If you are going to law school, you will need a command of the English language.
Garner’s Modern American Usage - Has essays about grammatical rules in addition to word definitions. It’s a fun read and also useful for settling arguments over grammar and usage.
How to Argue and Win Everytime - Excellent book on persuasion and empathy by America’s top trial lawyer.
How to Talk to Anyone, Anyplace, Any timie - Larry King wrote it. The guy is shameless, but he can get people to open up to him.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - We are all puppets… How can we keep otehrs from pulling our strings? How can we learn to pull the strings of others? This book teaches you how.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Don’t read On the Road, read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Post-apocalyptic, about a man and his son, beautiful story, and beautifully written.[/quote]
Agreed. Thankfully, I read the book before it made Oprah’s book club. Otherwise, that taint would have kept it out of my hands!
[quote]Grimnuruk wrote:
KombatAthlete wrote:
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond comes about as close as any other to what you might call a “unified theory of history”.
Excellent book. Can’t recommend it enough. Might as well read his:
Third Chimpanzee as well and The Dark Side of Man by Michael Ghiglieri and Wrangham’s Demonic Males. (former graduate student in anthropology/archaeology)
[/quote]
I didn’t care for The Third Chimpanzee as much as for his (Diamond’s) other work, but I found Demonic Males to be one of the more interesting books I’ve ever read.
It helped to fill in a grey area in my understanding of human behavior between the game theoretical and the more conventional fields. I highly recommend it to anyone considering it. I’ll be checking out “Dark Side of Man.”
I was just about the biggest sceptic of the whole HP series before my girlfriend convinced me to read them and I have to say I was thourghly converted.
They’re some of the few books I’ve literally not been able to put down. I’d be reading it at breakfast, at dinner, whenever I had sparew mintue really!
If you are interested in not having your time wasted, skip “The People’s History” by Zinn. It is neither history nor particularly the mouthpiece of any “people”.
Someone mentioned Cormac McCarthy - great choice.
As for Catcher in the Rye - I think is vastly overrated, but some people really love it. It is a short book - might be worth the time.
[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Hanley wrote:
Also, read the Fight Club novel. I can’t stress this enough, READ IT. it’s one of my all time favourites. Palahinuk does a great job at setting the scene and really imeressing the reader. FAR superior in every single way to the film.
Strange, I have found Fight Club to be the only movie I’ve ever seen that was superior to the book. Pass on it and read other Paliniuk. Lullaby or Invisible Monsters and Survivor are his best reads.
mike
[/quote]
shockingly the guy who shits on catcher in the rye likes this pap.
shockingly the guy who shits on catcher in the rye likes this pap.
[/quote]
I’m still waiting for Someone to explian what exactly is so great about Catcher In The Rye.
The guys who don’t like it have said why, but all the pseudo intellectuals have just looked down their noses at us un-educated and ignorant folk and told us it’s great.
Xen,
Since I know you’re into MMA and thinking of possibly fighting, then I think you should read: A Fighter’s Heart by Sam Sheridan.
Good, fast read. Sheridan spends time training in a lot of different places and takes part in a few fights. Cool stuff if you like MMA and combat sports.
[quote]Djwlfpack wrote:
Xen,
Since I know you’re into MMA and thinking of possibly fighting, then I think you should read: A Fighter’s Heart by Sam Sheridan.
Good, fast read. Sheridan spends time training in a lot of different places and takes part in a few fights. Cool stuff if you like MMA and combat sports.[/quote]
I read it in 3 trips to barnes and nobles haha, sat down for a few hours each time its a really hard book to put down, actually tear’d me up at certain points.
Anyone involved in combat sports or even just weightlifting (hell any pursuit outside of attempting to be an “al bundy-esque” type male) would enjoy that book.
One from an S&C Perspective that I’m going to look at (this is the kind of book that can probably be gone over in like an hour a lot of the info has been covered on T-Nation, elitefts, dieselcrew, and other places on the web)
Explosive Power & Strength: Complex Training for Maximum Results
by Donald A. Chu
shockingly the guy who shits on catcher in the rye likes this pap.
I’m still waiting for Someone to explian what exactly is so great about Catcher In The Rye.
The guys who don’t like it have said why, but all the pseudo intellectuals have just looked down their noses at us un-educated and ignorant folk and told us it’s great.[/quote]
i think it’s some brilliant, way ahead of it’s time insight into spoiled people and why they behave the way they do.
that book is like a roadmap to the mind of today’s detached from family emo-youth and to the arrested and frustrated lives they’re looking forward to if they (and our day-care summer-camp flavored society) don’t snap the fuck out of it.
it’s ironic that the folks who don’t dig the book have demonstrated such emo- negative reactions to it, rather than just moving on with their lives. that’s pretty much the m.o. of holden isn’t it ?
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
If you are interested in not having your time wasted, skip “The People’s History” by Zinn. It is neither history nor particularly the mouthpiece of any “people”.
[/quote]
No, “People’s History of the United States” is an excellent read. It covers aspects of American history not covered by a lot of history books, namely, the history of working class people, minorities, etc. The view is that history is not only made by famous HEROS, but also by common and marginalized folk.
Like anybody writing history (there is no absolute objectivity) Zinn has his own ideology, he’s a socialist. I suspect someone as reactionary as thunderbolt wants to claim that this fact necessarily means that the book contains nothing but lies to further a political agenda. Read it for yourself and decide.
I agree. Nice studies of the root of the american cocktail of religion and violence.
[quote]Hanley wrote:
I knew I was forgetting something…
The Harry Potter books!!
I was just about the biggest sceptic of the whole HP series before my girlfriend convinced me to read them and I have to say I was thourghly converted.
They’re some of the few books I’ve literally not been able to put down. I’d be reading it at breakfast, at dinner, whenever I had sparew mintue really![/quote]
