I saw the post about the books worth burning thread.

Figured I'd start a thread of books worth having whether they be technical or for reading pleasure. I will read through books if they are on the Chief of Staff's Reading List or if they are recommended by friends when traveling. It got me to thinking what the rest of the PBB reads, if anything.

Being that I started this thread I'll contribute a book I picked up in at the USO in Dallas.

The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War - Brandon Friedman

for a young single guy, this book wil... can get you laid.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T2JKCJAAL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Sun Tzu, the Art of War has helped me deal with the wife.:D

Tom Clancy; "Without Remorse"

Details on why you just don't screw with some people....
Stalking urban prey, varying methods to avoid LEOs, etc...

Orson Scott Card- Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.

Ender's Game changed my life as a kid. The best trilogy every written IMHO

Atlas Shrugged

seven roads to hell.....fawesome

This is a must have for all menfolk"


http://www.amazon.com/Sperm-Wars-Science-Robin-Baker/dp/0788160044

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/418HYHBN63L._SL500_AA300_.jpg


Other then that:

Democracy in America - Alexis de Tocqueville
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
The Federalist Papers - Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
A Letter Concerning Toleration and Two Treatises of Government - John Locke
The Republic - Plato
Self Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beyond Good and Evil - Freidrich Nietzsche
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
The Histories - Herodotus

Generation: Kill, it's about first hand experiences with a group of Recon Marines in Iraq. I recommend it to anyone it's a badass read!

Stephen King's "The Stand" & Dark Tower series

Michael Chricton's complete works though if you choose only one I would hit "State of Fear"

Orson Scott Card- Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide.

Ender's Game changed my life as a kid. The best trilogy every written IMHO

X2. I still read Enders Game every other year or so.

Atlas Shrugged

Reading that now - very good.

Lonesome Dove is the best Western on record.

The complete works of Louis L'Amour
Unintended Consequences
1984
Animal Farm
The Overton Window
The New American Standard Bible
Atlas Shrugged

Dr Suess goes to War
http://web.ushmm.org/AccountTempFiles/Account17398/images/dr_suess_goes_to_war_big.jpg

before WW2 he did political comics, theres alot of insight about how history repeats
http://www.cominganarchy.com/wordpress/wp-content/old_uploads/appeaser.jpg




then theres
Monkey Wrench gang ....

Lord of the Flies.....

The Bible
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Siddhartha
The Anarchist's Cookbook
Technical Manual for 5.56MM, M16A2, M4 and M4A1 Carbine
The Book of Virtues
How To Fix Damn Near Everything
The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Webster's Dictionary
Mandarin-English Dictionary :tinfoilhat:

TB: those should be published as a box set!

The Lord of the Rings trilogy - J.R.R.Tolkein
Medicine for Mountaineering

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pershig
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Hemingway

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pershig

That book has sparked my interest, but I normally don't read fiction. How close to fiction is it? I've only read a short summary about it.

That book has sparked my interest, but I normally don't read fiction. How close to fiction is it? I've only read a short summary about it.

Reads like a non-fiction tale of a guy riding cross-country with his son after an existential breakdown.

If you like Nietzsche, you might like this in the same sort of punk-rock-level philosophy way.

Death In The Long Grass - Peter Hathaway Capstick

The Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald are great escapism.

So are Ed McBain's 54th Precinct novels. They are called "police procedurals" and follow a detective squad in a fictional New York-like city as they work with modern methods to solve crimes. Think of them as a well-written CSI/NCIS crossed with NYPD Blue.

You really need to look them up on Wiki so that you can find them and read them in order. I believe that the series spans at least thirty years so if you read a new one followed by an old one, you'll be saying, "WTF? Why don't they just use the mass spectrometer like Abby on NCIS has?". It's interesting to read about crime solving in the days before all these very well developed crime labs.

Ed McBain (who also writes under his real name of Evan Hunter) also did a Florida based series similar to MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Instead of a color in every title like the McGee series (The Deep Blue Goodbye, Dress Her in Indigo, Bright Orange for the Shroud, etc.), McBain has a reference to a nursery rhyme in all of that series' titles. I recommend the McGee series before McBain's knockoff.

I've read all of Clancy's stuff and in a similar vein, all of Dale Brown's military techo-thrillers. There's less politics than Clancy and slightly less intrigue, but the description of battles and the futuristic hardware used is very good.

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z are both good. I'm waiting for the third book which supposedly is close to being published.

The Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald are great escapism.

I've read all of Clancy's stuff and in a similar vein, all of Dale Brown's military techo-thrillers. There's less politics than Clancy and slightly less intrigue, but the description of battles and the futuristic hardware used is very good.

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z are both good. I'm waiting for the third book which supposedly is close to being published.

I started typing JDM and Clancy...then erased them.

They're books worth reading, but not necessarily books that everyone must keep on their bookshelf and read every 1-3 years.

For fiction, I also enjoy Stephen Coonts' Jake Grafton techno-thrillers (starting with Flight of the Intruder), as well as Vince Flynn (Mitch Rapp/CIA protagonist) and David Baldacci --especially the camel club series....but they don't write people as well as MacDonald.

Any of the Vince Flynn books. They're political thrillers based in reality with the main character being a CIA operative/badass. Reading through the series for the 3rd time. had to replace the first 2 books in the series because they were read so much that they fell apart.

W.E.B Griffin is another of my favorites. He takes real historical events and laces them into intricate plots involving realistic but fictional characters. He's got alot of books out as well. His writing is awesome, but what really got me was when i read the acknowledgements in his book

The Bible

The Foxfire series.

The Witchery of Archery by Maurice Thompson
The Odyssey by :homer:
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
White Feather: Carlos Hathcock USMC scout sniper
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Chilton's repair manual for Jeeps :flipoff2:

That book has sparked my interest, but I normally don't read fiction. How close to fiction is it? I've only read a short summary about it.

Ive read this book 3 or 4 times. It discusses a lot of philosophy, but rather than being a straight up philosophy book, its intersperced into a story about a cross country motorcycle trip. The philosophy discussion is kinda like when you're on a long drive and random stuff pops into your head, but more organized, its difficult to explain, i havent read or see anything like it. The storyline is actually a true story, the guy was on a cross country motorcycle trip with his son. As I was reading I never got the idea that I was reading a fiction novel. In the bookstore I purchased my copy in it was listed in the Philosophy section, so dont sweat it being "fiction". I highly reccomend this book, to anyone who will listen.

Favorite Book:
Radical Brewing - Randy Mosher

Staples:
How to Brew - John Palmer
Designing Great Beers - Ray Daniels

Do text books count?:
Advanced Electromagnetics - Balanis

I don't do political books. It only pisses me off, even more so than the news.

The Odyssey by :homer:


Probably the 1st time Homer wasn't meant as an insult.

Anything by Tom Robbins - I especially like Villa Incognito
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot by John Muir (best book on engine repair ever)

Cosmic Banditos by A.C. Weisbecker

Many on my list have probably been covered but here it is.

Atlas Shrugged
Watership Down
Animal Farm
Art of War
Great and Secret Show
Anarchists Cookbook
complete collection of military training manuals
The Real Frank Zappa
World War Z
A history of the First World War
Sidhartha (sp?)

I have one on the complete history of the American Revolution that is a really raw look at it's buildup and the effects of various decisions but the name eludes me currently. I could add to this but it's a basic mixed list.

The major works of Max Hastings:
Retribution: The Battle for Japan 1944-45
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945

Currently reading Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy.

These are dense, heavily researched works of accurate history.

In the last year, you could pretty much always find it on me:

The Art of Electronics
or to those in the know "The Big Grey Book" :laughing::laughing:


Beyond that, my recommended and required reading are fun things like:
SAS spec
SATA spec
datasheets





can't remember the last time I read a book that wasn't technical.

*Conservative Comebacks To Liberal Lies
*The Lone Survivor

"Shop Class as Soulcraft"

Okay, I haven't read it but saw the author on Booknotes last weekend....yes, my weekends are indeed that exciting..

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft

"Mr. Crawford was inclined to work with his hands, but wood would not do. “Wood was for hippies,” he writes in “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.” “The wood whisperer with his hand planes, his curly maple, and his workshop on Walden Pond is a stock alter ego of gentlefolk everywhere, and I wanted none of it.”

I'm on the list at the local library.

That book has sparked my interest, but I normally don't read fiction. How close to fiction is it? I've only read a short summary about it.

I tried to read it numerous times and never got into it. (it is about some dude straight out of electric shock treatment for depression)

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls


Far & away my favorite book as a kid - I'm rereading it now :)

5000 yr leap.

a must for all americans!

So, Balke, have you actually read each of those?

The only book that I have been able to finish without getting completely bored with it was Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King but I really want to find Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and read it I loved the move and heard the book was a insane mount better.

"I hope they serve beer in Hell" Tucker Max Great book for a laugh. They also have a dvd.

http://www.amazon.com/Day-Armageddon-J-L-Bourne/dp/1439176671/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282087679&sr=8-2

And no, You can't really "Click to look inside!"... It was just the first pic I grabbed of it. :flipoff2:

Oh, and this: http://www.amazon.com/Cell-Novel-Stephen-King/dp/1416524517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282087898&sr=8-1

Arthur Rimbaud - A Season In Hell

Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.

One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care!

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.

I have called for executioners; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.

That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming!

"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ah! I've taken too much of that: - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.


I just try to read this, to get knowledge of Canadian Writers.

Mordecai Richler - Solomon Gursky Was Here

Cannery Row is my all time favorite
Pillars of the Earth, read it 10 years ago, don't have cable but have been told the mini series is pretty good.
Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn
Lolita
The Prophet

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G3CDPSXZL._SS500_.jpg

More Guns Less Crime
The Bias Against Guns
Both by John Lott

The Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas (fawk you Doc :flipoff2:)

Surprised no one has said it yet, but "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson, also the Baroque Cycle is really really good but its a bit of an undertaking at around 4000 pages.

Most of my favorites have been listed. I didn't see The Anarchist Cookbook listed though, I think it's a must have personally.

x2 on:
art of war
ender's game
1984
to kill a mockingbird
a brave new world

Chris

The Bible

The Foxfire series.

Julie got me the complete Foxfire set in paper back for Christmas a couple of years ago it really is awesome. Our Jr. High Library had it when I was a kid, and they were pretty much the only books I checked out. Some day I'll have a first edition hard back set.


I'm not much of a read for entertainment kind of guy but have enjoyed the works of:

Michael Crichton
Gary Paulsen (written more for younger folks/teens)
Tom Clancy (Damn fine video games too)
Dan Brown
John Grisham (Loved A Painted House, it was like reading about my grandparents)
John Lingenfelter (Modifying Small Block Chevy, also the LT1/LT4 book)
Corky Bell (Maximum Boost)



- Lee

most of my list has already been covered. I like Old Yeller as well.

Cosmic Banditos by A.C. Weisbecker

Ha, that is one I've actually read. If you liked that check out his other book 'In Search of Captain Zero', it's a pretty entertaining one too.

I've been wanting to start checking a few off this lists, both the novels and the non-fiction: http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

Of Human Bondage

The Story of O

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Travels with Charlie