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ohnoitsabear

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Feb 15, 2011
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Over the course of this summer, I plan on doing a bunch of reading. Basically, I'm going to be spending a lot of time camping this summer, and I want something to read during any downtime. Unfortunately, I'm not normally too much of a bookworm, and as such don't really know where to start in terms of finding good books. I'm pretty much open to any genre, although my favorite would probably be fantasy (I read through a Song of Ice and Fire last summer, to give you context). A few things I'm looking for:

Longer books are preferred. I'm not going to write off shorter books, but I would prefer each book to be able to last me a week or more.

It needs to be available in paperback. Space is at a premium, and I don't want to be lugging around a big hardcover book. Also, ebooks are just not a possibility.

Thank you for your help.
 

CrazyBlaze

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Jul 12, 2011
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The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rofthous.. Two books out. Both really good. Long read, amazing world and different magic system. Also the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks.. You can get all three books in one giant collection. Assassins, magic, political intrigue, true love. Brent Weeks also has a second series called The Lighhtbringer. Its about a man who is running out of time and is trying to stop the entire country/empire from being conquered.

http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/books.asp

http://www.brentweeks.com/books/the-night-angel-trilogy/

http://www.brentweeks.com/books/the-black-prism-trilogy/
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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Tolkien!

If you've not already read him, of course. The Lord of the Rings is almost standard reading for people by this point. If you haven't, though, then I would warn you that his style of prose is definitely not for everyone, as he's very long-winded about lore and descriptions and it's all a bit old-timey. But Middle Earth is one of the best-realized fictional universes I could name. If you have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, then why not expand to the posthumous Middle Earth works that Christopher Tolkien has edited together over the past forty years? Unfinished Tales, The Silmarillion, The Histories of Middle Earth, The Children of Hurin, etc. etc., they're all a bit less focused than The Lord of the Rings because they're even more concerned with lore and backstory, but as a way of fleshing out the world it's pretty top-tier.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one I would recommend for a bit of a more light-hearted jaunt, if you've not read it. It collects Douglas Adams' five Hitchhiker's Guide books into one volume (as the books themselves get shorter and shorter as they go along). It's comedic sci-fi, and pretty good at it too.

As far as longer fantasy is concerned, a series which frequently comes up in these recommendation threads is Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. It's widely lauded for Sanderson's ability to really craft his world and its use of magic and other supernatural elements. Then there's the Gentlemen Bastards series by Scott Lynch, which currently has three books released (The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic of Thieves) and is about a group of "elite con artists", to use Wikipedia's phrasing. Also Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, the two books currently released in his The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy.

While they are much shorter, I'd also recommend the works of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A good entry point to both of them might be Good Omens, which they co-wrote together. Pratchett is well-known for the comedic fantasy Discworld franchise, which is very large and spans many, many novels which often follow separate narrative paths so it's a bit complicated to suggest a good starting book, while Gaiman is known for more dark and weird things (the comic-book series The Sandman and the book upon which the film Coraline was based might be his two best-known works; American Gods, Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, and Stardust are my recommendations for him).

Something a bit more classical, if you're at all interested in Arthurian legend then check out T. H. White's The Once and Future King, which A Song of Ice & Fire has often been compared to and is probably the go-to example of mature literature centered around King Arthur. And for classic sci-fi, you can't really go wrong with Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land or Frank Herbert's Dune.

And... well, that's a lot of books and would likely cost a lot of money already, so I'll leave it there I think.
 

sextus the crazy

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The Count of Monte Cristo is like 1200 pages long and it's supposed to be good. Haven't read it yet, but I know it comes in paperback.
 

ohnoitsabear

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CrazyBlaze said:
Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.

shrekfan246 said:
I started reading the Lord of the Rings back in high school, but never got past Fellowship. I should really give it another shot. I have read all the Hitchhiker's books, and they are all absolutely fantastic. I'll have to look at the rest of them. I've heard of a few of them, but they all sound like things that I might like.

sextus the crazy said:
The Count of Monte Cristo is like 1200 pages long and it's supposed to be good. Haven't read it yet, but I know it comes in paperback.
I already read this one as required reading for high school. It's pretty good, but I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had read it in a different context.

Thanks for the suggestions everybody!
 

shrekfan246

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May 26, 2011
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ohnoitsabear said:
I started reading the Lord of the Rings back in high school, but never got past Fellowship. I should really give it another shot. I have read all the Hitchhiker's books, and they are all absolutely fantastic. I'll have to look at the rest of them. I've heard of a few of them, but they all sound like things that I might like.
As far as Tolkien is concerned, I would suggest easing in with The Hobbit if you haven't read that. It's far lighter on all of the really lore-heavy stuff that gets shoved into the Lord of the Rings trilogy and his other collected works, but still provides a solid taste of the prose style he used. But, even saying that, Tolkien's works are rather divisive; A lot of people just don't like his style. He was a philologist and heavily studied linguistics (to the point where he created multiple languages and alphabets unique to Middle Earth), and his extensive academic background does show fairly clearly in much of his writing. It takes a good amount of patience to be able to absorb everything he wrote.
 

CloudAtlas

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Mar 16, 2013
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Cloud Atlas of course! It's historic, current, sci fi & post-apocalyptic all at once! It's fun to read, but has some value as a piece of literature too - it's not just pop.
 

tm96

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I myself will recommend The Good the Bad and the Infernal by Guy Adams the blurb on the back caught my interest and I rather enjoyed the book.

Second is the Holy Machine by Chris Beckett for the same reason the as the above recommended book but I like for the world it creates and how dystopian the world can be due to what people believe if I my memory serves me right.

I don't know if you will enjoy these but I did.
 

Sean Hollyman

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Jun 24, 2011
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The Warlord Trilogy by Bernard Cornwell is awesome. It's about a warrior in King Arthur's reign and it's got Merlin and Magic and stuff. Really good and the battles are fantastic. The characters are fleshed out, and Derfel is just one of the best protagonists.
 

Vault101

I'm in your mind fuzz
Sep 26, 2010
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The Poisonwood Bible

a headstrong preacher and his family go into the congo during the 50's on a mission...goes as well as you'd expect, told from the perspective of his 4 daughters
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
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CloudAtlas said:
Cloud Atlas of course! It's historic, current, sci fi & post-apocalyptic all at once! It's fun to read, but has some value as a piece of literature too - it's not just pop.
Second this. It's a really good book. Much better than the movie (which, to be fair, was still pretty good).

#likeditbeforeitwascool
 

CloudAtlas

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Zhukov said:
CloudAtlas said:
Cloud Atlas of course! It's historic, current, sci fi & post-apocalyptic all at once! It's fun to read, but has some value as a piece of literature too - it's not just pop.
Second this. It's a really good book. Much better than the movie (which, to be fair, was still pretty good).

#likeditbeforeitwascool
I love both the book and the movie. They are pretty different, but honestly I never thought about which version I liked more. And I don't really feel like I want to.
 

dragonet111

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Nov 12, 2013
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If you want some heroic fantasy full of adventure and characters that end up feeling like friends try The Belgariad by David & Leigh Eddings. It's not the best fantasy out there but it's easy to read, full of action and really enjoyable. If you like the first cycle there is a sequel called the Mallorean and two prequel (Begarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress), but you have to know that if you like the Belgariad you will read everything, that's what everybody does and this is 12 books, fortunately it's normal size book not the backbreaking tome like the Wheel of Time or a Song of Ice and Fire. From the same authors there is also Elenium and The Tamuli 2 trilogies, again heroic fantasy. Again easy to read and really enjoyable.

I think those 2 series are perfect for a good summer read because they are just fun adventures full of action and good characters. Sadly the other 2 series (The dreamers and The Redemption of Althalus are not as interesting).

I've just started Garden of the Moon by Steven Erikson, it's the first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen and I love it so far.

There is also the Wheel of Time but for this serie of book it's kind of hit or miss for most readers. If you likeit it's very good otherwise it's a slow and boring read. I loved it but there is some books that feel unnecessary.
 

Plasmadamage

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Jul 24, 2012
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The Malazan Book of the Fallen is easily my favorite series, and it sounds like it's just up your street. It's Epic/Military Fantasy, and reads like a cross between Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, with a pretty unique magic system and some really memorable characters. The series manages to juggle brutal ultra realistic medieval combat (and magic)with humour and the odd psychotic god.

The first book is Gardens of the Moon, and its by far the shortest at 700 pages, whist the rest of the series varies between 1000 and 1500. Book one sets the tone of the series and introduces many of the key characters, but the overarching plot doesn't really begin until book 2. (There are 10 books)

Edit: Ninja'd by dragonett111
 

djl3485

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Sep 30, 2012
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Plasmadamage said:
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is easily my favorite series, and it sounds like it's just up your street. It's Epic/Military Fantasy, and reads like a cross between Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, with a pretty unique magic system and some really memorable characters. The series manages to juggle brutal ultra realistic medieval combat (and magic)with humour and the odd psychotic god.

The first book is Gardens of the Moon, and its by far the shortest at 700 pages, whist the rest of the series varies between 1000 and 1500. Book one sets the tone of the series and introduces many of the key characters, but the overarching plot doesn't really begin until book 2. (There are 10 books)

Edit: Ninja'd by dragonett111
I was coming here to recommend this series too.

I'm very, very picky about my fantasy books. I fell in love with this series fast and bought the next book in the series as soon as I was done witht he current one. Can't recommend you pick this series up any faster.

Another long series and is pretty decent is the Wheel of Time series.
 

Darknacht

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The Death Gate Cycle, its probably Weis and Hickman's best work. Long ago two powerful magical races, defined mostly by their different approaches to magic, fought and the winners break the world into 4 elemental realms and banished the losers to a fifth prison realm to teach them humility. The winners eventually lost contact between the realms and faded away, leaving the prison to mutate and become sadistic. After hundreds of years the first of the losers descendants to escape the prison enters the elemental realms ready to sow chaos, fight the victors, and prepare the realms to fall to his people, but the victors are missing and the realms are struggling.
 

Zhukov

The Laughing Arsehole
Dec 29, 2009
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CloudAtlas said:
Zhukov said:
CloudAtlas said:
Cloud Atlas of course! It's historic, current, sci fi & post-apocalyptic all at once! It's fun to read, but has some value as a piece of literature too - it's not just pop.
Second this. It's a really good book. Much better than the movie (which, to be fair, was still pretty good).

#likeditbeforeitwascool
I love both the book and the movie. They are pretty different, but honestly I never thought about which version I liked more. And I don't really feel like I want to.
The movie's problem was that it was trying to cram a huge amount of stuff into, what, two and a half hours of runtime.

The Sonmi 451 arc, which was my favourite from the book, suffered a lot. In the book her awakening process was a gradual thing, taking place over weeks or months as she meets more people and witnesses more of the world. In the movie she goes from timid slave to quietly determined revolutionary martyr in the course of an afternoon.

The Sloosha's Crossin' arc was well done though. And Timothy Cavendish was bloody perfect.

Vault101 said:
The Poisonwood Bible

a headstrong preacher and his family go into the congo during the 50's on a mission...goes as well as you'd expect, told from the perspective of his 4 daughters
;)

Second this too. Fantastic book. Although it's a far cry from the fantasy stuff everyone else is recommending.
 

Foolery

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Jun 5, 2013
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Anne McCaffrey. Dragonriders of Pern. It'll keep you reading for a long time.
It's technically sci-fi, but leans towards fantasy.

The books mostly start out with dealing with the threat of Thread, a deadly spore which devours all organic matter that it touches. Pern periodically experiences Threadfalls, in which this deadly organism rains down from the sky from a nearby orbital mass called the Red Star.

Later novels deal with the initial colonization of Pern and the creation of dragons through genetic manipulation.

The books are a fun read, if you're into the idea of advanced civilizations losing their technology, becoming tribal or feudalistic, and finally rediscovering their origins hundreds of years later. They even meet up with an Artificial Intelligence at one point.
 

Zac Jovanovic

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Jan 5, 2012
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I've read Tales of the Ketty Jay [http://www.goodreads.com/series/49415-tales-of-the-ketty-jay] recently and I enjoyed it immensely, I wholeheartedly recommend it. It's essentially a better version of Firefly, only without space stuff.

Another thing that no one mentioned are the works of Joe Abercrombie [http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/276660.Joe_Abercrombie], the First Law Trilogy is pretty good, but I liked his standalone sequels more, especially Red Country. If you liked ASoIaF this will be right down your alley.
 

sc1arr1

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May 1, 2013
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Since you've already read some song of ice and fire, I'll recommend the sci-fi Expanse series. Its really damn good.

first book: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=leviathan%20wakes&sprefix=leviathan+wake%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aleviathan%20wakes&ajr=2