# Books Recommended by our Members (Autumn 2014)



## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

For the list of recommendations in September 2014, look here:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,193761.0.html

If you are an author or publisher, please do not 'recommend' your own books. Instead you may start a discussion/promotion thread in the Book Bazaar.

Generally, this thread is for quick recommendations. You know, you're sitting with a friend at dinner and you say, "Hey, I just finished this book and I think you would love it!" That kind of thing.

If you've got a book review or other site and would like to regularly share reviews with us, we invite you to start a thread in the Book Bazaar for your site and periodically post links to reviews, subject to our posting rules for authors and bloggers.

Also, please use generic links, or, even better, the Link-Maker to make KindleBoards affiliate links. But please do not link through another site.

Please see Forum Decorum for guidelines.

Betsy, Ann, & Geoffrey
KB Moderators


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## Pickett (Jan 6, 2011)

The Luck of The Jews: An Incredible Story of Loss, Love, and Survival in the Holocaust  is my Prime Kindle loan for this month. I am hooked on Holocaust biographies; each is different in its own way, this one even more so. The grandson is telling the tale of how his grandparents survived and met; overall it is an uplifting story-I laughed aloud with delight at times. Unlike many such biographies this one has a good number of photos, so it was nice to see them on the Fire.


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## Maddie_K (Sep 13, 2014)

I just finished Joe Hill's horror novel NOS4A2.

I stayed up all night to finish it because I couldn't put it down. While I love his novel _Horns_, I admit it is a bit slow in parts. Not so here, NOS4A2 is the best kind of page turner.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

I just finished Blake Crouch's Wayward Pines Trilogy and it was amazing. Post-apocalyptic, little bit of horror, twilight-zonish.


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## rchapman1 (Dec 5, 2012)

Getting away from horror - I just finished Belize Navidad by Karen Hulene Bartell, which is a heartwarming story of love, corporate greed and the paranormal.


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## Kilgore Trout (Dec 28, 2008)

I just finished Linda Gould's _Handmaidens of Rock_ and it is her best book yet. The fictional story of pop nostalgia from the 1968-74 period is very true to life! This latest release is similar to Linda's _The Rock Star's Homecoming_, but this one is even better!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

'kay . . . so . . . . I don't do this often. Y'all oughta listen up:

Go BUY The Martian: A Novel 

READ IT.

It is probably the best book I've read this year. Full 5 stars -- and that's also a rarity for me. I stayed up _way_ too late last night to finish it.

If you don't think you like science fiction -- read it anyway.

Seriously.

Such. A. Good. Book.

That is all.


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## raymond.mathiesen (Mar 14, 2013)

The Neurotic's Guide To Avoiding Enlightenment by Chris Niebauer, Ph.D. - Book Review
Reviewed by Raymond Mathiesen
4 out of 5 stars

Deep thoughts about the self and self-improvement&#8230;

Even a quick look at the self-help shelf at any bookstore will quickly reveal that the industry is booming and that most of us seem to have a secret desire to 'be a better person'. We search for that magic formula which will give us enlightenment, hopefully the quicker the better. But is enlightenment, as we understand it, really achievable? If we did have a better life what would it be like? Would it be very different from our current life? Even more, what if we found that this 'self', which we are so bent on improving, turned out not to really exist, to be a myth, an unreliable creation of our own brain? Can modern neuroscience throw any light on this subject, and if so do you have to be an expert to understand it? If you are confused already get ready to have many of your ideas challenged by Chris Niebauer's thought provoking book The Neurotics Guide To Avoiding Enlightenment: How The Left-brain Plays Unending Games Of Self-improvement.

Many self-help books are written from a New Age / Eastern Mysticism perspective and in a way Niebauer's book fits into this category. Niebauer is strongly influenced both by the mid twentieth century author Alan Watts and the contemporary writer Eckhart Tolle. Watts wrote on a variety of Eastern Religions including Zen, Hinduism and Taoism and Tolle is greatly influenced by Buddhism. To describe the book as being purely of this ilk, however, would be greatly misleading. Also, to describe The Neurotics Guide simply as a self-help book, would be equally deceptive. Certainly there are mind-exercises and meditation techniques included which the reader may find helps them achieve a new mind-state, and which gives them a new approach to life, but this is very much a book of theory / philosophy which concentrates on challenging our standard ideas about ourselves and our lives. Niebauer is indeed "a college professor specializing in cognitive neuropsychology" (Preface) and the book has a heavy neuroscience content. In essence Niebauer is attempting to give Eastern Mysticism a neuroscience framework, taking it from the world of pure ideas and giving it a firm background in science.

http://goo.gl/oKlcFz The Neurotics Guide (Book ed.)

http://goo.gl/z8HkhM The Neurotics Guide (Kindle ed.)

http://goo.gl/IgXUcJ Chris Niebauer's Facebook Page

http://goo.gl/HBAXap  Chris Niebauer's Web Site


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## ricsmiraldi (Nov 19, 2014)

I just read Charcoal Grey: A memoir of obsessive-compulsive disorder, clinical depression and anorexia nervosa [Kindle Edition]. I usually don't care for these kinds of books. But I read it because I wanted to understand. This book had me in tears - and I am a hard nut to crack. So if any of you want to see the disease through this young Dublin woman's eyes - I think you'd enjoy it. Yes, it has many of those rookie troubles, but it's a good read, and you will cry. You can read my review. I gave her five stars (and I don't give out stars easily).


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## jaspertyler (Feb 13, 2009)

I'm really enjoying the Jefferson Bass book series (Body Farm) starting with Carved in Bone.


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## Pickett (Jan 6, 2011)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Go BUY The Martian: A Novel
> 
> READ IT.


This book gets incredible ratings at Audible and has been on my wish list for a while. Guess I will have to buy it! Buying the Kindle and then the Audible will only come out to $5.99.


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