xkcd

by **Ansob.** » Sun Feb 10, 2008 11:48 pm UTC

L'existentialisme est un humanisme, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Figures, since I consider myself (mostly) a Sartrean existentialist.

by **pollywog** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:51 am UTC

bigglesworth wrote:
pollywog wrote:
Fossa wrote:George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is right up there as well, though.

I really wish my library had the first book of that, so that I could start reading it, as a lot of people tell me that it is quite good.

*Apologies for Librarian anger*

F**king ask the lending library and they will order it for you.

I did. I now have it. It is good.

by **Chrismclegless** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 6:38 pm UTC

Completely out of my normal style of fantasy/scifi/thriller, I really liked 'The time travelers wife'. I just loved the ideas, and the way they were portrayed by the author.

by **microwaved** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:12 am UTC

Almost solely because of this thread, i bought catch-22 tonight. I was browsing the local bookstore for something to catch my eye, and I saw it. Figured why not and bought it. I better not be disappointed.

by **tope** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:20 pm UTC

Anything by Robert Rankin has me howling, "The Book of Ultimate Truths" being my current favourite. Other stuff? Check out Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston "The Cabinet of Curiosities".

by **Anomie** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 8:27 pm UTC

I love Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, also Fear and Loathing by Hunter S Thompson and Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

by **btarlinian** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:56 pm UTC

The Once and Future King, by T.H. White (that book will make you cry at the end)
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
The Aeneid by Vergil Everyone's read The Iliad and The Odyssey, but this is just so much better (and being able to read it in Latin makes it even nicer).
The Metamorphoses by Ovid (I haven't read all of this in the original Latin, but once you read it you realize that much of English literature is just a copy of it).
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Anything by Mark Twain
Anything by Terry Pratchett
And since you said books I'll put in a piece of nonfiction: Feynman's Lectures on Physics, simply the greatest text on physics ever written.

by **steewi** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 1:36 am UTC

Any of the Realm of the Elderlings books by Robin Hobb (i.e. Farseers, LiveShips, Tawny Man)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Rediscovery of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith

...among a bunch of others. Special mentions to William Tenn, Theodore Sturgeon, Octavia Butler and the Stainless Steel Rat.

by **Minerva** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 2:48 pm UTC

I think my favourite book is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, with The Diamond Age a close second.

by **Torvaun** » Fri Feb 22, 2008 11:27 pm UTC

Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash would be much higher on my list if Neal Stephenson could write endings. On Cryptonomicon in particular, I was surprised by the ending, because I was expecting 5-10 more pages.

by **HighCharity** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:52 am UTC

My favorite books from like, ever.
Ender's Game-Holy shit. I love this book. There's really nothing that can compare to it. It's not even remotely possible that someone can read it and not fall in love with it. Read: 3 times in a row, then once, then 2 times. Best book ever.
Homecoming Series(I read this series when I was like 11 and it fucked me up for the first couple days after reading it)
Flowers for Algernon(Again, fucked me up)
It wasn't so much that those books were graphic or anything, they just changed the way I looked at things.
Also, I liked the Harry Potter books OKAY, but Ender's Game far surpassed me.
By the way, I totally think there should be a sticky discussion of Ender's Game. I would never leave this board

by **nightwing2024** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:56 pm UTC

Well, from when I was a kid, and even now, I absolutely love the Animorphs series. <3 Tobias and Ax.

I like the Eragon books, (so sue me).

Tangerine, though a little under my reading level, is still a good book.

by **Torvaun** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:00 pm UTC

nightwing2024 wrote:Well, from when I was a kid, and even now, I absolutely love the Animorphs series. <3 Tobias and Ax.

I like the Eragon books, (so sue me).

Tangerine, though a little under my reading level, is still a good book.

We don't sue here, we hunt down and assault.

by **nightwing2024** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:15 pm UTC

the books are good, IMO. Fun to read.

I thought they'd suck because of the movie, but I like them.

by **Mikagon** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:58 pm UTC

I'd have to say my favorite series is the Dragon Nimbus Series by Irene Radford. But I don't really play favorites with books but more with authors.
So my top authors are:
-Phillip Pullman
-Tamora Pearce
-Irene Radford
-K.A. Applegate
-Stephenie Meyering
-Orson Scott Card
-Rick Riordan
-Vivian Vande Veld
-Kate Constable
-Garth Nix
-Scott Westerfeld

And a few other obscure ones.
Most of the books I enjoy are because they have an amazing story line as well as a good cast of characters.

by **WaywardAngel** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:22 pm UTC

darwinwins wrote:
chelidon wrote:Invisible Man, Ellison
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Haddon (No love here?)
Oryx and Crake; Cat's Eye, Atwood
East of Eden; Cannery Row; The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway (I didn't much like his other novels--The Garden of Eden in particular was awful.)
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
Madame Bovary, Flaubert
All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon (Best Christmas present in years!)
Catch-22, Heller
The Stand, King
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald (I didn't like Tender is the Night, but This Side of Paradise was good.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Márquez
The nearly-ubiquitous Ender's Game, Card (Speaker of the Dead was fair, but I only managed to drag myself through Xenocide, Children of the Mind, and the Ender's Shadow series through a combined sense of loyalty and masochism.)

props for oryx and crake. nobody's read that book. i think most people expect a certain type of book from margaret atwood and decided to skip that novel. i can't seem to get into her other works but when i read it, i was in the middle of a bio-ethics class and loved every bit of that book. i still have issues eating processed chicken on a regular basis these days.

Good to see there are others who've read it. It simply happened to be the first book of hers I read, never managed to get into the others either. Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being is another brilliant yet disturbing one.

EDIT: Agreed with whoever mentioned The Aeneid, my favorite of the epics. Book 2 is astonishingly good. READ IT.

by **Knucklecallus093** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:44 am UTC

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Dune series (which completely blow my fucking mind in their complexity), Beowulf (more specifically, the character Grendel), 1984, The Collected Works of Emerson, The Magic School Bus books, The Road, And finally, the book that has always influenced me in a subconscious manner since I first read it in 2nd grade, White Fang. God damn, so many more that I can't remember.

Now, poets, on the other hand...

Off to start a new topic.
Edit: Oh yeah, and Enders Game! + Dr. Seuss stuff

by **wery67564** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:45 pm UTC

Catch-22

by **xndrew** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 4:01 am UTC

wery67564 wrote:Catch-22

Makes sense for a government employed anarchist.

by **pollywog** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:45 am UTC

Mikagon wrote:I'd have to say my favorite series is the Dragon Nimbus Series by Irene Radford. But I don't really play favorites with books but more with authors.

I don't like to play favourites with authors. Most of the books I like are written by people who have written books I really don't like. David Zindell wrote A Requiem for Homo sapiens, which I loved, but I can't stand any of his other work. I loved Ender's Game, but hate every other book by Orson Scott Card that I've read.

by **zombie_monkey** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 12:22 pm UTC

Apparently me a pollywog are the same person.

by **wery67564** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 5:49 pm UTC

xndrew wrote:
wery67564 wrote:Catch-22

Makes sense for a government employed anarchist.

I must say, I failed to notice that, but yes, I have been naked in a tree on base before...

by **Knucklecallus093** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:23 pm UTC

Minerva wrote:I think my favourite book is Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, with The Diamond Age a close second.

Holy shit holy shit holy shit I love that book. I can't believe that I forgot about it, even though I read it four times, despite its being fat and tasty...
What an interesting book.

by **lonelynocturnal** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:25 pm UTC

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, by Brady Udall.
I keep seeing this mentioned and I have to say, I loved Ender's Game. Couldn't get much into Speaker for the Dead, though. I'll give it another try sometime.

by **kid c** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 1:16 am UTC

It would have to be Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

hmmmmm but second place would probably have to be Vurt by Jeff Noon. That thing messed up my head but good.

by **Hica** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 6:12 am UTC

Until recently it was The Stand by Stephen King, but now I'm not so sure. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers is up there for me, as is Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. I guess I can't go wrong either way.

by **zomgmouse** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:37 pm UTC

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Code of the Woosters - P.G. Wodehouse
1984 - George Orwell

by **Enneract** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 5:38 pm UTC

while I won't say favorite, I just finished reading The J. W. Wells Trilogy (Consisting of, The Portable Door, In Your Dreams, and Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard) By Tom Holt

And they were wonderful.

Website · by **Sandry** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:44 am UTC

Torvaun wrote:Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash would be much higher on my list if Neal Stephenson could write endings. On Cryptonomicon in particular, I was surprised by the ending, because I was expecting 5-10 more pages.

Heh, I was just telling my housemate maybe an hour ago that this is what annoys me about Stephenson. I do think, though, that Snow Crash is nowhere near as bad in that respect as some of his other stuff. Diamond Age, in particular. Ah well. It's better than William Gibson. I adored Pattern Recognition, and really liked Idoru, so now I keep trying to read other works of his, only to find I just supremely Do Not Care. I'm halfway through Mona Lisa Overdrive and am at best apathetic about every single character.

by **swik** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 8:04 pm UTC

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach - I read it in middle school and it is still the only book that had me literally jump at the ending.

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein - I grok it.

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger - It's just something I very much enjoy and read through in one sitting. I find him an easy character to identify with, I love the contradictions. It certainly helps that the most common time to read the book is when you're near the same age as Holden and when you reread it later in life you're able to take different things from it.

by **Various Varieties** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:42 pm UTC

My absolute favourite is Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams. That's in spite of the fact that it perpetuates the "water spirals the other way in the Southern hemisphere!" myth.

Other favourites include Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books.

Ian Fleming's James Bond books are also great fun - From Russia With Love is my favourite (it's my favourite of the film series too).

With Terry Pratchett, I have trouble picking just one, though Lords and Ladies (the Witches FTW!), Night Watch, The Fifth Elephant and Soul Music are contenders. Good Omens is brilliant, too, although American Gods is my favourite Neil Gaiman book.

I also recently read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, which instantly acquired a place in my top 10 - unlike some, I was not too disappointed by the ending. I shall seek out Snow Crash ASAP!

by **JoyDivision** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:23 am UTC

I have the problem of always starting books and never finishing them.

My favourite sci fi books however are probably Look to Windward by Iain M Banks along with The Hitchhikers Guide by Douglas Adams.

I also love Robert Rankin, Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials along with his other childrens books.

The funniest author I've ever read has to be Flann O'Brien, I also remember loving The Great Gatsby purely because there character of Gatsby is pretty much open to debate.

by **Gatesunder** » Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:02 pm UTC

My favorite non-fiction book is "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. It's a really really great book that presents so many details and presents them as if the events in the book coul actually be true.

My favorite Non-fiction book is a toss up. It would have to be either "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku or "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hoftstadter. The former is great because it deals with high level physics in a way that the arm-chair physicist can understand. He really speaks to the laymen in that one. The latter book is a really nice philisophical (and maybe partially scientifical?) look into the question of "What makes the mind what it is?" or rather "if the brain and mind are one, then what makes us think in a way that makes it feel like they are seperate?" His theory takes the completely scientific approach to the mind, rather than the metaphysical approach and presents it in a really solid manner.

by **hat_on_a_rat** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 12:01 am UTC

The wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.
The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind.
And the Y: The Last Man comic book series (really made me think)

by **nsmjohn** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 10:26 pm UTC

Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan (series)
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe (series)
Night's Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
Endangered Species - Gene Wolfe (short story collection)
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman
Glasshouse - Charles Stross
Survivor: A Novel - Chuck Palahniuk (if you thought Fight Club was fucked up...)

by **Maturin** » Wed Mar 19, 2008 4:35 am UTC

Catch-22, Heller.
Master and Commander (the whole Aubrey/Maturin series), Patrick O'Brian.

by **kjsharke** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:47 am UTC

My favorites among things that were little commented on:

Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera was different (good good good) I didn't ever find it disturbing... I need to try his other stuff. Thirded on that I guess.

One person said The Stranger by Camus... I'd say just about anything. The Plague wasn't as much a joy to read, but it sticks. I only read it once and I still think about it.

Gravity's Rainbow was mentioned in another thread, but only one person said Pynchon at all. It is dense, but very tasty.

Narcissus and Goldmund by Hesse. I need to read more (especially Siddhartha, which seems to be the most common)

Anna Karenina. This was said, but it bears repeating.

Also, the Oresteian Trilogy, and Aristophanes in general

And besides that, the standards. Everyone loves Vonnegut/H2G2/Catch-22.

by **annals** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:51 pm UTC

Most of mine have already been posted, but, in no particular order:

At the Back of the North Wind-George MacDonald
Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoevsky
Life of Pi-Yann Martel
Lord of the Flies-William Golding
The Count of Monte Christo-Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables-Victor Hugo
East of Eden-John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rebecca-Daphne du Maurier
Discworld series-Terry Pratchett
Lord Peter Wimsey series-Dorothy Sayers

I also love Laurie King's Mary Russell series, though I'm not sure that it's one of my favorites.

by **jakkle** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:51 pm UTC

i currently love a clockwork orange, inferno, and ovid's metamorphoses. also 'jonathan strange and mr norrel' - the amount of stories and stuff she created is amazing, pretty much a whole country's mythology [which obviously it is meant to be]. also i love her stupid long footnotes which are pretty much short stories in themselves

the discworld books, and barry trotter. the va dinci cod.

i also enjoy reading 1984 - it kinda scares me, more so than a clockwork orange does

soon moving on to down and out in paris and london, and kafka, both of which i look forward to immensely.

sorry about that first paragraph - i wrote is as i thought of it, which made no sense written down... whoops

by **Semidi** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:14 pm UTC

1984 by Orwell. Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. Catch-22 by Heller. I'll also throw in The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas. I love many more books, but of the books I've loved, these have influenced me the most and are the most memorable to me. Edit: I forgot Candide by Voltaire.

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