Books?!?!

[Ganado_Headshot]

Hello escapist community, I've been away for too long and I intend to atone for such transgressions, I was just wondering if any of the fine members of this website knew of any good books to read. I recently watched A Scanner Darkly and it got me wanting to read the book. Just to be clear I'm a big fan of the whole third world order idea. I think it makes for great characters and plots.

Some of these books include
-1984
-A Brave New World
-etc.

Thanks for your help and I hope to be reading soon

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Fahrenheit 451 is another classic high-school must-read dystopia novel. If you liked A Scanner Darkly, try reading Philip K. Dick's books, he writes a lot of sci-fi and that usually touches on dystopia. The Man in the High Castle is excellent.

 

[Dangit2019]

Try reading some stuff by Kurt Vonnegut. People will recommend Slaughterhouse 5, and while that book is brilliant, I instead recommend Cat's Cradle because it really shows the type of author voice and writing style he has. Also, it's a lot less depressing.

As for the New World Order type books, there was a series i read a few years back called the Uglies series. It was mainly written for teen girls, but I personally believe it's extremely underrated.

 

[Bertylicious]

Who was that bloke what wrote that book "Pollen"? That was dead good, that was,and he's done loads of stuff in that whole dystopian vein. Also if you like your socio-political commentary to have its tongue firmly in cheek then you might want to give Robert Rankin's Armageddon 2:The Musical a go.

 

[Galletea]

I'm not an expert in dystopia novels but The Road is one of the best books I've read.
Other than that, you might want to try Bret Easton Ellis' stuff, he wrote American Psycho. I read his first novel, Less than Zero, and it's one of those car crash type books, it is horrible and yet fascinating.

 

[Jindrax]

I'm probably going to get flamed by ignorant trolls but yeah
My contract law professor is gave a random 50 minute speech on this book.
Claiming his generation has fucked up the world and it's our moral obligation to fix it.
SO he was like yeah read this book, it's important.
I've yet to read it but it was super highly rated in the New York Times.

Al Gore - The Future.

 

[Guffe]

I like "The Count of Monte Christo" a lot.
Both Yahtzees books, Mogworld and Jam, are entertaning
And if you're looking for autobiographies I recommend Jimmy White (Snooker) and Jamie Carragher (football player)

 

[wolf thing]

"The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, is such a good book, its about a human empire in the far future meeting an alien race, everything about it is fantastic.

"Dune" by Frank Herbert, "Dragonflight" by Anne McCaffrey, "Women of wonder" by many writter as it is a short story collection, are all really good science fiction books and some of my favorite.

 

[Batou667]

A lot of Isaac Asimov's work is great. The Foundation series in particular is great, as are any of his robot books. The Caves of Steel (and the sequel, which I forget the name of) are two good examples.

Philip K Dick - this guy was a genius. His short stories are fantastic, and overall I much prefer them to his "proper" novels. A Scanner Darkly might be an exception to that.

Robert Heinlein. Most famous for Starship Troopers, which is a must-read, but I also read A Door Into Summer by him and it's a devilishly clever story of revenge.

Thomas Harris' Hannibal trilogy. Awesome books, fantastic characterisation.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. One that's almost worth reading just so you can say you've read it, but actually it's a really good book too.

Fight Club. Every bit as good as the film, real dark nihilistic stuff.

Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. If you're not adverse to the idea of reading "young adult fiction" you might find these good. I was blown away by them, especially the first book. It was made into "The Golden Compass", but I've heard the film isn't a patch on the books.

Also, if you're into autobiographies, Jackie Chan's one is really good.

 

[Shock and Awe]

Foundation Trilogy-Issac Asimov: Nice classic sci-fi, a bit dated, but still a great read.

The Hunger Games Trilogy-Suzanne Collins: Absolutely fantastic to my surprise, great characters and quite dark at times.

A Song of Ice and Fire-George R. R. Martin: I'm usually not to interested in fantasy, but Martin breaks enough tropes to make me really like the series. Great characters and world can go a long way.

Starship Troopers-Robert Heinlein: One of my favorite books of all time. Great characters and great plot. Classic sci-fi, but seems a bit less dated then Foundation.

Thats just a few good ones I thought of.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Since you're obviously into dystopian nightmare scenarios, you could try "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood.
It's basically about gender politics and fundamentalist religion gone horribly, horribly wrong.

 

[Muspelheim]

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell is an interesting read if you liked 1984 and want some insight in what experiences inspired that book. It's Orwell's own personal account of his time in the worker's militia in the Spanish Civil War, and it does include several elements that helped shape 1984. With the horrible addition that it's also historical fact.

It's fairly short, more like an interesting footnote reguarding George Orwell and the enviroment that would one day lead to 1984, but it's well worth a read if you can find it.

 

[malaloba]

I second the recommendation for the Hunger Games. The books are always better to the movie, but the Hunger Games books really went into depth about everything- you got a real sense of how life was just awful in Panem and how everything has it's price. I also liked the Divergent series, which is another one of those 'teen girl in dystopia' series, but it does stand out from the rest of them. Or at least, I'd like to think it did!

 

[purf]

Honestly, in this day and age catering for short attention spans, I don't read a lot and when I do, I'm really picky about the thing that sets literature apart from other media which is: use of language... with that said, the last novel I read:

... I enjoyed Zone One by Colson Whitehead. A quite different take on the subject of the Zombie Apocalypse.

 

[Korenith]

If you like your dystopian stuff I'd go with Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Both excellent books with very different takes on near future sci-fi.

 

[Launcelot111]

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Essentially every memorable Clint Eastwood character ever is based on the book's protagonist.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

The last really good book I read was called Julia. It's about a woman who's either being haunted or or going crazy depending on how you read it. Sorry I can't recommend anything similar to 1984 or anything