{"id":431,"date":"2014-08-30T17:39:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T17:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/?p=431"},"modified":"2014-08-30T17:52:59","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T17:52:59","slug":"10-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/30\/10-books\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Howard asked for my 10 most memorable books. Here are the ones I remember the best:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Stranger in a Strange Land<\/a>,\u00a0Robert A. Heinlein, although I think Starship Troopers<\/a> was my first Heinlein, and is also good (especially since it was written as juvy fiction). But Stranger is in its own class.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n

    The Sparrow<\/a>, Mary Doria Russell. Again, this book, for me at least, is in a class by itself.\u00a0Children of God<\/a> (sequel) was also good.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    The Four Pillars of investing<\/a>, William J \u00a0Bernstein. A Random Walk Down Wall Street<\/a>, by\u00a0Burton G. Malkiel covers the same material, and is the classic reference for this stuff, but I found Bernstein much less dry.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    So much less dry, that I also read Bernstein’s Birth of Plenty<\/a>, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and really made me think about economic\/political trends a bit.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    Snow Crash<\/a>, Neil Stephenson. This is one of the first Sci-Fi authors that took it for granted that the reader was already familiar with computers, and general Sci-Fi concepts, which was refreshing. I’ve like a lot of his other stuff. This is just the first one that I read.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  6. \n

    Still Life with Woodpecker<\/a>, Tom Robbins. For which, I think you need to also be listening to Maryn Cadell’s Angel Food For Thought<\/a>, the whole time.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  7. \n

    The Many Colored Land<\/a>, Julian May. I think I read the entire 10+ book series. One of the very few that I’ve done that with – Usually can’t get past book 3 or so in many series.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  8. \n

    The Magic of Recluse<\/a>, L.E. Modesitt Jr. I really liked the philosophical ying\/yang thing going on in the magic system.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  9. \n

    On a Pale Horse<\/a>,\u00a0Piers Anthony. Although A Spell for Chameleon<\/a>\u00a0is what got me started on Mr Anthony, and his many other series.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  10. \n

    Cat’s Cradle<\/a>, Kurt Vonnegut<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Honerable Mention<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The White Dragon<\/a>, Anne McCaffrey. Even though this is the 3rd book in the series, it was the first one that I read, and this is the first series that I can remember where I read most of them.<\/p>\n

    Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever<\/a>, Stephen R. Donaldson. Pretty dense reading for a piece of fiction.<\/p>\n

    Dune<\/a>, Frank Herbert. I think this might have been the book that really got me started on science fiction. As a kid, I found a hard copy of it lying on the sidewalk one day. I think it took a couple of years before I got around to reading it.<\/p>\n

    A Fire Upon The Deep<\/a>, and Marooned in Realtime<\/a>, Vernor Vinge. Two very different series. \u00a0Marooned is kinda neat in that it is really a detective\/mystery story in a sci-fi setting. Fire, I just liked.<\/p>\n

    The God Engines<\/a>, John Scalzi. I got this recently as part of a humble (book) bundle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    And may I say, that at this point the recommendations on Good Reads is turning into a giant time suck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Robert Howard asked for my 10 most memorable books. Here are the ones I remember the best: Stranger in a Strange Land,\u00a0Robert A. Heinlein, although I think Starship Troopers was my first Heinlein, and is also good (especially since it was written as juvy fiction). But Stranger is in its own class. The Sparrow, Mary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3p6ZE-6X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/russandbecky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}