Books! (and other things)

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>I was inspired by my list of favorite TV shows on the Thanksgiving thread to devote a thread devoted to our favorite things. Holiday season is upon us and I'll most likely have cash to burn-- I'm looking for a few good books, CDs, and movies to keep me warm through winter break, and I'm sure many of you need something to distract you from the impending doom of college decisions.</p>

<p>So, without further ado... some of my favorite books:</p>

<p>-- Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
-- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth (childrens' book)
-- Don DeLillo, White Noise
-- Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse
-- Kimberly Willis Holt, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (another young-ish book)
-- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (think Catcher in the Rye goes to college)
-- Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (writer goes undercover as a security guard at Sing Sing)
-- Adrian Nicole Blanc, Random Family (nonfic about a family in poverty)
-- Tim O'Brien, all (Going After Cacciato is my favorite, but The Things They Carried is a little more poetic)</p>

<p>Right now I'm reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which is pretty good. Though it's about Chicago and the World's Fair, which was happening at the same time and at the same place that the U of C was founded, don't expect to enjoy it for its U of C references, because there are none.</p>

<p>Favorite Movies:
-- Do the Right Thing
-- 2001: A Space Odyssey
-- Casablanca
-- Taxi Driver
-- GoodFellas
-- Dogma
-- The French Connection
-- Mean Girls</p>

<p>Favorite CD's:
-- The Smiths, The Queen is Dead
-- Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
-- Patti Smith, Horses
-- Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
-- Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile
-- Dinosaur Jr., You're Living All Over Me
-- Bruce Springsteen, everything
-- David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
-- Beatles, everything
-- The Cure, Disintegration
-- Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation</p>

<p>Anyway, in dire need of suggestions. I'm pretty set on reading Anna Karenina this winter break, but other than that, I'd love to hear what you all would recommend to each other, now that I've exposed myself as somebody who's fuzzy for childrens' books, Lindsay Lohan, and loud music.</p>

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<p>Favorite Books:</p>

<ul>
<li>Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon</li>
<li>Natsume Soseki, Kokoro</li>
<li>Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio</li>
<li>Stephen King, pretty much everything</li>
<li>J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye</li>
<li>Ayn Rand, everything</li>
</ul>

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<p>Book-wise...</p>

<p>I second Winesburg, Ohio. And Anna Karenina!</p>

<p>Also: Anything Nabokov. (Pale Fire most especially; an old love of mine; it is exquisitely crafted, a true magnum opus.</p>

<p>Also (in no particular order): the Sherlock Holmes Canon; George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, for the fantastically inclined; Joyce's Ulysses<a href="of%20course">/I</a>; the short stories of Anton Chekhov; Georges Perec's *La Disparition<a href="%22A%20Void%22">/I</a> and *Life: A User's Manual; Thoreau's Walden; Vonnegut (anything, really; the Snuff Box is interesting); Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel; Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway; Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and his collected fairy tales (all very endearing); Sterne's Tristram Shandy; the poetry of Whitman, Pound, Thomas (Dylan), Rilke, Byron, Plath, Louise Labe, and some others I can't for the life of me remember...</p>

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<p>Jane Eyre, for a good dose of English classic.</p>

<p>Nabokov's short stories are also hellishly amazing.</p>

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<p>Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.</p>

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<p>St. Exupery's The Little Prince...I love that book to death!</p>

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<p>me love lindsey lohan (Lilo) too <3</p>

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<p>You guys don't need to just list "classics," just so you know. </p>

<p>I like Harry Potter myself. And Goodnight Moon. And Equus, to give you some variety. </p>

<p>I'm also a fan of some books already mentioned (e.g. The Things They Carried), Bel Canto, and some stuff I've read in hum.</p>

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<p>crime and punishment is my favorite.
and maybe ill refresh my memories of les miserables and count de monte cristo.
currently cracking brothers karamazov, fountainhead, guns, germs, and steel, age of turbulence, and wuthering heights (reread). i know, i like to read multiple books at the same time.</p>

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<p>lol i feel like this book isn't smart enough to add to the list... but i just read The Kite Runner, and it was glorious. in an effort to prove i'm educated, i'll add that Antigone is great... i think i'm obsessed with the ancient Greeks.</p>

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<p>Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled</p>

<p>This may be my favorite book. I think people will either love it or hate it, though.</p>

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<p>Books
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon- For anybody who likes comic books, World War II era stuff, etc.</p>

<p>Watchmen by Alan Moore- If you've never read a graphic novel make this your first one.</p>

<p>The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand- Ignore the annoying cult of personality surrounding Ayn Rand and enjoy the books as they are. A lot of people are turned off from these just because people can get annoying about them.</p>

<p>The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass- A complete classic, and really unique.</p>

<p>Stephen King's Dark Tower series- I just finished the fourth book. These are completely awesome!</p>

<p>I have many more favorites, though. Those were the first to come to mind. For TV shows people may want for Christmas I'd definitely give a nod to the new Twin Peaks gold box set that just came out. For movies, check out anything by David Lynch: Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, etc.</p>

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<p>1984 by George Orwell. My favorite...so far.</p>

<p>I want to read the last Harry Potter book... :(</p>

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<p>I'm a sucker for any kind of gossipy, high society/ overly sexed book... Gossip Girl, The Clique, any and all YA, I am Charlotte Simmons, The Devil Wears Prada, Academy X, etc. I really like reading the wickedly distorted version of what my life isn't.</p>

<p>At one time in my life, Flowers in the Attic was my favorite book. I promise you that you're not missing anything-- it's probably the most dreadful book of all time. See why: Flowers</a> in the Attic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>

<p>Another brilliant book is The Westing Game, by Ellen Raskin, which everybody should read before graduating elementary school.</p>

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<p>I second Crime and Punishment and Pride and Prejudice... I also like A Tale of Two Cities, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Montaigne's Essays. Oh, and Harry Potter, of course : )</p>

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<p>esentman: I'm one of the people turned off by that cult of personality you speak of >_></p>

<p>Ian McEwan is an amazing author, if you can get past the pretense. My boyfriend found his writing "self-masturbatory" at first, but even he gave in as the plot started to thicken...On Chesil Beach and Atonement are lovely and heartbreaking.</p>

<p>Anything by Neil Gaiman is fair game -- start with American Gods, though, just because it's amazing squared. Also, Good Omens by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is great if you want something humorous. And Thank You For Smoking (the book; I've never seen the movie) left me in stitches.</p>

<p>And although I don't like Orson Scott Card as a person, I can't deny the awesomeness that is Ender's Game. Yay science fiction!</p>

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<p>Neil Gaiman makes me think of Alan Moore (I love American Gods too, don't get me wrong). But Alan Moore's Watchmen is simply incredibly. Plus it's a comic book, so it's like reading without really reading.</p>

<p>Other amazing comic books/ graphic novels: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (by Chris Ware), almost anything by Daniel Clowes, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud</p>

<p>One of my favorite geekreads ever was Ways of Seeing by John Berger. Art history theory.</p>

<p>And I can't forget Philip Roth! He and Joyce Carol Oates are probably the most prodigious and most consistently quality living writers.</p>

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<p>The Westing Game.. I'm sure I've read that, but I don't remember the details.</p>

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<p>My favorite book by far is the Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. I know it's somewhat childish, but I remember almost everything in the book, and it's a book I can read again and again. I still remember how much fun I had reading that book when I read it during the stress-free days of 10th grade. </p>

<p>My least favorite book by far is the Scarlet Letter. Horrible book! I read it at first independently in 9th grade, since one of my older cousins was reading it in school, and he apparently loved it. And then when it was a required reading this year (senior year), I would have killed myself before I read it for the second time.</p>

<p>I also like Slaugher-House Five, but I had to read it twice, really, really carefully to understand it fully enough to appreciate it. </p>

<p>My fav nonfictions are Tipping Point, Blink, Republic, and World is Flat, in no particular order. I also read Nicomachean Ethics like someone else who posted here, and I liked it, but I didn't like it as much as Republic, so I'm not putting it as a favorite. And I've read Critique of Pure Reason by Kant, I absolutey despise him! He makes me feel so dumb. Surprisingly, I have yet to read a Humes, and I've heard he's arguably the most entertaining in this department--I feel so ashamed of myself!</p>

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<p>the westing game is brilliant.</p>

<p>but not as brilliant as philip roth's american pastoral</p>