Recommend a book

I used to read 2-3 books a week when I was younger and now I just find myself wasting away hours on 'teh web' instead of doing anything productive or insightful.

From all the hype and a friends recommendation I'm probably going to pick up a copy of the Da Vinci Code but after that, what else is out there that I and others may have skipped past?

What books have you read that made you open your eyes and think? What can you recommend as a book others should definitely read?

[Edited on Nov 03, 2005 by gothi]

Peter Straub, Koko. Forget Dan Brown...

Cecile Pineda , Frieze.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Chbosky

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein

A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson

written on the body by jeanette winterson
blue angel by francine prose
blood sugar by nicole blackman (poetry)
void of course by jim carroll (poetry)
run with the hunted by charles bukowski
rock and roll babes from outer space by linda jaivin
we so seldom look on love by barbara gowdy (short stories)
trainspotting by irvine welsh
leaving las vegas by john o'brien
high fidelity by nick hornby
a confederacy of dunces by john kennedy toole
a clockwork orange by anthony burgess
brave new world by aldous huxley
day of the locust by nathaniel west
catcher in the rye by j.d. salinger
war and peace by leo tolstoy
how to be alone by jonathan franzen (essays)
catch-22 by joseph heller
the importance of being earnest by oscar wilde
on the road by jack kerouac
the cheese monkeys by chip kidd

and i could go on and on!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach
For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way.
In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries — from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.


Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden
The strikingly pretty child of an impoverished fishing family, Chiyo is taken to faraway Kyoto and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house where she is renamed Sayuri. Initially reluctant, Sayuri must finally invent and cultivate an image of herself as a desirable geisha in order to survive in Gion's cruel hierarchy. Through her eyes, we are given a backstage view of the ancient and secretive geisha district, Gion, and of the lives of the women who learn and practice the rigorous arts of the geisha. Behind its facade of haunting beauty the district turns out to be a viciously competitive place where women vie desperately for men's favor and largess, where a young girl's virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder, where personal trust is almost nonexistent, and where no woman can afford even to dream about love or happiness. A timeless pocket of the world, Gion cannot remain cut off from the bustle of the modern era forever. When Japan enters the Second World War, Gion's isolation is finally breached and Sayuri must once again reinvent herself and her way of existence.

veronika decides to die - paulo coehlo
others by him that are awesome too
eleven minutes
the river piedra i sat down
the devil and miss prym
the alchemist (everyone says this is great ad coehlos best book but i think veronika is way better..)

Fiction: Anything by Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, or Kafka...

Non-Fiction: Thomas Frank, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and many others

Dharma bums by kerouac, Another roadside attraction by Tom Robbins

Damn! There's a lot of good ones on this thread already. My all time faves are High Fidelity (Hornby), Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth), The Stranger (Camus), Cider House Rules (John Irving), and pretty much anything by Bukowski.

Reefer Madness and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser or any Disinformation book, if you want to find out about stuff you normally wouldn't know about.

The Handmaid's Tale is probably one of the best books I have read.

You should read: "Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs and Some Other Things That Aren't As Scary, Maybe, Depending On How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures From the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, A Man Names Lars Farf, And One Other Story"

Although I base this entirely on the title.

Agreed.

The Contortionist's Handbook, Dermaphoria, No Logo, 1984, Culture of Fear, and Surviving the Extremes

catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I'm reading The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.

Good stuff.

I'm currently reading the Aeneid by Virgil.

Highly recommended

A lot of horrible, mush-brained crap out there. In fiction, I just finished Amy Hempel's The Dog of the Marriage. Minimalist short stories. Good stuff.

Choke and Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Fucking great, amazing, wonderful books.

Hop on Pop by Dr. Suess. That is some hot shit yo.

Ender's Game - Orson scott card.

Not particularly thought provoking, but it really is a masterwork. Get 50 pages in and you can't put it down at all!

Well I'm going to recomend 2 books, the first is Dead House Gates by Steven Erikson, if you are a fan of fantasy and insanely huge battles but still get to know about each of the main characters then you'll love it, the other is Memories of Ice again by Steven Erikson it is the Third book in the series but the cool thing is you dont need to read dead house gates or memories of ice in order to follow them, Both amazing books that are really worth reading.

The first book is Gardens of the moon and there are 2 more books after memories of ice which are house of chains and midnight tides if I remember rightly.