|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
SuperFly
Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Location: In the doghouse
|
 Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 6:43 am Post subject: |
 |
|
These aren't novels, but they're a facsinating books. Also endorsed by the doggies for world peace movement.
| Quote: |
Amazon.com
As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed. Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.
Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we see��like an ant walking along a lily pad��we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."
For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird."
In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 7:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
This is going to sound strange because it is a book for kids, but "The Forgotten Door" by Alexander Key. Probably very hard to find.
A book I always wanted to make into a movie... but someone already did:
http://alekeia.tripod.com/forgot.html |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
stumptown
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Location: Paju: Wife beating capital of Korea
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
| joe_doufu wrote: |
Don Quixote.
By the way, check out the book exchange next Sunday. |
What book exchange? I thought the woman that organized that left Korea and the exchange stopped. I don't get anymore e-mails. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:42 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| A Confederacy of Dunces.....great read. New Orleans before the conventions and kitsch. Also if anyone is into foreign literature -- my all time fav. is "Too loud a Solitude" by the Czech Bohumil Hrabal. He is an amazing writer and no matter the translation (though Michael Heim is the best), he shines. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
krats1976
Joined: 14 May 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm midway through Inkheart right now. I know, young adult fiction, but it's pretty good. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
elg
Joined: 23 Aug 2005
|
| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 3:28 am Post subject: |
|
|
howard roark and the fountainhead
lawrence darrel and the razors edge
the monk who sold his ferrari |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pangit
Joined: 02 Sep 2004
Location: Puet mo.
|
| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 3:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude or Snow Crash. |
Good taste.
Mario Vargas Llosa, The War of the End of the World. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tiberious aka Sparkles
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: I'm one cool cat!
|
| Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 6:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| ddeubel wrote: |
| A Confederacy of Dunces.....great read. New Orleans before the conventions and kitsch. |
No, no, a thousand times no! That was the most tortuous read I've ever experienced (well, save maybe Joyce's Ulysses). It's billed as humorous, but the problem is there's nothing funny in the book; and all of the characters are unlikeable.
I'm astounded whenever I read or hear that this is supposed to be a great novel. To quote Dominic Dunn in An American Werewolf in London, it's boooring!
http://psychedelickimchi.blogspot.com/2005/06/longest-page.html
Sparkles*_* |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Lao Wai
Joined: 01 Aug 2005
Location: East Coast Canada
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 4:23 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The Giver by Lowis Lowry
A young adult novel, but it's a fascinating read.
In a world with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy, 12-year-old Jonas is chosen to be the community's Receiver of Memories. Under the tutelage of the Elders and an old man known as the Giver, he discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy. With echoes of Brave New World, in this 1994 Newbery Medal winner, Lowry examines the idea that people might freely choose to give up their humanity in order to create a more stable society. Gradually Jonas learns just how costly this ordered and pain-free society can be, and boldly decides he cannot pay the price
My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
An excellent book.
Anna was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her cancer-ridden older sister. Since birth, the 13-year-old has donated platelets, blood, her umbilical cord, and bone marrow as part of her family's struggle to lengthen Kate's life. Anna is now being considered as a kidney donor in a last-ditch attempt to save her 16-year-old sister. As this compelling story opens, Anna has hired a lawyer to represent her in a medical emancipation suit to allow her to have control over her own body. Picoult skillfully relates the ensuing drama from the points of view of the parents; Anna; Cambell, the self-absorbed lawyer; Julia, the court-appointed guardian ad litem; and Jesse, the troubled oldest child in the family. Everyone's quandary is explicated and each of the characters is fully developed. There seems to be no easy answer, and readers are likely to be sympathetic to all sides of the case. This is a real page-turner and frighteningly thought-provoking. The story shows evidence of thorough research and the unexpected twist at the end will surprise almost everyone. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Chillin' Villain
Joined: 13 Mar 2003
Location: Goo Row
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 6:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
My favorite author... Someone already recommended his earlier Snow Crash... This one's my favorite:
A pretty long read (1200 or so pages), but totally keeps you going. Stephenson's hilarious AND brilliant... The story's about cryptology and bounces back and forth between WW2 (with the Enigma code and all) and modern hi-tech stuff (digital encryption, etc).
If you REALLY have a lot of time to put into reading, Stephenson's trilogy, The Baroque Cycle is also great. It's sorta like historical sci-fi, but that's not really an adequate description. It's basically about how the modern economy, science, the Enlightenment, etc, all came into being, set from 1650-1715. Sounds dry, but it really is gripping, and really funny. And although it is fiction, there's a lot of amazing stuff to be learned from it.
(Vol.1- Quicksilver)
(Vol.2- The Confusion)
(Vol.3- The System of the World)
The whole thing's pretty long (almost 3000 pages), but was well worth the hours for me. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
krats1976
Joined: 14 May 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 6:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Lao Wai wrote: |
The Giver by Lowis Lowry
A young adult novel, but it's a fascinating read.
|
I second this. I use it in my 7th grade class, but it's actually a little above their level. It raises some interesting questions.
I just finished Inkheart, btw, and it is very good. I can't wait to read Inkspell. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Thunndarr
Joined: 30 Sep 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Cryptonomicon is one of my favorite books of all time. I just finished reading Quicksilver, which was good, but it took me about 300 pages to get into it. I'd still highly recommend either of them.
For those of you into the sort of "Harry Potter Knockoff Genre" I'd recommend the Bartimaeus Trilogy. It's set in an alternate universe modern day England ruled by magicians who summon demons. What sets it apart from the others in this saturated market is that it's actually well written with good characters and a wry sense of humor.
The Difference Engine by William Gibson and some other guy is quite a read. I think it's the novel that spawned the 'steampunk' genre, but I could be wrong about that. In any case, it's an interesting read about an alternate history England in which Charles Babbage gets computers up and running in the 1800's. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
periwinkle
Joined: 08 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 11:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I just finished Rule of Four. It was awesome. Now I'm reading Eddie's B a s t a r d, which rocks (my friend passed it on to me awhile ago, just never got around to reading it). Have you read White Oleander? One of my favs. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
philthy
Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Location: Incheon
|
| Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:13 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth.
The sequel is due out in 2007. I can't wait. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
keithinkorea
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
|
| Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 2:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Last really good book I read was 'Dead Air' by Iain Banks. Actually virtually all of Iain Banks' books are brilliant and well worth reading, even his sci-fi stuff- I'm no sci-fi fan, but Banks is a great writer. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
