Assuming you havn't read them (or you could read them again if you already have) : Narnia series (all seven books), Lord of the rings series (including hobbit, but i can't say i'd recommend silmarion, although you might like it, who knows), and Hitchhicker's guide to the galaxy.

Danny: Read the Narnia Chroniclaes when I was a kid, ditto the LOTR and Hobbit. I re-read the Hitchhiker's Guide last year when I found out that the movie was coming out.

Thanks for the ideas though!

LW: I ordered that one last week, and I'm dying for it to get here!

The DaVinci code....I was looking at that yesterday and wondering if it was any good.  It's been so popular that I wasn't sure I wanted to read it, but now that you've recommended it.....I think I'll give it a shot.

I've never head of Swan Song, but I'll go and have a look at it too.  The Thorn Birds...I think i started reading that when I was in my 20's, and I didn't finish it.  I'll have a look at that on Amazon too!

Good luck at the surgeon.....might we be commiserating with each other post-surgery soon?

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein

Don't Eat This Book, Morgan Spurlock (goes along with the Super Size Me video he put out in 2003? 2004?)

The Codex, Douglas Preston

It's All Right Now, Charles Chadwick

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares

but i can't say i'd recommend silmarion, although you might like it, who knows

It reads more like a history book than a novel.

Are you into Sci-Fi?  If so, The Foundation Trilogy.  If not James Mitchener (anything by him, but you might like Texas and Centenial).

Try Angels and Demons by Dan Brown...the same author as The Da Vinci Code. It was so truly captivating to me that I wanted my husband to enjoy it too, so I ordered the unabriged audio version that we have been listening to on some short out of state trips. Next week, we hope to finish it on a much longer out of state journey. Try it, you will like it, I promise.

Hmmm, I do have a few books lined up that I'm reading right now. One of them that I recently started reading is Cooking for Mr. Latte, a food lover's courtship, with recipes by Amanda Hesser. it's about this gourmet food writer's love of food and her romance with her recipes (her actual love, Mr. Latte and her "foodie" group of co-workers as she call them). So far it's pretty interesting and fun to read. Very light stuff and some really great recipes (that I hope to try one day)!

I'll take a look at the other titles that I can't remember right now that I have at home and tell you about them tomorrow.

Also I do have a list of "To be read books" that I keep on my hard drive. I think one of the books I mentioned is one you were reading some time ago and recommended on your JU book site and also the Dune series which either Doc or Elie recommended for me to read since I love the movie so much! I'll copy it for you here:


SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME
A Year of Passionate Reading
by Sara Nelson (nonfiction)

Mary Hunt’s Debt-proof Living
By Mary Hunt

The Complete Tightwad Gazette:
Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle
by Amy Dacyczyn

WILD CARD QUILT
Taking a Chance on Home
by Janisse Ray (nonfiction)


EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY
by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D. (nonfiction)

Learn How To Bank Like A Banker, Kimberly Griffiths.


AN EMBARRASSMENT OF MANGOES
by Ann Vanderhoof (nonfiction)


The Dune Series –
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
House Corrino
By Brian Herbert & Kevin Anderson

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
By Mark Haddon

The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell

Learning to Fall – the Blessings of an Imperfect Life
By Philip Simmons

Always Wear Joy, My Mother Bold & Beautiful by Susan Fales-Hill

Monkey Dancing by Daniel Glick

Lend me your Ears, A collection of the World’s great speeches
by William Safire

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Lila by Robert Pirsig

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Contact by Carl Sagan

Sophie's Choice by William Styron

and ya can't go wrong with a little Penthouse Forum...

Here's some that are not brain benders, but none the less, entertaining

Wally Lamb: She's Come Undone (my faaaavorite book)
Ben Stein: Hollywood Days, Hollywood nights
Nicholas Spark: The Notebook

I recommend:

Jinn by Matthew B.J. Delaney

Saving Private Ryan meets Alien in Delaney's tense and involving first novel, a hybrid that transcends its several genres. In the deadly jungles of the Pacific Theatre in 1943, young Private Eric Davis sees something "long and squirming" burst out of the stomach of a dead soldier. Davis is picked up by a ship, the Gallo, which is promptly shelled and sent to the bottom. Flash forward to the year 2007: Pierre Devereaux, a Jacques Cousteau type, is directing an undersea documentary when he discovers the wreck of the Gallo. Not surprisingly, Devereaux's assistants are horrified when they see Davis's corpse banging its head insistently against the window of their sub. A year after the Gallo is brought back to Boston, a series of murders begins to plague the city...

Gravity by Tess Gerritsen

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor, is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions, and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Murine wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to earth.

The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

The Cobra Event is itself a paranoia-fest, a provocative thriller that makes you wonder exactly how much bioterrorism is taking place in the real world. Preston, best known for his terrifying chronicle of the Ebola virus, The Hot Zone, and other impeccably researched nonfictions, is not content to create fast-paced nightmarish scenes. His novel is instead a complex morality tale anchored in uncomfortable fact. Preston is keen to convey the "invisible history" of bioweapons engineering and, equally, to show the unsung heroism of his scientific detectives (along with that of the nurses and technicians who literally sacrifice their lives for medicine). Like their creator, these characters are not without a sense of humor. One calls the manmade virus "the ultimate head cold." Readers will never forget literally dozens of scenes and will never again see the subway, rodents, autopsy knives, and--above all--runny noses in the same light.

AND

Prey by Michael Crichton

High-tech whistle-blower Jack Forman used to specialize in programming computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of efficient wild animals--swarming bees or hunting hyena packs, for example. Now he's unemployed and is finally starting to enjoy his new role as stay-at-home dad. All would be domestic bliss if it were not for Jack's suspicions that his wife, who's been behaving strangely and working long hours at the top-secret research labs of Xymos Technology, is having an affair. When he's called in to help with her hush-hush project, it seems like the perfect opportunity to see what his wife's been doing, but Jack quickly finds there's a lot more going on in the lab than an illicit affair. Within hours of his arrival at the remote testing center, Jack discovers his wife's firm has created self-replicating nanotechnology--a literal swarm of microscopic machines. Originally meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, the swarm has now escaped into the environment and is seemingly intent on killing the scientists trapped in the facility. The reader realizes early, however, that Jack, his wife, and fellow scientists have more to fear from the hidden dangers within the lab than from the predators without.

"Switch Bitch", "Kiss Kiss", and "My Uncle Oswald" by Roald Dahl (or any other of his adult short-story collections, those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.)
the "Canopus in Argos: Archives" series by Doris Lessing
"Briefing for a Descent into Hell", by Doris Lessing.
"The Sound and the Fury" and "As I Lay Dying", by William Faulkner
"The Sun Also Rises", "A Farewell to Arms", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", and "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway.
"A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. Also a bunch of other stuff by him, although none has reached anywhere near the heights achieved by that one.
Any book by Terry Pratchett, but particularly the "Discworld" series. Gently humorous but engrossing, rather in the tradition of...
Any book by P.G. Wodehouse, but particularly the Bertie Wooster stories (aka the "Jeeves" stories) and the Psmith novels.
Any Dilbert book.
A book of crossword puzzles or other mental gymnastics (or perhaps a couple weeks' worth of newspaper crosswords).
"Starship Troopers", "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", and "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein.
"Little Fuzzy" and "Fuzzy Sapiens" by H. Beam Piper.

for sheer escape and pleasure anything by james patterson, clive cussler and john sanford.

My favorite author is JG Ballard, a great 70's British sci-fi writer. But the books that I enjoy the most which he wrote are Empire of the Sun, which was made into a movie that was directed/produced by Stephen Speilberg, and The Kindness of Women which is a sort of continuation of the story.
I've got a book I'd like to mail you... send me your address at my email and I'll post it asap. I'll even include a note as to why I love it so much, and why it makes me think of you. Nic.

stopsonadime@yahoo.com

All the Dan Brown books are..interesting. Angels & Demons and Davinci Code are by far the best. But Deception Point and Digital Fortress are also interesting and both have a female lead.

I read all 4 in a space of a week and I shouldn't have because Dan Brown is lazy - he uses the same formula for all his books - Completely different scenarios (and all equally interesting) but once you know the pattern its REALLY easy to know who the "bad guy" is. And that annoyed me.

I'm really into Marian Keyes Linkabout now (so was Shades) Watermelon, Rachels Holiday and Angels are all about the same family each one focusing on a different sister.
The Other Side of the Story, Sushi for Beginners and Last chance saloon are good. I think Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married was my favourite after Watermelon.

Cecelia Aherns PS I Love You - was also really good. Poignent. Sad, funny - good.

I LOVE Traci HardingLink. She's an Australian fantasy writer she wrote 2 trilogys about the same character and she has 2 standalone books that I haven't as yet read.
The Ancient Future
Echo in time - Atlantis
Masters of Reality - The Gathering

Chronicle of Ages
Tablet of Destinies
Cosmic Logos

Actually I think because of the stuff you write about Budddism and your interest in religions etc you'd really enjoy these the first one is about this chick who goes back to the year 519. (Traci Hardings done ALOT of research)
The second she goes to Atlantis
The third is the Future

The first in the second trilogy picks up 50years after the end of the 3rd
The second picks up straight after
The third another 50years later.

Oh yeah, anything by Larry McMurtry. Did I tell ya I met him once? He doesn't live far from me, BTW.