Snow Falling on Cedars is great. Beuatifully written and very atmospheric.

Dom and others, thanks for the replies. I appreciate it. I may not get to them for a little bit, but I'll end up reading some of these recs to see if the genre fits for me.

I actually own Speaker and Xenocide (for years now) and just haven't opened them. At this point a reread of Ender's Game first might be necessary (even though I know they're not entirely related).

This list looks pretty good, I haven't read any here (except the short story of Beggars in Spain, I haven't read the novelization. The short story is awesome). I have Calculating God, I'll give it a go.

Mieville annoys the hell out of me for some reason, but 'the city & the city' is worth checking out (it's prob best described as speculative fiction). And embassytown has some great ideas, although overall I thought it was a poor execution of them.

And for a totally different take on science fiction, you could try john Wyndham's the crysalids (I also really like the kraken wakes) or anything by Ursula le guin

Reread not necessary at all for Speaker but would probably be fun anyway. Ender really is a completely different character and what backstory might be needed is given.

Speaker can be read on its own. Although, from what I read, Scott Card wrote Ender's Game in part to motivate Speaker for the Dead by creating a character people wanted to read about.

Speaker for the Dead it's awesome.

Reading Capote's In Cold Blood. His prose is so clean and perfect it's astounding.

Yeah, read it a few months back. Very, very depressing though.

Finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. The first 3/4 of the book were very engrossing. I was very interested in hearing the stories of his chosen outliers and how they rose to success through a series of good timing and lucky breaks that they took advantage of.

Although, I found the Plane Crash chapter very interesting, I felt like the final 1/4 of the book was more about Gladwell's opinions and critique on modern society's views on schooling, which I do believe in, but felt that it bogged the rest of the book down.

Despite that, every chapter was interesting, some more engrossing than others, and for those qualities it is a welcomed addition to my growing library.

Next for me is Love in the Time of Cholera. About 15 pages in. I can tell I'm going to like this.

I decided to read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I bought the new edition for $2 when it was on sale on Amazon a few months ago and I started reading it today. So far, I am enjoying it. I've read some of Gaiman's graphic novels before with "Death: The high cost of living" being one of my favorite comic books and I've also read The Graveyard Book which was a fun book inspired by the Jungle Book.

Shantaram is in the bag. Enjoyed it for the most part but it's repetitive. I'm not sure I've read a 5*/5 novel that's 500 pages or more ... writers seem to get in the way of themselves

Yeah, this is pretty good. It's a nice style, and I really liked the fact it was completely unpredictable most of the time.

+1

although I'm going to give 'Shogun' a shot I think.

agree on the repetitiveness...but still my favorite book I've read in at least the past 2-3 years. been itching for a reread already-- and can't wait for the sequel The Mountain Shadow supposedly coming out this year.

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Solo,

I just want to ad my +1 to Speaker For The Dead as my favorite Card book.

I don't know how you guys can ever read current books. I can never catch up. Here is a perfect example. I was raised in the East Bay and am a huge baseball fan, but I am only now, now done reading...

Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

A lot of this was not news for me. I was a big Bill James guy back in the day, and Pete Palmer and Voros McCracken were known to me as well. Still, it was great to see them getting exposed to a wider audience here. The whole Billy Beane thing as nut job was fun to read.

I never saw the movie, but I can't imagine this book as a movie. They must have only focused on a small slice of the book?

Thanks for the recommendation. It's an enjoyable read and now that I've just finished I'm turning it over in my head more than I can recall doing with a book for a while.

You'd be surprised how much the movie covers from the book. The movie was quite good.

Just read The Woman Who Wasn't There

Story of Tania Head, who became the President of the World Trade Center Survivors Network, and claimed to have been one of 19 people who were at or above impact in the South tower.

Quick read, couldn't put it down. Focuses on Tania, but also the conditions where the veracity of her claims mattered less than the story.

Documentary is coming out shortly.

Read The Merchant of Death which is some middle school fantasy novel about Bobby Pendragon. I read it because it's one of my students favorite books. It was a relatively quick read, definitely felt pretty long at times, which was especially surprising given the target audience.

I followed that up by reading Brave New World. I hadn't read that in a while. I thought that somewhere about 3/4 of the way through it starts dragging until you hit the big philosophy discussion between Mustapha and Savage. Thumbs up BNW.

This was an excellent read.

i'm sold, gonna read it ^ next too

Well ****, count me in as well.