I can never, ever remember the best ones when quizzed like this. Same goes for best movies etc.

Ones I have liked of late are (in no order):
The Dark Tower series: Stephen King
The Book Thief: Marcus Zusak
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Dave Eggers (Currently reading another of his books actually)
The Mars Trilogy: Kim Stanley Robinson
LOTR: Tolkien
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams
Many Discworld novels: Terry Pratchett
Dune: Frank Herbert
The Dressmaker: Rosalie Ham (An Australian gothic novel, just brilliant, I'd love to see this made into a film)
2010: Arthur C Clarke (Yeah, I like it better than 2001, sue me)


But inevitably someone will mention some book and I'll go 'AAAH, yeah, LOVED that one'!... so yeah, there are many others that I'm sure should be here, and probably in place of others here... (I just scrolled up and added some that others had put, because I'd forgotten them)...

Catch 22 : I just wanted to say that for all the praise that this book gets, I couldn't get through it. He made his points, set up his things, and then seemed to repeat the same damn jokes/observations over and over and over again to the point where I just stopped reading it... sorry, but it bored me. Good start, lost me soon after.

1. Dune by Frank Herbert

2. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

3. Number9dream by David Mitchell

4. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood (and yeah that's the source of my name)

5. Hmm i wanna include Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson),
Night Watch (Terry Pratchett),
Pattern Recognition (William Gibson),
Lord of the Flies (William Golding),
Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein)
1984 (George Orwell)

>> ^gwiz665:
Ooh, the Dune Series was great too, but I sort of lost interest by the fifth and sixth book. I never finished the sixth one, was that Chapterhouse Dune?


Chapterhouse is incomplete anyway. Herbert never finished it and leaves lots of subplots unresolved. A rather unsatisfying ending to the great (original!) series.

I don't know if you meant to confine this to novels or not, but I'm going wider:

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
Dune (whole series) - Frank Herbert
Live from Golgotha - Gore Vidal
Macbeth - William Shakespeare
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson

I'm actually in the middle of Cryptonomicon right now, but I'm already confident it belongs in that list. 5 is too short, anyway:

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Galápagos - Kurt Vonnegut
The Hobbit & LotR - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

There's probably a couple dozen I've forgotten at the moment, and there's a lot of other fantasy novels I really enjoyed, like Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber". But that's a good start.

Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan is still considered to be one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, and you can buy his MP3 of Symphony #9 at Amazon.com for $8.99. Or if you feel like splurging, you can buy all nine Beethoven symphonies (conducted by Karajan) for $22.97.

I don't recommend iTunes because of the goddamn DRM they still use. All of Amazon.com's MP3 dowloads are DRM-free.

One more thing: Karajan was a member of the Nazi party from 1933 to 1939. I don't know how important that is to you in regards to this purchase, but many Jewish musicians refused to play for him, so I think it's only fair that you know.

Herbert von Karajan, Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Singverein, New Year's Eve 1977 in Berlin

Amazon link ... if you really like the 9th, this one will blow your brains out. Well, maybe not. But it's a good one.

It's on YT as well, here's the first part of the first movement. If it wasn't out of sync, i would have sifted it a long time ago.

What does the 41st president have to do with this?

>> ^StukaFox:
I hate to kick a man when he's down, but I'd make an exception for George Herbert Walker Bush.

I hate to kick a man when he's down, but I'd make an exception for George Herbert Walker Bush.

For the record, I never mentioned high school. You're not the only one who attended university, Farhad2000.

I don't remember ever writing that FDR was the cause or the only reason why the effects of the depression were felt for decades. I don't presume to know everything about economics.

Contrary to what you wrote,one can say that certain policies created by FDR extended the Great Depression. One can "blame him" with good reason.

Don't take my word for it, though.

Just to mention one example of an expert opinion: Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian published the findings of their 4 year study in the August 2004 issue of the Journal of Political Economy citing FDR's policies as one reason that the great depression dragged on. I believe they even put an exact figure on just how long he lengthened it by.

But let's not focus only on FDR. Considering how complex the US economy is, let's spread the blame out a little. There's plenty to go around to.... say Herbert Hoover, as well.

I understand that there are many different schools of economics, but we (the non-experts) must take the recent findings of the experts and base our actions and our votes on their reports. Otherwise, we are just taking shots in the dark. The economy doesn't perform well under the "guess-and-check" method.


That being said, I'm curious: Which economic school told Barack Obama that his economic policies, in regards to small businesses, would be good for our economy (one that is driven by small business)? Any single one of those policies, when applied to my business, hurts. Therefore, it is bad for my employees because it hinders my profits, which stifles growth, which limits the number and dollar amount of raises, which causes poor employee moral, which........



Lee E. Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research
Harold L. Cole, Ph.D., professor of Economics UCLA, National Bureau of Economic Research


>> ^Farhad2000:
Really?
You know I got taught in university that one cannot simply focus on FDR's presidential policies and blame them for extending the depression considering the problem was based on a multitude of factors at time of limited understanding of economic policies as a whole which lead to Keynesian theory of economics.
And yes imstellar you are a Ayn Rand wank. Because you actually think economic theory of markets is simple and straight, you do realize all theories of economics are simply theories, all of them rely on model behavior, all of them are constantly revalued due to incompatibility with the real world. We debated this over and over in your economic propositions on the blog.
But hey American high school must be much better than that!

I would like if your Libertarian could read chap VIII to X of Herbert Spencer book "Social Static" and give me your thought about it. I found it to be a major flaw of Libertarian theory. It's only about 10 pages in lenght

# Chapter VIII.: The Rights of Life and Personal Liberty.
# Chapter IX.: The Right to the Use of the Earth.
# Chapter X.: The Right of Property.

here's the link to the book : http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=273

Heh, and the 1928 non-Bush, non-Nixon President?

Herbert Hoover.

Before that? Coolige.

Before that? Harding.

If we remembered those days, Harding and Hoover would be on the same level of antipathy as Nixon and Bush.

lol @ the herbert hoover attempt there

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

"Senator Obama, I served with Herbert Hoover, and you're just like him"

It's Mike Henry that does the voice, the same guy that does Cleveland and Herbert (the old pervert).

i watched this documentary, La Constellation Jodorowsky, where he speaks about how he was suppose to film Herbert's "Dune". famous comic artist Moebius did a wonderful conceptual script for the movie and the soundtrack would feature Pink Floyd and Magma. the project was abandoned by the producers after the other Dune flick hit the screens.
more here: http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/moebius.asp
http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/jodorowsky.asp