Good Books

Particularly “The Girl with Dragon Tattoo”…but I have another that can be added to the list that is football related if the quest for knowledge is burning…it is “Blood, Sweat, and Chalk” by Tim Layden (SI). Very good and readable about the history/context and development of the offenses and defenses in the history of the league…good read for football fans!

Is the greatest series of fiction I have yet to encounter. Literally, the only problem I have with the series is so many characters, it’s hard to keep track of the ‘non-main’ characters as far as who’s good/evil/still uncertain, etc.

WOT, Wiki – also if you’re already familiar with the series, a great WOT website. The second website is great to gloss over stuff once you’ve read it, to remember important developments, story lines and character good/evil affiliation.

Thanks Bradley

He’s a great author, you learn a lot from his books too

Anne McCaffery’s Dragon’s of Pern series. Most of her other stuff is good too.
Katherine Kerr- Derry and the Westlands series. Very deep reading
Morgan Llewellyn for Irish Mythology
Fritz Lieber- The Adventures of Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser (series)
Leon Uris
Stephen Lawhead

Kirk already listed Lawhead so:

Tad Williams’ Otherland series
Anne Rice’s series that begins with “The Witching Hour” (Not the Lestat series)
George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series (HBO has a pretty good adaptation airing right now)
Ted Bell’s Alex Hawke books

and one obscure book that I picked up at an airport that turned out to be very entertaining. “The Rift” by Walter J. Williams.

A good football book is “Next Man Up”…John Feinstein follows the Ravens through their entire 2004 season….Very interesting read about all the goings-on with the team and front office…

From Chuck Logan’s Absolute Zero, one of the very best books ever in the action/who dunnit/what’s gonna happen now genre.
To set the scene: Hank’s a good guy. Hank has been in a coma for most of the book, thanks to one of his friends. Actually, he has been thought to be brain dead. In fact, he’s been in there, cognizant about what has happened and what is happening. He is able to move a finger and his eyelids. He gets the attention of Broker, the protagonist, and with Broker’s help, Hank communicates what was done to him by painstakingly spelling out letters by blinking his eyes. Hank has had his revenge as the scene unfolds.
Hank is a Vietnam veteran from years before.
Here’s Hank:
 
    The exhausting ordeal with the letters had ended. He’d done his best and then his mind had just turned to sand. Whatever happened now would happen without Allen and Earl. And without him.
Jolene had taken her first steps and would just have to take her chances with whatever came next.
He had come full circle. Milt and Jolene tucked him in and hovered for a moment over his bed. Then, slowly, they backed away and turned out the lights.
    At first it was just a color – yellow – and then, as it moved closer, it assumed the shape of a man. He understood this was merely manifestation; the way he chose to experience it.
    So he made himself tidy inside and remembered the first time he’d seen it coming, calm, like this. All the other times it grazed him with a lurid action beat: shock, fear, pain, adrenaline hemorrhaging, and the brimstone reek of cordite.
    It had been on a late morning when the air was the color of steaming tea. This yellow blur floating against the ferrous-red dirt and all the green God ever made. It was hot that day. The sky was the blue heart of a bunsen burner. They were sweaty and dirty and dressed, as usual, to kill. They were sprawled along the path, taking a break next to the baked, fallow fields that were cracked and choked with weeds.
    And Hank and his squad were kin to the weeds: poisonous, itchy, and bristling with stickers. They had all gotten so dirty they would never be clean again. And then they saw the yellow come floating, a man in saffron robes and bare feet.
    Gook in the open.
    Reflex rifles came up, the solitary figure filled a few peep sights.
    Hey man, check this dude out, someone yelled, the way he walks.
    It’s cool. Just one of those monks, walking.
    The peeps moved off.
    And he came on with his shaved head and bare feet and his saffron robe swaying and his sturdy brown arms swinging. A man who moved like a clear, upright flame, His clear brown eyes focused right through and beyond them, like they were mud from somewhere else that had gotten out of control and had acquired guns and airline tickets to his country. And Hank had remembered absolutely recognizing how this guy knew exactly what he was doing. He was walking one hundred per cent present in the moment and every one of them watching were wishing they were someplace else.
    Absolutely perfect goddamn walking.
    Just look at the way he placed his foot in the dust, the way his heel came down, and then the instep, and the ball and then the toes. This guy could teach the world to walk.
    They’d watched him come on, one step at a time, and by the time he’d passed them they were all up on their mud feet.
    Eyes right.
    Hank was a grown man the day he learned to walk. And he never forgot the presence of that moment and how it had a one-pointed heft and carry to it; simple, like a country song about a hanging in the morning.
    Tried to live his life that way.
    Maybe he’d managed a few gestures that came close.
    And now he just had to put one foot in front of the other.
    So….
    When you walk, walk.
    And when you fight, fight.
    And when you live, live.
    And when you die….

Robert McCammon-Boy’s Life-He’s a great writer, seriously read this book.

I love all of James Clavell’s stuff-Shogun, King Rat are my favs.

I love action/adventure novels:

James Rollins is fun.
Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child -Pendergast novels are great!

I just got into the fantasty stuff:

Brent Weeks-The Night Angel Trilogy-A great diparture from Orks and Elfs. Very dark though.
Brandon Sanderson-The Mistborn Trilogy-Completely unique. He is really good at wrapping you in to the story.

My Losing Season by Pat Conroy his memoir about playing basketball at the Citadel. One of my all time favorites.

Follow the Roar by Bob Smiley (follows Tiger for 604 holes in his greatest season)

Floyd Little’s Tales from the Broncos Sidelines

How could you not list The Lion’s Game under DeMille?!! jk, I know it’s all subjective. He got me hooked with The Charm School, but Lion’s Game followed by the sequel The Lion are my favorites.

For what it is worth, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is just fantastic. I could care less about some of his other stuff, but I really REALLY dug what he did with the Dark Tower. It begins and ends quite well.

What could possibly he more enlightening than the discovery that man is the third most intelligent species on the planet behind white mice and dolphins……“So long and thanks for all the fish”

“Swords” series is a pretty good read too. I forgot about them.

I bet all of you have seen the movie, with Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey.
Patrick O’brien wrote 20 or so books about Aubrey and his friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin.
The first book, Master and Commander, takes place in the Mediterranean, so is totally different from the movie, which is sort of a compilation of a couple later books. Really good books though, and if you get into them, you’ll want to buy a copy of Harbors And High Seas by Dean King, which puts the books into their settings with maps and historical notes.

Bob Morris’ novels feature character is a former Miami Dolphins linebacker, Zack Chasteen, who became a palm tree farmer/unofficial crime detective along with his friend Boggy, who purports to be the last representative of the long-extinct Taino Indians. The stories all take place in south Florida and Jamaica.

Stephen White’s novels feature Alan Gregory, a Boulder psychiatrist, whose wife is the Boulder DA, and he consults with his best friend and Boulder detective Sam Purdy, to solve murders. The stories are all pretty much based in Boulder, but Alan and Sam often find themselves traveling all over the country to solve murder mysteries.

Jonathan Kellerman’s novels are who-done-it murder mysteries featuring child psychiatrist Alex Delaware who consults with his best friend, LA detective Milo Sturgis. The stories all take place in and around the Los Angeles area.