Great Books Thread

[Dr. Orange]

Hello my fellow SF-Oers.

 

I come with a question.

I need a new book to try over the boring holidays. What books do you recommend to read. Your top ten or just all time favorite.

 

>inb4 Twilight, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and 50 Shades. And please nothing that's in the media at the moment ex. Ender's Game, 12 Years a Slave or the Hobbit, I've already got those three down.

[Drasiana]

Literally anything in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. They're really engaging fantasy/comedy books.

 

Also, Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy is always a safe bet.

[jeth]

I really liked "The Name of the Wind" 

[Xortberg]

Literally anything in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. They're really engaging fantasy/comedy books.

 

Also, Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy is always a safe bet.

 

I've been meaning to read the Discworld series but holy damn there's a lot of books so I'm a little hesitant to get started. Also, never read Abhorsen but I do remember his Seventh Tower series being pretty swag back when I was a wee middle schooler. Thanks for reminding me he exists, I'll look at his other books sometime.

[mjakob42]

Currently reading Vladmir Nabakov's Lolita, and it's honestly one of the best books I've ever read. Yes, the content is extremely touchy, but the way it's written, just...ugh. Read it. Besides, it's a classic!

[LoneWolf]

Classic literature is best literature. I really liked Brave New World and any Shakespeare is great. Also read anything with the name Issac Asimov, Charles Dickens, or George Orwell on it. Should keep you occupied for a few years.

[Drasiana]

I've been meaning to read the Discworld series but holy damn there's a lot of books so I'm a little hesitant to get started. Also, never read Abhorsen but I do remember his Seventh Tower series being pretty swag back when I was a wee middle schooler. Thanks for reminding me he exists, I'll look at his other books sometime.

 

The great thing about Discworld is that you don't actually have to commit yourself to reading all of them. There's no real "main plot" in the series, though there are certain character groups (Rincewind, the Witches, Death, the Night Watch, etc) whose books tend to go in a certain order, but they're still fairly standalone. And yeah Nix's other books are really fun--I even still enjoy the Keys to the Kingdom series even though it's clearly directed at a much younger audience.

[Vy'drach]

I absolutely love Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon series. Long setting short, it's the Napoleonic Wars with the addition of dragons, not mindless beasts but intelligent creatures that form lifelong bonds with their "Captains," bonds that transcend all others, and they are often used for aerial warfare.

 

What I love most about the series is that the characters seem to be fully fleshed out, and not cardboard stand-ins that symbolize characters like most other stories I read. Even with dragons, it's written well enough that I'd forget the situations and characters are fiction, and when that realization hit I'd feel a bit sad because, in the words of Dane Cook, "I'm sad... because I know it will never happen." And then there's Captain Rankin, which one can not fathom the depth of the hatred my soul harbors for that man.

 

 

I also happen to be waiting for Roadside Picnic and the Harlan Ellison Collection, which includes I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Could not acquire Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? at this time unfortunately. I have heard good things about all of these.