Topic awaiting preservation: Asylum Book Club (Page 1 of 2)

After finishing the latest Harry Potter, I found a renewed interest in reading. Now I'm making my way through The Golden Ratio (Its a bit dry but still quite fascinating). My question is where should I go next? What are the books that you guys think everyone MUST read? The first book I'd put on such a list would be The Tao of Physics. H2G2 would definelty be on there as well. Unfortunetly for me I've already read those! =) So what are you're guys picks?

Frank Herbert's Dune saga.

LoTR Trilogy (if you haven't), the Silmarillion, The Hobbit, hmm... I donno, plenty of good reads out there. Fantasy's my pick though.

After LoTR and if you fancy continuing in that direction go for the Chonicales of Thomas Covenant and look into Michael Moorcock.

Iain (M.) Banks early stuff (sci-fi and fiction) is well worth looking into Player of games, Wasp Factory (I'm less impressed by his recent work). if the space opera style suits you then Peter Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds both deliver the goods.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Stephen King and Dean Koontz are a couple of my steady favorites. There aren't many books by either of them that I haven't enjoyed. Right now I'm reading "From the Corner of his Eye" by Dean Koontz. It's been amazing so far.

If you like that suspense kind of thing, Greg Iles and William Diehl are a couple to go for. Diehl wrote "Primal Fear" which was made into a movie a while back that starred Edward Norton.

Then, if you want a completely fucked up ride get some Chuck Palahniuk. He wrote Fight Club. My favorites of his so far have been Choke and Invisible Monsters. It's seriously messed up stuff.

Oh, and then there's Neil Gaiman. Complete fantasy and very well written. American Gods was so engrossing I actually missed a flight because I was trapped in the book. Neverwhere is also great.

:::11oh1:::

Absolute must-reads:

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - Slaughterhouse 5
George Orwell - 1984
George Orwell - Animal Farm
Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451
Tom Robbins - Still life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume
Tom Robbins - Skinny Legs and All
Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the BLues
JD Salinger - A Catcher in the Rye
John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Lewis Carrol - Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Alduous Huxley - Brave New World
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
CS Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (all of them)
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings

And, if we're going to go the fantasy/sci fi route -
Margerette Weiss/Tracy Hickman - the original Dragonlance Series
Margerette Weiss/Tracy Hickman - The Death Gate Cycle (at least the 1st 4)
Anything else by these two quite frankly

On the historical side of things -
Thomas Cahill - The "Hinges of History" series. Excellent stuff -
How the Irish Saved Civilization (The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe)
The Gift of the Jews (How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels)
Desire of the Everlasting Hills (The World Before and After Jesus)

Of course, BullFynch's Mythology is a must
The Illiad
The Odyssey

.....those should be a good start.

=)

Of Dl's, I'd say that Slaughterhouse 5, Cats Cradle, Catcher in the Rye and of Mice and Men were standout to me.

For some fairly mindless entertainment, Dean Koontz is a good author. Some of my favorites of his are One Door Away from Heaven, Watchers and Strangers. Along the same line is King. His Gunslinger trilogy is some of his best work. I really liked Carrie as well.

Alexandre Dumas: The three musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. Terry Pratchet: Just about anything, Small Gods was some of his best. Soul Music was good also.

Matthew Reilly's Ice Station was definitely one of the most mindless and entertaining books I read last year.


[This message has been edited by counterfeitbacon (edited 08-10-2003).]

In case you've allready finnished the things mentioned above, I'll add a some more

fiction:
Merry Shelly - Frankenstein
Bram Stroker - Dracula
Isaac Asimov - anything by him
Peter F. Hamilton - the Night Dawn Triology
Tad Williams - the Otherland Series
Terry Brooks - the Shannara Series
Raymond E. Feist - the Riftwar saga
Raymond E. Feist + Janny Wurst - Servant of the Empire Series
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
James Clavell - Shõgun
James Clavell - Tai Pan
Arthur C. Clark - A 2001 Space Odyssey

and non-fiction:
Richard Dawkins - the Selfish Gene
Sun Tzu - the Art of War
Simon Singh - Fermat's Last Theorem
Simon Singh - the Bible Code

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"

[This message has been edited by Veneficuz (edited 08-10-2003).]

DL, most of those books on your list were required for me to read in school.

Umm...

Douglas Adam's incressingly missed named trilogy. You know, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the rest.

Personally, I don't have the attention span for a whole book anymore. For the past decade or so, I've preferred short stories. I've really enjoyed short stories by:
Edgar Allen Poe
Dorothy Parker
Clive Barker (Books of Blood)
H. P. Lovecraft
Stephen King (Skeleton Crew, Nightshift)
Pierce Anthony

Pretty much any book that is a collection of short stores, especially sci-fi and fantasy.

Yeah, and really, really, really old stuff. Like Metaphorphesis(?), The Divine Comedy, Brother's Grim, Beowulf, and those two that DL mentioned.

edit:
Oh, hell. I don't think much of that constitutes as must read.
LOL I'm an idiot. Need sleep.


[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 08-11-2003).]

Ohh God Almighty Allah.....why in hell I dont even like LOTR???
I cant even figure it out...help me here!

ok and another great book i will recommend is:

The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce "a 25 year landmark study"
Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia M. Lewis, Sandra Blakeslee---cant miss read till you are young!



[This message has been edited by Ruski (edited 08-11-2003).]

Any Rand - Atlas Shrugged.

This book, unfortunatly, is too long for most people to conquor, but it is by far one of the best books ever written with an awesome story of power and secret societies. I find it amazing how many people have not read this book.


.quotes.

beside the sci-fi/fantasy listed above, add
Neil Stephenson - Snow Crash, The Neuromancer

fiction:
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, Anna Karenina
Alexandre Dumas - Three Musketeers, Count of Monty Cristo, more...
William Bligh - Mutiny on the Bounty
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
Charles Dickens - got paid by the word, so his stories are very wordy..

not required but fun:
David Eddings - The Belgariad series - excellent to read to youngsters to whet their appetite for reading or being read to (the hero starts out small enough to run under a kitchen table w/o having to duck).

Doug Adams
-The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
-Life, the Universe, and Everything
-Thanks for All the Fish
-Mostly Harmless
Michael Crichton
-The Andromeda Strain
-Congo
-Jurassic Park
-The Lost World
-The Great Train Robbery
-Prey
Matthew Reilly
-Ice Station
-Contest
Isaac Asimov
-I, Robot
-The Logistical Man
Whitley Streiber
-Communion
J.R.R. Tolkien
-The Lord of the Rings
Me
-Steal Back the Daedalus! (a work in progress, but still...)
Lawrence Krauss
-The Physics of Star Trek
-Beyond Star Trek
Stephen Hawking
-The Universe in a Nutshell
Stephen King
-Cujo
-It
-Carrie
-The Stand
-The Green Mile
Stephen Baxter
-Time
-Space
-Origin
-Anti-Ice
Eric Idle
-The Road to Mars

I read a lot.



[This message has been edited by Rameses Niblik the Third (edited 08-15-2003).]

Okay, I finally thought of a must read: Calvin and Hobbes.

I also recommend my book, of course....
Which you can order, for free.

Journery of Common Men

Just came by to second WJ's notion of Calvin & Hobbes. Bill Watterson's great.

quote:

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not required but fun:
David Eddings - The Belgariad series

---

Ah yes, forgot about those. Excellent books, all 10 of them

He has other good series as well

Well I'm on a classics kick so I'll go with:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Time Machine
The Cantebury Tales
The Oddessy
The Illiad
The orginal English printing of Gulliver's Travels (not some reprinted interpreted knockoff)

That's all for me right now. Can't think... more coffee required

Wow, some great suggestions there guys. I wanna 2nd some of 'em.

Catcher in the Rye - I loved this book, but was a lil' scared about how much I identified with the main charachter

LoTR - Come on, who HASN'T read these! I tried to read the simarillion but just couldn't find it as compelling.

Alice in Wonderland - I've read this but havn't gotten around to through the looking glass yet. I highly suggest the annotated alice to anyone who wishes to read these.

I think next i'm gonna take on Atlas Shrugged as I have another friend who has been pressuring me to read it. After that i'll probably grab some random titles in the thread. Thanks for the advice!

Umberto Eco - Fucaults Pendulum
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time (??)
Mervin Peake - The Gormenghast Trilogy (*Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone)


Bug-free software only exisits in two places
A programmer's mind and a salesman's lips

I can't believe nobody mentioned Hemingway.
Old Man and the Sea
Death in the Afternoon
The Fifth Column and the Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Farewell to Arms
The Sun Also Rises

All very good.

But Hemingway didn't include anything about space travel, laser beams, and cool stuff like that.

In that vein, I would suggest Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy

. . : slicePuzzle

I did enjoy "for whom the bell tolls" but I must admit I only read it because of Metallica... In fact I only read lovecraft because of Metallica too

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card. This one's good the sequels can be hit or miss.
Bio of a Space Tyrant (series) - Piers Anthony

hmm.. brain fart all of a sudden



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

For a good message presented in a humerous way, I'd always suggest Terry Pratchett's discworld series, as well as his books 'Only you can save mankind (if not you, who else?) and Johnny and the bomb and Johnny and the dead. Plus they're just good for a laugh.

As well, on the fantasy front, I'd suggest the works of David and Leigh Eddings, especially they're works of The Belgariad and The Mallorean (for those who haven't read them, they are two series of 5 books each, with companion titles as well. In order the are:

Belgariad:

Pawn of Prophecy
Queen of Sorcery
Castle of Wizardry
Magician's Gambit
Enchanter's End Game

Mallorean:
Guardians of the West
King of the Murgos
Demon Lord of Karanda
Sorceress of Darshiva
Seeress of Kell

Companions:
Belgarath the Sorcerer
Polgara the Sorceress
The Rivan Codex)

and other titles by David and Leigh Eddings, the Redemption of Althalus and their series of the Elenium and the Tamuli.

[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 08-14-2003).]

Larry Niven : Ringworld ( amazing scope of imagination)
Harry Harrison: The Stainless Steel Rat books
Douglas Adams : See also Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency

And I second *Anything by Issac Asimov* His Sci Fi is the best, but wrote on a wide range of topics.
Many other greats on this list, too. Read em all.

Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett
The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
Thought Contagion by Aaron Lynch
Out Of Control by Kevin Kelly
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
How We Believe by Michael Shermer
The Moral Animal by Robert Wright
Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie
The Extended Phenotype by Richard Dawkins
The Retreat To Commitment by William Bartley
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

[This message has been edited by metahuman (edited 08-15-2003).]

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist
Magician Apprentice
Magician Master
Silverthorn
A Darkness at Sethanon
The Serpantwar Saga also by Feist
Shadow of a Dark Queen
Rise of a Merchant Prince
Rage of a Demon King
Shards of a Broken Crown

The Banned and the Banished series by James Clemens
Wit'ch Fire
Wit'ch Storm
Wit'ch War
Wit'ch Gate
Wit'ch Star

Timeline by Michael Crichton

Subterranean \
Excavation -->by James Rollins
Deep Fathom /

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

White Fang \__
Call of the Wild / by Jack London


The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

Umm... that about covers it for now... I'll have to go look at the rest of my books to kickstart my memory!

quote:

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White Fang \__
Call of the Wild / by Jack London

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

---

Ahh yes, all of those were excelent when I was younger. I may have to find a couple of A Wrinkle in Time and read it again as I can scarcley recall much of it. I do remember the String analogy to time travel and the world with all the boys bounching their balls in time.

Aha! Got another one:
Go Ask Alice

My copy of that book got trashed from passing it around. Everybody I know thoroughly enjoyed that book, especially the remedial druggies.

I thought of another one.
Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow

Everything by Clive Cussler!
A mix between Indiana Jones, James Bond without the hightech and good old fashion adventures with take over the world plots.

That plus about 10-15 other writers I follow.
Dale Brown, Tom Clancy...
Really good stuff.
/Dan

{cell 260}
-{ a vibration is a movement that doesn't know which way to go }-

Definatly Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and the other books that go with it. The collections Isaac Asimov Gold and the other collections that go with are good reads for the stories and the articles/letter response by Asimove in them.
Also Larry Niven(Ringworld), Ray Bradbury(can be slightly depressing) and Arthur C. Clark for more good Sci-fi.

More seconding for any David and Leigh Eddings and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The first 2 books in the series a pretty slow but the later books well make up for that. But be prepared to read some very long books, near 1000 pages each, in a series of over 10.

__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into get engines.

eh, only book worth reading

'everything i know i learned on Acid'

it answers any question you might have .. and removes all doubt ...

^^ interesting collection of quotes... most not from the "acid" era.

one of my favorites: There is also a time to throw aside discretion and among fools to play the fool. -Menander, 342-292 BC

{edit- link}

[This message has been edited by velvetrose (edited 08-22-2003).]

I just started reading Goedel, Escher, Back: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. It's very good. (It's also on my list above!)

_________________________
A devil's work is never done.

Oh! I forgot about that one, Metahuman. Excellant read. I recommend going through and reading all of the plays first. Not only did that make the other stuff easier to understand for me, but most of the plays are outright hilarious.

The tortoise, the hare, and Achilles. Good stuff.

I just read "The Key to Rebecca," it was good....
...
Yup.

Actually...I forgot a few earlier.

Anne McCaffrey, any of her books in the Chronicles of Pern, the Pegasus Series, The Rowan Series, and the Crystal Singer series.

Douglas Adams...the Hitchiker's Series. Man...these books are...very...hard to describe. You have to read them to understand a description of them properly. Also his lesser known books 'Last Chance to See...', both the Dirk Gently books and 'The Meaning of Liff' and 'The Deeper Meaning of Liff'

Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" An all-round good book, and a real eye-opener in same cases.

Terry Brooks, The Shannarra Series and any from the magical Kingdom (such as 'Magical Kingdom for Sale...Sold!')