Recommendations

This is an area for everyone to post recommendations about pretty much anything from books, music, TV shows, and movies, to recipes, vacation spots, websites, and restaurants. Basically anything you can think of.

Also, feel free to ask for recommendations for things too. I know sometimes I want to try something new, and I ask around in case there's any info someone can give me about something. For example. once I wanted to order from an online store, and my friend warned me that all their shoe sizes run small, which was nice to know.

I'll start out with two recommendations for great summer reads:

1. For anyone who enjoys classic or romance literature, definitely try Lady of Milkweed Manor by Julie Klassen. It's about a young woman during Regency England who falls from grace when she gets pregnant out of wedlock and has to go to a lying-in hospital for poor women. It's basically her journey as she deals with losing everyone that was close to her and making a new life for herself. I swear it's better then I make it sound. It was actually written very recently by in the style of regency times.

2. For vampire lovers, I just checked out the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. I love Twilight, and was not a fan of the show True Blood, but I decided to give these novels a chance at the recommendation of my cousin who loves both. Now I'm completely hooked. For anyone who doesn't know the books are about a woman named Sookie Stackhouse who is a barmaid in Louisiana, and happens to be able to read minds. Sookie ends up falling in love with a vampire, and it leads her into a whole bunch of trouble through the books, which are all mysteries. One of the things that I enjoy about this particular vampire series is that vampires are "out" in society, as in, the rest of the world knows that they exist and they are trying to gain civil rights. The whole dynamic with the different prejudices and such is really intriguing, and makes the books more complex. I would recommend this series for anyone who loves a good romance, mystery or vampire story.

hmm, I'm going to recommend an author...Chuck Palahniuk. I know mostly everyone has heard of Fight Club, but the book is WAY better then the movie. His whole list of books is:

Fight Club *
Survivior *
Invisible Monsters *
Choke ~
Lullaby ~
Fugitives and Refugees
Diary *
Stranger than Fiction
Haunted ~
Rant *
Snuff *
Pygmy *

The * are the books that I read and the ~ are the books that I have but haven't gotten around to yet. All of his books have an amazing twist and they're all pretty easy reads. My favorite, by far, is RANT (the oral biography of Rant Casey). I love the way it was written and it's the most original thing I've read in a while. It's about the life of his kid Rant (his actual name is Buster) written though the accounts of other people (Friends, family, teachers). He walks on the dangerous side and it deadly to society with is infliction of Rabies and lustful spirit. It has an AWESOME twist at the end, one that you wouldn't expect.

YES! Palahniuk is amazing. I finished Lullaby just a few hours ago, it was so good. My library only has a few of his books and they're always out, so one day I'll get around to them. I do need to go book shopping though....

YAY FOR PALAHNIUK FANS!! I literally just finished Snuff...and I LOVED it. A couple of people told me that it was his worst book and that he just wrote it for the shock factor. And granted, it didn't have as much of a twist at some of the others, but I still really liked it. I would have to say Pygmy was my least favorite. I felt there was a lack of character development and he kinda just let the plot go and it wasn't really about much and VERY hard to get through.

Have you read any other books by him?

I read Lullaby many years ago, and while I loved it a lot, I don't really remember it having much of a twist. maybe that's just my memory failing me though. I love Palahniuk too.

Lullaby didn't have one HUGE twist but a couple of smaller ones.
I've read Fight Club, Snuff and Haunted. I really enjoyed Snuff because it kept me guessing the whole way through. And Haunted was AWESOME. All the different characters and their individual stories, they were all so different and interesting. And some of it was... a little bit horrifying... but I couldn't put it down.
I plan on buying Choke as soon as I can, I've seen it in my local bookstore lately.

i HIGHLY recommend the movie 500 days of summer. i went to see it last night, and it was soo good. I think everyone can relate to it, even just a little bit. It was filmed pretty awesomely also. The cast was awesome and I loved the ending. I know some people didn't like it, so I guess it's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it immensely!!

I want to see 500 Days of Summer so bad.

Tonight I saw The Time Traveler's Wife. I went into it knowing very little about the story, because I just went to spend time with a friend, but it was great! I really enjoyed it, and it was a really interesting concept for a movie. And it was sad, but not like a major tear jerker. I only shed a few tears. But anyway, I recommend it to anyone who likes romantic movies or even just movies about weird phenomena such as time travel, because it kinda has it's own little take on that.

Ya I want to see The Time Traveler's Wife. And amazingly I don't really know that much about 500 Days of Summer. I've seen posters for it and such but know absolutely nothing about it lol. I saw Inglorious Basterds the other night and I really enjoyed it. I just thought it filmed brilliantly. And yes there was violence but it wasn't like the unrealistic, overexaggerated violence of the Kill Bills. I also saw The Ugly Truth (finally) and I thought it was hilarious. I think anyone who likes a good romantic comedy would really enjoy it.