Most Memorable Novel You've Ever Read?

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hobbit
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Most Memorable Novel You've Ever Read?

Post by hobbit »

We all have one that haunts us, that we think about time and again no matter how long we live after the last page is read. For me, it is Aztec by Gary Jennings.

Jennings was probably the greatest historical fiction writer ever. After he died in 1999, the University of California library system paid Aztec the ultimate compliment by including it in the core curriculum and cataloging it as "American literature" rather than "contemporary American fiction".

Jennings was a Korean War vet who earned a Bronze Star with V for saving the lives of South Korean orphans during the North Korean onslaught in the last year of the war. He was a loner and deeply introspective man who came from a lower-middle class background, his father a movie projectionist in a small Virginia community. Jennings had no formal education and had to teach himself how to write following the war, getting gigs in advertising and children's book editing for a few years, and dabbling at novel writing, but growing weary of this mediocrity before making one of the most remarkable and implausible transitions in literary history: He packed a rucksack, left New York City, moved to Mexico City, then spent the next ten years living in poverty, in a single room abode learning the archaic Aztec language as well as archaic (Middle Ages) Spanish. Learning these languages and the nuances of culture they revealed, was a critical step in researching material for the 1000-page novel he was writing on pre-Colombian Aztec culture, that when published in 1980 would skyrocket him into international fame (the book would eventually be published in more than 40 languages and was #1 on the New York Times best seller list for nearly four months). If I’m ever nailed down to recommending only one book for the most remarkable and memorable reading experience imaginable, this is the book I’d have to recommend.

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Post by Silverback »

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Casca pierced the side of Christ on Golgotha and Christ cursed him to forever walk the Earth as a soldier without fear of death. The problem is that he cannot die but he feels any pain and suffering associated with his injuries.


The reason this book was so memorable for me was because it was the first book I read all the way through (Not counting school). Additionally the telling of the battle of Dien Bien Phu from the perspective of the Legionaires was absolutely riveting.
Last edited by Silverback on September 17th, 2006, 7:05 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by hobbit »

Silverback wrote:Image
Thanks for the synopsis. Is it a coloring book, or are there words too? 8)
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Post by SkyShark »

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It's all good.
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Post by Ranger Bill »

It is tough to pick the best one I ever read, but I will go with one I read when I was 12 and had the most impact on me as a youngster in terms of service, what it means to be a soldier and a citizen, why men fight and why war is justified. It is a scence fiction book that was written in the 1950s, and I am not talking about the movie: Starship Troopers.
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Post by Bravo57 »

The most memorable books for me was the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I think I was in 5th or 6th grade when I finally read them. I mean shit, I was totally pulled into the story. When the movies came out, it was nice to see, but the book was still stuck in my head.


I tried to read "War and Peace". I gave up. :oops:
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Post by Gordo173 »

Bravo57 wrote:The most memorable books for me was the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I think I was in 5th or 6th grade when I finally read them. I mean shit, I was totally pulled into the story. When the movies came out, it was nice to see, but the book was still stuck in my head.


I tried to read "War and Peace". I gave up. :oops:
Funny you should mention both of those. I read a lot! Which I think may actually be an understatement. Hell as a kid sittin at the breakfast bar I would read the advertisements in the phone book while eating breakfast before school, but I digress. 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy was absolutely a memorable series for me that I must have read 3-4 times before I even finished high school, it defintely hooked me into reading fantasy which I thoroughly enjoy and read quite a bit of. 'War and Peace' was one of those I picked up as an affectation while in college (you know the whole smoking a pipe, while reading a book in a bar in the middle of the day sporting some fucked up goatee thing and trying to look cool and intellectual for the chickies........BTW worked like a charm back then! :twisted: ) Anyway, I really got into it, have since read it like 3-4 times the most recent was last year while as a site manager at Camp India. Got me started on the whole military/historical fiction genre. 'Starship Troopers' to me was also one of those pivotal moments but mostly cause it cemented my desire to read science fiction particularly those with a military angle to them, it also brought me to a book that really effected my thinking and I believe helped me through a lot of tough situations in the military particularly Ranger School, that was the "Dorsai" series by Gordon Dickson. The central character describes a mental technique for relaxing and seperating his mind from pain that I attempted to replicate whenever I was in dire straits. I would say it worked somewhat though maybe not to the extent that the character did, still I tried and continue to use it today at times. There are so many great reads out there, so many that started me off on another genre or just provided me with some serious mental entertainment and stimulation. I look forward to seeing some of the other recommendations here as it might easily get me started on another.














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Post by Goatboy708 »

Ranger Bill wrote: Starship Troopers.
This is mine as well. I read this for the first time last year from recommendations off of this site. It really opens your eyes to the way things could be.
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Post by hobbit »

Wade wrote:"Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey.

Ed Abbey is one of the greatest writers I've ever read. His descriptions are incredible. His passion is brought forth through his writing in such a way that you can feel what he's talking about. I take a copy of this book with me everywhere I go. I can open it to any page, and begin reading. It's pure joy for me.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

We camp the first night in the Green River Desert, just a few miles off the Hanksville road, rise early and head east, into the dawn, through the desert toward the hidden river. Behind us the pale fangs of the San Rafael Reef gleam in the early sunlight; above them stands Temple Mountain - uranium country, poison springs country, headwaters of the Dirty Devil. Around us the Green River Desert rolls away to the north, south and east, an absolutely treeless plain, not even a juniper in sight, nothing but sand, blackbrush, prickly pear, a few sunflowers. Directly eastward we can see the blue and hazy La Sal Mountains, only sixty miles away by line of sight but twice that far by road, with nothing whatever to suggest the fantastic, complex and impassable gulf that falls between here and there. The Colorado River and its tributary the Green, with their vast canyons and labyrinth of drainages, lie below the level of the plateau on which we are approaching them, "under the ledge," as they say in Moab.

The scenery improves as we bounce onward over the winding, dusty road: reddish sand dunes appear, dense growths of sunflowers cradled in their leeward crescents. More and more sunflowers, whole fields of them, acres and acres of gold - perhaps we should call this the Sunflower Desert. We see a few baldface cows, pass a corral and windmill, meet a rancher coming out in his pickup truck. Nobody lives in this area but it is utilized nevertheless; the rancher we saw probably has his home in Hanksville or the little town of Green River.

Halfway to the river and the land begins to rise, gradually, much like the approach to Grand Canyon from the south. What we are going to see is comparable, in fact, to the Grand Canyon - I write this with reluctance - in scale and grandeur, though not so clearly stratified or brilliantly colored. As the land rises the vegetation becomes richer, for the desert almost luxuriant: junipers appear, first as isolated individuals and then in stands, pinyon pines loaded with cones and vivid colonies of sunflowers, chamisa, golden beeweed, scarlet penstemon, skyrocket gilia (as we near 7000 feet), purple asters and a kind of yellow flax. Many of the junipers - the females - are covered with showers of light-blue berries, that hard bitter fruit with the flavor of gin. Between the flowered patches and the clumps of trees are meadows thick with gramagrass and shining Indian ricegrass_and not a cow, horse, deer or buffalo anywhere. For God 's sake, Bob, I'm thinking, let 's stop this machine, get out there and eat some grass! But he grinds on in singleminded second gear, bound for Land's End, and glory.

Flocks of pinyon jays fly off, sparrows dart before us, a redtailed hawk soars overhead. We climb higher, the land begins to break away: we head a fork of Happy Canyon, pass close to the box head of Millard Canyon. A fork in the road, with one branch old, rocky and seldom used, the other freshly bulldozed through the woods. No signs. We stop, consult our maps, and take the older road; the new one has probably been made by some oil exploration outfit.

Again the road brings us close to the brink of Millard Canyon and here we see something like a little shrine mounted on a post. We stop. The wooden box contains a register book for visitors, brand-new, with less than a dozen entries, put here by the BLM--Bureau of Land Management. "Keep the tourists out," some tourist from Salt Lake City has written. As fellow tourists we heartily agree.

On to French Spring, where we find two steel granaries and the old cabin, open and empty. On the wall inside is a large water-stained photograph in color of a naked woman. The cowboy's agony. We can't find the spring but don't look very hard, since all of our water cans are still full.

We drive south down a neck of the plateau between canyons dropping away, vertically, on either side. Through openings in the dwarf forest of pinyon and juniper we catch glimpses of hazy depths, spires, buttes, orange cliffs. A second fork presents itself in the road and again we take the one to the left, the older one less traveled by, and come all at once to the big jump and the head of the Flint Trail. We stop, get out to reconnoiter.

The link to the excerpt:
http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/ALN/aln35/Abbey.html

Of course, then there is also "Yertle the Turtle" by Dr. Seuss. A good life lesson book.

"I'm ruler," said Yertle, "of all that I see. But I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me. With this stone for a throne, I look down on my pond. But I cannot look down on the places beyond. This throne that I sit on is too, too low down. It ought to be higher!" he said with a frown. "If I could sit high, how much greater I'd be! What a king! I'd be ruler of all I could see!" :D
Yes, great book. I was a backpacker for many many years and read every word Abbey wrote.
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Post by Silverback »

hobbit wrote:
Silverback wrote:Image
Thanks for the synopsis. Is it a coloring book, or are there words too? 8)
Is that better testicle breath?
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Post by Steadfast »

While in RVN I read several books by Joseph Heller.
& Yes, Catch 22 was the first, 2nd was another lesser known book of a play called "Peace in New Haven". Well I read it was a bomb on Broadway when I prompted Google. To me the play was about a group or Platoon or army men rehearsing a play. And when ever someone in the play decided they no longer wished to be part of the said play and asked to quit. The producer or director or that person in the background said that any man that wanted to quit would be dealt with harshly bordered on absurdity in the highest but was agreed by the cast to continue and keep doing the said dumb play and some of the things I was asked to do seemed similar to Peace in New Haven. With all this crap going on - life and death were constantly around with me a part of Joseph Heller's mad imagination.

In the end I won out, came home and learned to watch the ad commericals of T.V. circa 1970 whenever I felt I might be jes a tad crazy. I'd jes wait for Hertz to put a driver in the the drivers seat (via flying in the sitting position through the air into the car) or the bleach commerical - Action Bleach was its name. The name New Action Bleach was shouted with a deep strong voice then a muscle man's arm would be thrust upward out of a top loading old fashioned washing machinewith Action Bleach in his hand I would think to myself, I am not crazy but Joseph Heller's brothers are!
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hobbit
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Post by hobbit »

Silverback wrote:
hobbit wrote:
Silverback wrote:Image
Thanks for the synopsis. Is it a coloring book, or are there words too? 8)
Is that better testicle breath?
I have to plead ignorance. I looked it up on Amazon and was really surprised both by the author, Barry Sadler, and the fact that he'd stretched this theme into a 22 volume epic. That's not a freekin' novel. That's the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Post by hobbit »

Silverback wrote:Additionally the telling of the battle of Dien Bien Phu from the perspective of the Legionaires was absolutely riveting.
I appropriated this from an NVA lieutenant colonel who no longer had any need of it. It is the campaign badge for communist veterans of Dien Bien Phu.
Shown here about twice actual size:

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