The best books nobody knows about.

[jubosu]

The Hawk and The Wolf I picked up at Barnes and Noble a week ago is pretty much awesome.
Medieval setting based on the early life of Merlin.
Lots of action well worth the price.

 

[doctorwhofan]

Laurie King's Mary Russell Series
Sharon Shinn's Archangel Series
Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising Sequence
Jane Yolen's Heart's Blood
FRank Baum's OTHER Oz books
Wendy and Richard Pini's Elfquest
Bujold's Miles Vorgiskan (sp?) series
Cherryh's Fortress series


I'm sure I have left off a few.

 

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

Dunno if these are well known in wherever you, the reader of this comment happen to live, but here are a few great books:

Lee Child's Killing Floor

It's a "quasi-detective" story featuring Jack Reacher, who is an awesome and endearing protagonist. He's ex-Millitary Police and is checking out America after being abroad his entire life. So he goes to some little town to pay tribute to the guitarist Blind Blake, but gets arrested and charged with a murder he didn't commit. Sounds cliché but it's actually really awesome.

Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory

Ok, this is a weird one. It's kind of hard to categorize, but Iain himself calls it "Sci-Fi" Which is kind of weird seeing as it takes place in modern day Scotland, but it follows a nutjob I think who's name is Frank. He lives on an island with his dad and does some very peculiar shit. There's sort of 2 storys intertwined, which are the present day events, and the events that led up to the fucked up predicament he's in right now. I won't spoil anything, because it's a great book that really deserves to be read.

 

[Gitsnik]

i agree with the night angel trilogy, yet i disagree with the third one being weak. what else could the author do with the series? i really hope he writes another book set in the same universe where we get to see kylar when he is durzo's age.

This isn't the place to write about it. Maybe if it kicks someones fancy they can setup an off topic thread for it. But I will say: Durzo lasted many years without doing bucket loads of magic tricks above and beyond the other wetboys.

 

[bmf185]

Cien años de soledad by: Gabriel García Márquez, arguable one of the best books of the 20th century. And yes, it is available in more than just its native spanish.

I've read that in both Spanish and English. You know what I thought it was? Long.

Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain) is a great read.

Blindness and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago are good. I think they recently made Blindness into a bad movie.

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo is extremely bleak but touching. It's about a soldier who gets his arms, legs, and face blown off but has a fully-functional mind.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon will read you. One of the most challenging books I have read.

I thoroughly enjoy Graham Greene's books but I can't seem to find another person who has read them.

 

[Sonofadiddly]

Also it is getting increasingly more difficult to find someone who has read both horror originals - Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster.

Yo.

OT: I read pretty much nothing but completely random obscure books that I found in the back of the library. The only titles that come to mind now are Flux and The Diamond Age.

 

[mcpop9]

Ender's Game

 

[dirt_empire]

Ender's Game

Who is this Ender and what Game does he play?

 

[RufusMcLaser]

To start off, I'm just about to finish Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and I have to say it's in my top 5 favorite books
....
Ray Bradbury's and Richard Matheson's short stories. Yes, you've probably read A Sound of Thunder, or I Am Legend, but I doubt many people are familiar with The Fog Horn or Witch War. If you are, all the better.

I'd hate to think that Snow Crash qualifies as a book nobody knows about. For shame, people! Even if the glossolalia subplot was based on a faulty premise, it was still made of win and awesome!
Phew. Okay... Hey, yeah, I remember "The Fog Horn"! I heard the Mindwebs [http://www.mediafire.com/?nzzj0cqqnfm] version, too.

Anyway. I think Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint is criminally under-appreciated. The less said the better, as I don't want to give any plot points away, but it's Dick at his best.
John Brunner is mostly remembered for The Sheep Look Up, but in my opinion Stand on Zanzibar and Shockwave Rider are both much better.

For non sci-fi, I recommend Robb White's Deathwatch [http://www.amazon.com/Deathwatch-Robb-White/dp/0440917409]. I remember reading it straight through in one sitting, and there are very few books which can say that about.*

Ender's Game

Shirley, you're joking! Can there possibly be a school library in the Western world that doesn't have at least one well-read copy of that book? I certainly hope not, I've never stopped liking it.

*The others are Ender's Game, and The Andromeda Strain.

 

[Buffoon]

Anything by EL Doctorow or Carol Shields, authors that no one I know has ever heard of, although they're both quite well known in certain circles. Suffice it to say, I do not move in those circles. Shields' Stone Diaries won a (well-deserved) Pulitzer and earned a Booker Prize nomination, so it's not exactly obscure, but yeah, I don't know anyone who's heard of it. Well, one person, the person who recommended it to me. But that's it!

 

[SnippyWings]

The Cardinals Blades, although im not certain how well known it is.
also the night angel trilogy is awesome.

 

[GundamSentinel]

The Children of Húrin. Probably my favorite book to this day but whenever I mention it I am met with blank stares.

That was a very good book. I first read it as part of the Silmarillion (rather shortened version) and later in Unfinished Tales (as the title might imply, still very unfinished with lots of annotations). Very epic book, my favorite part of the Silmarillion (which is my favo book ever.)

 

[friedo.obrain]

The Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust are just plain awesome and i'd like to second the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

 

[sramota]

A whole lot of these books you mention are well known and well read...
Christ..

I'd have a go at
Little Sister by Kara Dalkey
The Sacred Book of Werewolf and Buddha's Little Finger by Victor Pelevin
and Sabriel by Garth Nix..

 

[MiserableOldGit]

A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole - still not nearly as well known as it should be-and the daft bugger killed himself before it got printed. Anyone with an interest in contemporary literature needs to read this book...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces

 

[Outright Villainy]

If you haven't read The Book Thief I advise it strongly.

Is that the children's book about the Holocaust?

It'd be a children's book in the same respect as To kill a mocking bird is a children's book; It's a child centred narrative with depressing adult background and themes.
Anyways, it's hardly an unknown book, but that doesn't mean more people shouldn't read it, it's very, very good. I cried at the end of that one. Manly tears mind. *cough*

 

[G1eet]

Matthew Riely books.

I'm hoping you mean "Ice Station" and such?

Those are the ones.

Wonderful. I love those books.

Especially the one with nuclear elephant seals.

To start off, I'm just about to finish Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash,

Spit! You totally started a thread about fave books, and THAT was my book! That is always my go-to book when people start talking favorites. And you Ninja'd it in post numero UNO! Hats off to you.

Haha, I thought I would be only a matter of time until I got a post such as this. It's too good of a book not to warrant that kind of reaction.

I'd hate to think that Snow Crash qualifies as a book nobody knows about. For shame, people! Even if the glossolalia subplot was based on a faulty premise, it was still made of win and awesome! Well, since only my English professor had heard of it, I assumed it was fairly obscure.

He's also the man that turned me onto Intronaut and Dark City.

Phew. Okay... Hey, yeah, I remember "The Fog Horn"! I heard the Mindwebs [http://www.mediafire.com/?nzzj0cqqnfm] version, too.

Is there any chance that you've heard of Bradbury's "Fire and Ice"? It's possibly my favorite in the Sound of Thunder short story collection.

"Here There Be Tygers," anyone?

 

[E_nchanted]

The heritage of shannara,
consisting off 4 books of shannara.

any book from terry brooks is pure fantasy heaven