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the Unofficial Recommendation Thread


werewolfv2

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Just two books that I haven't seen on this thread yet:

Space, by James A. Michener (just a fun read)

Trinity (can't remember the author); this is a historical fiction based upon the Irish Catholics and their struggles for Independance from Great Britain (basically, the descendants of the Fenians and the predecessors of the IRA)... quite a good read.

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Classics:

Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein

Time enough for love - Robert A. Heinlein

The cat who walks through walls - Robert A. Heinlein

Ringworld - Larry Niven

Gulliver’s Travels - Jonathan Swift (Not the kids version)

Foundation - Empire (the full series) - Assimov

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever Series - Stephen R. Donaldson

Lighter yet not lacking for depth:

The dancers at the end of time - Michael Moorkock

Job, a comedy of justice - Robert A. Heinlein

Thief of Time (Discworld series) - Terry Pratchett

Good Omens - Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

Much loved:

John C. Wright - Golden Age trilogy

The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 - Roger Zelazny

Dune (+ all series) - Frank Herbert

Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion and Endymion - Dan Simmons

The Uplift War - from memory its Brin - might be wrong though

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Darwin's Radio - Greg Bear

Less but still good:

(this could be too long a list, so am keeping it short:)

Tales of Alvin Maker - Orson Scott Card

Pastwatch, The redemption of Christopher Columbus - Orson Scott Card

When I was much younger I loved:

The Fionavar Tapestry (trilogy of Summer Tree, also: The wandering fire) - Guy Gavriel Kay

The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Breadley

The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel

A Wizard of Earthsea + sequels (The Farthest shore - Earthsea Trilogy) - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Neverendingstory - Michael Ende

None fiction:

Mircha Eliad - most of his works

Joseph Campbell - Especially 'A Hero with a Thousand Faces'

By auther:

(That means I'll give a try to anything written by...)

Neal Stephenson

David Brin

Greg Bear

Douglas Adams

Asimov

And... almost Anything by Jorge Luis Borges

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SciFi:

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -- Robert Heinlein

I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov

Dune -- Frank Herbert

Fantasy:

American Gods -- Neil Gaiman

Harry Potter -- J.K. Rowling

Memnoch the Devil -- Anne Rice

The Dark is Rising Sequence -- Susan Cooper

Subversive Literature:

Beyond Good and Evil -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

The Principia Discordia -- Google it, it's free online

America the Book: A Guide to Democracy Inaction -- The Daily Show

The Fountainhead -- Ayn Rand

...Anne Rice is the only author who does not come with a general recommendation. Most of her books are very genre-limited in my opinion, but Memnoch transcends genre to be a really good book imo.

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  • 2 weeks later...

In random order (as my personal top-ten is also a discussion of some sort :P)

1) The entire Dune series, including the prequels written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

2) "The Big over Easy" by James Fforde

3) Any novel by Terry Pratchett

4) "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons

5) "Soldier's Son" by Robin Hobb

6) "Pandora's Star" by.. er.. I forgot by whom.

7) "The Company" by Robert Littel (spelling optional)

8) "Windhaven" by none other than our own GRRM

9) The Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum. Please note that "The Bourne Legacy" is not part of this series.

10) Beekman en Beekman, by Toon Kortooms (for Dutch speakers only)

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Gee, 18 months ago i don't think i had read 10 fiction books. But here's my 10 recommendations in no particular order...

1. The Harry Potter series - JKRowling. I later found others series that offered more but i would not have not have looked for them if i had not started here.

2. The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King. The Waste Lands was a highlight.

3. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien.

4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

5. The Life of Pi by Yan Martell.

6. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

7. Jaws by Peter Benchley - I loved that fish!

8. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian - Robert E Howard.

9. Stories of your Life and Others - Ted Chiang.

10. A Song of Ice and Fire - GRRMartin. A Game of Thrones.

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Guest rhaenys

My absolute favorites (other than ASOIAF) in no particular order:

The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, and System of the World) by Neal Stephenson

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (and anything else)

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice (skip Lasher and Taltos, the other two in the series)

The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

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Series:

1) A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin

2) The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

3) The Monarchies of God by Paul Kearney

4) The Sword of Shadows by JV Jones

5) Otherland by Tad Williams

6) Sandman by Neil Gaiman (graphic novels)

7) The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton

8) The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton

9) The Revelation Space Series by Alastair Reynolds

10) The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson

Single Novels:

1) Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

2) Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

2) Dune by Frank Herbert

3) The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien

4) The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

5) Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

6) The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay

7) Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

8) Fevre Dream by George RR Martin

9) Magician by Raymond E. Feist

10) Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

And a shout out to my favourite non-fiction book ever:

1) The Nine Hundred Days by Harrison E. Salisbury

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  • 2 weeks later...

1. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2. Neverwhere- Neil Gaiman

3. Enders Game- Orson Scott Card

4. The Liveship Traders (Book 1: Ship of Magic, Book 2: Mad Ship, Book 3: Ship of Destiny)

5. The Once and Future King - T.H. White

6. Lord Valentine's Castle- Robert Silverberg

7. Windhaven- George R.R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle

8. Fevre Dream- George R.R. Martin

9. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

10. The Screwtape Letters- C.S. Lewis

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5) The Portable Henry Rollins – Henry Rollins (great intro to the man, the myth, the legend)

Hell yeah. I didn't expect to see that book on this forum.

Hyperion Cantos

ASoIaF

Heroes Die

Perdido Street Station

The Scar

The Forever War

Snow Crash

Flowers for Algernon

The Hollow Man (depressing, and a lot of people hate it, but I thought it was superb)

Dying Inside

...a few more

The Elegant Universe

Fabric of the Cosmos

Ilium

Altered Carbon

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Glad to see people are reading Gaiman (ah, Neverwhere) and Pullman (His Dark Materials). So aside from The Tolkein and Narnia and GRRM -

The Adventures of Peter and Wendy by Sir Barrie (written after the play)

The Well at the End of the World by Wm Morris

Tigana

The Mists of Avalon

The Door in the Hedge

Grendel by John Gardner

The Magic of Atlantis (probably out of print)

The Princess & the Goblin and The Princess & Curdie by Geo. MacDOnald

C.S. Lewis' space triology (That Hideous Strength)

Tam Linn (set in the 1970's)

So many books, so little time. All I can think of as fantasy right now.

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5) Travis McGee series, John D. MacDonald

Another vote for John D. even though the Travis McGee books are not fantasy (they're brooding PI-style mysteries). There are 21 books in the series and I read at least one every month, and have for the past 10 years (I'm on my 5th read through the entire series -- and there's only 1 out of the bunch that I don't absolutely love, but I re-read it every time anyway).

A couple of non-fantasy but grand-scale selections everyone should read once:

War and Peace - Tolstoy/Briggs (the new translation)

Les Miserables - Hugo/MacAfee (unabridged Signet edition)

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky/Pevear & Volokhonsky

The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas/Buss (best unabridged translation)

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the dilettante's sexology syllabus

vatsyayana's kamasutra & yashodhara's jayamangala on same

ovid's ars amatoria

rochester's sodom

cleland's memoirs of a woman of pleasure

de sade's 120 days of sodom & philosophy of the boudoir

sacher-masoch's venus in furs

krafft-ebing's psychopathia sexualis

freud's three essays on sexuality

foucault's history of sexuality (3 vol)

dworkin's intercourse

the prestige epic syllabus

the mahabharata (rumored to have been narrated by immortal vyasa and scribed by ganesha)

the ramayana (rumored to have been inspired by brahma and scribed by valmiki)

homer's iliad and odyssey

hesiod's theogony

virgil's aeneid

ovid's metamorphoses

valerius flaccus' argonautica

silius italicus' punica

statius' thebaid

lucan's pharsalia

tasso's jerusalem delivered

ariosto's orlando furioso

spenser's the faerie queene

milton's paradise lost

super-prestige: manas, 500K lines, the epic of kyrgyzstan, probably composed 1000 years ago

hyper-prestige: the epic of king gesar, 20M words (i.e., 120 vol.) written by tibetan monks 1000 years ago

the introductory marxist theory syllabus

marx' & engels' manifesto of the communist paty, the german ideology, and das kapital (3 vol.)

luxembourg's the accumulation of capital

lenin's state and revolution, imperialism, left-wing communism, and what is to be done?

trotsky's revolution betrayed, stalin school of falsification, & permanent revolution

gramsci's prison notebooks

lukacs' history and class consciousness

althusser's for marx and lenin and philosophy

adorno's prisms, minima moralia, culture industry, and negative dialectics

horkheimer's dawn and decline and dialectic of enlightenment (with adorno)

marcuse's eros and civilization and one dimensional man

fromm's escape from freedom and the anatomy of human destructiveness

meszaros' the power of ideology and beyond capital

callinicos' against postmodernism, marxism and philosophy, and against the third way

zavarzadeh's seeing films politically and theory as resistance (with morton)

negri's marx against marx and empire (with hardt)

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Fiction, in no particular order:

A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin

The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie

The Deluge, Henryk Sienkiewiec

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

L'Assommior, Emile Zola

The Human Beast, Emile Zola

Les Miserables (complete and uncut), Victor Hugo

Lady Chatterly's Lover, D. H. Lawrence

The Night Trilogy, Elie Wiesel

Non-Fiction, in no particular order

The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom, by Slavomir Rawicz

The Last Run, Todd Lewan

Dark Star Safari, by Paul Theroux

Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson

The Lawless Roads, Grahame Greene

The Shameless Diary of an Explorer: A Story of Failure on Mt. McKinley, by Robert Dunn

Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival, by David Roberts

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  • 4 weeks later...

I know theres a thread on it, but, I'd recomend Bakkers Prince of nothing series. Also, check out Mary Gentles' newere Title, A sundial in a grave. Great stuff, and, both require a bit more than going along for the ride enjoying exciting sword fights.

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the AKIRA graphic novels, published by dark horse.

On par with Song of Ice and Fire, but in a whole different dimension. I've pretty much spent my life waiting to read these two series (well, also Tolkien)

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