Favourite Book?

Jojobobo · **Posted:** Sun Sep 18, 2011 2:09 am **Post subject:**

Well if you can't pick one magikot make a list, I'm sure no-one would mind and if you have a lot of favourities I'd be interested to hear. I have two as I said.

Smuelissim0 wrote:

My favourite book is probably Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I'd vouch for Flowers For Algernon.

mufti wrote:

everything by Ray Bradbury I have read so far

I read Something Wicked This Way Comes (ZOMG quote by Gary in V:tM - B) and found it thoroughly disappointing - makes me want to watch Freaks though which I have yet to see. If you reccommend more Ray Bradbury titles I'll give them a look.

DaneKoponen · **Joined:** Nov 13, 2007 **Posts:** 90

I enjoyed Ender's Shadow and several other books by Orson Scott Card when I was a kid, although its been perhaps 8 years since I've read anything by him so my memory is not all that fresh.

As for serious recommendations, I'm a fan of a few Steven Pressfield novels. Probably his best known is "Gates of Fire", a historical retelling of ancient Spartan culture and the Battle of Thermopylae (of recent "300" fame.. although this came before that craze, and lacks the over the top machismo they're so well known for).

To quote wikipedia...

"Steven Pressfield is an American novelist and author of screenplays, principally of military historical fiction set in classical antiquity. His historical fiction is well-researched, but for the sake of dramatic flow, Pressfield may alter some details, like the sequence of events, or make use of jarring contemporary terms and place names, his stated aim being an attempt to capture the spirit of the times.

His epic novel Gates of Fire is on the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Reading list. It is taught at U.S. Military Academy and United States Naval Academy and at the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico[1] , and according to the L.A. Times, "has achieved cult status among Marines."

Muro · **Posted:** Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:08 pm **Post subject:**

Some personal favourites:

"Hyperion" by Dan Simmons
The best ideas and mental images put into a book I've experienced so far, period.
"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
Anything by Neil Gaiman is good, but this is probably the best.
Enjoyable characters and story and just the right amount of characteristic humor. I wanted it to go forever.
"Coraline" also by Neil Gaiman
A book that starts like a story for kids and transforms into nightmare fuel? What's not to like.
"I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson
Not all classics survive the trial of time, but this one certainly does.
"Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" by Kate Wilhelm
I seem to have a thing for disturbing visions of the future of mankind.

Jacobgoblin · **Joined:** Oct 11, 2011 **Posts:** 1

My favorite books are:

•The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
•Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
•Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
•The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
•The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
•The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
•The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre

wobbler · **Posted:** Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:00 am **Post subject:**

As promised, I deliver. I have several favorite books, for different reason. But in truth, there is no end to the list.

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TheDavisChanger · **Posted:** Wed Oct 12, 2011 7:34 pm **Post subject:**

Muro wrote:

"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
Anything by Neil Gaiman is good, but this is probably the best.
Enjoyable characters and story and just the right amount of characteristic humor. I wanted it to go forever.

I believe I read the sequel to American Gods. As I recall it was OK, but nothing I'd recommend. I also read Neverwhere and was very much impressed by the stories and characters.
Presently I'm readying Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Recently a friend of mine expressed that he cannot get through Mieveille's works because they are so slow. I'd have to agree that this yarn starts slowly, but not so slowly that I had to give it up. In any case, it has just gotten exciting and has picked up very fast. I am enjoying it a great deal now that I see some familiar cliches taking form.
This book has a feel that is comparable to Neverwhere so I'd suggest giving it a shot if you are a fan of Gaiman.

Jojobobo · **Posted:** Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:42 pm **Post subject:**

TheDavisChanger wrote:

Presently I'm readying Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Recently a friend of mine expressed that he cannot get through Mieveille's works because they are so slow. I'd have to agree that this yarn starts slowly, but not so slowly that I had to give it up. In any case, it has just gotten exciting and has picked up very fast. I am enjoying it a great deal now that I see some familiar cliches taking form.
This book has a feel that is comparable to Neverwhere so I'd suggest giving it a shot if you are a fan of Gaiman.

Post up what you thought about it overall when you've finished, I'd be interested to hear because as I said on the previous page I read The City and The City and it was pretty good so I'm wondering if anything else by Mieville is decent. Then again I probably shouldn't buy anymore books for the time being; I just bought a load more the other day that I probably won't get round to reading til terms finished.

wayne-scales · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:33 am **Post subject:**

Books are jerks.

Jojobobo · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 12:40 am **Post subject:**

Nice insight wayne, very detailed and thought out.

rroyo · **Joined:** Oct 14, 2006 **Posts:** 3292

I might as well post something while I'm here -

The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings, The Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, Thieves World and the M.Y.T.H. series by Robert Asprin.

Jojobobo · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:02 am **Post subject:**

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in my mind are undisputed classics. The Silmarillion however I thought read like a drab history book, though this might just be me.

TheDavisChanger · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:06 am **Post subject:**

I loved The Hobbit but couldn't slug through the series. I loved the Pern books growing up and appreciate them even more now that I'm more of a science fiction fan and not fixated on dragonsdragonsdragons.

wobbler · **Posted:** Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:16 am **Post subject:**

Well The Silmarillion wasn't really written by Tolkien as book, it was put together by his son. Tolkien had written a ton of short stories and notes on what had happened in the world and whatnot (background history bitches, you can probably trace Bilbos family back 300 years with his notes) so Christopher just gathered them and give them out. This resulted in 6 or 7 books about the middle earth, The Silmarillion being the first.

ytzk · **Posted:** Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:42 am **Post subject:**

Dan Simmons is the best. The Hyperion Cantos is awesome. Anything else he does is brilliant too.

Illium and Olympos* make another cool future scifi invention with some unprecedented ideas. Hard Case is a brilliant detective thriller, and the latest I read, Drood, is a masterpiece, a macabre mystery story focussing on the final years of Charles Dickens. It really brings gaslight London to life... eww!

Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks are two others on the Read All They Write List.

*edit

de Vere · **Posted:** Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:56 am **Post subject:**

Robert Anson Heinlein.

All of his books - but most especially his later, slower and more thoughtful works.

Arthgon · **Posted:** Fri Oct 21, 2011 12:03 pm **Post subject:**

Now that you mention Terry Pratchet. I suddenly remember that Sam Vimes will return in the newest book. Now this time his wife forced him to go on a vacation, but once again, he stumbles upon a murder case.

Perhaps I should read Silmarillon again. The last time? I was twelve years old back then. Therefore, it has been awhile.

The other one that I like are Bernard Cornwell and Clark Ashton Smith.

ytzk · **Posted:** Mon Oct 31, 2011 11:30 pm **Post subject:**

I just consumed Iain Banks' 'The Wasp Factory' which was brilliant and fucked up in equal measure. When an author puts this kind of review in the front page, you know he's too cool for school: "As a piece of writing, The Wasp Factory soars to mediocrity. Maybe the crassly explicit language, the obsenity of the plot, were thought to strike an agreeable avant-garde note. Perhaps it is all a joke, meant to fool literary London into respect for rubbish." The Times.

Also Dan Simmons' 'Black Hills' which was just brilliant.

TheDavisChanger · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:03 am **Post subject:**

Jeffrey Barlough's Dark Sleeper just sprung to mind. It's written in Charles Dickens' style and was ripe with atmosphere!

Charonte · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 10:12 am **Post subject:**

I view this thread as a potential security risk.

If some of the more shady members of this forum were to discover my favourite book, and knew my step sister's auntie's mother's brother's son's maiden name (this is tasmania after all), they could hack into my bank account which presently holds a full half of all funding currently in the Tasmanian health system. In other words, fuck all but that is besides the point.

So, in lieu of my previous very important point I will tell you about the books I do not like. I never liked Tolkein a great deal, his writing was too dry. It was like reading a dictionary (which I have done). David Gemmel was also a moron who could barely put two words together and had to use 20-pt fonts. I tend to enjoy female authors more, though that quite obviously excludes specifics such as Joke Rollin', who is quite cleary stoopid and Janny Wurts, who is a complete slag.

Thanks, I hope my contribution was useful to this very important thread pertaining to identity theft. Please be aware that I have been taking notes on anyone who has posted in this thread.

TheDavisChanger · **Posted:** Tue Nov 01, 2011 6:24 pm **Post subject:**

I'm thinking it's more like in the movie Se7en where the protagonists track that antagonist based on some of his bizarre library borrowing habits. If Charonte were to leak that his favorite book is Mein Kampf, the Australian constabulary would be kicking his door in without so much as a how-do-you-do.
EDIT:
I just finished Perdido Street Station and I would say it's worth a read. I picked it up because I've read somewhere that it is required reading for steampunk enthusiasts. While much of the beginning of the book may have been designed to set up this steampunk setting, I didn't appreciate it; I just wanted him to "get on with it."
Once he did, the reading was a blast. This bloke mentions the emergence of a D&D adventuring party, and this is precisely the "familiar cliche" I needed to cue me into the fact I was in for an adventure. Once that point was reached, the action rarely slowed and I really enjoyed it.
Now that the adventure is over, I can look back at Mieville's setting and appreciate it for what it is. It isn't high-fantasy and while magic can achieve remarkably impossible things, it isn't that common. Magic is treated as the powerful commodity I feel it should be, and I can buy into it.
Also, it is apparent that the world Mieville has created is persistent and thoroughly fleshed out. This is emphasized by the inclusion of aspects of the world that plug in snugly with the story of Perdido Street Station while being wholy independent of it. It is clear that these aspects of the world have their own purpose and don't exist for this story alone.
If I were to reread this, I'd start about two fifths of the way into the book. I suggest that anybody reading this book for the first time could do the same, but I can't guarantee that they wouldn't be missing something in the beginning chapters.

Arthgon · **Posted:** Thu Nov 03, 2011 5:10 pm **Post subject:**

This monday I bought the new Terry Pratchet book called 'Snuff'. I just started in the book and it looks very good.

I tried to read all the books of Robert Jordan. But. After a while I cannot remember who is who anymore. Because there are too many characters.

Has anyone of you had the same problem?

Edit: Has any one read the new 'Robert Jordan' books? Are they any good?

Dark Elf · **Posted:** Thu Nov 03, 2011 11:42 pm **Post subject:**

rroyo posted in a thread and I didn't welcome him back?

Wolfsbane · **Joined:** Nov 11, 2005 **Posts:** 4262

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel is a very nice piece of literature. I like the way Clarke captures the old fashioned english of gents like Dickens and his like. I also like the way magic is portrayed in that book.

A Song of Ice and Fire (the entire suite). Must I explain myself? These are very good books written by a very talented author.

American Psycho. Because Bateman is the man.

The Bibl-BWAAAHAHAHAHA - sorry, just kidding.

I enjoyed the earlier books of Stephen Kings The Dark Tower suite, namely The Guslinger, The Three are Drawn and The Waste Lands. The later ones became somewhat tedious, though still great books.

EDIT

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is a very entertaining little book.

Grossenschwamm · **Posted:** Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:06 am **Post subject:**

Tao Te Jing by Lao Tsu. I pick up something new every time I read through it.

The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, both by Max Brooks. One of the shorts in World War Z was kinda cliche, but other than that it was a very solid read. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about an undead apocalypse. My favorite aspect of this particular book were the Quislings.
The Zombie Survival Guide just has no-nonsense information* about how zombies are made, and the most effective weapons to kill them, as well as safety tips to prevent infection.

*I'd say that in all seriousness, but if there's no heartbeat, no respiration, and therefore no oxygen circulation, or even relevant transfer of nutrients to individual cells, nerve impulses won't matter and all eating will do is slow the things down. Plus, decomposition is a bitch.

wayne-scales · **Posted:** Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:50 pm **Post subject:**

Grossenschwamm wrote:

Tao Te Jing by Lao Tsu. I pick up something new every time I read through it.

I couldn't get into it. I read a bit, and flicked through a bit, but I don't really think I understood it the way I was supposed to. I'm not really into reading between the lines in poetry and stuff like that, though; for example, the one I can remember best is about how it's the empty part of the vase which is the useful part, and once it's full it's not useful anymore, and I thought it was nice imagery and all that, but I didn't have some kind of profound realization that I should love my neighbour or be kinder to my empty vases or something.

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