I'm new would like some recommendations

[dippdogg2002]

Hey everybody I"m new to this site just found today while looking up some books. I'm just wanting to know some recommendations for some books to read. I like books that are thrillers with some historical themes such as Lewis Perdue and Katherine Neville. I also loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If you haven't read it then you are missing out on one of the best books ever written. There are a few parts that will make you just break down and cry and I'm a grown a$$ man. I basically just like stuff that has emotion surprise ending or very scary without being too boring.

[Stanislaw]

Try stuff by stanislaw lem, the futurological congress.

Or stephen kings from a buick 8

[Jester]

whats Romance of the Three kingdoms about...?

[papayahed]

Blindness by Jose Saramago.

That's my recommnedation to everybody, that and The Eight but since you already mentioned Katherine Neville...

[Sitaram]

As I read this thread, what comes to my mind as a suggestion is "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosinsky, but there is no rationale, rhyme or reason for such a suggestion, based on the interests you describe.

It is such a violent book. The title comes from the practice of a purveyor of wild birds, who, occasionally, would take one bird, paint it a different color, and place it in a cage with many other birds of its own kind. The other birds, perceiving it to be different, would peck it to death, which spectacle served as amusement for the audience of the fowler's customers.

Jerzy Kosinsky, as a boy of 9 or perhaps younger, was found wandering dazed in Nazi occupied Poland, unable to speak.

Kosinsky committed suicide in his Manhattan apartment. They found him in a bath tub with a plastic bag tied over his head.

In the "Painted Bird" there is a narrative of some young boys who, for amusement, lay upon the railroad track and let the passing train rush over them. One boy said that only during those moments, when death was racing an inch above him, did he feel truly alive. I often think of this passage when I think of someone like Hemingway, chasing about after wars and bullfights, validating his existence in a suicidal fashion; feeling alive by daring death.

My father and I were walking one day along the docks in Annapolis, Maryland.

We saw an old scow, moored, rusting, barnacle-encrusted, grotesque. My father said, "Some things are so ugly that they become beautiful and fascinating."

The brutality of "The Painted Bird" is like that rusty scow, fascinating in grotesqueness.

[byquist]

Have your read any of Dick Francis, as far as mystery? Also Louis L'Amour as far as westerns?

[subterranean]

As always..Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Also, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and Siddharta by Hermann Hesse.

Welcome by the way

[baddad]

Try stuff by stanislaw lem, the futurological congress.

...well.....there's a surprise suggestion .... *remembers sarcasm is the lowest form of humour but types this anyway*

[EAP]

Hmm, plugging for a book I picked up from this forum, went in with low expectations and came out a changed person.

'Snow Falling on Cedars' by David Gutterson.

[Scheherazade]

What is it about, EAP? Couple of times at the library, I picked it up and then changed my mind. If it is a good read, I might borrow next time.

[Sitaram]

'Snow Falling on Cedars' by David Gutterson.

http://www.liglobal.com/readersbloc/reviews/snowfall/

During the dark days of World War II, our government made a decision, based on prejudice and fear, to intern Japanese Americans. These interment camps were largely based in the Northwest. Hardworking citizens were forcibly taken from their jobs and homes and held against their will. It is a part of our history that we are now ashamed of and rightfully so. I did not study this disgraceful episode as a high school student in the late sixties. My first encounter with this subject came through the reading of the marvelous novel Snow Falling On Ceders by David Guterson.

The plot actually begins with a murder. On its' simplest level, this is a murder mystery with all the intrigue and drama of a courtroom thriller. An established and populsr member of this small fishing and farming community is found dead on his boat. Foul play is immediately suspected and a Japanese American is taken in for questioning and eventually booked for murder. Although a respected member of the community as well, Kabuo Miiyamoto turns out to have opportunity and motive. Claiming innocence, he is nevertheless indicted.

We soon begin to learn the story behind the motive. Before the war years, Kabuo's father made an agreement with the victim's father. Money changed hands, land was promised and terms were set. Unfortunately, the war came and the Japanese Americans were sent away. Nothing was quite the same at wars end. Agreements were no longer honored and the isolated island became emotionally remote as well. Without giving away too much, a sub-plot of romance and passion weave a complex trail throughout the story and redemption and integrity eventually save the day.

http://dcn.davis.ca.us/go/gizmo/cedars.html

David Guterson says he owes the wonderful success of his first novel to a reclusive Southern woman who only wrote one book. That woman is Harper Lee and the book she wrote was, as everyone knows, "To Kill A Mockingbird."

"I owe a lot to 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' Guterson said at a reading in Berkeley earlier this month. "I followed very much the same structure and addressed the same concerns. I'm glad that book was part of my life."

When Guterson's book, "Snow Falling on Cedars," won the Pen/Faulkner Award earlier this year, he wrote to Harper Lee asking her to come to the award ceremony in Washington, D.C. Guterson didn't say whether Lee answered his letter, but she definitely didn't come to the award ceremony.

Guterson became an English teacher and "To Kill A Mockingbird" became his favorite book. "No other book had such an enormous impact," he said. "I read it 20 times in 10 years and it never got old, only richer, deeper and more interesting."

"I took that structure...of two separate stories that become one...and used it," he said. Guterson's book, like his mentor's, is multilayered. His book takes place on a fictitious island in the Pacific Northwest. Guterson grew up and lives on Bainbridge Island. "Snow Falling on Cedars" is a courtroom drama, a story of racial conflict, a regional novel, and a novel that portrays a particular time in U.S. history.

[Scheherazade]

OK, Sitaram. You have persuaded me to read it!