Books!!! Share the books (Fiction) that you read that you enjoyed!

Going with general chit-chat, not sure where to post this. Mods please move to the appropriate place.


Being that I am now retired, I have decided to return to my roots when I was younger and catch up on some reading. Computers are evil (lol) (ironic I know) but lets talk about books you really enjoyed reading.

Me:

I went through several phases in my early years and my interests changed.... anyway, the books I read and liked:

1. All the Hardy boy books.
2. All the Nancy Drew books.
3. All the Walter Farley books..... Black Stallion and the series that followed.

4. Stranger in a Strange Land
5. Catch-22
6. Catcher in the Rye

(4,5 & 6 are books I was forced to read in high school but i really liked them, Don't tell my teachers!)

Too many science fiction books to mention.

7. Chariots of the Gods.......... that book is probably is the foremost reason I started questioning the archeological reasoning of mankind. My hat is off to Eric where ever you may be.... you made me think outside the box,,, we need a 1000 more just like you sir!




That is a start

Name yours!

reply to post by RickinVa


I recently re-read from childhood "A Wrinkle in Time" and enjoyed it tremendously!
I had only read it once as a kid, didn't quite understand it all at the time, but some of it stuck with me all my life.
It is terrific story by a wonderful author.

All of Terry Prachett's Discworld novels. Really good fun.

Galadriel
reply to post by RickinVa

 

I recently re-read from childhood "A Wrinkle in Time" and enjoyed it tremendously!
I had only read it once as a kid, didn't quite understand it all at the time, but some of it stuck with me all my life.
It is terrific story by a wonderful author.

Your name reminded me......... the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy....... I have read them all at least 3 times LOL

reply to post by RickinVa


Anything by Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor, Haunted, Choke, Rant, to name a few)

another I forgot....

I really enjoy reading books by Clive Cussler.... I have read almost all of them.... they appeal to my sense of adventure, treasure hunting and oceanography all combined in a book...... it doesn't get much better lol

I have add, so it is very hard for a book to keep my attention. My thoughts are too wild to stay focused on what I'm reading.
Just about the only author that can keep my attention is Isaac Asimov and his short stories.

Jarring
I have add, so it is very hard for a book to keep my attention. My thoughts are too wild to stay focused on what I'm reading.
Just about the only author that can keep my attention is Isaac Asimov and his short stories.

Have you ever read the 9 billion names of God by A C Clark.... great short story!

RickinVa

Jarring
I have add, so it is very hard for a book to keep my attention. My thoughts are too wild to stay focused on what I'm reading.
Just about the only author that can keep my attention is Isaac Asimov and his short stories.

Have you ever read the 9 billion names of God by A C Clark.... great short story!

no, sounds interesting, i'll have to check it out.
Reminds me of the archangel Metatron, the voice of God, who has 72 wings representing each and every name of God.

Just fiction? But history's so much more interesting!

How about...
'All Quiet On The Western Front'
'The Berkut'
Homer's 'Iliad' & 'Odyssey'
Palahniuk was mentioned and I concur!
'Conan of Cimmeria'
'Game of Thrones'
'American Psycho'

Do comic books count? lol

I have read books too numerous to list. I love sci/fi... Issac assimov, Arthur C Clark and many others. I love fantasy like Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter, Saphira and the dragon books by same author etc. I love most anthing with dragons, elves, faeries, dwarfs other mystical beings. Also enjoy a good thriller mystery, anything on the paranormal etc. I read every day. It takes me away to other places and times and I can get lost within the pages and away from the mundane.

Anything by Terry Pratchett, Robert Rankin and Robin Hobb pretty much cover my fantasy needs. Also Adrians Undead Diary by Chris Philbrook for all my zombie apocalypse needs
Diana Gabaldons books satisfy my historical fiction side.

Frank Herberts Dune series is worth a look. Googling a title and adding pdf yields magical results for most anything you might want to read

The last novel I finished was one of the best I've read in a while: Tom Wolfe's Back to Blood. Set in Miami, it's a good, old-fashioned yarn about immigrants, art snobs, porn addicts, hot Latinas, Cuban cops and Russian oligarchs, all furiously chasing the American Dream.

A few weeks before that, I re-read Walter Miller's classic post-holocaust novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, returning to it after something like forty years. It was just as good as I remembered from my adolescent reading — no, better.

The best novel I read in 2013 was, without a doubt, Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. I personally prefer the showier, more self-consciously literary style of Martin Amis, but there is no doubt that McEwan is simply the most accomplished writer of fiction currently active anywhere in the world. Atonement is his masterpiece, but Sweet Tooth definitely deserves a place on the same high shelf.

Other novels I read and enjoyed in 2013 were

• Scoop, Evelyn Waugh's comic masterpiece about blundering foreign correspondents and the need to stir up trouble in faraway places to keep newspaper readers at home interested
  
  
• Lost Horizon by James Hilton, the novel which gave the world Shangri-La
  
  
• An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, in which an ageing Japanese painter relives his past accomplishments and failures, in which are depicted the greater accomplishments and failures of his country.
  
  
• The Hydrogen Sonata, by Iain M. Banks. His Culture is a magnificent literary invention, a fantasy world in which readers love to lose themselves, and to which they can return time and again. The last Culture novel (Banks died a few months after finishing The Hydrogen Sonata) is probably the least impressive of them all, but that still put it head and shoulders above all the other science fiction published in 2013.

tom Clancy ,Clive Custler and Michael Crichton for fiction in the last ten years. Read Crichtons book "next" if your into genetics, it's raises all kinds of scared moral questions.
But my all time favorites are the classic sci fi works.. Wells is the best.

For fiction, I like mainly fantasy and sci-fi with a smattering of historical fiction and horror in there. Some of all-time favorites have been:

Watership Down by Richard Adams (I've read several copies to pieces)
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Lightning by Dean R. Koontz
The Firebringer Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (a trilogy, each one is its own book)
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling (The amount of planning still fascinates me + It's such an easy read and entertaining)
Most anything by Robin McKinley (I love her prose)
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
Age of Fire series by E.E. Knight

One of my ALL TIME FAVORITES is "On The Beach" it's a short story (130pages) written with research about after a Nuclear War with Russia happened in the 1950s I think. Basically it portrays a slowly dying world from Nuclear winter and the mass human migration to the Southern Hemisphere because that's the last place the radiation reaches because of wind/water circulation patterns. It's a sad sad book but very real in its portrayal of a dying civilization and who would do what to enjoy their last days.
After that my favorites would be Raymond E. Feists "Riftwar Saga" that's a good Fantasy Series.

Someone mentioned Rant by Palahniuk , awesome mind bender!

Here's a list:
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski (seriously, read it. I will send you my copy.)
The stand by Stephen King
Anything written by Vonnegut
Good times bad times by James kirkwood. (If you like catcher in the rye, you'll like this ten times more)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (anything that man writes is gold)
Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test


And for non fiction, if you're into horror read Helter Skelter. Holy god that book was terrifying.

That's all I can think of.

reply to post by Jarring


Reading Asimov now. The robot novels.

How about some Philip k. Dick? Dude is warped, his books are awesome, but make me feel weird when I'm done like, "wtf did I jus read?!"

denybedoomed
reply to post by Jarring

 

Reading Asimov now. The robot novels.

How about some Philip k. Dick? Dude is warped, his books are awesome, but make me feel weird when I'm done like, "wtf did I jus read?!"

I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and I have to say that Dune was less twisted and more comprehensible.