Great Thread! I can't pick just one, but in no particular order are some of my favorites.
Steven Pressfield - Gates of Fire - by far his best to date
Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth - mentioned by a few already, great book
Gore Vidal - Creation - his cynical sense of humor shows through in everything he writes.
James Clavell - Shogun
Thomas Flanagan - The Year of the French - I believe this is out of print but grab a copy if you can. Starts slow.
Larry Mcmurtry - Lonesome Dove - Great feel for the old American West. Good miniseries, much better book.
Bernard Cornwell - The Archer's Tale/The Last Kingdom/or the Richard Sharpe series
David Howarth -1066 The year of the conquest - Another out of print book. A little dry but great historic fiction.
Patrick O'Brian - Master & Commander - Have not finished the Aubrey/Maturin novels but have enjoyed all that I have read.
...and of course I probably would not be at the Paizo site if I didn't have a love for fantasy and Sci Fi
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Foundation Series
Neverwhere
Fahrenheit 451
The whole John Carter Warlord of Mars series
The Once & Future King
The Stand/ Salem's Lot
Jurasic Park
I've intentionally left out the "classics" and some great pure history books. I highly reccomend any of the above list.
Dashiell Hammett - Red Harvest (the original Fistful of Dollars/Seven Samurai/Last Man Standing);
Andrew Vachss - Shella;
Jack Vance - The Killing Machine;
John Bellairs - The Face in the Frost;
Robert Parker - All Our Yesterdays;
James Clavell - Tai-Pan;
Frank Herbert - The Dosadi Experiment.
Just to name a few favorites.
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Stephen King--It
Clive Barker--The Damnation Game
Neil Gaiman--Neverwhere
Douglas Clegg--The Infinite
Scott Nicholson--The Manor
Caleb Carr--The Alienist
Arturo Perez Reverte--The Club Dumas
Chuck Palahniuk--Lullaby
Peter Straub--Shadowland
Erik Larson--The Devil In The White City
Mark Z. Danielewski--House Of Leaves
Richard Matheson--Hell House
Gregory Maguire--Lost
Thomas Harris--Red Dragon
Gary Gygax--Saga Of Old City
George R.R. Martin--A Game Of Thrones
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child--Brimstone
Dan Simmons--A Winter Haunting
Ray Bradbury--Something Wicked This Way Comes
J.R.R. Tolkien--The Hobbit
Definitely agree with The Alienist by Caleb Carr. Really great read.
Ok, here I go in no particular order...
Simon R Green - Deathstalker Series
Kate Forsythe - Witches of Eileanan Series
Terry Pratchett - Discworld Series
Robin Hobb - Farseer Trilogy
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Ray Bradbury - The Illustrated Man
Alan Burt Akers - Dray Prescott series (didn't want it to end)
John D McDonald - Travis McGee series (ditto)
Spider Robinson - Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
Anything by Mr. Poe.
I see some people cheating and listing book series.
Shame, shame, the core idea of the thread is one book.
Roger Zelazney -- Lords of Light
Arthur C. Clarke -- Childhood's End
L. Ron Hubbar -- Battlefield Earth
Alfred Bester -- The Demolished Man
Lester Del Rey -- Nerves
Larry Niven/Steven Barnes -- Dream Park
wow; hmm
Jim Butcher - any of the Dresden Files on the premise that you have the info from the one before as that series completely rocks.
DR. Suess the Grinch who stole Xmas; (ok all you English experts; I am not gonna do proper titles and such with documentation even though I know how)
Robert Aspirin - the Myth series - I dont remember the first one; they are all good but the first one got me hooked.
Sigh, I dont remember the author; but The Misenchanted Sword was among his best.
Sheesh, I need to do this while I can look at my books; think something in my brain caught fire.
hmm Zelazney; didnt he do the Chronicles of Amber. I have the whole series bound in two books #1 and #2; and #1 is his best though I like it all.
Tolkien; Liked the Hobbit the best.
Erik Van Lustbater the Ninja
Wow Piers Anthony is really, really hard; he is so great and is so prolific; gonna have to think about this one a lot; he writes so much variety also.
Heinlein; the moon is a harsh mistress geez Friday a close second ack the cat who walked through walls, did he do Farnams Freehold; sheesh and one scifi about a beggar who was a spy who raised a boy; sheesh; cant remember them all; this is hard.
Larry Niven; uhm, Lucifers Hammer - this spawned a lot of copycats.
sigh. this is hard.
Miguel Delibes: Los Santos Inocentes
Jules Verne: The Mysterious Island
Manuel Vazquez Montalban: La Soledad del Manager
Borges: Ficciones
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion
Arturo Perez Reverte: El Club Dumas
Lorenzo Silva: El Lejano Pais de los Estanques
Richard Matheson: I am Legend
Ray Bradbury: Martian Chronicles
Isaac Asimov: I, Robot
daedel, el azote.
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash.
While Cryptonomicon is actually my favorite novel, Snow Crash absolutely redefined the cyberpunk genre.
I never thought of it as redefining the genre, but then I didn't know it was that old.... I think I read it in about 1998 or 99. It seemed to me when I read it to be a lot younger than Gibson's cyberpunk, and cooler. It's a little flip at times but I love that. Gibson is so serious, so dour.
I'd like to pitch in a long list but I'll restrain myself. In the spirit of the thread, I'm throwing in a book by a guy who wrote ONE really good book, while the rest were very mediocre. So if you like war and science fiction, this is an awesome book:
Joseph Haldeman--The Forever War
And anyone who's thinking Stephen King: ONE book dudes and dudettes. That means no Dark Tower. Hmmm.
I just picked a single edition of THE STAND, the "complete and uncut edition".
That would be my ONE title by King.
Roger Zelazney -- Lords of Light
Lord of Light was fantastic, better even than Isle of the Dead. But if I had to pick only ONE of Zelazny's books to take to a desert island, it'd for sure be The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," "This Moment of the Storm," and "Divine Madness" are three of my favorite short stories by any author. They remind me of Wallace Stevens poems set to prose.
D'OH! I can't believe I left out
Trevanian's The Main. Ultradan, you should for sure read this one!
Has anyone else here read Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves?
It takes quite a bit of work, but is well worth the struggle if you can get all the way through it.
I love love LOVE that book.
My list:
House of Leaves
American Gods-Neil Gaiman
Perdido Street Station-China Mieville
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone-JKR
The Stand-SK
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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This is hard for me. Not because I have a hard time choosing favorites, mind you, but because I haven't read many books. Still, I'll chime in with a few of the gems that I've discovered:
- Stephen King - "The Stand" (still haven't read the Dark Tower stuff, so this is the best one of the 4 King novels I've read)
- Neil Gaiman - "American Gods" (it's the only book I've read of his, but it was pretty awesome)
- Michael Crichton - "Jurassic Park" (the first novel I ever read that wasn't an assignment in school and also the only Crichton novel I've read thus far - much cooler than the movie)
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - "The Darksword Trilogy" (okay, I'm cheating here because it's a trilogy, but it's still quite awesome)
- R.A. Salvatore - "Exile" (the best novel written about the Underdark ever and, oh yeah, that Drizzt guy is in it too)
Yeah... that's about all I've got.
Just a few off the top of my head:
C.S. Lewis - Out of the Silent Planet (one of the best sci-fi novels that isn't heavy on the technology)
Robert A. Heinlein - Have to agree on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (although Stranger in a Strange land is my favorite quickly followed by Starship Troopers)
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Frank Herbert - Dune (don't bother with the rest of the series)
Brian Jacques - Redwall
Yukio Mishima - Patriotism
Grace Chetwin - Gom on Windy Mountain
Laurence Yep - Dragon Couldron (Hopefully I googled the right book)
Its funny that this thread got ressurected just after I spent a good chunk of my weekend packing up ~90% of my books to put in the storage locker.
We needed more space now that our 9 month old daughter to crawling/walking around, so I had to trim my books/RPG books down to one large bookcase worth, spread across high shelves that she can't reach. It was painful.
Basically, I had to boil it down to books that:
A) I loved
B) I wanted to read again
C) I'd want to read when a sequel came out in the near future.
D) Provided me with a varied library, so I wasn't just stuck with high fantasy, or sci-fi, etc
Abbreviated List: (in no particular order)
Orson Scott Card Ender's Game (The rest of the series was packed up)
Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time (Luckily someone had bought me the paperback gift collections a few years ago at Xmas, not realizing I already owned the hardcovers. So the first 7 or so are in paperpack, with the rest in hardcover. It would have been hard to justify keeping the whole series in HC otherwise)
Raymond Feist Riftwar + Serpent War + Covenant of Shadows + assorted like Faerie Tale and King's Bucaneer (One of my favorite authors)
Michael Stackpole Dragoncrown series + Battletech/Star Wars novels (Warrior Trilogy + Blood of Kerensky + Rogue Squadron) (Another one of my favorite authors. I also stole my boardname from one of his novels)
RA Salvatore The first 3 collected hardcover editions of the various Drizz't series He gets slagged alot because of Drizzt, but I can still remember reading Icewind Dale as a kid when it was first out.
Terry Brooks Collect Hardcovers of the Shannarra Series + the first 2 in the new Genesis of Shanara series
Tolkien The obvious LOTR, + the similarion. I also didn't keep LOTR out, because of the DVDs, despite the differences.
SM Stirling Dies the Fire + Protector's War + Meeting at Corvallis + Sunrise Lands + Peshwar Lancers + The Sky People An author I like because of his alt-history/apocalypse settings. And the Sky People is the first in a series that extralopates what it would be like if the pulp ideas about venus and mars were actually true and confirmed by NASA & the USSR space programs at the height of the Cold War. Interesting premise, and the first one was good.
Heinlein Starship Troopers + Moon is a Harsh Mistress + 2 collections of short stories
Lovecraft A couple of collections of short stories
David Gemmell Pretty much his whole catalogue, although some are in collected hardcover editions If you like gritty fantasy warfare, or though 300 was awesome, check out his first novel, Legend. Can't get much better than that for a fantasy loosely inspired by the Spartans facing overwhelming odds.
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child Relic + Thunderhead + Ice Limit + Cabinet of Curiosities + Still Life with Crows + Brimstone + Dance of Death + Book of the Dead My favorite authors of suspense stories lately.
A somewhat random assortment of paperbacks to round out the collection.
It really hurt to pare down my books to just this meager collection. At least I can always go to the storage locker and dig around through the boxes if I really want to find a specific book.
Who does not get the title of this board? List an author and then most of what he has written? I KNOW you guys are not illiterate!
And what's with posters not reading the stuff posted before them? I mean, I check this thread out to see if I can find stuff that I've missed, so ummmm, maybe we can stop adding Tolkien and everything he has written as the ONE book you should read by him because we all know who Tolkien is folks, and we know what's good out of his works.
Sheesh!
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Anything by Michael Crichton, even his non-fiction (although if I reallllly had to pick I would probably have to say Prey. Can you tell he's my favourite Author?)
Empyrion - Stephen Lawhead (originally in 2 books, although it is one story. They are The Search for Fierra & The Siege of Dome and I am pretty sure you can only get it now as an omnibus)
Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained - Peter F. Hamilton (I know this is actually 2 books, but again it is one story, the books are just so frickin' huge that you would need a forklift to read if they were in one volume)
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (Wicked Twist. No interest in reading the others, although my Wife says they are OK)
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke (The Sequels are also good, but the original is the best)
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (again, I know this is a series, but if you can get them in one omnibus like I have then you can cheat and call it one book)
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien ('nuff said)
Contest - Matthew Reilly (an Australian Author, so I'm not sure how you'll go picking it up OS. You may laugh at this choice, but I find that his books, while quite simple in their style of writing, are extremely enjoyable and engaging. Contest was his first book, but he has done quite a few others and even a sort of series about a US Marine, Ice Station, Area 7 & Scarecrow)
It - Stephen King (spooky, but not too much so like most of King's older work)
The Templar Legacy - Steve Berry (one of those Ancient Conspiracy Theory books ala Da Vinci Code, but still engaging nonetheless)
A Death in Vienna - Daniel Silva (any of Silva's books are good, but if I had to choose it would be this one. Not the first in the series though, FYI).
I also like the Harry Potter Books, but since I have to choose one, I will say The Half-Blood Prince
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Wow this is hard, because I think most of mine have been picked. several times over, but lets give 'er a try shall we? Only one per author hhmmm. So hard to choose.
Roger Zelazney Lord Demon
H.P. Lovecraft Dunwhich Horror
Robert E. Howard Conan the Bucaneer
Mark Twain Joan of Arc
Fritz Leiber Swords agianst Death
Raymond E. Feist Magician
Alexander Dumas The Three Musketeers Which I would love to see actually made into a good movie or TV series one of these centuries
C. S. Lewis Prince caspian
Stephen King The Gunslinger
J.R.R. Tolkien Son's of Hurin
of course this is just my fiction list we could go on and on and on but I think since I am adding my bit late here (my work will let me lurk on the board, I just cant post till I am off work)I think I will bow out gracfully
My fantasy favourites have been chosen, so here are some other titles:)
Homer : illiad - find a good translation and read out loud - Bliss!
Anthony Beevor : Stalingrad - Creeping doom in book form.
John Fowles : The Magus - what is going on?
If you only ever read one book by Ernest Hemingway, read one that isn't "The Old Man and the Sea", and then you'll have read all of them that weren't "The Old Man and the Sea".
I'm suprised nobody's made this joke yet. It's not even Hemingway-specific. Works for Tom Clancy, for example.
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Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child Relic + Thunderhead + Ice Limit + Cabinet of Curiosities + Still Life with Crows + Brimstone + Dance of Death + Book of the Dead My favorite authors of suspense stories lately.
Finally! Someone else knows about these guys!
By the way, have you read Reliquary? It's part of the D'Agosta / Pendergast story thread, and follows directly after Relic. Some other good ones are Riptide and Mount Dragon.
Also, Preston's solo stuff is good too, especially Tyrannosaur Canyon and The Codex.
Finally, keep an eye out for Blasphemy and Wheel of Darkness, which should be out soon.
Robert E. Howard Conan the Bucaneer
As a big REH fan, I need to point out that "Buccaneer" is a later addition to the stories by de Camp & Carter; Howard didn't write any of it.
Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers Which I would love to see actually made into a good movie or TV series one of these centuries
The really old one with Gene Kelly is still one of my favorite movies!
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Heinlein; the moon is a harsh mistress geez Friday a close second ack the cat who walked through walls, did he do Farnams Freehold; sheesh and one scifi about a beggar who was a spy who raised a boy; sheesh; cant remember them all; this is hard.
yes he did write Farnams Freehold, and I know the story your talking about it's part of the juviniles series... I'll look it up tonight and post the title tommorrow
Thomas Kinsella (translator): The Tain- never mind Conan- this is the real McCoy.
Seamus Heaney (translator): Beowulf
Lord Dunsany: In the Land of Time and other Fantasy Tales- probably the best pre-Tolkien Fantastist there is. For something more substantial, try the King of Elfland's Daughter or The Charwoman's Shadow.
Lady Augusta Gregory: Gods and Fighting Men. The title alone is worth the read.
Micheal Moorcock: The Eternal Champion Series
Fritz Leiber: The Lankhmar Stories
Micheal Scott Rohan: The Winter of the World Series- why this is out of print, I'll never know.
Joseph Campbell: Myths to Live by
JRR Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Susanna Clarke: Johnathan Strange and Mister Norrell; Jane Austen meets Fantasy. Worth sticking with.
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials- yes, this is the anti- Narnia and all the better for it.
Marc Scott Zicree and Friends: Magic Time Trilogy.
Mark Chadbourn: The Age of Misrule- both this and Magic Time are "Apocalyptic Magic surges back into our world" stories, but very different sensibilities.
Lewis Carroll: Alice in Wonderland.
Alan Garner: The Weirdstone of Brisingame
David Gemmell: Legend
Jeff Smith: Bone
I'm sure there must be more, will probably add to it
Director of Narrative
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I looked for an Orson Scott Card thread in this section and this thread ended up being the one with the most references. In the interest of not spawning heaps of 4 post threads, I decided to jack/resurrect this one with this comic that was sent to my lovely lady recently.
Joel Rosenberg - The Sleeping Dragon
Brian Lumley - Necroscope
Terry Goodkind - Wizard's First Rule
David Feintuch - Midshipman's Hope
Richard Adams - Watership Down
There are plenty others, but they have already been posted. I didn't see these listed (though I did skim through some of the thread so I may have missed them).
Most of these are the beginnings of a series, but they are good series, and these books should get you hooked on them enough to read the others.
Larry Niven - Footfall (his best collaboration, absolutely IMHO)
Better than Lucifer's Hammer?
Come, now...
I would argue The Mote In God's Eye beats them both.
I love HP Lovecraft - so hard to pick... so so so ha@76wds,,a
Anyway,
Gabriel García Márquez - "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (In case you're ever inspired to run a world based in magical realism)
Milan Kundera - Yeah, I might say "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" ... BUT, for this crowd, I suggest "Life is Elsewhere." Lots of fantastical scenes and the main character is evil (and like all good evil, doesn't even know it).
M. Scott Peck - "People of the Lie." His "Road Less Traveled" is far more well-known. But his case studies of his absolutely worst patients will give "Rise of the Rune Lords" a run for its money (for example, his story of the parents who gave their teenage son a rifle for Christmas... sounds fine, except it was the same rifle his old brother used to commit suicide the year before).
Oh, and C.S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters." Screwtape is a devil, and each letter is a correspondence with his infernal superiors on how to tempt folks into the 7 deadly sins. :-)
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Books I read over and over;
Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny (although Creatures of Light and Darkness and Isle of the Dead are also good)
Magician - Raymond E Feist
Daughter of Empire - Ray Feist and Janny Wurts
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Others I love unreasonably;
When True Night Falls – Celia Friedman
Legacy of Heorot – Niven, Pournelle & Barnes
Startide Rising – David Brin
The Reality Dysfunction - Peter Hamilton
Hard Wired - Walter Jon Williams
At the Mountains of Madness - HP Lovecraft
Master of Hawks - Linda Bushyager
And if you ever feel the need to read only one Star Trek tie-in novel ever;
How Much for Just the Planet? - John Ford
Has anyone else here read Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves?
It takes quite a bit of work, but is well worth the struggle if you can get all the way through it.
I love love LOVE that book.
My list:
House of Leaves
American Gods-Neil Gaiman
Perdido Street Station-China Mieville
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone-JKR
The Stand-SK
I foundMark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves to be very fun. If it was written as a novel it would still be pretty good, but the games it has are great. Never before have I read a book that contained so many varied games embedded in its structure. I am surprised that more gamers had not mentioned it, as it is a game just to read it.
Ian M. Banks - Consider Phlebas
Richard S. Sutton - Reinforcement Learning
Richard O. Duda - Pattern Classification
Zvi Bodie - Investments
Larry Wasserman - All of Statistics
Fred Saberhagen - Berserker Base
Raymond Smullyan - The Lady or the Tiger?
Carl Sagan - Cosmos
Stephen G. Kellison - Theory of Interest
Lawrence McMillan - Options as a Strategic Investment
Thought I would add a few more after the last post nearly 4 years ago:
James Ellroy - LA Confidential
Bernard Cornwell - The Last Kingdom
Robert Parker - Stone Cold
Stephen Lawhead - Byzantium
Persian Fire - Tom Holland
Get any book by Ed McBain. They are such a pleasurable, easy read.
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I find it hard to believe that after all these years no one has mentioned Gene Wolfe. His wisdom is astounding even though he is catholic(remember:keep it civil,religophiles)
If you only ever read one book by Gene Wolfe...
...make it The Claw of the Conciliator.
this is book 2 in the Book of the New Sun-the first of many of Wolfe's books I have read. I picked it up from a literature rack in a bookstore at Universal Studios theme park when I was a young man(teen or pre-teen). It is the story of a Torturer's Apprentice exiled for the sin of mercy(due to the infatuousness of youth's first sexual encounter). It is much bigger also, cocerning the return of the "savior"(Conciliator) and the coming of the New Sun to the Urth of a dying sun.
The protagonist ,Severian of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, is an unreliable narrator like many of Wolfe's protagonists(Latro in Soldier of the Mist is my second favorite)
Poul Anderson - Three Hearts and Three Lions: Besides being a good story, it's the blueprint for a number of D&D staples.
Brandon Sanderson - Mistborn: Elantris is great, too, but the magic system in Mistborn alone is worth the price of admission. You get likable characters and an interesting story as a bonus.
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Director of Narrative
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Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth
Edit: Anyone interested I will try to mail you a copy of this book. Email me if interested.
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Larry Niven - Footfall (his best collaboration, absolutely IMHO)
Better than Lucifer's Hammer?
Come, now...
The Legacy of Heorot beats them both.
I remember --I must have been something like 13 or 14-- and my mom was getting the dirty laundry out of my room, and at once she happened to notice --out of all the paperbacks-- Lucifer's Hammer. She didn't even glance twice before throwing it out because she was certain it had to do with devil worship...
Geraldo's infamous devil worship episode had aired earlier that week.