Finished War and Peace about 2 months ago and I am so thankful! It's such an epic story. It obviously is very long but it is not a hard read. Tolstoy really flows better than any author I have ever read. Never have I had such a connection to so many characters in a book!
Is this your first Harry Bosch novel? I hope so, because you've begun a great journey, this being the first in the series. Michael Connelly is brilliant, and this is as good as it gets when it comes to modern crime novels, in my opinion. And, if anything, they just get better.
It isn't my first Connelly novel (I read The Poet) but it is my first Bosch novel and from what I've read so far, I have to agree with you. The books are really well-written and fun to read. Did you read the Bosch series in order?
Sort of, but not exactly. What happened to me is that I discovered his Mickey Haller novels (The Lincoln Lawyer is one of them and was made into a film, which can't touch the novel) and read them all, and then, instead of jumping around (I'd been introduced to Bosch in them... Connelly loves to connect his novels together in one fashion or another), I got The Black Echo and I'm still working my way through the series of Bosch novels. My "problem" is that I read several things at the same time. When I'm reading a series, I often step away from it for a while, read some other things, and then go back. Except for the Bosch novels that Haller is in, I still have a ways to go. I've read 9 Bosch/Haller novels altogether, but still have several in the Bosch series. Confusing, isnt it!
continuing in the Noire/Hard-boiled genre I've read The Devil in a Blue Dress. I'm now reading A Red Death.
Finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It was a pretty good fantasy/magic book but it was slow. Reading Ready Player One next.
My summer reading choice this year is Game of Thrones - almost through the third book so far. Good stuff...
In Between Days by Andrew Porter. Not a bad read so far and I picked it up based on the recommendation of my favorite book store since it's set in Houston. But really annoys the hell out of me that the author calls it "Houston International" airport. I mean, come on.
100 books to read before you die. "1984" by George Orwell "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers "A Long Way Gone" by Ishmael Beah "A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition" by Lemony Snicket "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle "Alice Munro: Selected Stories" by Alice Munro "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll "All the President's Men" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt "Are You There, God? It's me, Margaret" by Judy Blume "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett "Beloved" by Toni Morrison "Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen" by Christopher McDougall "Breath, Eyes, Memory" by Edwidge Danticat "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl "Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White "Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead" by Brene Brown "Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1" by Jeff Kinney "Dune" by Frank Herbert "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" by Hunter S. Thompson "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn "Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison "Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth" by Chris Ware "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain "Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson "Little House on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Love Medicine" by Louise Erdrich "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis "Of Human Bondage" by W. Somerset Maugham "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac "Out of Africa" by Isak Dinesen "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Malcolm X and Alex Haley "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger "The Color of Water" by James McBride "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen "The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America" by Erik Larson "The Diary of Anne Frank" by Anne Frank "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green "The Giver" by Lois Lowry "The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood "The House At Pooh Corner" by A. A. Milne "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot "The Liars' Club: A Memoir" by Mary Karr "The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1)" by Rick Riordan "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales" by Oliver Sacks "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan "The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster "The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel" by Barbara Kingsolver "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York" by Robert A. Caro "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt "The Shining" by Stephen King "The Stranger" by Albert Camus "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle "The Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel" by Haruki Murakami "The World According to Garp" by John Irving "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption" by Laura Hillenbrand "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-100-books-everyone-must-read-2014-2#ixzz2sqBd5y1C
Great freaking book. Enjoy. I finally finished the Thomas Jefferson book by John Meacham. How awesome would Twitter have been if it had been around when our VP killed a former Treasury Secretary?! Starting The Plague by Albert Camus.
I'm going to have to add a few of those Amazon 100 to my read list. Just a head's up that we started a 2014 thread.
The Hunger Games? Anthony Bourdain? Are y'all being facetious? This list doesn't do justice for the great books out there - not by a long shot. Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Poe, Chekhov, and so many more are missing from this crap 'you must read before you' list. I realize fewer Americans read leisurely anymore so these short lists are better than nothing. However, most people I know read a book a month at least so this list will be done in just over 8 years. Assuming 63 years of reading life from age 12 to age 75, one should read 756 books at the minimal rate. I made a resolution some years back to read a book every week, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I'm currently reading, Ruth Park's "Harp In The South" (1948). It shows a family living in the slums of Sydney and all the wonderful people they encounter. There are dark parts as well of course. I believe many people in that part of the world are familiar with this book.
damn. thats awesome...but i don't think most have the time to do that. you listen to audibooks or actually read them? i know people who listen to audiobooks while they work...i'm not sure how they could focus on the book..but whatever.
I hear you. I read for 30-45 minutes/night before going to bed on weeknights, and sometimes 2-3 hours on weekends. Once you read enough, your reading speed increases tremendously. I alternate between fiction/non-fiction, the classics/NY Times bestsellers, etc. You learn so many valuable insights for work and your career; your perspective on life and the people around you changes; eventually you become happier in some ways as the knowledge gives you assurance and priorities. Once you began the process, you'll learn to allocate time for reading. The depth of fulfillment you experience when reading the literary greats motivates you to budget your time effectively. I listen to podcasts on my commute, but audiobooks would be a good alternative.
You're missing the point. It's easy to make a list of classics...that's been done a million times. This list actually has a ton of variety that can appeal to ALL people. Goodnight Moon is on the list...and for babies, that's the end all be all of books. Very nice list and well thought out, imo.
