Favourite Books

[GundamSentinel]

You don't really hear about books on the Escapist (except Twilight hate, which is perfectly reasonable) so what are you faves?

I swear this is one of the most asked questions on the Escapist. :L

And I keep telling you, go and buy the Histories of Herodotus, read it, persevere with it, have your mind absolutely blown as all of modern Western Culture is explained from the very bare roots from which it has grown from. BUY IT NOW!

(It also has the true story of the 300, which is always a good read).

I had to translate a large part of it in my final year of Ancient Greek. I enjoyed it a lot. It's more readable than you'd expect from such an ancient work. Excellent book.

 

[Mugen Weston]

Anything written by Raymond E Feist, particularly The Magician.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

And of course, Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw

 

[Erja_Perttu]

I love David Eddings' Belgariad and Elenium, and their sequel series' (Mallorean and Tamuli respectively) The character building (and everything else but the inevitably cliché plot) is brilliant.

Yeah, those books were great fun to read.

At the moment I'm reading the Sharpe books, which are great, some Diskworld books and Sherlock Holmes. I'm having a whale of a time!

 

[Bleedingskye]

A+ on the Foundation series, all those books are amazing, favorite thing by Asimov.
Hitchhiker's Guide
To The Scatters Your Bodies Go (Riverworld series)
Just finished The Graveyard Book-Gaiman awesome stuff
Un Lun Dun by china Mieville

 

[Kaytastrophe]

Mine are:

Dune by Frank Herbert

Metro 2033 (yes the game was based off it)

Red Inferno by Robert Conroy

Brave New World by Huxley

1984/Animal Farm by Orwell

I was also surprised by how much I liked The DaVinci Code

 

[Dwachak]

The first 4 Harry Potter books (I'm not really into all that wizard angst) and The Children of Húrin is probably my favourite re-reads

 

[Emurlahn]

Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson and Ian . C. Esslemont
Chronicles of the Black Company - Glen Cook
H. P. Lovecraft's work
Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Song of Ice and Fire - Tad Williams
Kingkiller Chronicles - Patrick Rothfuss
Shadowmarch series - Tad Williams
Krigeren - Josefine Ottesen
Black Magician Trilogy - Trudy Canavan
Conan - Robert E. Howard
Game of Thrones - Geroge R. R. Martin
Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Iliad - Homer
The Last Samurai - Helen Dewitt
Dark Tower - Steven King
And a lot other I can't remember right now...
Not all of it is quite finished yet.

And Yes I've read Mogworld.

 

[Agayek]

You don't really hear about books on the Escapist (except Twilight hate, which is perfectly reasonable) so what are you faves? For me it's anything by Darren Shan and the Harry Potter books.

Edit: Also, has anyone read Mogworld, Yahtzee's book. I got it off of Amazon. It's really funny, especially if you know a lot about games.

My favorite books:
Dresden Files series
Codex Alera series
Kingkiller trilogy
Lord of the Rings
Villains by Necessity

These are my top 5, but I have a few hundred books that I read fairly regularly. It's getting a bit ridiculous, since I'm out of bookshelf space, but I keep getting more anyway.

 

[Lilani]

The 7 Artemis Fowl books.

Concentrated awesome.

Agreed, for sure.

I'm not good at picking favorites, though...The only book I can remember ever re-reading is The Hobbit. Man that book is awesome. Much less drawn-out and dry compared to the LotR series. I mean really: less than 10 pages in Bilbo's got 13 dwarves and a wizard in his house saying "Let's go kill a dragon!" In LotR, it was like 17 years (and 70-100 pages) before Frodo even left the Shire after he got the ring.

I'm also very much a fan of Maria V. Snyder's Study and Glass series's, and in high school I went through pretty much all of Tamora Pierce's Tortall books in just a few months. I tend to get fixated on series's. I'll come across one I love, and then not read anything else until I've finished it and whatever offspring it might have. But if I had to settle on one book, I guess I'd say The Hobbit.

War and Peace. Seriously a great book.

Did you know Leo Tolstoy's wife rewrote that entire book for him seven times, by hand? If she wasn't mad before she began, she certainly had to have been by the time she was done.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (the original and the Penguin Classics English version are both great)

Best non-fantasy/sci-fi book I've ever read.

Otherwise:

Magician (Raymond E Feist)
A Bridge Too Far (Cornelius Ryan)
anything in the Duchies world (Robin Hobb)
Troy series (David Gemmell)

 

[DEAD34345]

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, all 4 parts.

You mean all five.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy in 4 parts containing:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

That is the book I own and have read... does this mean I am missing a part!?

 

[TheAceTheOne]

Dresden Files (Any and all) - Jim Butcher
John Dies at the End - David Wong
Night Angel Trilogy - Brent Weeks
Scott Pilgrim series (Technically a book. It's a comic, but if that doesn't count, forget I mentioned it.) - Brian Lee O'Malley

There's more, but I can't think of them.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Hesse's Steppenwolf is still my favorite book of all time. Immediate follow ups are anything written by Kurt Vonnegut.

 

[Giantpanda602]

I LOVE anything by Robin Hobb. Shes a brilliant fantasy author. My favorite is, by far, the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies. Also, the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman was great. HDM is really atheist, and it actually made me atheist for a bit. Ironically, the same questions from the book that made me atheist made me Christian again.

 

[BENZOOKA]

Misread the title.

I love Tolkien; so The Hobbit and Silmarillion.

 

[Je Suis Ubermonkey]

Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, all 4 parts.

You mean all five.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy in 4 parts containing:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

That is the book I own and have read... does this mean I am missing a part!?

Yes! Mostly harmless! Featuring the best sandwiches in the universe.
Get yourself to a bookstore! Go!

 

[Detective Prince]

The Sight - David Clement-Davies
Black Beauty - Anne Sewell
Sara's Face - Melvin Burgess
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett

They're all great for their own reasons. The Sight was originally a book I borrowed from the library but was so good I had to buy my own copy. Black Beauty was the first book I ever loved so much I re-read it, I was like 8 when I first read it. Sara's Face was the first book with a character I truly identified with and Guards! Guards! well it's Terry Pratchett...Need I say more?

 

[game-lover]

The 7 Artemis Fowl books.

Concentrated awesome.

There's seven?? I don't think I read seven of them! Could it be that some of them haven't made it this way? Probably. I am in America and they suck. Like when they stopped publishing the Spy High series and before the last book in the first series came out... *pouts*

*looks it up* I knew it! It's the seventh one exactly! Gah! Oh well, at least I knew it wasn't the end!

I should see if I can check it out from a library.

Anyway... I don't think I have a favorite. I love too many to count. Plus some of them I haven't read yet.

 

[Eijarel]

Twilight!!...pffft Just kidding,

I really like "Hero with a thousand faces" and the "hero's Journey" by Joseph Campbell
(before George Lucas was abducted and replaced by the fake, he studied these books for the original trilogy)