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Last Great Book You Have Read?

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MWes11

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I hate reading. Not gonna lie about it. Unless it is a short sports article, I can't sit down for hours and read because it doesn't keep my interest. But I also travel a lot so I was thinking of getting some books on tape/iTunes to kill some time in between sports radio. Afternoon sports radio is atrocious with Gottlieb on CBS and Bomani Jones on ESPN.

Any suggestions? I heard The Devil in the White City is good. Also heard they were making a movie about it with Leo and Scorsese. In to thrillers/mysteries, history, sports.
 
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Supreme Lord Z

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The Devil in the White City is a good book. I believe I read that after a thread in here several years ago talked about it.

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian is the last truly great book I read. Although you don't strike me as the McCarthy type. He is a tad metaphoric.

I highly recommend two books by Don Delillo...

Libra about Lee Harvey Oswald
White Noise - Just read it
 
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Joneslab

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The last great one was a short thriller (but really it's impossible to pin down the genre) by Iain Reid called I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

Never read anything like it. The closest cousin is probably Michael Faber's Under the Skin, which was turned into the lunatic-crazy movie starring Scarlett Johanson.

But I'm Thinking of Ending Things is far more propulsive. And far more scary. It's just a unique, unhinged, frightening read that has stuck with me almost every day since I read it two months ago.

And before that is was probably Josh Malerman's Bird Box, which remains the best apocalyptic novel I've read not named The Road.
 
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KentuckyStout

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Hmm since you don't like to read this ain't easy.

I'd say The Road by Cormac McCarthy and All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque are both good reads and both are less than 300 pages.
 
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Joneslab

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Supreme Lord Z said:
I highly recommend two books by Don Delillo...

Libra about Lee Harvey Oswald
White Noise - Just read it
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I got into DeLillo in college after White Noise blew me away. I also recommend Underworld if you haven't read it.

To the OP: Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken is a great place to start for people who don't like reading, though by now most people know many of the story's details. It remains one of the best nonfiction books I've read.

I read a lot of basketball books if you're looking for sports-related stuff. There are some very good ones (The Last Great Game, Play Their Hearts Out, To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever) but the granddaddy is probably Darcy Frey's The Last Shot. I'm not sure this is still in print, but if you can find it it's sort of the literary Hoop Dreams. And a very young Stephon Marbury makes an appearance.

I'm not nearly as big of a football fan, but I did really like Warren St. John's book about Alabama football, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer. This is an interesting glimpse into Bama when they weren't the powerhouse they are now, and there are some highly uncomfortable things St. John is willing to share about his fellow fan.
 
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Kaizer Sosay

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I have read several decent books since…but Unbroken is the last GREAT book I have read. It is long but it is very hard to put it down once you start reading. Great story and it is very well written. And…it's a true story. Win/win/win.

Devil in the White City is definitely a good read though.
 
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Supreme Lord Z

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Joneslab said:
I got into DeLillo in college after White Noise blew me away. I also recommend Underworld if you haven't read it.

To the OP: Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken is a great place to start for people who don't like reading, though by now most people know many of the story's details. It remains one of the best nonfiction books I've read.

I read a lot of basketball books if you're looking for sports-related stuff. There are some very good ones (The Last Great Game, Play Their Hearts Out, To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever) but the granddaddy is probably Darcy Frey's The Last Shot. I'm not sure this is still in print, but if you can find it it's sort of the literary Hoop Dreams. And a very young Stephon Marbury makes an appearance.

I'm not nearly as big of a football fan, but I did really like Warren St. John's book about Alabama football, Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer. This is an interesting glimpse into Bama when they weren't the powerhouse they are now, and there are some highly uncomfortable things St. John is willing to share about his fellow fan.
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Love Delillo... and Libra is his my favorite which puts me distinctly in the minority and I've read most of Delillo's stuff including Underworld. He paints Oswald so vividly and fleshes him out so completely. I couldn't put that one down.

White Noise is a comedic masterpiece. I have never laughed harder at a movie or a book than I did that one.

Delillo is the greatest author most people have never read, I think. His fans tend towards the professional and the professorial. Very popular among the academia.
 
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domino79

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Along the Yellow River by I.P. Freely. Fascinating account of China's famed Yellow River and the stories therein.
 
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MWes11

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Thanks for the recommendations. Seem like some very good options thrown out.
 
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BankerCat12

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Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery and Billion Dollar Deals

Currently reading: Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues. Good book so far.

I probably have about 20 books I am still needing to read that are collecting dust in my office:

The Panama Papers
Seinfeldia
The Cartel
The Power of the Dog
House of Nails: Memoir of Lenny Dykstra
 
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anon_aawvduncd4ay0

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Power of the Dog is good easy read
Papillon
Fire at the Gates
 
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jockstrap_mcgee

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Challenger deep. Neil shusterman.

About a teenager beginning to suffer from schizo-affective disorder. It won the national book award last year. Incredible book.
 
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ThwKentuckyKid

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With ADHD it's hard to read a paragraph, let alone a whole book. My eyes will be reading, but I'll be thinking about something totally unrelated.
 
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Joneslab

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I'm actually reading a very good book right now. Jut picked it up this week and it seems perfect for people who aren't big readers.

It's definitely not something I normally read: a YA novel set in a sort of quasi, magic-infused Middle East. It's called An Ember in the Ashes, and it's by Sabaa Tahir. I'd heard it was kind of a phenomenon among YA readers--there's a definite Harry Potter-meets-Hunger-Games vibe--but didn't pick it up because it's so far out of my normal reading wheelhouse.

But it's pretty amazing so far. It sold a gazillion copies, movies rights have been sold to I think Twentieth Century Fox, and the sequel just came out last week.
 
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Captain Forehead

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I'm more into educational reads myself. Like researching projects and things to work on.
If you like animals I recommend this one about sharks...

It will definitely keep you entertained for hours and hours.
But you said you were into thrillers. How about this one.

Now that is one crazy *** bear. Will he kill and eat the other little furry animals?
Dunno. Gonna have to read it to find out. Definitely a cliff hanger.
 
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Chuckinden

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Been reading the Jack Reacher series, but had to take a break. Just started "The Girl On A Train" last night.

I would like recommendations on non-fiction.
 
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Nubb16

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Supreme Lord Z said:
The Devil in the White City is a good book. I believe I read that after a thread in here several years ago talked about it.
[/QUOTE]
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that was probably me that recommended it. I wrote a paper on that book in college. Loved it.


I love to read. It don't get much time now. I read Revival by Stephen King last Christmas break. The ending wasn't what I really wanted but it was a great story to read.
 
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Joneslab

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Chuckinden said:
Been reading the Jack Reacher series, but had to take a break. Just started "The Girl On A Train" last night.

I would like recommendations on non-fiction.
Click to expand...

True crime: Simon Worrall's The Poet and the Murderer. Best true crime book I've read.

History: Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. Maybe the best book I've read period. Fascinating locked-room mystery that's also about the birth of the moden detective.

Social sciences: Ted Conover's Newjack. A reporter appeals to Sing Sing to let him write about the prison, but they turn him down. So he becomes a guard. Brutal and hilarious.

Science: Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything. Bryson has the storyteller's knack for condensing complex information into punchy, easy-to-digest little fragments. Highly entertaining book.

Americana: Tracy Kidder's Home Town. This is kind of cheating because it's the story of a crime, but Kidder--like Bryson--has a God-given ability to really tell a story. Whenever I get a jones to read nonfiction this is usually the first book I think about.

Essays: David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Hilarious and sharp, but it's not for everybody. Some of the footnotes can run fifteen pages or so. But Wallace was a master of the language and I'm not sure there's another modern writer like him.
 
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UK 82

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If you don't like to read and want something light and entertaining then I'd highly recommend Carl Hiaasen's Bad Monkey. Plenty of action and hysterical to boot. Very easy read. For thrillers you can't go wrong with anything (well almost anything) from Jo Nesbo and Ben Coes.
 
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Tskware

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PTI (pti) said:
I really enjoyed Station Eleven.
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I read that and thought it excellent.

Just finished "67 Shots" a book about the three days leading up to the Kent State shootings and the aftermath. Although I would not say it was "great", it was a very interesting treatment of an infamous event that I well remember when I was a kid, but really did not know any of the facts (except I was aware that one of the victims was walking to class with a friend when she was fatally shot)
 
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mailman85_rivals376684

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Okay so what's the boards opinion on Blood Meridian? Its been sitting on the shelf so decided to start it after reading this thread. Only about a third of the way through and I'm still up in the air about it.
 
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Tskware

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mailman85 said:
Okay so what's the boards opinion on Blood Meridian? Its been sitting on the shelf so decided to start it after reading this thread. Only about a third of the way through and I'm still up in the air about it.
Click to expand...

Think CM is a brilliant writer, loved nearly every one of his books . . . but not that one, thought it was pointlessly violent, never really understood WTF the story was about or what the point of it was.
 
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