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Re: Official OS Book Club
I just started reading Finn by Jon Clinch. Its a companion novel to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I haven't gotten far into it, but so far its a great read.
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Re: Official OS Book Club
For the first time in a long time I'm reading a book for amusement. It's Spy by Ted Belle. Basically it's his character Hawke (can't remember his first name) that he's used in a lot of his other books. He get's taken captive by some tribes in South America and it turns out that the tribes are in cahoots with terrorists. I'm not too far into it yet, but I liked his other book, AssassinComment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
I enjoyed the Hannibal Lecter Series except for Hannibal Rising. A truly horrid reading experience IMO.Comment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
Maybe the ones I didn't read were better, but I thought Red Dragon was horrible as well.
Agree with Dave, though. Hannibal Rising was disgusting bad.Comment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
If you guys get the chance, pick up the graphic novel "Watchmen"! It's a great one (one of Time's Top 100 novels of all time) and it has a lot of parallels to 'Heroes'.I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. - Douglas Adams
Oh, sorry...I got distracted by the internet. - Scott PilgrimComment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
Has anyone read The Spook Who Sat By the Door by Sam Greenlee? An excellent book. It was written back in the late 60's and probably one of the best books I ever read. I read it while pursuing my undergrad in college and discovered the controversy behind it. Greenlee had a hard time getting the book published because of the topic. He was rejected by 40 publishing houses in the United States until a small publishing house in London decided to take on the book. After it was published not too many book stores offered to sell the book. But it still sold over 1 million copies and printed in 6 different languages. The book was sold primarily in independent black book stores and was a favorite among black militants during this time.
The book is about a guy named Dan Freeman. He is a quiet, college educated, well-mannered black man from the Chicago streets. He gets selected as a candidate with a group of other black men to be an agent for the CIA. The CIA is getting pressure from a Senator to hire more black people so the Senator can get more black voters. After various tests and trials they put the candidates through, Freeman is the only one that passes and he's the only one hired from the group of candidates. Well, instead of making him a field agent they give him a desk position. While he works his desk position he takes careful notes on how the CIA trains their agents and how they operate in the field. He works there for about 3 years and quits. He goes back to Chicago and works as a social worker by day. However, at night he trains the Chicago street gangs in tactics that he learned from the CIA. After some months from training, they steals some weapons from an armory and basically form their own militia. Freeman then sends some of his followers to other ghettos in major American cities and they start the same program of training young gang members with CIA-tatics into trained militia members. The movement starts to spawns across the United States and causes chaos.
Here's another interesting story behind the book. The author Sam Greenlee meet a guy at a San Francisco airport. He was trying to sell his book but found out he already had it. But the guy wanted an autographed copy. Greenlee discovered that the guy was a former FBI agent. Greenlee asked him how he got a copy of his book and the guy stated that it was required reading at the FBI academy.I have more respect for a man who let's me know where he stands, even if he's wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil. - Malcolm XComment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
I mostly read historical books that I'm sure nobody wants a 500 page book about the political tensions of the war between Athens and Sparta, so I'll spare those reccomendations.
Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy, if you haven't read it, do so soon if you like that sort of thing. It might be 800 pages but I read it in a week, still my favorite book. I played the video games but this book was far better than the first one, and still had some things the video game didn't.Comment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
I was just looking through this thread a couple days ago, and yesterday went to the library and picked up a copy of House of Leaves, which was suggested by a couple people here. Just flipping through the pages, weird book...words written upside down, pages with just one or two words, etc...I feel like I'm gonna have to figure out some crazy code to read this thingComment
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Re: Official OS Book Club
The most recent book I read was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I actually got this book in junior year of high school as reading for an economics course, but I am just now reading it.
It's a beast of a book, about 1200 pages or so. Definitely a favorite of mine though. While it does deal with economic issues in a fictional society, I would say this book is more philosophy than anything else. The book's basis premise is about the idea of objectivism, which in its most basic sense, is the ideal that everybody should pursue their own happiness first and foremost and not worry about the possible repercussions that may affect others. In the end, everybody's individual pursuit of happiness leads to a better world. The author explains her idea by creating a fictional society in which the world leaders of all major industries decide to disappear. It's a very interesting read.
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