Recommend a Book

Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Stephen King's book Gerald's Game.

Good read (like most of King's books).

Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

All of David Gemmell's books are excellent. They're all stand alone novels and not series where you have to read it in an order, although some of them are considered series you don't have to read them in order to understand everything. I hate romance in my fantasy books and he puts in just enough to make the character more human. IMO his writing style is simple and easy to understand.

Guy Gavriel Kay is a good author too. I've only read The Lions of Al-Rassan but it was good enough for me to want to read his other novels. This book was more political and the setting was basically in medieval Spain. IMO I found it very violent but I still loved it.

Someone already recommended Maragret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance novels. I also enjoyed reading the series. It has your typical elves, dragons, dwarf's, knights, and an half-elf plus the saving the world.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

As my first post on this site, i thought reccommending a book is appropriate (even if the thread's a bit old!), since i'm kind of obsessed....

Almost everybody has reccommended new(ish) and popular(ish) books, so i thought i'd shout out a few all-time faves which are a bit off the beaten track....

"Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake
This is one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written. No action, not much plot, but a lot of heavy atmosphere, bizarre characters and astounding writing.... it's like drowning in beautiful language! The two sequels "Gormenghast" and "Titus Alone" are also excellent, but not quite so essential. Way, way better than LOTR (although i confess most people diagree with me on that!). I'm re-reading it now for the first time in fifteen years, and i find that there are still paragraphs i remember almost whole...

"The Book & the Sword" by Jin Yong (Louis Cha)
Awesome kung fu novel by one of the world's most popular novelists. Originally published in daily serial form in HK's Ming Pao newspaper, so it moves at a cracking pace! There are several translation but the best by miles is the one by Graham Earnshaw from Oxford University Press (US)... a bit expensive but a beautiful hardback as well as a thrilling read. Like all his works i've readto date it has a sly sense of humour in with the madcap action... and a crazy twisty plot to boot.

"The Cold Six Thousand" by James Ellroy
Possibly the most cynical crime novel ever written, with some of the most intense, almost anti-literary prose ever written. There's not a paragraph over five lines, and his clipped, short, no-BS style is jaw-dropping. Most of the characters are obsessive, violent, psychotic and racist, so it's an often uncomfortable read, but well worth it. You also get a fictional "insider" view of the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK as the author twists reality and fiction together beautifully.

"The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson
Anderson's sf is so-so, but his fantasy novels are outstanding! This is the book which inspired Michael Moorcock's Elric novels, and for my money it's way better. Set in the Danelaw of Medieval Britain, it mixes folklore and myth with a tragic love-story and lots of intense fighting! Like Conan but with a lot more finesse.

PPS - who reccommended Ayn Rand? I read "The Fountainhead" as a teenager and i laughed my butt of but i don't think i was supposed to. That's some scary '50s right-wing craziness right there, my advice is avoid like the plague! But then again i'm a leftist nutter, so what do i know? Tongue

Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:30 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, a really well written book with a really good story. Check it out if you got the time

Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

hmmm.... my favorite books that I'd recommend are....
the Ender series and the Bean series by Orson Scott Card
the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
anything by HP Lovecraft
the Xanth series by Piers Anthony is amazingly good
Anita Blake - the earlier books
and probably the Philip Marlowe series by Raymond Chandler - although those are kind of 1930s detective novels, so not many people that I've met are into it.....

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 3:17 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Anything from Laurell K. Hamilton.
Earlier Anita Blake books and Merry Gentry are my favorites, I'm currently reading A Kiss of Shadows ^^