Books

[Socius]

Okei, here is the thing.
I am a student who really want to become an author. You could say I'm a sucker for Fantasy books. Then i started wondering what you guys like, are the books from Tolkien, Angie Sage, Lewis and Eoin Colfer as much fun for you as it is for me? or do you prefer other types of books? If so name you favorites. a top 3 list if you will.

mine:
1: The fellowship of the ring - J. R. R. Tolkien
2: Septimus Heap, The shaddow - Anngie Sage
3: Artimis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

EDIT: yes, this is a Favorite book thread!

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

Well, the best fantasy authors have a wide array of tastes so be sure to not just read one genre. The best sci-fi and fantasy I've ever read relied heavily on other ideas and books, so personally I just try to read a wide variety of things.

Is this a favorite book thread? The best science fiction book ever written is Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Best fantasy...I'm gonna go for bust and say Robin Hobb's Assassin Trilogy.

 

[Socius]

Well, the best fantasy authors have a wide array of tastes so be sure to not just read one genre. The best sci-fi and fantasy I've ever read relied heavily on other ideas and books, so personally I just try to read a wide variety of things.

Is this a favorite book thread? The best science fiction book ever written is Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. Best fantasy...I'm gonna go for bust and say Robin Hobb's Assassin Trilogy.

yes, its supposed to be a favorite book thread

 

[Scarecrow38]

Well the only Fantasy books I ever enjoyed were the Lord of the Rings series.. So,

1. The Fellowship of the Ring
2. The Two Towers
3. The Return of the KIng

I'm in awe at the fact that Tolkien didn't see this trilogy as his most crowning achievement. The Lord of the Rings trilogy were only a small fraction of the entire wealth of lore and history he wrote for his 'Middle-earth'. Amazing. Best of luck with the author thing. My best advice/ motivation is something my personal favourite author, Matthew Reilly, said once:

"There is no such thing as an aspiring author. You either are or you aren't."

PS: The best advice I can give to an author is read widely, even non- fiction. Regardless of the type of genre you're thinking of writing a strong general knowledge can help alot.

 

[J-Man]

Nietzsche (any book)
The Road - Cormac Maccarthy
Trotsky/Lenin/Marx/Che (any book)
Garth Nix is a pretty good sci-fi/fantasy writer
Isaac Asimov (any book)

 

[Socius]

Well the only Fantasy books I ever enjoyed were the Lord of the Rings series.. So,

1. The Fellowship of the Ring
2. The Two Towers
3. The Return of the KIng

I'm in awe at the fact that Tolkien didn't see this trilogy as his most crowning achievement. The Lord of the Rings trilogy were only a small fraction of the entire wealth of lore and history he wrote for his 'Middle-earth'. Amazing. Best of luck with the author thing. My best advice/ motivation is something my personal favourite author, Matthew Reilly, said once:

"There is no such thing as an aspiring author. You either are or you aren't."

I can agree on Tolkien there, "Silmarillion" witch was his lifeachivment was a fantastic book! written in the same manner as the bible, but it was very hard to read therefore i didn't enjoy it as much as the lord of the rings saga...

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Hmmm...


Perfect Storm- Sebastian Junger
The Beach- Alex Garland
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time- Mark Haddon
Anything by Bill Bryson

(Not in any order)

 

[Jenny Creed]

I'm partial to Marcel Proust's In search of lost time. No, I'm kidding. Stephen King works for me. I like It in particular. Quite an accomplishment, bringing that monster into the world. . . and making the word "it" almost as scary as "if".

And I'll pretend there's no discrimination of comic books compared to other books and go ahead and name The Sandman by Neil Gaiman the best book in the world. Well, series of books.

 

[Ken Korda]

Ok, I don't want to sound like an arrogant prick but I would like to post a couple of non-fiction books if that's alright?

1) 'Ever Closer Union' by Desmond Dinan. If you ever wanted to know anything about the European UNion this is the place to find it.

2) 'Globalization and its Discontents' by Joseph Stiglitz. Whether you argee with the politics or not it is an excellent summary of an alternative way of viewing the existing global economy

3) 'The World We're In' by Will Hutton. This is a little out of date now but it gives an excellent account of bothe American and European social models and demonstrates the importance for social security and government intervention in economics

Hope that wasn't too pretentious but those are three excellent books

 

[Cahlee]

The Hobbit- J.R.R Tolkein
Hitchhikers Guide - Douglas Adams
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
The Witches Eileannan Series - Kate Forsyth

That'll do for now!

 

[Malkavian]

I can't ever make lists of 3...

Fiction:
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Fight Club by Chuck Pahlaniuck
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Discworld series (Though the first three wasn't that great)
The Comissar Cain series
The Gaunt's Ghosts series

Currently I'm reading through the Horus Heresy series. It's written by a range of authors, but everything has been quite good so far.

Non-Fiction:
On the Geneaology of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche
Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiddies


I read a lot, but I think these books are those that I have enjoyed the most.

 

[SecretTacoNinja]

I just finished reading The Shining. It was fucking awesome.

My top 10 in no particular order:

Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Round Ireland With a Fridge - Tony Hawks
The Shining - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
Red Dwarf/Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers - Rob Grant
FAT - Rob Grant
JPod - Douglas Coupland
The Gladiators from Capua (part of a series) - Caroline Lawrence

I have a lot.

 

[Cahlee]

I just finished reading The Shining. It was fucking awesome.

My top 10 in no particular order:

Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Round Ireland With a Fridge - Tony Hawks
The Shining - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
Red Dwarf/Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers - Rob Grant
FAT - Rob Grant
JPod - Douglas Coupland
The Gladiators from Capua (part of a series) - Caroline Lawrence

I have a lot.

I finished the shining about a week ago. I agree, it was GREAT!

I like your books!

 

[R.O.]

I'm into all types of books but here goes my top 3.

1. Notes From the Underground
2. Through The Ice
3. Grifter's Game

I think those books sum it up nicely. They are all short, fun, hilarious, and easy to read. Plus they are intense and make you think. Lord of the Rings is way too wooden for me. I feel like I'll pass out at any minute especially when they start singing.

 

[Fridr]

My favourite book is "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, though not so much the first of the novels in it, i.e. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I've also enjoyed every Dragonlance novel I have read up to now (about 10), they are just really fun and easy to read

 

[Same River New Water]

Sorry, I just can't pick all-time favourites. I'll give you some recent favourites instead.

The best book I've read recently was Run by Douglas E Winter. I picked it from the library at random based on a hunch, read it all at once and couldn't get it out of my head for a week. There's one particular bit that's still bouncing around in there six months later... brilliant. It's an fast-paced crime/action book, very well told.

Layer Cake by J. J. Connolly is another great crime book, but very different. Where Run has the traditional strengths of American writing (pace, conviction, immediacy, clear plot structure), Layer Cake has the traditional strengths of British writing: humour, distinctive characters, believability, ridiculously complicated plot structure and a truckload of accents rendered perfectly. Again, scenes from this book will stay with you. Think Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but scarier and more serious. (Yes, the movie [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0375912/] is based on the book - Daniel Craig's break-out lead role.)

Moving over the fence to detective stories: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler is an absolute classic of the hard-boiled private investigator kind.

Wow, how did I end up reading so much crime fiction lately? It used to be all fantasy and science fiction. Huh.

 

[SecretTacoNinja]

I just finished reading The Shining. It was fucking awesome.

My top 10 in no particular order:

Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Round Ireland With a Fridge - Tony Hawks
The Shining - Stephen King
Misery - Stephen King
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
Red Dwarf/Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers - Rob Grant
FAT - Rob Grant
JPod - Douglas Coupland
The Gladiators from Capua (part of a series) - Caroline Lawrence
My mum's book, yet to be released.

I have a lot.

I finished the shining about a week ago. I agree, it was GREAT!

I like your books!

I loved the ending...

I like my books too. XD
I only settle for the best.
Oh wait, I missed one...

 

[GenHellspawn]

1: The fellowship of the ring - J. R. R. Tolkien
2: Septimus Heap, The shaddow - Anngie Sage
3: Artimis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

As a fellow writer, I can say the worst thing you're doing here is being too conventional. Try to read things that don't catch your fancy, you never know what you'll find.

On topic:

1: The Hard Goodbye - Frank Miller
2: John Dies at the End - David Wong
3: I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

 

[Trivun]

Can't really list a top 3 or a top 10, just because I read so much. I'm 18 though so I'm sort of at the stage where I still read some young teen fiction (mainly because I started the series' at the right age and then as more books were released I wanted to know the rest of the story) and also more adult fiction. My top books (in no particular order) would, however, have to include:

Ian Irvine's 'The Three Worlds' cycle
Anything by Terry Pratchett (mainly Discworld though)
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl
Anthony Horowitz's The Power of Five series
Any of the Halo tie-in novels
Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet (Hungry Cities chronicles for you Americans)
Anything by Dan Brown
Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series (kill me if you want but I liked the books, and the film)
Lord of the Rings was alright but I prefer the films, same for Harry Potter :s

To be honest I wouldn't mind reading anything by Tom Clancy or Andy McNab either.