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Recommend Some Good Books

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Smoke Break:
I actually just finished Alan Alda's memoirs/autobiography last night called "Never have your dog stuffed and other things ive learned", it was a really good read its full of anectdotes and stories of the things hes been through you should check it out it keeps you reading. Oh its a pretty light read by the way, its like 250 pages.

Dogg_Pound_Gangsta:
You should read some self help books too.  The first should be How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale CArnegie.  Also Positive Personality Profiles - Dr. Robert A. Rohm, and The 5 Love Languages.  Awesome books

Low Key:
An Underground Education : The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human
By Richard Zacks

Here's a quick review I found:

You must think you are the cat's patoot, so sure you know everything. You paid attention in class, got good grades, and everything Mr. or Mrs. Insert Teacher's Name Here said was true because they had a college degree and the bravery to stand in front of a bunch of slack jawed kids and try to teach them something. Well, have I got the book for you.
Richard Zacks explodes our often mythic look at the world. This is not just another "your teacher lied to you in school" book. Zacks backs up his own history with actual primary source documentation. As he writes, "I started muttering, 'You can't make this stuff up!'."

Zacks has divided the book into ten different sections: Arts & Literature, Business, Crime & Punishment, Everyday Life, Medicine, Religion, Science, Sex, World History, and American History. While each section can be read separately, it may be hard to put down the book after just one helping. Zacks covers a wide range of topics, but always keeps his writing simple and unpedestrian. You quickly realize that all of these icons in history were actually people just like you and me. Mata Hari was no genius spy, her mug shot taken before her execution shows a plain woman in her early forties.

William Shakespeare used to write down to his common audiences, letting loose with filthy puns lost on today's students. Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin, two of America's greatest humorists, both worked blue, writing material that you will not see in copies of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" or "Poor Richard's Almanack." You think Iraqi war profiteering is something new? Pity the poor soldiers of the Civil War, eating rancid meat and trying to fight with ancient weaponry all sold to the United States government by greedy business tycoons.

Speaking of the Civil War, did you know that almost a million slaves held in the Union states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were not freed until AFTER their enslaved brothers to the south? Thank the thirteenth amendment, since the Emancipation Proclamation only dealt with slaves in the Confederacy.

The material covered is immense, from the race to build the first electric chair to the world's first indoor toilet. Hermaphrodites, bestiality, and a pope pushing cocaine laced wine, oh my!

Zacks litters his text with photos, but they add to the prose. He lets his opinions be known often, from his outrage over the lynchings of the early twentieth century, to defending Amerigo Vespucci in light of criticism by others. Christopher Columbus does not get off as easily. He highlights the common as well as royal historical figures

"An Underground Education" is a very good read. Once in a while, Zacks makes his point early, and a couple of vignettes run a little long (especially privateers in the Revolutionary War, and some of the business anecdotes), but the things you discover will outweigh any boredom you feel. If education is the key to success, then Zacks takes that key and breaks it off in the lock.

Don Breezio:

--- Quote from: Double Diamond! on December 02, 2005, 12:49:56 PM ---You should read some self help books too.  The first should be How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale CArnegie.  Also Positive Personality Profiles - Dr. Robert A. Rohm, and The 5 Love Languages.  Awesome books

--- End quote ---

yeah i have the 7 habits of highly effective people that im gonna start reading soon...i bought that 5 love languages book for my girl...i prolly won't read it though

T-Dogg:
"Eureka Street Belfast" by Robert McLiam Wilson. Good story, plenty of humour.

"The Egyptian" by Mika Waltari. A thick ass book, but it's all good. The sort of story you'd call "epic". (Plus, this is the only Finnish novel that has been made into a big Hollywood production. It was way back in the day though, the black & white days.)

Those are pretty much the only two books that I've read and enjoyed doing it. I'm the kind of person that classifies "reading" as "work". These are the only two exceptions so far.

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