So I have decided to read more books in 2010, as I have barely read books before maybe 2-3 a year on average the last 10 years.
So today I read "The Alchemist" for a fresh start on the New year, but I did not really like it and I don`t understand all the fuzz about it since everyone seem to love that book.
Anyway my next project is finishing a book about Doctor Mengele that I started reading during the Christmas and got half way through and when I finish that I am gonna read Nick Cave`s "And Ass Saw the Angel". Once I am done with that I don`t really have any more books planned so here I hope for some help from Teamliquid to recommend me some books.
Books I have enjoyed reading before are Dan Brown books, a lot of Tom Clancy books, Tolkien books and the occasional book about WW2.
I dont really have any favorite genre and is open to read lots of different stuff, so some book recommendations with a short description what the books is about and genre would be greatly appreciated!
On January 02 2010 08:58 Ota Solgryn wrote: Read some books of Haruki Murakami. Really, really great writer.
Lol if you like plots that make no sense and off-the-wall completely unbelievable wtf is going on situations XD. Sorry to bash Haruki, the man is just verifiably INSANE. But hey, that's a style and some people love it. And he does it well.
I'd suggest Sharon Kay Penman's Here Be Dragons. It's historical fiction, set in medieval Wales/England. Pretty great book, if you're into that sort of thing. "Lions of Al-Rassan" is another great book, set in Muslim Spain during the Reconquista. El Cid's one of the main characters but it's not a typical sword and sorcery type of book. Very elegant writing.
On January 02 2010 09:07 Holgerius wrote: Michael Crichton is awesome if you like science fiction thrillers. I've read like 10 books by him the last year or so. Sphere is highly recommended.
Anything by Jan Guillou is awesome as well. :D
Michael Crichton WAS awesome :[. That awesome man is dead now T_T
Sci-fi, written by Stanislaw Lem. Good enough that they made a movie with George Clooney about it, though I haven't seen it. It's a psychological thriller and it'll freak you out.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Sci-fi, moral questions and psychological drama. Also good enough that they made a movie about it (Bladerunner). Both this and the previous books are 'better' than the movie, but only because there's so much plot that it can't be properly condensed into 2 hours.
The Things They Carried
war narrative about vietnam. Psychological. Focus on PTSD. REALLY incredible writing style that just makes you want to keep going.
Dirk Gently
Douglas Adams' 'detective' novels. Absolutely hilarious. If you liked the Hitchhiker's Guide you'll like this... If you haven't read the Hitchhiker's Guide, do yourself a favour and read that too. Really genius metaphors and plot devices in all of Douglas Adams' work.
Mortal Engines
Steam-punk. It's written for teenagers/kids but it's enjoyable in the same way that Harry Potter is still enjoyable to adults. Just an interesting story and a cool universe he's created, especially if you've never read steampunk before. Walking cities that eat each other. Awesome.
Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer is a true story about a Hmong family. Guarantee you'll /respect at some of the stuff her dad does during the story, it's unbelievable.
I must post this in every book thread ever, in the hope that at least one person will read The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. Not found an author who can touch Hobb on her ability to convey emotion.
ummm, dunno if you'll like them, but heres some easy enough to read ones I liked:
- Confederacy of Dunces - My Favourite book. Easy to read, hilarious and incredibly clever.
- Day of the Triffids - Very British apocalypse story. Not particularly well written but an awesome idea.
- Clockwork Orange - You owe it to yourself to read the novel of this. It's far better than the very good film.
- Last Exit to Brooklyn - Same as above
- Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - about russian gulags.
- Catch 22 + Slaughter House 5 + Catcher in the Rye
Oh and even though its a comic book, Maus is incredible.
Dunno if your after more umm, challenging (read "needlessly complicated") books, but if you are I'd recommend
- Good Soldier Svejk - One of the most oddly hilarious books I've ever read. - Ullysses should be read at some point in your lifetime. - The Flounder by Gunter Grass - To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Couldn't really describe them, but all definitely worth reading if you have the time.
Thanks for all the advices til now, will google some of these books and make a list of what to read in the coming months.
As a huge film lover iv seen the movies of several of these books some of you have recommended (Sphere, Solaris, BladeRunner, Hitchhikers guide and Dune)
That "The Hot Zone" book looks really interesting as I have always found viruses like that without a cure really interesting.
Only book I've read recently that I enjoyed a lot was this one:
While it might be categorized under sociology in the library / shop you want to pick it up at, don't be fooled - it's not a "how to get laid"-kind of book. It's a good story... about people wanting to get laid.
Seriously though, good book.
Aside from those, the three Stieg Larsson books ("Menn som hater kvinner", "Jenta som lekte med ilden", "Luftslottet som sprengtes") are supposedly awesome. Haven't read it myself, but I get a ton of positive feedback about the series from people around my own age when at work. Yea, I work at a library.
If you're into scary stories with supernatural elements, or generally are interested in Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos, some publisher recently released a ton of Lovecraft's books in one collection, fittingly named "Necronomicon - The weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft". Should be in most book shops around whatever civilized location you live at.
As for Dan Brown, the new one's supposedly not as good as "the Digital Fortress" and a lot less catchy than "the DaVinci Code", but if you liked those two and you like Brown's style of writing, then go for it.
"Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning." Seriously, he is a vastly underappreciated author.
Some other favorites of mine are Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I'd also like to reiterate the suggestions for Lovecraft, Robin Hobb's Farseer books, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice books, Heinlein's A Stranger in a Strange Land, as well as the books by C.S. Friedman, Sergei Lukyanenko, and Patrick Rothfuss.
Right now I'm finishing the last book in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, which I'd recommend along with his Dresden Files books as immensely entertaining reads.
- Day of the Triffids - Very British apocalypse story. Not particularly well written but an awesome idea.
British..? wtf
to the OP: i know i only have a few posts but you should read Deathworld by Harry Harrison. It will completely blow you away. I will give you a head if you won't like it.
On January 02 2010 11:49 StorkHwaiting wrote: hehe I've heard a bird from inside the industry say some things about A Dance With Dragons being ....
I've considered a hunting party to setup a perimeter outside of Martin's house so he can't go on any more book tours for wild cards or some other tripe.
SS.GB by Len Deighton - "What if Hitler had invaded England and won the war?"
The Eagle has Flown by Jack Higgins - Another WWII novel that is about Heinrich Himmler sending his agents to rescue a German Oberst(Colonel) who survived the assassination attempt on Winston Churchill.
Chains of Command, Storming Heaven, Shadows of Steel, and Wings of Fire by Dale Brown - Military based novels, one of which involved a fictional, heavily armed B-52 Superfortress. All are of the same genre and also involve a nice mix of technology exploration in his writings.
27 by William Diehl - A man's lover is murdered by Hitler's cronies and he begins a relentless campaign against the Third Reich as a mercenary, he finds out more than he wanted to when he discovers the secret mission "27."
Seven Days to Petrograd by Tom Hyman - Story of a man who's mission is to board a train from Zurich to Petrograd with the intent to assassinated Vladimir Lenin.
read karl ove knausgård's min kamp. I got it for christmas, been reading some and it looks ridiculously good so far. three of 6 books out so far and it's gonna be about 2700 pages in the end :p
On January 02 2010 08:56 Oystein wrote: Books I have enjoyed reading before are Dan Brown books, a lot of Tom Clancy books, Tolkien books and the occasional book about WW2.
On January 02 2010 08:56 Oystein wrote: Books I have enjoyed reading before are Dan Brown books, a lot of Tom Clancy books, Tolkien books and the occasional book about WW2.
You really need to start reading something else.
ya and you should probably start by asking for recommendations on good books to read.
oh sorry i didnt realize you were just trying to demonstrate your superiority to uncivilized people who read popular books.
I must be the only person alive who thought a confederacy of dunces was a pretty boring book.
...But then, I prefer short stories and poems to the novel anyways. The novel is the art form with the greatest capacity, however, unfortunately, this means it is almost always the less refined. )
On January 02 2010 08:56 Oystein wrote: Books I have enjoyed reading before are Dan Brown books, a lot of Tom Clancy books, Tolkien books and the occasional book about WW2.
You really need to start reading something else.
ya and you should probably start by asking for recommendations on good books to read.
oh sorry i didnt realize you were just trying to demonstrate your superiority to uncivilized people who read popular books.
- Day of the Triffids - Very British apocalypse story. Not particularly well written but an awesome idea.
British..? wtf
to the OP: i know i only have a few posts but you should read Deathworld by Harry Harrison. It will completely blow you away. I will give you a head if you won't like it.
Yeah, it's a British book...
And who's head are you gonna give him if he doesn't like it? ^^
Since this is about recommending books, I should probably recommend something. Almost all the rec's so far have been sci/fi fantasy (some good, some excellent, others... ehh) so I'll try and avoid it. I will say that China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and Jeffrey Ford all deserve a look if you do enjoy fantasy. Mieville might be a no-no because he despises tolkien, but he's still notable. Kelly Link definitely deserves far more love than she gets, Magic for Beginners was a terrific collection of short stories that are just impossible to describe. KJ Bishop has some amazing short stories and a wonderful debut novel but has been very inactive for the last 2 years or so.
From the tastes Oystein described in his OP though I would say the Dresden Files come the closest to fulfilling all the requirements without having overwhelming flaws.
As far as more "normal" books go, I can only think of american literature due to having had it beaten into my brain for the past 2 years. So apologies to my neglect of the British. I can recall some excellent spanish novelists like Gabria Garcia Marquez as well, but haven't read them deeply enough to recommend them. Danielewski's House of Leaves was excellent, although I recommend skipping all of Johnny's sections after the first 200 pages. Basically it's a horror story set within a satire of academic criticism.
Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay was extremely flawed but very well done, a sort of faux-history of the early periods of comic books.
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is terrific, one of my favorite books, howweeever, likely the most difficult book to read in the english (or any other) language. A dystopian examination of the last few weeks of WW2, when parts of the world had not yet realized the war had ended. Pynchon's earlier novel "V." is also wonderful, and considerably less hostile to the reader.
Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian is wonderful if the reader has no problem with the disdain Mccarthy has for certain conventions of the english language (He never uses apostrophes and almost never uses contraction marks either. So dont is a frequent occurrence). I do recall the specific thing I read on the jacket that was a great description, "a tale of redemption through violence." It has my favorite opening paragraph as far as prose usage of any book.
These are all fairly recent books. I'm going to throw out a list of older-modern books now without as much summary because most people are familiar with them to some extent. Joseph Heller's Catch-22, but also ...
Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye (Really, it's good. Yes, it's flawed and a tad overrated but it's a book that most people benefit from reading). Joyce's Ulysses, (Hey! something not american!) George Orwell's 1984 Nabokov's "Lolita", "Pnin", or "Invitation to a Beheading." (Stay away from Pale Fire). (If it weren't for the Cold War he would be considered Russian).
I'm tired now. There are waaay more that I love but are almost cliche to recommend, like Moby Dick or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and still others that are just too out there and hard to find to recommend like Gormenghast.
- Day of the Triffids - Very British apocalypse story. Not particularly well written but an awesome idea.
British..? wtf
to the OP: i know i only have a few posts but you should read Deathworld by Harry Harrison. It will completely blow you away. I will give you a head if you won't like it.
Yeah, it's a British book...
And who's head are you gonna give him if he doesn't like it? ^^
oh man.. I was 100% sure Van Vogt wrote that.. and you know why? There was a book with 3 stories and he was mistakenly listed as an author of Day of the Triffids.. Learned something new today.
Thefollowing two books are both classics so chances are yhat you have already red them. Have you not, you are missing out! I am no book-reading person but these ones really are great.
Some contemporaries I've read recently that I liked
The Road A Spot of Bother 1421 - The Year China Discovered America (<- this is actually pretty interesting, but its proposed theories are largely refuted in the academia)
If you want to try Lovecraft, start with the The Colour Out of Space or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
If you don't like it you can give up with Lovecraft because all his books are quite the same. However if you like i can give you some advices about what to read next :p
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Pretty damn good book, just getting into it. But get the one translated by Mirra Ginsburg; supposedly, it's the best translation. The book before I read was The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa, very good read.
Seconding Foucault's Pendulum. It's like the The Da Vinci code, only that it's a smarter book, dealing with big ideas and that has multidimensional characters!
The Name of the Rose and Baudolino are also great Umberto Eco novels that I would recommend. He's an absolutely amazing author.
EPT
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