Name: The Painted Bird
ISBN: 9780802134226

wglbNov 2022

Unfamiliar with Yngwie.

If you are going to look for excellent storytellers, I suggest Jerzy Kosiński, whose Painted Bird is a autobiography, that is pretty much known to be false, (but true in some sense) and probably not written by him. His books are far more interesting than anything Gladwell wrote.

Gladwell once said "If you don't like my writing, don't read it" (not sure if this quote is exact) or equivalent. I'm likely to go one better and recommend that friends don't read it as well.

If you are looking for compelling not-true but claimed-to-be-true, also consider Carlos Castañeda.

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cratermoonJul 2022

What are you missing out on?

Moby-Dick. Don Quixote, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, The Call of the Wild, Lord of the Flies, The Painted Bird, The Handmaid's Tale, 2001: A Space Odyssey, On the Beach, Naked Lunch, I Am Legend, The Grapes of Wrath, Last and First Men, Frankenstein,

Try to avoid "Great Books" lists, though. Ask your closest friends who they read. Or if a literary reference comes up that sparks your curiosity, ask where it's from and read that. Did you like a movie? Look it up on IMDB and see if it is based on or borrows from a book (you'd be surprised how many movies are drawn from books, even if they aren't direct adaptations.

Pick one, read it a while. Give it a chance, some start slow. If it doesn't resonate, move on to the next one. If you like a book, try another book by the same author, or from the same genre/era. Follow your curiosity.

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iuguyMay 2013

During the summer I go on holiday to a remote island in the mediterranean where I sit on my patio atop a hill overlooking the sea and read for about a week. The only electronic devices I have are my e-book reader and a charger. Here's some of the best summer reading I've gone through:

The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski - http://www.amazon.com/Painted-Bird-Jerzy-Kosinski/dp/0802134...

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Splendid-Suns-Khaled-Hosseini...

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - http://www.amazon.com/Brave-World-P-S-Aldous-Huxley/dp/00617...

Burmese Days - George Orwell - http://www.amazon.com/Burmese-Days-Novel-George-Orwell/dp/01...

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway - http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Also-Rises-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/074...

Catch 22 - Joe Heller - http://www.amazon.com/Catch-22-50th-Anniversary-Joseph-Helle...

The Road - Cormac McCarthy - http://www.amazon.com/Road-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/0307387895

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee - http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Mockingbird-Harper-Lee/dp/0446310...

The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger - http://www.amazon.com/Catcher-Rye-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769487

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway - http://www.amazon.com/Whom-Bell-Tolls-Ernest-Hemingway/dp/06...

For non-fiction it really depends on what you're looking for but I really enjoyed Joel Bakan's The Corporation and Mark Thomas' As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela.

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A4ET8a8uTh0_v2Apr 2025

Heh. I will take this one.

<< like we weren't all kids who had parents at some point.

When I was a young impressionable boy, I read through just about every book in our household. I remember "Painted Bird" by Kosinski making an impression and looking back it may have been inappropriate for my age. By today's standards, stuff there is nothing like the crap available to young minds.

I am fairly permissive, but I also do not simply allow my kid to browse the world wide web; stuff is heavily curated by me. In a sense, I am effectively replicating the approach of my parents adjusted for current tech.

edit: To be clear, librarians are effectively that world wide web, which means someone else is curating for you, which means you are bound to disagree on the actual output.

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