Happiness is..... a good book

[lamenamenumbers]

A book thread, wonderful! This list may turn into a novel, be warned. I was always a reader, but when I started smoking cannabis in my mid teens I truly became immersed in the books. You may need to turn down your nerd alerts a hair, because there is about to be a big list of fantasy authors.
Brandon Sanderson it the top fantasist of the day in my mind. Prolific producer and it's all wonderful. Although if Pat Rothfuss would get cracking on that next Kingkiller book my mind could be changed. Steven Erikson for epic gritty fantasy. Cheesy as they are, Weiss and Hickmans books put the dork stamp on me early on, and it never left. Terry Pratchett's word play and humour have influenced me deeply. Although I would say for any fans of puns Spider Robinson's Callahans books will give you some chuckles. Neil Gaiman of course, and his team up with Sir PTerry, Good Omens is always a Christmas time read for me. Jay Kristoff and Mark Lawrence are also good fantasy writers.

As for books without swords and wizards.
The Sisters brothers by Patrick DeWitt
The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant
The One Straw Revolution by Masonbu Fukuoka
And if you want an unflinching, honest story of one woman's counter culture upbringing North of Normal by Cea Sunrise Person is wonderful, although heart breaking at times.
So many books, so little time!

 

[Bjorn to farm.]

I’ve read thousands of books, mostly sci fi, though I haven’t read much lately.
Ringworld by Larry Niven and all other Niven books.
RiverWorld series by Phillip Jose Farmer and all his other books.

 

[v1ru5]

An Island to Oneself by Tom Neale.

 

[bleedsgreen]

George RR Martin
Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan
Tim Dorsey
Carl Hiaasen
Michael Connelly
Lincoln Child/Douglas Preston
Robert McCammon
Stephen King
Harlan Coben
Jim Butcher
Bernard Cromwell
Brad Thor
Michael Crichton
John Sanford
James Rollins
Lee Child
Joe Abercrombie
Robin Hobb
Robert Ludlum
Patrick Rothfuss
Christopher Moore
Leon Uris

Love Hobb and R Jordan these days, a few others I can put down:
J Patterson
CJ Box
C Cussler
Stuart Wood
just to add a few there are so many more.

 

[ion]

How To Read a Book

Mortimer J Adler

==============
the eye opener
the bible
magna carta

i doth say, maybe one of the most important books ever

 

[davers]

I love scifi books

 

[geneva_sativa]

The Banished Immortal

Interesting insight into life of Li Bai,

China's best loved poet,, of Tang dynasty times

 

[davers]

I am newbie in cannabis research and will be glad to read this book. I am college student and study medicine so I need to know different information about cannabis. I will work on my argumentative essay now, tips of writing it i check on https://essaypro.com/blog/argumentative-essay/

 

[Sunshineinabag]

we all do most of our reading online these days
but some of us still love to relax with a good old-fashioned book.


do you have any books that you just loved and want to recommend?

did a book change the way you looked at life?

what is your favourite author?

Prob the old man and the sea. I'm mezmirized by Marlins .........I'm not enthused with the way they are being BRUTALLY taken from our oceans.
I've had hundreds of metaphors in this book that came through my life!

 

[gladysvjubb]

Stranger in a Strange Land.
Robert Heinlen

 

[kaochiu]

La Pelle (The Skin) by Curzio Malaparte. It doesn't really answer to the thread title, no happiness here, but possibly one of the best I've ever... read? No, that wasn't just reading...

 

[aridbud]

Easy summer read, Robin Cook's, Charlatans.

 

[Green Squall]

April Morning by Howard Fast

About a boys coming of age at The Battle of Lexington (1775.)

I've kind of been on a Revolutionary War kick lately.

 

[gladysvjubb]

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A Heinlen

 

[janeep522]

I like Happiness Is an Inside Job - written by "Sylvia Boorstein". After reading the book I started my career in xxxxxxxxx and from now I'm going up on daily mean improvements.

 

[oliviar256]

I have read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. The concept of this book is that how to get happiness even in tough situations. I remembered that my first job at: xxxxxxxxxxxx was disturbing me as I was inexperienced but after reading this book my whole life changed.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

I read a really good book recently, more intriguing and terrifying than any spy thriller because it was non-fiction/totally true and current. It's about an international cyber criminal enterprise and its creator:

The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord

by Evan Ratliff

Overview

The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

“A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting—undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk.”—Los Angeles Times

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Evening Standard • Kirkus Reviews

It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them.

The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined.

For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed.

Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux’s empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age.

 

[BadTicket]

Just finished the "Journal of Nicholas Cresswell 1774 - 1777".

Nicholas Cresswell was twenty-four years old when he left his birthplace of Edale, England to sail for Virginia, believing that ""a person with a small fortune may live much better and make greater improvements in America than he can possibly do in England."" From the time he left, sailing from Liverpool in 1774, until the time he returned, he kept a diary detailing his experiences in pre-Revolutionary America. As a loyal subject to King George, Cresswell found himself often unhappy in America, detailing the turmoil and abuses often suffered by Loyalists in the colonies. Confining his travel mainly to the mid-Atlantic region, Cresswell not only had occasion to attend a slave gathering and observe what went on there, but also traded amongst many of the native tribes, including the Lenape, Tuscarora, Ottawa and Shawnee. Despite his ambivalence about returning to England, (toward the end of the book he moans, ""I wish to be at home and yet dread the thought of returning to my native Country a Beggar "" (P. 251)), life in the colonies becomes too much for this loyal subject and Cresswell's journal ends in 1777 with his return to England.

Interesting stuff for those interested in old timey stuff like this, especially from an outsiders view.
The only negative I have for the book is that I had to keep a glossary handy for some words I've never heard before, and some words which had a different meaning some 300 years ago compared to present time. And whoa boy, some stuff has really changed! Sometimes it makes for good comedy, sometimes it's really confusing. And yea, English is not my 1st language, but even if it was, I'd still go with the glossary.

For example: If you went looking for some wild ass with the boys some 300 years ago, you were talking about catching/taming/domesticating animals. Most likely at least.
If you and the boys go looking for some wild ass these days, I'd be surprised if you were talking about donkeys. Well, surprised, and shocked. 'Cause you know, most of my pals don't do stuff like that.
At least they don't talk about it openly..

Anyways, a good book!

 

[Ryan Williams]

I am a big fan of Stephen King , have read all his novels. Dreamcatcher, Bang of bones, The green mile, Under the dome...

 

[yesum]

I am in the middle of The Smuggler's Ghost. A guy that smuggles Jamaican pot into the US during the 70's/80's. Good read and non fiction. Saltwater Cowboy was a good read about the same thing except he brought Colombian pot in. Both guys used boats to bring in pot to Florida, I think the Colombian guy used planes a bit too for high quality Punto Rojo. Lots more books on Florida pot smuggling during that time. The Everglades provided a super place to bring the loads in. Lots of coves, little islands or mangrove stands to hide among.

Would have loved to live in Florida during that time. If nothing else you could go out in a boat early morning/late night and fish for square grouper in the ocean. That was bales of pot that had somehow been lost coming into Florida. Not that rare a thing. They would wash up regularly. If the saltwater got into the plastic wrapped pot you could cut the outer soaked layer off and discard it or soak it in tap water till the saltiness came out of it, then dry it. A lesser grade of course. Loads were in tons, up to about 100 tons if I remember right. Multiple smaller boats would link up to a large freight vessel loaded with pot from Colombia out miles into the ocean and bring it back into the glades.

Those were the days. At least I can read about it and not do any time in prison like these guys did.