This book is a load of old twaddle

I’m sure neither are but I have tried to read both of these twice and given up

Stranger in Strange Land
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

edit: bugger – wrong forum!

I read SISL when I was about 15 and I was reading everything we had in the house. Frankly I found it to be a bunch of hippy free love and didn’t really rate it, even though I like Heinlein’s other stuff. So yeah, didn’t really get it.

Zen and… I read in India, and really got on with it. I guess my tolerance is a bit better when I’m travelling – I’ll read anything – but even so, I thought it was a good read and worth the effort to get into it.

Anything by Carlos Castaneda. Also The Silmarillion by Tolkien.

The Bible.

Black Spring by Hery Miller. The only book I have ever tried to read but given up on completely.

James Joyce – pish

Can I be first to say The Da Vinci Code?

zen is in my list of books that changed my life. However I’m sure that’s because I read it at the right time in my life and I’m sure that today if I were to read it for the first time I may well have the same opinion as you. Sometimes it’s when you read it rather than what you read.

on the Road.

Anything by Philip Roth, and anything by a writer who creates a character that is a writer who has hot sex action with a young lady.

I read Zen somewhere in Amazonia… it were ace. But… I think if I read it for the first time now I would also be a bit miffed. A lot is down to time and place.

read SISL when I was about 15 and I was reading everything we had in the house. Frankly I found it to be a bunch of hippy free love and didn’t really rate it, even though I like Heinlein’s other stuff. So yeah, didn’t really get it.

Heinlein was slighttly to the right of Attila the Hun! Reread, if you can be bothered. 🙂

My best mate’s Mother gave me Zen as a present. I didn’t make it through the first half on the first attempt. A few years later I tried again and tried harder. It is now one of my all time most rated and recommended books. I found it hard going but worth it. Definitely high on or top of my list of ‘improving books’.

I was doing a post grad course in engieering and there was a module on quality. We had a guest lecturer who was a completely stereotypical academic ar5e, all self importance, ego, supersilious air of intelectual superiority complete with bow tie. I asked him if he’d ever read Zen hoping for expert comment and giving him a chance to demonstrate a breadth of knowledge since it is the best treatment of the essence of quality I know of. His reply was ‘Are you serious?.
‘Yes, I really am’.
No answer, no idea what I was talking about.
Found out and exposed as an academically over achieving, intelectually lightweight, posing to55er.

Can I be first to say The Da Vinci Code?

The first but not the last. Utter shite.

Also anything by Terry Pratchett, Iain M Banks and other space fantasy cr@p.

‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian’

Billed as ‘hillariously funny’

No it’s not

It’s just shite

Zen is fantastic to put you to sleep

I’m trying to get through The Zen but it’s challenging to say the least.

Also anything by Terry Pratchett, Iain M Banks and other space fantasy cr@p.
Just cause it ain’t you taste doesn’t make it crap, as it’s just the escapism I want cheers.
Hey ppl watch soaps like Eastenders and coranation st.? Why on earth???? … each to there own.

SISL – was s’ok.
Trampus, if you’ve seen (really crap IMO) or read starship trooper, yes it’s slightly noticable.
I prefer 60’s sci-fi to anything else really though.

Just cause it ain’t you taste doesn’t make it crap

You can say that about any of the books that have been mentioned here. This thread is not about anything else but individual taste (well, apart from Da Vinci Code, obviously – that is pure shite).

Louis de **** Bernieres. Or whatever he’s called, shamelessly pilfered from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so in this case it’s as much about principle as individual taste, though his writing is painfully, self-consciously wordy as well. Dire stuff. Go read One Hundred Years Of Solitude instead, then come back and say that Captain Corelli’s Mandolin or whatever it’s called, is a masterpiece. :o)

I quite enjoyed Captain Corelli as a summer read – up till the end when he goes off on an anti-Communist rant.

I like Ian M Banks, fair enough if you dont, but it certsinly isnt cap, its very well written.

I’ve been reading Zen for about the last 4 years.

In The Labyrinth, Alain Robbe-Grillet – I’ve never got past the first 40 pages
Shikasta, Doris Lessing – every time I’ve started to read it I’ve found that I have a sea change in life
Novel with cocaine, M Agayev – always quite seductive

…but when you’re feeling miserable or poorly – anything by Dick Francis is just the job.

I like Ian M Banks, fair enough if you dont, but it certsinly isnt cap, its very well written.

My opinion. Yours is different. So what?

Doris Lessing – boring boring boring
Ayn Rand – pathetic political fantasy for immature teenagers