I was going to mention Jack London or Rudyard Kipling but I really don’t know if their book qualify as “Brain dead action book”. Carry on.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Rafael Sabatini has some good pirate stories on Gutenberg. I recommend **Captain Blood ** and The Sea Hawk.
Not Gutenberg, but Kipling’s With the Night Mail: A Story of 2000 AD is not to be missed.
It’s a 1905 view of 2000, and the action centers around an ill-fated mail-dirigible’s run to Quebec. Reads like a sailor’s yarn.
The best part is all the extradiagetic supplementals. (Mock advertisements for “futuristic” airship and monoplane products, in the style of patent advertisements from the turn of the century.) Whee!
I’m a sucker for books like those. Even when they are crap (my favourite book of all time reads like it was written by an illiterate monkey [it’s called "The Forever War, about a war between mankind and aliens, and the major plot point is the difficulty in fighting a modern war where relitivity often raises it’s head, then there is the moral at the end of the story]).
I’ve got a couple really old books that I like (pre 1970’s at least). One called the R-factor, and it is set around modern time, and it’s one plot feature is that the main character is living in a world where your job is given to you based on how much your IQ is raised by a drug called R-??. The other is called Space Merchants, and it’s only plot feature is the main character is at the top of a world completely run by corporations, includes ads for things like cigarettes and what not. All of these books are very poorly written, but I love reading old “in the future there will be. . .” books; even when, as the three books I’ve listed, the story is a one trick pony.
FYI: I’ve downloaded a number of the suggestions in this thread, and I’m currently reading Verne’s “FRom the Earth to the Moon”. I think it is really interesting that the sterotypical american hasn’t changed in all the years since the book was written. IE, attitude towards guns/artilery, warlike nature, I’ve read up to the part about the duel; it seems like Verne didn’t have a high opinion of americans.
I don’t suppose anyone ever wrote a book about the use of Zepplin’s in war, because that would be something to read. I’m definately going to keep an eye open for “With the Night Mail”, partly because it has a Zepplin/Derigible, and because it mentions Canada. I aways get a kick out of reading something Canadian in a book, or comming accross a character that has my name (I also think it is really cool when Jepardy has a Canadian Category).
That link, is that the complete text?
Ask and you shall receive:
Try H.G. Wells, particularly The First Men in the Moon, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.
For horror/action, try Dracula which holds up extremely well.
And for straight-ahead action/adventure there’s Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King.
All of these are page-turners.
Don’t forget Wells’ * The War in the Air. * Now, there’s a Zeppelins-at-war story for you.
Yup, it’s just a short story. But a ripping yarn, nonetheless.
Yeah, that book was so crap that it won the two most prestigious awards in Science Fiction: the Nubula and Hugo. Haldeman is such a hack that he’s only won a measly 21 other awards for fiction and is a respected poet. Geez, what an illiterate monkey.
That’s strange, the actual writing of the “Forever War” didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t feel really drawn into the story, it felt more like a video game, I was given the barest bones minimum, and from that I created the rest of the story (I liked my verson of the “Forever War” better than the written version). The writing read like star trek (<6/10) to me, superficial, and as if there was a bone to pick. To me the book didn’t feel fleshed out, (FYI, I thought LOTR (8.5-9/10) was over done, too much fleshing out).
The book was better than day of the Triffids (5.5/10) to be sure; I stopped reading it, and started creating my own story when the guy discovered, that there was no law anymore, and that in theory (if only it changed to practice) he could do anything he wanted. (Was it set in London, I don’t remember), but anyway, the city I thought looked a lot my home town. Triffids (written version) seemed a little bit hokey to me too.
For compairison purposes, “From the Earth to the Moon, and Around the moon, or what ever it’s called”(8.5/10) really drew me into the story, Michael Creton’s “Prey”(7.5-8/10) drew me into the story (although his harping on the lies, and deception themes got to be a little much, it would go good with Hamlet (8.5-9/10) IMO, to read both at the same time).
But to me it felt like “Forever War” was trying to tell a story (a good story), but fell short, and left it to me to improve the story, something like a guided writing assignment. I’ve also seen the “Why did you start it” theme way too many times for it to be anything other than a tired cliche.
All in all, I would give the book a 6.5 - 7 out of 10, I don’t really think the book deserved to win any awards. Unfortunately Literature is not math; I’m glad you’re not my Eng teacher, otherwise I would bomb an assignment on that book.
As far as the “perfect” book, the book I compair all other books to: Harry Potter, either of the last two. Why: (w/o going into too much detail) They are both dictionary sized books, but they are not too long for the story (length doesn’t matter to me, a sentance can be too long if it’s poorly written), you barely notice the length, you barely notice the time passing, you are completely destroyed, and recreated inside the story.