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What are the best books you have ever read
Kiamde
Member CommonPosts: 5,820
I was curious. I need some ideas for a new read. Now, I make one request- please don't bog down this thread with fantasy novels.
I enjoy many of Tom Clancy's novels. Rainbow Six and The Hunt for Red October are probably my favorates. I also enjoy the occasional Steven King novel. Michael Crichton is a great author and I have read all of his novels and I look forward to reading his new book on his political views.
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"
"When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman
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Well side from the main LoTR series, I liked The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and right now im reading Forgotten Tales. The Wheel of Time series is also a popular series. I Also like The Shining, Dreamcatcher, Desperation... uhh, a few others I forget... some of my friends have read The DaVinci code which I hear is supposed to be really good too.
Marion Zimmer Bradley write a very nice variation of King Arthur with: ''Mists of Avalon''(women centered instead of men centered). There is very little fantasy and all of it could be explained with someone delusion and lonelyness easily.
Anne Rice have quite an extensive list of books, I read the vampires books but their is a LOT of others stuff she did.
Unsure if it is far enought from ''fantasy'', but that is all I can muster.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
All my titles are fantasy so i'm not even going to bother.
The only one that isn't, is the new Kevin Mitnick book "The Art of Intrusion" which i'll be buying when it releases this month.
Are Anne Rice's novels based on new age vampires? I have heard great things about her novels but I never got the chance to buy them.
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"
"When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman
ok, no fantasy here...since you like Tom Clancy Im going to recommend something you've probably never heard of...John Briley "The First Stone" Its a very good novel about a jewish mole that marries a saudi. One of my favorite books!
Dark Tower series by Steven King
Anything Anne Rice
Discworld
Earthsea
And as always...
Harry Potter.
--------------------------------------
Like any teenager, I dont get that excited with books, although this book was hard to put down.
Hole In My Life
By: Jack Gantos
hmm lets see... two of my favorites... would be
Jonathan livingston seagull ( and the other 2 books he made about his... only read if ur interested in philosophy... if not than you will think it is a bit kiddish... but through all three books its very interesting... )
StarDust ( if you want an amazing fantasy/adventure...by neil gaiman... personally my favorite book... just amazing... didnt even want to finish it because it was soo good... )
EarthSea
The Way of a Peaceful Warrior (changes the way you think highly recomended)
Lord of the Rings including Silmarillion and the Hobbit.
No Fantasy ok then,
i'd say go with a classic like Ulysses by James Joyce, it's proberly the greatest novel of the 20th century.
other then that anything by Charles Dickens is good, And if you can handle poetry i highly recommend The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.
First I'll get out of the way the usual Lord the Rings/Silmarrion for my favorite fantasy novels (Harry Potter's newer ones weren't too bad either). Sci-fi would definitely have to be Frank Herbert's Dune series (including the new ones being written by his son). To me it outclasses Star Wars or any other sci-fi universe with its pure originality and thought process. The only reason it's not talked about too much is that it is way to complex and epic to really create a movie or game to do it justice.
But for your style of books you've already chosen my top two choices: Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton. I've read all of Tom Clancy's (I really like the ones such as Executive Orders where Jack Ryan is President) and most of Crichton's. For two other authors that are similar I would probably say check out either Dave Brown (not Dan Brown... I'll get to him in a second) or Clive Cussler. Dave Brown is a lot like Clancy and although I haven't read too much of his stuff most of his stuff is supposed to be pretty good (he's also writing the story for a new RTS coming out soon; Act of War). Cussler I have yet to read (even though I have some of his books) but every time I go to a bookstore and ask about Clancy they always tell me I should try Cussler too. From what I've read on the synopsis of his books he sounds a bit more like Crichton then Clancy.
Although not exactly the same style of writing I also really enjoyed all of Dan Brown's novels (Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, Deception Point, and Digital Fortress). As long as you take them for just what they are (just really gripping and exciting novels) and not as fact you should enjoy them (and also if you don't really mind his anti-Catholic bias in Angels & Demons and Da Vinci).
I've also read a few war novels that are also worth noting. For some good Civil War novels Jeff & Michael Shara's Gods & Generals, The Killer Angels, and the Last Full Measure. A good WWII series would be the Men at War novels by W.E.B. Griffin.
That's pretty much all I can think about off the top of my head.
Currently:
Playing: WOW & GW
Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) The Long Walk
Frank Peretti This Present Darkness and The Oath
Stephen King's Collection of Skeleton Crew
The Bible
To Kill a Mockingbird
Charles Dickons Great Expectations
Dante Alighieri Inferno
John Bunyon Pilgrim's Progres
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
I read about 80% of those books in English.
"Whoever controls the media controls the mind..-'Jim Morrison"
"When decorum is repression, the only dignity free men have is to speak out." ~Abbie Hoffman
Ok i got 2 books that redefined not only scifi but the way we live now:
1.Snowcrash- Best damn hard scifi i have EVER read.Just google it!!!
2.Neuromancer.-It may be even better than the above title.
If either one of these books dont make you a scifi addict nothing will just google the both of them.
Want to ENJOY an mmo?
Dont start a guild and dont be a leader or volunteer to be coleader or captain.
Just play the damn game:)
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Just one word describes that book, "Awesome."
"The greatest trick the devil played on humanity in the 20th century was convincing them that he didn't exist." (Paraphrasing) C.S. Lewis
"If a mother can kill her own child, what is left before I kill you and you kill me?" -Mother Teresa when talking about abortion after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979
Seize the Night by Dean Koontz
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
and A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer
They make you cry
, laugh 
, and just grow in shock 
.
My most favorite book of all time is probably by Anton Myer, called Once an Eagle. Its basically about a soldiers whole life, starting with the Mexican War, and ending in Vietnam, and i just follows his career starting as a grunt and becoming a major general. Really long but pretty well worth the read. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061030864/qid=1107503096/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-6769835-2497519...theres the amazon link, his other one Big War was pretty good to.
Some other I like are:
Dale Brown, Joe Weber, Larry Brown, Harold Coyle, Robert Ludlum, Michael and Jeff Sharra, and any other political driven military-ish books. Could ya guess...im an international relations major
I like all of William Gibson's work... Neuromancer was definitely my favorite.... My wife has sucked me into the whole Harry Potter Series... (I wish I was able to stop that sentance after the word "me", but unfortunately I've been married too long for that...)
The other book she's been trying to get me to read is the DaVinci Code, but I have not had time to read it yet...
Whitewolf and quite a few recent movies where all inspired from Anne Rice novels. Unsure what you mean by new age vampires, but Lestat, Louis and Akhasha(or Acasha, sorry for the spelling) are all from her novels. The serie Kindred the embrace was inspired from Whitewolf, so 2 generations inspiration if you want...Buffy the vampire slayer is building relationships with vampires that could have come from Rice's novels, and she slay a little of every vampires types. So yeah, Angel and Spike are the vampire type who could emerged from Rice's novel, same with the ''Toronto detective vampire thing'' hehe...
Anne Rice is to vampires what Tolkien is to fantasy.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I stopped reading fantasy and sci-fi (with the exception of William Gibson and John Lydham, who I plan to read) in my teens. I will never read: any Harry Potter book, the Da Vinci Code nor Bridget Jones.
Favourite Books in no particular order:
*American Psycho - Bret Easton Elis. A disturbing satire on the empty values of the 80s. The values that are exemplified - greed, status, money - are taken to their extreme conclusion. By day, Patrick Bateman works on Wall Street and is attractive, intelligent and wealthy. By night, he leads a life that we cannot begin to imagine - doing impermissible things to women. He lives his American Dream.
Caustically funny, and viscerally shocking.
* The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov (probably my favourite novel). The devil and his retinue appear in early 20th century Russia. By the time they leave, the city is in chaos, the alysums are full, and only the Master and Margarita remain with their sanity intact.
A wonderfully written piece of magic realism that predates Marquez and is an allegorical look at Russia.
* Brideshead Revisted - Evelyn Waugh. A tender and nostalgic look at the destructive fortune of an artistocratic family through the years. Symoblic of the loss of a world, that is slowly dying and being replaced by a modern one, secular and one that displaces the old social order. Waugh also looks at God's plan, interweaving the lives of many characters.
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera. A pretentious but brillant book weaving together a number of themes into an insight on sex and the human condition.
* London Fields - Martin Amis. Amis slumming it with crass transatlantic culture, and a book rich with unloveable, obnoxious characters in an unlikely coming together, based around a scam, centered around Nichola Six.
Amis at his very best.
Regards,
Riotgirl
P.s. Nowt wrong with re-reading those books that you were forced to read in English i.e. To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies. All chosen for a reason.
"If you think I'm plucky and scrappy and all I need is love, you're in way over your head. I don't have a heart of gold or get nice. There are a lot nicer people coming up. We call them losers."
All I have to say to this is...
Hungry rats.
heres the best of all...
Wheres Waldo
~Greatness~
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The Book that changed my life...
Alexander Dumas -> "The Count of Monte Cristo"
(PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE IT BY THE MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!)
And OFCOURSE I HAVE to add fantasy...
Terry Brooks' Shannara series... I've read every single one from "The Elfstones" up...
And i just bought "High Druid"...
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