# Books worth a second read



## Your Majesty (Nov 1, 2006)

Books I recommend a second read... *"Clockwork Orange*"  

You haven't read it, read it. If you have already read it, go back and re-read it again. Disturbing as hell, but worth the read.


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## Chris (Nov 1, 2006)

To Kill a Mockingbird.


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## Drew (Nov 1, 2006)

Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" and David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" both made a LOT more sense on a second read, as did Falkner's "Absalom, Absalom," and actually just about everything by the guy. 

Any truely good book, however (not a mere page-turner with an addictive plot, but an actual masterpeice) is worth a re-read. Great fiction, IMO, transcends plot.


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## eaeolian (Nov 1, 2006)

Hmm.

Frank Herbert's "Dune".
James Joyce's "Ulysses".

There are more, but those are first two that popped to mind.


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## Makelele (Nov 1, 2006)

Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".
George Orwell's "1984".
Probably "Lord of the Rings" (I should probably read the trilogy again, because I've only read it once back when I was about 10 years old).


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## distressed_romeo (Nov 1, 2006)

Your Majesty said:


> Books I recommend a second read... *"Clockwork Orange*"
> 
> You haven't read it, read it. If you have already read it, go back and re-read it again. Disturbing as hell, but worth the read.



I second 'A Clockwork Orange'! 

In addition...

Wuthering Heights; Emily Bronte
Lost Souls; Poppy Z Brite
Hyperion/Endymion Cantos; Dan Simmons

Oh, and 'Threshold' by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and Storm Constantine's Grigori Trilogy.


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## Pauly (Nov 1, 2006)

eaeolian said:


> Hmm.
> Frank Herbert's "Dune".



All 13 (soon to be 14) Dune books have immense re-read value, mainly because Frank Herbert created such a full and detailed universe that it's hard to take it all in 1st time, Duneiverse ftw!


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## Durero (Nov 1, 2006)

eaeolian said:


> Frank Herbert's "Dune".


+1


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## The Dark Wolf (Nov 1, 2006)

Wow. Too...many...books.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Mars-Trilogy-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0553560735, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Brilliant! All about Mars Colonization and the strugggles to shape a world. Fucking very realistic, and one of the best series I've ever read.

Have a Nice Day! A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, by Mick Foley. This is one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. Who'd think a book written by a pro wrestler, who's known as the harccore legend, would be so funny, intelligent, and so damn readable? Mick's a terrific writer, and this book literally makes me almost cry from laughter each time I read it. (I've read it 3 or 4 times so far.)

I'd also recommend Mick's novel, Tietam Brown. A coming-of-age story set in the mid 80's, full of dichotomy. Scenes of surpassing beauty and tenderness and set side-by-side with horrific violence and brutality. A damn good read. 

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, by Dale Peterson and Rickard Wrangham. One of the most insightful looks into why we are the way we are I've ever read. Changed my whole world view.

I've read LotR/The Hobbit probably 10-15 times through by now. Always worth a re-read. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is another. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, always worth a re-read. Colleeen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is also fantastic, especially for fans of Historical fiction.

I'd say 'A Study in Scarlet' and 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', by Arthur Conan Doyle, are worth a re-read. I've read both about 3 times, as they're my favorite Sherlock Holmes books.

I don't know how you could get into 'Absalom, Absalom', D. Maybe I should give it, and Infinite Joke, another try.  Faulkner is a tough sell for me.

I could go and on.


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## ohio_eric (Nov 1, 2006)

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo: My fovorite book about the horrors of war.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons: Best graphic novel ever. 

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. It is my skeptical bible

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut: This book is a collection of essays by one of my favorite writers ever.


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## distressed_romeo (Nov 1, 2006)

+1000 for anything by Kurt Vonnegut and 'Watchmen'.

If we're allowed grpahic novels, then 'The Killing Joke', both volumes of 'Under the Hood', all of Gloomcookie, and 'Kingdom Come'.


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## eaeolian (Nov 1, 2006)

distressed_romeo said:


> +1000 for anything by Kurt Vonnegut and 'Watchmen'.



I don't know about everything of Vonnegut's, but "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle" definitely qualify...

If we include story collections, Harlan Ellison's "Angry Candy" certainly qualifies - he's the master of the short story format.


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## distressed_romeo (Nov 1, 2006)

Oh, and 'The Book of Proper Names' by Amelie Nothomb.


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## ohio_eric (Nov 1, 2006)

eaeolian said:


> I don't know about everything of Vonnegut's, but "Slaughterhouse Five" and "Cat's Cradle" definitely qualify...
> 
> If we include story collections, Harlan Ellison's "Angry Candy" certainly qualifies - he's the master of the short story format.



+1000 on Harlan Ellison  

Deathbird Stories and Strange Wine are also both worthy reads.


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## Naren (Nov 1, 2006)

The Dark Wolf said:


> I've read LotR/The Hobbit probably 10-15 times through by now. Always worth a re-read. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is another. Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, always worth a re-read. Colleeen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is also fantastic, especially for fans of Historical fiction.



Lord of the Rings was the first thing that came to mind. I've read "Fellowship of the Ring" 10 times, "The Two Towers" and "The Return Of The King" 9 times each, and "The Hobbit" 5 times.

Definitely worth reading several times.

Anything by HP Lovecraft is worth reading over again. I recommend this one: http://www.amazon.com/Best-H-P-Love...=pd_bbs_1/103-7796884-9719840?ie=UTF8&s=books because it has most of my favorite Lovecraft stories (The Dunwich Horror, The Dreams In The Witch-House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Call Of Cthulu, The Colour Out Of Space, The Shadow Out Of Time, The Rats In The Walls, The Whisperer In Darkness, Pickman's Model, etc). Some of my favorite Lovecraft stories that aren't in that book include: At The Mountains Of Madness and The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward.


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## eaeolian (Nov 1, 2006)

Naren said:


> Anything by HP Lovecraft is worth reading over again.



Abso-frickin'-lutely. "The Shadow Out of Time" is one of my favorite stories ever.


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## Naren (Nov 2, 2006)

eaeolian said:


> Abso-frickin'-lutely. "The Shadow Out of Time" is one of my favorite stories ever.



I love that story. Out of Lovecraft's stories, "The Colour Out Of Space" and "The Shadow Out of Time" both inspired some of the screenplays I've written. Every movie I've seen based off of a Lovecraft book absolutely sucked and wasn't scary at all. So I wrote a screenplay the way I thought it should be done (It's Lovecraftian, but not really based off of any of his stories). It really isn't B movie level (like most of the Lovecraft movies released so far), since some of the extravagent eerie scenes played out would require some amazing special effects to get it to be eerily realistic. I like the extremely eerie "gripping horror of doom" atmosphere in the screenplays.


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## distressed_romeo (Nov 2, 2006)

Apparently a silent film of 'The Call of Cthulu' came out this year that was pretty creepy and atmospheric...


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## Naren (Nov 2, 2006)

distressed_romeo said:


> Apparently a silent film of 'The Call of Cthulu' came out this year that was pretty creepy and atmospheric...



The fact that it's a silent film makes me not want to see it (not that I have anything against silent films. It's just that you cannot properly make a Lovecraft story into a silent film). The one screenplay I wrote has very little dialogue in the whole thing (90% of that dialogue being voice over from the main character) and if I made it into a movie, it would be mostly atmospheric sounds like wind, creaking of pipes, the whirr of an electric machine, the echoing through a cavern, etc.

I've seen about 10 films that were based on Lovecraft stories. The only one that didn't completely suck was "Dagon" and I thought that one wasn't particularly great either. It just didn't suck. The short stories it was based off of were 100x scarier.

I heard a director was going to direct "At The Mountains Of Madness." I don't know what happened to that, but I'd really like to see it (although I'm sure it wouldn't live up to the book).


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## Drew (Nov 2, 2006)

The Dark Wolf said:


> I don't know how you could get into 'Absalom, Absalom', D. Maybe I should give it, and Infinite Joke, another try.  Faulkner is a tough sell for me.



I HATED it the first time I read it, Bob, because I had no idea what was going on. The second time, I had a pretty good grasp for the chronology, and it absolutely blew my mind. 

That's why I mentioned it in this thread.


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## Naren (Nov 2, 2006)

Faulkner is a tough sell for me too. I had to read 2-3 of his novels in college and I wasn't impressed by any of them...


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## Drew (Nov 3, 2006)

Naren said:


> Faulkner is a tough sell for me too. I had to read 2-3 of his novels in college and I wasn't impressed by any of them...



Again, I wasn't either on first read. But, when you "get" Faulkner, Naren, the man's amazing. 

If it helps, he once half-jokingly refered to "Absalom, Absalom" as "Seven ways of looking at Thomas Sutpen... and none of them are right," as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Stevens poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." That's really where the story lies - not in the action or the plot, but rather in the presentation of the action and plot, and the bias of each character and how they interpret it. 

Really, you have to remember that this story is just that, a story - it's not about Thomas Sutpen, it's about two 19-year-old boys sitting in a Harvard dorm room riffing on the legend of Thomas Sutpen, trying to peice together a 50-year-old story from conflicting sources, and just making up what they don't know. It's a total mindfuck until you accept it as a total mindfuck, if that makes any sense.


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