If you could recommend just ONE book or book series...

"Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins is one I really enjoyed. It deals with the subjects of immortality, the olfactory sense, hot dogs, and true love. I found it superbly entertaining.

The Pandora Star series by Peter F Hamilton.
Pandora's Star
Judas Unchained
The Dreaming Void
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void

It all takes place way in the future, well after we've colonized space.

a reply to: kosmicjack

If you're into sci-fi, Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire series. There are six books. Or Frank Herbert's Dune series, also six books. If you like fantasy, Stephen R Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. For exceptional yet high probability weirdness, try The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson.

Cheers - Dave

I really like Wilbur Smith´s books they are like ancient fiction yet "historical". Another writer i like is Christian Jacq who wrote Ramses book series.
One more historical book is Mika Waltari " Sinuhe, Egyptian" which was also filmed in 1954 as a "Egyptian"

Papillon by Henri Charrière .. though also filmed but much better as a book

The Gates of Janus, Ian Brady

The 120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade (the most disturbing read you'll ever have. I never finished it. I couldn't.)

The Everlasting Man, GK Chesterton

CS Lewis' sci-fi trilogy: Out of The Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength

Down and Out In Paris and London
Nineteen Eighty Four
Animal Farm
- George Orwell

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas de Quincey

The Ghost in The Machine
The Case of The Midwife Toad
The Roots of Coincidence
- Arthur Koestler

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
Many novels have changed my life, but they are personal.

That's really what I'm looking for.

a reply to: dollukka

Yes! This! Wilbur Smith, especially the Egypt series, you will not regret it, berfect blend of intelligence, history, drama, sex, violence, introspect and escapism! Taita will show you the way.

a reply to: kosmicjack

I'm reading Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (it's a series and I'm on the second one). They're fantastic.

Also, I just read The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker--which was also great it was a historical urban fantasy.

And The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman--which was the last book in a series and the best out of the series.

If you don't want fantasy, might I suggest The Round House by Louise Erdrich?

And, if you haven't already: do yourself a favor and read A Clockwork Orange.

I could go on and on because books are life but--

What genre is your favorite? If you tell me, I can recommend all sorts of books for you

Also, though they are adolescent books, which when I read I wish had released earlier, Phillip Pullmans 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy really impacted me, so much I wish I could have read them years before I did. Kids books, but very very good.

a reply to: rukia

I don't really have a genre. I like a lot of different types of books, though I tend toward the classics and sci fi/fantasy. I'm really just looking to expand my horizons and see what other people are into who have something in common with me. I've wandered the library and the book store and Amazon. I've read all the best seller, top pick and must read lists but whoever makes those isn't necessarily anything like me. I tend to think the mere fact that we are all here gives us some sort of common denominator and I'd much rather know ATS's top picks than anyone else. We have such a variety of personalities and intellects and tastes, yet a thread runs among us.

My first suggestion would be the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy trilogy (all five books- don't ask).
Next would be the Gunslinger series, by Stephen King.

Really it depends on the genre of books that you like for individual titles

After I read James Joyce's "Ulysses" I've never been quite the same.

Same with anything by Hunter S. Thompson....

a reply to: kosmicjack
Check out books by:
Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfeld, China Mieville, Miyuki Miyabe, Susanna Clarke, Charles DeLint, Robert Jordan, Lemony Snicket, Phillip Pullman

and of course all of the classics like Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin. If you really are wanting some great fantasy--it's going to sound strange, but go and read some books from the children's section of your local library. I used to be a library page and it was amazing because sometimes, kid books had the most-original plots and best characterization.

Read Feed by MT Anderson and Unwind by Neal Schusterman, if you haven't ^_^

Especially Unwind. It got real lol: en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: rukia

Rukia, I agree with Gaiman Garth Nix and Pullman, and the rest I have not read so don't know, but don't you find Tolkien more like a history of fantasy lesson than a decent story? Then again if I were asking for recommendations and I hadn't already read It I'd be glad I did.

originally posted by: Learningman
a reply to: rukia

don't you find Tolkien more like a history of fantasy lesson than a decent story?

That's kind of a good characterization, now that you mention it. I never really thought so before but...

Skunkape23 made the fine suggestion of Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

Might I also add Skinny Legs and All by the same author?
The most interesting ride fiction has ever or likely will ever take me. After all, half the characters are inanimate objects.

I kind of just stopped reading fiction after his books as I've seen nothing that compares in it's beauty and artistic style.

a reply to: kosmicjack

Not knocking it in any manner but it's an archetype of the genre, if you have read a few fantasy novels its hard to really give a damn. Once I'd read them once I didn't find any other than the Hobbit, the children's book, to be enjoyable to read again at all. When the films of the LotR came out I reread them again, and it kinda made me less excited to see a proper film of some books I liked as a kid. And it sucks because the silmarillion would only ever have worked as a film in the 80's, no way people would like it now. And damn do I want to see an 80's Silmarillion movie.

If you really want a bizarre experience, try some China Mieville.

Dr. Michael Newton "Journey of Souls."

a reply to: kosmicjack

There are many, but I keep advising folks to check out this one. Souls meet up again and again, are reborn and in the 1st few hours of life, remember their past lives, then quickly memories fade and they move on and on.

Search and download free PDF. Short read....Really makes you think about why we are here, where we are going, and what we need to learn as males and females to females and then males...over and over.

"Back Again" by Larry Rich 2010

"Stories about the afterlife usually tell about getting there. This is a tale about going back the other way … from the pre-life." Larry Rich