something that I believe could be enhanced with a decent...reader? Actor? Whatever. I can envision a universe where I enjoy some guy reading that story into my ears.

[cherrypoptart]

This all reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George wants to listen to the audiobook version because he doesn't like the sound of his own voice in his head when he reads.

Spoiler Alert (maybe):

"George has to give a lecture on risk management (because his résumé gives the impression that he is an expert on the subject), but he finds that he can't study for it because books on tape have spoiled him. When George discovers the blind can get any book on tape, he intentionally fails an eye test so he can get his book on tape."

Not sure if this is a spoiler but as usual it doesn't work out quite the way he planned. After all, their readers are volunteers, not professionals.

[wmLambert]

And if you wanted us to read something, you should have just said, "This writing was good, check it out guys!"

You know the best way to *censored* up a non political discussion?

Walk that *censored* in with how the Dems tried to kill Jesus or something.

No, face it. You just don't want to entertain the idea that book-writing has become an income stream for politicians and analysts. All the more reason to point out what books to recommend, and which ones not to.

[DJQuag]

And if you wanted us to read something, you should have just said, "This writing was good, check it out guys!"

You know the best way to *censored* up a non political discussion?

Walk that *censored* in with how the Dems tried to kill Jesus or something.

No, face it. You just don't want to entertain the idea that book-writing has become an income stream for politicians and analysts. All the more reason to point out what books to recommend, and which ones not to.

No, dick. All I wanted was just one freaking thread where some jackass didn't bring his conspiracy theories about Obama and Ayers and the Je- sorry, about *Soros* into it. I'm sorry that you're unable to recommend a good book without *censored*ting the thread up.

[DonaldD]

Just - ignore.  Don't feed it.

[DJQuag]

I'm unable to edit my response out, but my goat was got. I apologise for getting all wound up.

[wmLambert]

I'm unable to edit my response out, but my goat was got. I apologize for getting all wound up.

Fine. But I did recommend plenty of books, but you refused that and fixated on one post about why a few books were hard to find. I know the reason bothers you, sorry.

[DJQuag]

I'm unable to edit my response out, but my goat was got. I apologize for getting all wound up.

Fine. But I did recommend plenty of books, but you refused that and fixated on one post about why a few books were hard to find. I know the reason bothers you, sorry.

If you can give us a list of decent works without bringing Obama, Ayers, or Satan into it, I'm more then willing to listen.

Good books.

That's what this thread is about. Even if you're only recommending them to flip off the Libs and trick us, what I hope you can understand is while I may disagree with you, I've always really enjoyed reading and trying to understand what the other side has to offer. Just basic human curiosity.

No one wants to hear how Obama and Ayers conspired to do something really evil and that's why this book is important.  If the book is as well written as you make out, I'm sure that will come out anyway. Please. Just recommend a book and offer to talk about what it meant afterwards. If no one else does, I promise I will.

[Grant]

Recently I've been reading the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu.  I've completed reading The Three Body Problem and The Dark Forest.  I first heard about these books when The Three Body Problem won the Hugo award, I think back in 2015 or something.  Back then there was a bunch of controversy about weather Hugo voters were unduly voting for authors that were not good ole white males. 

I kind of understood some of the concern, but I was out of reading material and felt that it was a good opportunity to check it out for myself and form a real opinion. 

Both books were pretty good.  I havn't read The Dark Between the Stars, or any other of the Hugo nominees for that year, so I don't know if it truly deserved to win or not.  I like Kevin Anderson, but I don't think he's superb.  His Dune books were meh.  Good, but not GREAT.  Honestly, Michael Stackpole is better. 

The Three Body Problem was good because it was different.  It was mostly a mystery novel rather than straight up Sci-Fi.  The Dark Forest was more sci-fi, but was so full of ChiCom gibberish that it was hard to handle until the very end, which was outstanding.  Like Song of Ice and Fire level outstanding. 

Neither book was exactly a work of art when it came to language, but sci-fi so rarely is.  It had the handicap of being a translation, but so was War and Peace.  Cixin Liu isn't Tolstoy, but he writes some good books.

I read Confessions by Augustine.  It was good but I'm more of an Aquinas guy.  I figure everyone should read it once if they want the full classics education, but I probably won't be digging into it again. 

I read Nostromo last year.  It was good.  The language was much better of course.  It was an interesting read since, much like Coriolanus, it can be read from either viewpoint from a marxist/critical theory point of view.  It was better than Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.  Heart of Darkness requires much herb to appreciate fully, and Lord Jim is for a specific set.  I'd say Nostromo is Conrad's masterpiece. 

I read Blood Meridian, because it was supposed to be Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.  It was a page turner, but I found it to be more of a commentary on literature critics than anything else.  The language was truly something.  Maybe not Faulkner, but they both shared something.  It appears to me that book critics have been overly enamored of language and style over plot and narrative, which in my opinion is much more important. 

[TheDrake]

I just reread Job, A Comedy of Justice. Regret. Wish I had just kept my foggy memories from when I read it as a teen. Awful prose, disjointed plot, misogyny that didn't age well. Oops.

[DonaldD]

I'm re-reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman...

[kidv]

I also wear white gold when given the choice, I must admit almost solely because of Thomas Covenant. (an unworthy hero I realize now, but the power of white gold was fascinating to a 12 year old).

I've started the Witcher books [The Last Wish, then Blood of Elves] because of the Netflix series.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the series, and I've been pleasantly surprised to enjoy the books.

I recently read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, and was floored by parts of it, just making me adore the magic of life.  Please read.

[DJQuag]

I've been rereading the Dark Tower series recently and to go back through it with an adult's understanding of the issues in the text and beyond that what the author himself was dealing with in his personal life makes it much more interesting.