Book Suggestions for 14-Hour Plane Ride

[JamesU]

Book suggestions pleasee!

I'm going on a trip to australia and the plane ride will be about 14 hours. I'm wondering if anyone has any book suggestions. I'm looking for science, puzzle, , science fiction, and anything of that nature. but if you think there's a really good book that doesn't fit in those, feel free to suggest it

all suggestions appreciated

 

[foxxyfoster]

Hey,
have you read Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code?
You should...
Australias cool. You'll like it

 

[JamesU]

no I have not read it... I've been meaning to though

 

[foxxyfoster]

where are you from

 

[JamesU]

phoenix Az
USA

 

[foxxyfoster]

cool. I'm from a town near sydney.
I'm serious about The Da Vinci code- it's a great read. A mix of science fiction and art history.

 

[foxxyfoster]

so, why are you coming to Down Under- If you don't mind my asking?

 

[JamesU]

We like to travel. I really want to see the great barrier reef and ayer's rock.

 

[icvotria]

I recommend A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, it's really really good. Not sciencey at all but still very good. And short stories are good for plane rides and stuff, Rohld Dahl's written loads of great short stories.

 

[zoobyshoe]

so, why are you coming to Down Under- If you don't mind my asking?

I hope you realize you're hitting on a 13 year old kid.

 

[JamesU]

a new word in webster: sciency

n
1. of or pertaining to science, having to do with science

2. someone or something that is related to science in a direct manner

Origins: originaly quoted from icvotria on jume 1, 2005. was used in a sarchastic remark by yomamma, and later submitted, to make the newest english word since: quiz

 

[foxxyfoster]

I'll check it out...
The great barrier Reef is amazing. Its so beautiful- it's impossible to describe the colour of the water. Ayers Rock is aslo amazing It has this weird feeling about it- its a mysterious place there, but sooo beatiful, especially on sundown. I love to travel too, my family and i are barely at home. We are always trekking around Australia...

 

[foxxyfoster]

I'm not hitting on you.. Ha Ha Ha

 

[foxxyfoster]

13 ? are you at scholl right now..

 

[JamesU]

I' not sure where you got that though but I'm glad your not

 

[foxxyfoster]

i have to go.

 

[JamesU]

13 ? are you at scholl right now..

it ended last week

 

[Soilwork]

I thought the Da Vinci Code was a really badly written book and don't really know how it managed to stay at number 1 for so long.
I guess it deserved to be in the top ten...maybe...but it shouldn't have been at number 1 in my opinion.
It is OK for a read, but it's nothing special.
Does anybody know what happened with the creators of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" suing Dan Brown for plagiarism?

Recommendation - Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo or if you want to finish a book on the ride then get 1001 ghosts by him. Really good short book.

If that's not what you want then try Simon Singh - Big Bang. He's a really good author and you could maybe try his Codebook as well.

 

[Evo]

I'm going on a trip to australia and the plane ride will be about 14 hours. I'm wondering if anyone has any book suggestions. I'm looking for science, puzzle, , science fiction, and anything of that nature. but if you think there's a really good book that doesn't fit in those, feel free to suggest it

all suggestions appreciated

Have you read Snow Crash? You're a bit young, but perhaps mature enough. I love this book, it will make you think.

"The science fiction novel Snow Crash (1992), written by Neal Stephenson, follows in the footsteps of the cyberpunk novels by such authors as William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, though Stephenson breaks away from the typical "techno punk" stories by embellishing this story with a heavy dose of satire and jet-black humor.

Snow Crash (Stephenson's third novel) rocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller charts upon its release and established Stephenson as a major science fiction writer for the 1990s.

Like many postmodern novels, Snow Crash has a unique style and a chaotic structure which many readers find difficult to follow. It contains many arcane references to geography, politics, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, history, and computer science, which may inspire readers to explore these topics further, or at least consult relevant reference works. The novel explores themes of reality, imagination, thought, perception, and the violent and physical nature of humanity, in the context of a socially-constructed (virtual) reality imposed on a political-economic system in the throes of radical transition."

Background
The story takes place in a semi-America of the future, where corporatization, franchising, and the economy in general have spun wildly out of control. Snow Crash depicts the absence of a central powerful state; in its place, corporations have taken over the traditional roles of government, including dispute resolution and national defense. The United States has lost most of its territory in the wake of an economic collapse; the residual remains of the federal government are weak and inefficient and are used by Stephenson for comic relief.

Much of the territory lost by the government has been carved up into a huge number of sovereign enclaves, each run by its own big business franchise (such as "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" or the various residential burbclaves). This arrangement bears a similarity to anarcho-capitalism, a theme Stephenson carries over to his next novel The Diamond Age. Hyperinflation has devalued the dollar to the extent that trillion dollar bills, Ed Meeses, are little regarded and the quadrillion dollar note, a Gipper, is the standard 'small' bill. For large transactions, people resort to alternative currencies like yen or "Kongbucks" (the official currency of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong).

The Metaverse, Stephenson's successor to the Internet, permeates ruling-class activities, and constitutes Stephenson's vision of how a virtual reality-based Internet might evolve in the near future. Although there are public-access Metaverse terminals in Reality, using them carries a social stigma among Metaverse denizens, in part because of the low visual quality of the avatars (the Metaverse representation of a user). In the Metaverse, status is a function of two things: access to restricted environments (such as the Black Sun, an exclusive Metaverse club) and technical acumen (often demonstrated by the sophistication of one's avatar). See Second Life, The Palace, Uru, and Active Worlds. The latter is based entirely on Snow Crash.

[edit]
Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The story centers around Hiro Protagonist, an out-of-work hacker and swordsman, and a streetwise young girl nicknamed Y.T. (short for Yours Truly), who works as a plank Kourier for a company called RadiKS. The pair meet when Hiro loses his job as a pizza delivery driver for the Mafia, and decide to become partners in the intelligence business. The setting is a near-future dystopian version of Los Angeles, where franchising, individual sovereignty and automobiles reign supreme (along with drug trafficking, violent crime, and traffic congestion).

The pair soon learn of a dangerous new drug, called "Snow Crash" - both a computer virus, capable of infecting the brains of unwary hackers in the Metaverse, and a drug in Reality being marketed through a nearly-untraceable chain of sources. As Hiro and Y.T. dig deeper (or are drawn in), they discover more about Snow Crash and its connection to ancient Sumerian culture, the fiber-optics monopolist L. Bob Rife and his enormous Raft of refugee boat people, and an Aleut harpooner named Raven, whose ambition is to nuke America. The Snow Crash metavirus may be characterized as an extremely aggressive meme.

Stephenson spends much of the novel taking the reader on an extensive, impeccably-researched tour of the mythology of ancient Sumeria, while theorizing upon the origin of languages and their relationship to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Asherah is portrayed as a deadly biological and verbal virus which was stopped in Ancient Sumer by the God Enki. In order to do that, Enki deployed a countermeasure which was later described as the Tower of Babel. The deeper meaning of the novel can be summed up with a quote from William S. Burroughs: "Langauge is a virus from outer space". The book also reflects ideas from Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976).

READ IT. You'll thank me.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I couple years ago I was given a collection of short stories by Greg Bear. Very good, mostly science fiction.
I read Angels & Demons, the precursor to The Da Vinci Code, it was decent. A typical suspense novel as far as the style and quality of the writing. I'm figuring that Da Vinci Code is probably about the same.

 

[Moonbear]

I thought the Da Vinci Code was a really badly written book and don't really know how it managed to stay at number 1 for so long.

It was a fun book, a nice light read. It's actually perfect for reading on a flight, because by the time you get to your destination, you can be done reading it. I enjoyed the story, but agree it wasn't well written. It could have been better. I enjoyed Angels and Demons (also by Dan Brown) a bit more than The DaVinci Code. Just remember, it's definitely FICTION with just enough fact thrown in for credibility.

Have you read all the Harry Potter books yet? I love those. They're also good for reading on flights, because you really get sucked into the story so you'll quickly lose track of time while reading them. And, again, it's quick reading, so if you're feeling tired, you don't have to concentrate too hard to follow the story if you are reading instead of being able to nap (I have a lot of difficulty sleeping on planes, so really like light reading to keep me occupied when I'm too tired to read anything that requires a lot of thought).

 

[fourier jr]

I'm going on a trip to australia and the plane ride will be about 14 hours. I'm wondering if anyone has any book suggestions. I'm looking for science, puzzle, , science fiction, and anything of that nature. but if you think there's a really good book that doesn't fit in those, feel free to suggest it

all suggestions appreciated

puzzle book... how about the classic "mathematical recreations & essays" by coxeter/ball. it made it to the 12th edition, so it's definitely stood the test of time.
lookie here at the table of contents:
http://web.doverpublications.com/cgi-bin/toc.pl/0486253570
"12th edition of classic work offers scores of stimulating, mind-expanding games and puzzles: arithmetical and geometrical problems, chessboard recreations, magic squares, map-coloring problems, cryptography and cryptanalysis, much more. "A must to add to your mathematics library"—The Mathematics Teacher. Index. References for Further Study. 150 black-and-white line illus."

 

[neurocomp2003]

Gary Flake's "Computational Beauty of Nature"
Lisa Eliota "whats going on in there"
Hofstader "Godel Escher Bach"
Steve Grand "Creation" or the new one if its out...though its a bit naively written...however the ideas are very interesting.

 

[Gokul43201]

Bach : Johnathan Livingstone Seagull (fiction) - short book and a great read; you'll finish it during the flight.

 

[arildno]

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card; you'll love it.

If you haven't read Ursula Le Guin's "Wizard of Earthsea" yet (fantasy), you should.

 

[Mk]

Ender's Game was great, I also ended up reading Ender's Shadow, which was great too.

Mr. yomama would also probably like to read Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I'm sure its the best book series in the history of the universe.

I'm going to be reading the 6th on a flight tomorrow, there's seven.

The Dark Tower is not a very scary series, more so drama-action.

If you chose to read it, don't lose faith when reading the first one - its not that good.

I <3 Dark Tower w00t! w00t! w00t! w00t!

 

[Huckleberry]

Have you read Snow Crash? You're a bit young, but perhaps mature enough. I love this book, it will make you think.

Neal Stephenson is one of my current favorites. I read his Snow Crash and loved it. I also liked his Cryptonomicon very much, although I wasn't very satisfied with the way he ended it. It seemed very abrupt.

Have a great time in Australia yomamma. Take a lot of pictures. I've always wanted to go there. One day I mean to.

edit- I read Ender's Game a long time ago and I didn't care for it very much. I don't remember it very well. Maybe I should give it another go.

The Dark Tower series was good. I liked the first book just fine. I wouldn't say it was the best fiction book series. I like the Lord of the Rings and HGTTG better than those, but Dark Tower is one of Stephen Kings best imo.

I thought the Davinci code was very well written. It seems to have been aimed at someone who doesn't have much time for reading. Some of the chapters are only one page long! But the chapters are planned very well and each one ends at a point that leaves the reader interested in what happened next. And I think the story lines of each of the characters is intricately woven together. The line between fact and fiction is tantalizingly ambiguous. A good read I thought.

 

[primal schemer]

I liked the da vinci code, but probably wouldn't read any of his other books, the writing style really started to annoy me towards the end. Like the way something would almost be revealed at the end of every chapter, but then get interrupted by something. e.g. the way the girl keeps remembering things that happened in her past, and just as she is about to remember some important detail, someone comes in and stops her from daydreaming...

Last time I was on a flight I read "The curious incident with the dog in the night". Its a pretty light read, but pretty interesting. Its about an autistic kid. Strange as it may sound, I couldn't figure out if it was a childrens book or not!

Currently reading "The blind watchmaker" by richard dawkins, very good book about evolution and stuff, but maybe not the best for a long flight...

PS

 

[hitssquad]

Have you read Snow Crash? You're a bit young, but perhaps mature enough. I love this book, it will make you think.

It made me think YT was Miss Matheson.

 

[hitssquad]

But later I learned:
slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/18/1049244&mode=nested

--
YT and Mrs Matheson (Score:2)
by sully (22777) on Tuesday October 19, @06:58AM (#1602526)
(http://www.hbomb.net/)
>I'd love to ask him about whether YT is Mrs Matheson

I saw Mr Stephenson on his book signing tour for Cryptonomicon and during the Q&A asked him exactly that - he said nope not the same person - further along that line of questioning it turns out according to Neal, Diamond Age and Snow Crash are not in the same universe at all. He stated further that any similarity is just due to the coincidence of the both novels having the same author.
--