Book Suggestions

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Kanyamagufa

Regular
I know a lot of members are avid readers, and I trust you guys taste-wise, so I come to you in desperate need of advice on what to pick up the next time I'm at Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I'm really into Sci-Fi stuff, I'm a huge fan of Michael Crichton and Frank Herbert. I also love Dan Brown novels and I tore through LoTR and The Hobbit.

I also really enjoy the classics as well (Catcher in the Rye, Gatsby, etc...)

I just get overwhelmed whenever I go into a book store. There's so much! I don't know where to go or what to pick.

My question is what do you guys suggest? I'm totally open, I just need something to read desperately.
 
Kanyamagufa said:
I know a lot of members are avid readers, and I trust you guys taste-wise, so I come to you in desperate need of advice on what to pick up the next time I'm at Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I'm really into Sci-Fi stuff, I'm a huge fan of Michael Crichton and Frank Herbert. I also love Dan Brown novels and I tore through LoTR and The Hobbit.

I also really enjoy the classics as well (Catcher in the Rye, Gatsby, etc...)

I just get overwhelmed whenever I go into a book store. There's so much! I don't know where to go or what to pick.

My question is what do you guys suggest? I'm totally open, I just need something to read desperately.
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If you like Sci-Fi stuff, you cannot go wrong with Philip K. Dick. My favourite P.K.Dick is Ubik. Though, Do Electric Sheep Dream ... is also quite a nice read.

As for classics, I particularily like Camus or Umberto Eco.
 
I personally enjoyed Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series, starting with...ahhh to remember the name...it's either The Call of Earth or Memory of Earth (it's 5 books long, I never made it to 5 before I packed them away and haven't found them (moving...sucks))

But the 4 that I did read, were all very nice reads...

Another good book to consider is Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, or Asimov's I. Robot (though I would think you've possibly read both of these)
 
Kanyamagufa said:
My question is what do you guys suggest? I'm totally open, I just need something to read desperately.
Click to expand...

Have a wade through the following thread - plenty of recommendations in there:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20118


For good SF books, almost anything by:

Iain M. Banks (note the 'M'!)
Peter Hamilton
Alastair Reynolds
David Brin
Neal Asher
Richard Morgan

All rather 'hard' science fiction but very enjoyable. Barely a bad book between them.

Of course, the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle partnership has produced some good books as well.

Just a few authors off the top of my head.
 
"The Sage of Pliocene Exile" by Julian May. Probably out of print, though you check Amazon. "Dune" was my favorite piece of sci-fi until I read this series in the early 80s, though it's technically more sci-fantasy than science fiction. Great stuff either way, though.
 
The whole bloody Vladd Taltos saga by Brust, probably the most fun read I've ever done.

Vlad Taltos is a very dangerous man. He has to be, in his line of work. He's an assassin. He's an Easterner (what we'd call human) in an empire full of near-immortal, very powerful beings known collectively as the Dragaerians. They have magic, superior numbers, and lifespans that allow them to plan over the course of centuries. They're faster, taller, stronger, meaner, and possessed of Byzantine codes of honor and traditions that stretch back hundreds of thousands of years. He's an upstart, daring to play and beat them at their own game.

Long ago, Vlad's father spent all he had to buy a title within one of the seventeen great Houses of the Empire, becoming part of the Jhereg. These are the assassins, the criminals, the shady dealmakers, what the Mafia could be if given a few millennia to prosper and plan. Vlad's father thought he was setting his son up for a good life. He was wrong.

Neither fish nor fowl, Easterner nor Dragaerian, holding a title within a noble House but caring nothing for it, Vlad was forced to develop amazing survival skills. And that's how it all began.

He's a witch, having mastered some of the arcane powers only Easterners may truly understand. He's a sorcerer, having learned many of the psychic and magical talents shared by the Dragaerians. He's got one of the flying lizardlike creatures also known as jhereg as his familiar. He's going to need all the help he can get, for Vlad Taltos is the sort of man who makes enemies quicker than he can kill them. And this, collectively, is his story.

Over the course of ten volumes now, Steven Brust has charted the career of Vlad Taltos, skipping back and forth out of sequence to give us his beginnings, his endings, his rise and fall within the Jhereg organization. We've followed his progress through life and death, war and peace, prosperity and exile. And we've truly grown to know this extraordinary man, in his own words, through his own voice.
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It's written excellently, a very real/gritty feel for unreal situations with lots of ironic/sarcastic humor. :)
 
Don't listen to these geeks...

There's only one true book worm here and that's me :LOL:
Kidding...

anyway, u know i recently discovered him and i must say i have to recommend Robert J Sawyer. I read Calculating God and Factoring Humanity and i can safely say they're 2 of the best books i've ever read, and the latter is my favourite. Real quality and very well written, they'll flow quicker than The Da Vinci Code and give you a lot to think about in the process. Unmissable.

Ian M Banks is a pain, hated the only book of hihs that i read (Excession).
 
some of my favorite books in no particular order:
"invisivible cities" by italo calvino
"the man on the high castle" by phillip k. dick
"memoirs found in a bathtub" by stanislaw lem
"american gods" by neil gaiman
"dune" by frank herbert
"the dispossed" by ursula k. le guin
 
london-boy said:
Don't listen to these geeks...

There's only one true book worm here and that's me :LOL:
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:LOL: I know! It's not like I was waiting for your reply. ;)

Thank you for all your suggestions guys! Now I have a list to take with me. Definately a lot to choose from. Philip K. Dick and Robert Sawyer sound like musts - I loved the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. The Homecoming series and Vladd Taltos Saga sound awesome too. Sweet, I can't wait to get back into the game. :D
 
london-boy said:
<snip>...they'll flow quicker than The Da Vinci Code ... </snip>
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Heh, can't really flow much quicker for me - I read each Brown's book in a day :)

Anyway, lately I enjoy alot the Saga of Seven Suns by Kevin J. Anderson (4 books are out so far if I'm not mistaken).
 
If you haven't read it already, I'll suggest The City and the Stars by Clarke, just about the best SF novel ever and one of the finest books at all.
Other than that, I can also recommend almost any of Haruki Murakamis books. Maybe "A Wild Sheep Chase" is a good starting point.
 
I think Robert Heinlein is much overlooked when it comes to sci-fi. Starship Troopers, if you can get past the hype surrounding the politics, is a great piece of bona-fide science-fiction. Likewise for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger From a Strange Land. I'm keen to get into the Lazarus Long stuff, but it's hard to find the earlier books that he appears in.

Of course there's always the first three Foundation books (I didn't enjoy the others as much) which are must-reads, along with Rendevous with Rama and 2001 (which I thought was a better book than film).
 
Good to see I'm not the only one who'd recommend Vinge. They really are captivating reads.
You might also want to try some of the following:
Niven, Pournelle and Flynn "Fallen Angels", which is one of my all-time favourites. (Or, as mentioned above, any of the collaborations with Niven & Pournelle)
Any in Niven's "Man Kzin wars", which is Niven's universe, but many different writers let loose..
Pat Murphy "There and back again", funny and unpretentious.
Shakespear "Much ado about nothing" since you like the classics.
Also, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are quite entertaining, with "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" giving you most of the shorter stories, making it easy to pick up, and put down again if you don't have too much time on your hands.
 
If you like fantasy, then definitely read some of Ursula K. Leguin's books like the Earthsea series.

If you want something more raw and fun then try out Chuck Palahniuk (the guy who wrote Fight Club). Some of his books are Choke, Invisible Monsters, Stranger Than Fiction, and Survivor.
 
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