Okay, it's definately not literature, but this is a funny tongue-in-cheek "survival manual" for surviving zombie outbreaks. I recommend it because sometimes the dead are not grateful; sometimes they are just flesh eating killing machines. Organize before they rise!

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/

Yo Soy Boricua!

skye1965 ive recently read a book callled tiger in a trance a very compeling journey of this kids grateful dead experience i recomend it to any dead head

Thought I’d visit some other forums (fora?) in a more serious mood (..ish)

I will certainly seek out the Book Thief. If like ‘em beautiful but bleak, try ‘Snow’ by Turkish Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk. I was working in Turkey a lot earlier this year and bought it to learn a bit about the country and its culture. If you want to know what its like to be an innocent standing in the cross fire of left and right, religious and secular, democracy and dictatorship it’s the one for you!! I must say though that (for an outsider at least) Turkey is far far more fun than Pamuk suggests.

‘Collapse’ by Jared Diamond is enlightening stuff, but I find him an annoyingly repetitive writer at times

In the spirit of Douglas Adams, Rob Grant’s ‘Incompetence’ is a real laugh. It is a detective story set in a world where, according to Article 13199 of the Pan-European Constitution: ‘No person shall be prejudiced from employment in any capacity, at any level, by reason of age, race, creed or incompitence’

…does anyone else still read Alan Watts? A genius (for me) who tried to reconcile Zen, Acid, Beat and the realities of the Western Culture that shape so much our lives…..

Classical Dead
Cosmicbadger - I read lots of Alan Watts when I was in my late teens and early 20's. He served as my introduction to Buddhism, Zen and the Tao which I have continued to explore throughout my life. Once in a while I will reread his essays but I find some of his work a bit naive and his own painting of Buddhism, Zen and the Tao are a bit off from what I feel they are and have found in my studies. He did not do a great amount of meditation so it is difficult for me to see him as a master but his role as a popularizer was key. I really loved his critiques of society and he helped me see that there were other ways to view the world and to live.

Read a biography about him recently, Zen Effects The Life of Alan Watts by Monica Furlong.
So sad that he was victim of his own abuse of alcohol

We named our 40 acres of mountain property Cloud Hidden after his book Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown. That is also the title of a great Van Morrison song dedicated to Alan Watts.

Thank you Alan Watts for opening many doors for me.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Wiliam Blake

I have not read a lot of the books mentioned here, the classics got burned out of me at school, not much disecting of Dickens and Shakespeare.
I have always read a lot but very different books, when i was at school i would rather read Scifi than the stuff they tried to force on us.
Living in Spain i have not even read Don Quixote.
I like most of Kesey's stuff, i even have signed copies of Sailor Song and Further enquiry from when the bus came to my home town
Apart from that my reading tends towards fantasy now

Bob

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Spanish Jam