Good books to read

"Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" by Alfred Lansing (then followed up by "Shackleton's Boat Journey" by Frank Worsley)
"The Man-eaters of Tsavo" by John Henry Patterson

Those are the two at the top of my list and you will find quite the cult following for anything Shackleton.

Endurance is on my list after hearing Jordan Peterson recommend it and a friend recommended The Biggest Bluff. If you like poker or gambling that will appeal to you.

These I've read and recommend:

The Stranger by Camus if you want existential absurdist classic literature.

Hard to go wrong with 1984 if you haven't already read it.

Wind Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore for Japanese style novel

Cormac McCarthy writes some good books.

The Watchmen graphic novel.

The Screwtape Letters if you want something religious.
 
Great thread, with some fantastic suggestions. I’ll read, er, ah, listen to the ones available on Audible during my long drives. I do go through a lot of books.

I’m a Robert Heinlein fan, so when ever I get really bored, I’ll re-listen to a random Heinlein book. I have them all. My favorite Heinlein is Time Enough for Love, however Methuselah’s children is a prerequisite for TEFL. Heinlein was a bit of a visionary and enough years have passed now that it’s easy to see which of his predictions have materialized. I find it fascinating how science fiction has been remarkably predictive, with something like a 70 year delay.

TEFL is very long, pushes more than a few limits and involves a character “Lazarus Long” who is easy to both love and sometimes hate. In many ways, it paints a clear picture of what life was like in the past, Heinlein’s past that is, and one possible future. It’s time travel, science, space travel and characters you really get to know, and more all rolled up into one huge and informative book.
 
I listened to 1984 on audible and while I’ll avoid political commentary, I did find it kind of tough to get through and depressing.
 
Just received and finished (in practically one sitting) The Tragedy of Errors, a 1999 book-length tribute to author and detective Ellery Queen. It contains a 1970 detailed plot synopsis for a never-written EQ novel, several uncollected short stories, and a bunch of tributes and essays.

The synopsis is terrific and would have worked well. The essays and tributes are grand too. One essayist tells us that the Japanese love EQ and the grand old puzzle story. And after reading Mike Barr’s overview of the EQ comics and how some elements of the original stories found their way into other venues (like Batman solving the puzzle of a real, solid house that disappears overnight!), I’ve ordered a copy of Barr’s comic “The Maze Agency” No. 9. In it, Ellery guest-stars in “The English Channeller Mystery”!

Any EQ fan should grab a copy of Tragedy of Errors.
 
The stranger has already been mentioned, so why not contine with the pest?

Albert Camus, La Peste.
Albert Camus, Le mythe de Sysiphe

As we are ein the existentialist corner now, we cannot forget Sartre:
Jean-Paul Sarte, Huis clos
Jean-Paul Sartre, L'existentialisme est-il un humanisme?

And now for something that I found really interesting, and that might be of some practical use to those of you who are currently serving in the military, and of great interest to veterans:
David Kilkullen, The accidental guerilla.
 
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I finished "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison last week. I would recommend it.

I get the feeling a lot of people might only see this for the overt racial themes on its surface, but I found it to be much deeper than that. I think it speaks to anyone who feels put down, ignored, and above all underestimated by society. I got a lot out of this book personally.
 
I read Haynes repair manuals front to back and any car related books. If it’s not car related I’m not reading it lol because books are boring to me.
 
Hmm Missed this the first time around.

Joe Pickett series in particular but anything by CJ Box is quite good.

Into the Wild by John Krakeour (sp?)
 
Chicken Hawk by Robert Mason. Recommended to me to read 35 years after I read it by my neighbor Tom, a Vietnam Helo pilot and just retired from Cal fire as a helicopter pilot.
 
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Chicken Hawk by Robert Mason. Recommended to me to read 35 years after I read it by my neighbor Tom, a Vietnam Helo pilot and just retired from Cal fire as a helicopter pilot.
I've read it several times - excellent book! I bought the updated edition for a friend a few years ago.

It's so good to see that the author has come through a very bad time and done well.
 
Classic, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Agreed! Trivia: Scout's eccentric cousin in the book was based on the author's real-life cousin Truman Capote.
The amazing thing about the story, and one that is rarely mentioned in reviews, is that it is often funny.

Yes, Capote was the model for Dill, their visiting cousin. Only a year or so later, as Lee was waiting for Mockingbird to come out, she accompanied Capote on his research trips to a little place called Holcomb, Kansas . . . for a book that would become Capote's biggest seller and most famous, In Cold Blood. We've had two good film treatments of these events, Capote in '05 w/ Philip Seymour Hoffman, and an even better-cast flick, Infamous in '06, with Toby Jones as Capote and Sandra Bullock as Harper Lee.
 
The other book I received last week is one of the very first serial-killer stories ever, Philip MacDonald's Murder Gone Mad from 1931. In this one (MacDonald's usual amateur detective Anthony Gethryn is mentioned but does not appear), Supt. Arnold Pike from the Gethryn stories must track down a serial murderer who delights in sending gleeful notes to the police about his crimes. It's all about the people in a small garden suburb in England terrified by a killer willing to count a teenager and a child among his murders, and about careful police procedure. MacDonald makes the story move, makes you see the people and important details, and builds to a tense climax.

John Dickson Carr included this one in his list of ten best detective novels. "You are warned that this is no sham mania; it is the true blood-seeking; and even Superintendent Pike walks warily at the heels of 'The Butcher.' Its climax, after a miasma of terror, should raise your hair. The reader must walk warily too."
 
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