Rate The Dude's Fiction Bookshelf (+diablo and others too!)

[El Diablo]

e,

That looks pretty highbrow.

[The Dude]

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That classics block you've got going from Austen to Homer seems pretty obvious. I think you should just embrace your low-brow taste and move to the back the ones you don't actually like.

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All of the literature books on my shelf I have either read and enjoyed (Les Miserables, Pride and Prejudice, The Vampire Chronicles, etc.) or haven't read yet but would like to (The Iliad, The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.). I tried getting into The Odyssey a couple years ago but couldn't quite get into it. I might try again sometime soon.

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If you want advice on the "literary" front (meant here as a distinction between koontz and Austen, even if such a distinction is a tad on the silly side), post some of the literary works you've read and liked.

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I've been moving more toward literary fiction the past few years. Anne Rice, Robert Heinlein, Jane Austen, are probably my favorite pure literature authors. A lot of the old classics that are kind of quasi- pop fiction quasi- literature I really enjoy as well. Orson Scott Card comes to mind here.

I don't know that I'm familiar with Vonnegut. Give me some recommendations.

[bernie]

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The books you see are either ones I haven't read but like having visible (The Iliad, for example)

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I saw it in the pic before I read this. First thing my eyes were drawn to. It brought up bad flashbacks from when I read it. Thanks, I'll have to redo therapy for that now.

Yes, it should be much better to look at on your shelf than to read.

Looks like the same version I have. That effing thing is still haunting me.

b

[The Dude]

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The bottom shelf is pretty disappointing. I used to read a lot of Grisham/Crichton/etc. when I was flying a lot and wanted super quick and easy to read stuff, but it's really just not very good fiction. You should read some of the book rec threads here for much better written fiction. You're missing out.


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Most of that is leftover from my high-school days. I recently re-read Jurassic Park and The Lost World, but other than that it's probably been about 2 years since I've read and enjoyed anything by the types of authors you mentioned. (Well, the two novellas by Grisham on the far right of that shelf are pretty good.)

When I first separated my fiction and non-fiction book shelves, pop-fiction was about 75% of it, so you can see the direction it's gone in the past 3 years.

[The Dude]

Haha, I actually remember you talking about how much you hated that book. (Something about how even Hector gets others to fight his battles or something.) We'll see if I can ever actually get into it.

[The Dude]

econ, yikes!

[The Dude]

Devil,

It's been forever since I've read any Stephen King or John Saul. I enjoyed them back in the day, but I enjoyed Koontz and Clancy back in the day too, so I'm not sure. I was considering picking them up again.

[El Diablo]

Dude,

There will be some good contemporary fiction in my picture that I think you'll like. I veer more towards "fiction" than "literature" and have read most of the stuff you have. I definitely liked Clancy a ton. While he's no literary master, he's imo at a different level than Grisham/Crichton. Were you ever into spy novels? Robert Ludlum and Frederick Forsyth wrote tons of really entertaining, fast-paced, quick reads.

[orange]

Dude,

You like alot of the same stuff that I read. Sort've fast paced novels, not necessarily the best written, but fun reads nonetheless. A book I really enjoyed was 'Watchers' by Dean Koontz. Was about genetic engineering on animals.

Also, I notice you like alot of fantasy. Stephen King's Dark Tower series is really cool, kind've along the lines of Lord of the Rings in a sense.

[The Dude]

I haven't ready any spy novels, but it's a genre that I'm willing to try. At one point I almost picked up The Bourne Identity, then I heard from a few people that the book was pretty bad. But yeah, I'll take some recommendations in that direction.