Ok the middle chapter was different, was still very good but varied from the movie. A love/cheating story in the middle of a shark horror novel. Wait, did you read it? It's a great book and I'm guess you disagree.
1) The hound of the Baskervilles 2) At the mountain of madness 3) Insomnia (honorable mention: Eyes of the Dragon) 4) the three musketeers 5) Moby Dick That’s in no particular order
I’m a huge fan of the Ray’s (Bradbury and Harryhausen). Have you read Dandelion Wine and if so, why did you like 451 more?
This is a “favorite” book thread. When I read it, it was one of my favorites. Growing up on Long Island and spending 2 summers on Cape Cod this novel resonated with me. Not “classic” books that everyone over rates. Lol that’s a boring ass list. Hound of the Baskervilles was crap in 5th grade. Conan Doyle was a known hack in his day. Moby Dick? Unreadable. Three Muskateers? Kidding, right? Oh wait, these are your favorites? My bad. Good list. See how that works?
* - Yessir! "By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcass; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations. The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul. So seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm."
Desperation has always been one of my favorites, although picking just one King book is difficult. As far as Desperation, love the setting, the cast of characters, the fast pace, the violence, the bad guy, its one of the few where I like the ending. I know it is classic to complain about King's endings, but in that one, they succeed in what they want to do, and everything after that doesn't really matter. It, The Talisman, Dark Tower (2-5 being my favorites of the bunch), Eyes of the Dragon, Dolan's Cadillac, Misery are all others of his that are excellent and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few others.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - GGM Catch 22 - Edward Heller Desert Solitaire - Edward Abbey Geography of Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler Beer Blast - Philip Van Munching That’s likely to change daily
Joseph Heller, and that's definitely on my list (note: my first two are cheats, but that's the way it goes): Lord of the Rings trilogy - J.R.R. Tolkein Foundation trilogy - Isaac Asimov Catch-22 - Joseph Heller Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Dune - Frank Herbert (definitely not the Dune trilogy) So many others are possible: Ball Four - Jim Bouton Advise and Consent - Allen Drury Day of Infamy - Walter Lord Up the Down Staircase - Bel Kaufman The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie (or one of a dozen others, as long as you don't already know whodunit from the movie!) A Coffin for Dimitrios - Eric Ambler Moneyball - Michael Lewis
In no particular order... Fahrenheit 451 Dandelion Wine House on Garibaldi Street IT Man’s Search for Meaning
Well I wouldn’t shit on you without giving you the chance to criticize me, that would be unfair. Jaws is mediocre at best as a novel, I picked that one out of your list because it was the easiest to criticize out of the books to movies you stated. The purple prose (google it) is why I love mody dick, It’s one of the reasons I like lovecraft so much. ACD was ahead of his time and literally invented a genera. Hack? As if. You could have easily criticized my sentimentality for Lovecraft before anything else I named. The idea that you think it’s a “boring ass list” just shows that you’re unread. See how that works?
Yeah I’ve never understood why so many people don’t like how he ends things. It’s probably the most “realistic” way somebody would react if it happened to them. Wizards and Glass is probably my favorite dark tower book. As far as regulators vs desperation, something about the kids drawings coming to life always got me.
Yes I am totally unread. Moby Dick is such a page turner folks read it again and again. You intelligentsia, you’re so much smarter that us dullards reading pulp fiction. Please regale us with tales about Faulkner and Dostoyevsky and Cervantes. How GREAT was Jane Eyre. I could read that again and again. GTFO this is a “favorite” book thread, not overrated classics so boring they’ll put you to sleep. No reason to be a dick. I loved Jaws when I read it as a kid. Alive too. I really liked Silence Of the Lambs but I’m guessing that was beneath your intellect. Ever read Gates of Fire? No? Maybe try it. Then get back to me with your Dickens.
Sounds like someone struck a nerve in here. Never got around to Desperation or the Talisman but they’re coming up on my queue.
