Your Favourite Book

[San Martin]

I know this thread's been done before, but it should be fun anyway!

What's your favourite book and why? I know most people have several -I do too-, but for the sake of brevity try to pick just one.

The work that springs to mind now is "Cry, the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton.

This book has the honour of having nearly made me cry towards the end, which is quite impressive given how I always bottle up my emotions. It's about a pastor in Apartheid-era South Africa who travels to Johannesburg to search for his missing son, and once there he becomes embroiled in the city's undrworld of crime and vice.

Paton's style is simple, yet very elegant, and in many instances, through the use of unusual wording and metaphor, he writes in such a way as to give the impression that the text is Zulu but expressed in English (I hope that makes sense).

 

[Summerstorm]

Hm, i really liked reading
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan
Very easy to read, instructing critical thinking and promoting a positive outlook on humans and the struggle to better ourselves.

For entertaining i really liked the whole "Dune"-series (Yeah, i am mainstream, so sue me *g*).

I also enjoyed the shortstory compilations of Lovecraft (They are not that well written, but if you let your imaginations run they are really atmospheric.)

Bonusinfo:
I absolutely loathe reading anything by Nietzsche (I once wanted to read as many "classic must-read books" - but "Thus spoke Zarathustra" was SOOO idiotic and boring and didn't agree with me at all... eugh)

EDIT: Ah, i forgot Goethe... If you are german and don't like Goethe... terrible things happen to your family.

Has been a while... but when i was a emo-kid (well, not really) "Werthers Leiden" was pretty cool, anything by Goethe is great though.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I recently got into Abercrombe's The First Law trilogy. I managed to start and finish the first book, The Blade Itself, over 500 pages, in about 2 and a half weeks during my daily commutes to Uni.

Put simply, the first book is glorious. Expertly written, has several well-rounded characters, never boring to read. Abercrombe's one of those authors who have completely grasped the medium they're telling their story in, and it shows. There isn't a single moment which isn't an absolute blast to read through. The ending is bloody awesome, too. I cannot describe it and do it justice, just know that I've been gushing over it since I finished it yesterday.

 

[Tanis]

The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton:
Okay, so it's a bit of a cheat, but the books don't work NEARLY as well alone as they do together.

I mean, this series has it ALL.
Ghosts, living ships, clones, sci-fi, undead, good-guy Satan/god, bad-guy Satan/god, mono-polytheistic atheism, very characters and arcs bouncing around to form on overarching plot with several themes, etc.

<3

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I have a Top 5.
It is a tentative list and it is not to be held with or against me, ever.

Ubik, by Philip K. Dick.
The Rabid Toy, by Roberto Arlt.
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe.

*g*

Always wondered what this means. Is it for "grin", "gee" or what?

 

[TakerFoxx]

Stand-alone? American Gods. This book is a modern-day classic. There is no other way to describe it.

Book series? The Dresden Files. So much awesome...

 

[Zen Bard]

Genre Fiction: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy? Is it a treatise on Buddhism? The answer is yes.

Non Genre Fiction(ish): Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. A brilliant commentary on what went wrong with the so called "American Dream" of the 70's. Buy the ticket. Take the ride.

Non Fiction: Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner. It is exactly what it sounds like it is. Wisdom from a Punk monk.

Classic: The Art of War by Sun Tzu. If you can find a copy that's a relatively accurate translation and isn't laden with some scholar's "interpretation", you'll find a lot of wisdom that can be applied to many other aspects of life besides combat.

 

[Tiger King]

I'm still yet to find something that trumps Iain Banks 'use of weapons.'
You need to be patient to read it but what a twist at the end!

 

[COMaestro]

I do not have a favorite book. It's just impossible for me to whittle down all the books I love to declare a definite favorite. However, my favorite author is Jim Butcher, primarily due to the Dresden Files series, which is my favorite series of books at this time, though I did enjoy the Codex Alera series he wrote as well. I also tend to like anything by Timothy Zahn, who in my mind single-handedly resurrected the Star Wars franchise (and my love of it) back when he wrote Heir to the Empire back in 1991.

 

[omega 616]

I'm seriously not a book reader, like I own 3 books and 1 of them is just like a fact book.

However one of them is "Dan Brown - Inferno" ... sooo good!

I later learned that the Robert Langdon books are formulaic but damn, that was a great first book. This is how much I liked it, I actually got it as an audio book (which by the by, has a great voice actor!) and I liked it that much I went out and bought the book.

Full of tension and makes you think a little, while learning a little about some cool shit.

 

[San Martin]

I have a Top 5.
It is a tentative list and it is not to be held with or against me, ever.

Ubik, by Philip K. Dick.
The Rabid Toy, by Roberto Arlt.
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy.
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe.

*g*

Always wondered what this means. Is it for "grin", "gee" or what?

Hey Johnny, since you're here: what's your favourite Argentine book?

I ask because I read Marechal's "Adán Buenosayres" just before I went to study in your country, and dear lord I fricking loved it! In fact I just had to read it again.

If you don't mind me asking, are you a porteño?

 

[spartan231490]

It's one of the Kingkiller Chronicle books. It's impossible to pick one over the other.

 

[Vault101]

I wouldn't consider myself overly well read but I'm going to have to go with [b/]The Poisonwood Bible[/b] its a wonderful testament to mans ability to fuck things up

basically a preacher takes his family out to the congo in the early 60's as part of a mission. As you can imagine it doesn't go very well

a close second (or mabye even on par) would be [b/]the miseducation of cameron post[/b] its set in the early 90's and about a girl who has to go to gay conversion camp (sent there by her aunt after her parents dies a few years before) its like "But I'm a cheerleader" but more depressing (it does have its funny moments, like the other residents of the facility being baked on bad weed 90% of the time)

aside from being heartwrenching its beautifully written my favorite passage:

[quote/]I don't think it's overstating it to say that my religion of choice became VHS rentals, and that its messages came in Technicolor and musical montages and fades and jump cuts and silver-screen legends and B-movie nobodies and villains to root for and good guys to hate. But Ruth was wrong, too. There was more than just one other world beyond ours; there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and at 99 cents apiece I could rent them all. [/quote]

 

[Sosa Star]

The Black Company series by Glen Cook. It has some ups and downs, but I love the setting, the characters and how believable the world is.

But that might change in a few years, as my tastes change with time.

Also, this may seem slightly off topic, but I had a book I loved growing up, but I lost it in a move. I don't remember the title but the cover was three children, two girls and a boy, with the smallest holding an oversized marble. The book was about three siblings and the youngest who develops some magic power after they find a glass orb. Crazy stuff happens, including an evil teacher, a magic pumpkin and the little girl stopping a hurricane. The main character's name was Lucy. Long shot but does that sound familiar to anyone?

 

[Hawki]

Brave New World would be my favorite book of all time. I can probably name individual favorites in various genres, but that wasn't the question asked.

 

[the December King]

The Ceremonies or Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein. In my opinion, one of the finest writers of Lovecraftian Horror, a true master. I've included both of his books here, a novel and a collection of 4 short(ish) stories. Because for the most part, that's all he wrote.

A shame, really...

 

[shrekfan246]

Ubik, by Philip K. Dick.

I've gotta get my stuff together and really bust through my list of books-to-read; I've read Radio Free Albemuth and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and really enjoyed both of them, and I've still got Ubik and A Scanner Darkly waiting in the wings while I'm currently reading through a bunch of my dad's sci-fi and fantasy collection. I've been getting distracted lately by all kinds of games and comics, though.

OT: Man, that's a hard decision to make. Not least of all because I still have a ton of books yet to read.

So, I'm going to cheap out and just mention a few of the ones I've read in the past year or so that I enjoyed the most:
George R. R. Martin's A Storm of Swords - It's not easy for me to pick any particular Song of Ice & Fire novel, but I think that stands neck-and-neck with A Game of Thrones as the ones I read in the least amount of time because I enjoyed them that much.

Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The whole series is just great.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens - "Apocalyptically hilarious!"

Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama - I don't have a lot of exposure to hard sci-fi (Isaac Asimov is on my aforementioned list) and the descriptions were mind-boggling at times (though it can hardly be said that that isn't fitting considering the subject matter), but that was a damn fine read. I particularly appreciated that the only real antagonist was time itself.

 

[jademunky]

I've gotta go with The Hobbit. It was the first novel I ever read. Loved it so much that I read it aloud to my younger brother afterward just as an excuse to read it again.

"John dies at the end" would be a close second, just a great example of supernatural horror-comedy done really really well. Also, props to the poster who recommended "the demon-haunted world."