# Great books you've read that nobody else seems to know of... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 25, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215 "2006-04-25T22:29:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/21 "2006-04-26T13:43:44Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > As odd as it seems to me (as I read it as part of public education), no one I know has ever heard of _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich_ by Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. These people you know, they are retarded, yes? ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/22 "2006-04-26T13:47:53Z")
Dung Beetle, thanks for the recommendation, it looks like a good read. I’ll give it a try. I will offer Patricia A. McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld. A great fantasy that [QUOTE] xxxxx[/adventure, romance and a resonant mythology that reveals powerful truths about human natureQUOTE] I also enjoy The Man who Never Missed by Steve Perry. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/23 "2006-04-26T13:52:00Z")
John Steinbeck’s **The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights** Yes, _that_ John Steinbeck. “Grapes of Wrath”, “Mice and Men” Steinbeck. His take on Arthur is faithful but original. I was amazed I’d never heard of this when I picked it up. Since that single printing several years back, it seemsd to have fallen into obscurity: [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/hodges.htm](http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/hodges.htm) I’ve read both **The White Plague** and **The Iron Dream**. I’m a little surprised that the latter is listed as obscure, but maybe I shouldn’t be. A lot of the SF writers I grew up on now seem to be out of print and undeservedly forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/24 "2006-04-26T13:54:20Z")
Rather than a book, I’ll pimp an author: \*\*Keith Roberts \*\* (1935-2000). British writer of SF, fantasy and magical reality. Some of you may have heard of his story-cycle **‘Pavane’** but he wrote a whole lot more: - **The Furies** , an alien invasion story written as a tribute to John Wyndham, **The Chalk Giants** , a story of the rise of civilisation after a world war. Or the dreams and fantasies of a lonely loser. Or both. **‘Lemady:Episodes from a Writer’s Life’** , an autobiography about as revealing as Kiplings’ i.e. not very. But _beautifully_ written. \*All \* of his works are beautifully written. There are more. Lots more. Most of them are still in print, thanks to Wildside Press over there in the States. Do yourself a favour. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/25 "2006-04-26T14:10:42Z")
Wow, I messed that quote up. Let me try it again I will offer Patricia A. McKillip’s Forgotten Beasts of Eld. A great fantasy that offers > [@](#): > > adventure, romance and a resonant mythology that reveals powerful truths about human nature ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/26 "2006-04-26T14:30:00Z")
A few more: **Davy** by Edgar Pangborn. A prime contender for the greatest science fiction novel ever. A post-apocalypse novel with the history of Davy, who was king for a time. The characters jump off the page. **Replay** by Ken Grimwood. I know there are a few dopers who have read it, but it deserves more. It deals with the question: what would you do if you could live your life over? And over? And over? Grimwood came up with some fascinating permutations and some strong philosophical and emotional points. **Chronosequence** by Hilbert Schenk. In the early 80s, Schenck was one of the hottest writers in SF – four Hugo nominations in five years, with works filled with high adventure, quirky and fascinating characters, tight plotting, great concepts, and written in a way that made them impossible to put down. **Chronosequence** has to do with mysterious doings on a small island near Nantucket. For some reason, Schenck just stopped publishing after this, and his books have gone out of print. You should also seek out **Steam Bird** , a collection of two novellas: “Steam Bird” (about an atomic powered steam airplane) and “Hurricaine Claude.” ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/27 "2006-04-26T14:40:09Z")
> [@Dung Beetle](#): > > They _did_, you big silly! It is a good book though. I probably missed that because I hadn’t read the book at that time. It’s on my Blockbuster queue now, though. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/28 "2006-04-26T14:43:16Z")
Don’t thank me yet; I haven’t actually seen it… 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/29 "2006-04-26T15:04:58Z")
A few others: **The Devil’s Alternative** by Frederick Forsyth. Not quite as good as The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, but better, I think, than his more recent thrillers (which are themselves better than 90% of the thrillers out there). Wonderfully complex plot about the assassination of Yuri Andropov, back when he was KGB head, and the hijacking of a supertanker. **The Black Flame** – Stanley G. Weinbaum was called “science fiction’s James Dean”. He came and went in about a year, dying early of disease. He woulda been a major force in science fiction had he lived. His short stories, especially “A Martian Odyssey”, are in several anthologies (and we just discussed one of his stories a week ago). I was blown away to discover that he had written an entire novel, though. I’d never heard of it before. **The Bronze God of Rhodes** – L. Sprague de Camp was a great and, I think, underappreciated writer. Like his friend and contemporary, Isaac Asimov, he wrote just about everything, and was incredibly prolific – science fiction, fantasy, history, travel, biography, science fact. But asimov is still remembered and reprinted, while de Camp’s stuff was getting hard to come by, even in his lifetime. He also had a sadly short career as a historical novelist. His **dragon of the Ishtar Gate** is well-known, at least in sf/fantasy circles, but his others are less known, even there. This one is about the circumstances leading up to, and the actual construction of, the Colossus of Rhodes. It reminds me a lot of Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth”, in part because m,ore than half of the book goes by before the building actually starts. How can you not like it? de Camp was both engineer an historian, so it’s an unusually well-informed book. **An Elephant for Aristotle** – alse by L. Sprague de Camp. As he notes at the end, Aristotle gives an unusually accurate description of an Indian elephant in his writings. How did he see such a beast? de Camp postulates that the philosopher’s pupil, Alexander the Great, took it into his head to send such a beast back to his old tutor during his Indian campaign. This book chronicles the travels of the poor officer who got stuck with the duty of getting an elephant to walk all the way from India to Greece. (This is the Ancient World, after all – no trains or trucks. No boats big enough. No _bridges_ in most places, even. And you have to provide food all the way, and, even though you’re an army company, watch out for bandits and local warlords.) A heckuva book. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/30 "2006-04-26T15:25:21Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > John Christopher’s [Tripods Trilogy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods) was always a favorite of mine (_and_ my Dad’s), growing up. Basically an english boy and his newfound friends’ quest to escape a de-industrialized europe held for a century under the mental domination of alien conquerers. Did you see the “prequel” Christopher wrote a few years ago? It was called _The Rise of the Tripods_ or something similar, and it dealt with how the Tripods conquered 20th century Earth, setting the scene for the original trilogy. It was great to see the ideas put forth and the blanks filled – kind of what I hoped for from the Star Wars prequels – but the writing itself wasn’t all that hot. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/31 "2006-04-26T15:39:11Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > In several posts I’ve mentioned my admiration for **The Iron Dream** by Norman Spinrad. It’s an enormously admired and influential book to those in the SF community who’ve read it, but AFAIK it’s been out of print for some time, and hard to find copies of. > > … What starts out at first like a simple heroic fantasy eventually becomes a paen to fascist militarism, anti-Semitic paranoia and genocide… I read that. I wanted to take a shower afterwards. Very effective. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/32 "2006-04-26T16:50:14Z")
I’m very fond of **Space War Blues** by Richard Lupoff. It’s an expansion of his contribution to **Dangerous Visions** , “With the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Little Old New Alabama.” Apart from being a cool story, it appeals to my taste for narratives written in invented slang/dialect, a la **A Clockwork Orange**. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/33 "2006-04-26T17:54:34Z")
Every educated person should have a copy of _The Oxford Companion to Food_ by Davidson. A large-format tome, it contains not a single recipe; but it is the place to go to if you need to answer the question ‘What does penguin taste like?’ Need three pages on salt? You got it. Wanna read up on the history of bread? Gotya covered. The wonderful line drawings alone are with the price. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/34 "2006-04-26T18:02:11Z")
May just be a US/UK thing (or my circle of friends) but no one here in the states seems to have heard of [Iain M Banks](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-1487930-8401652?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Iain%20M.%20Banks) . ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/35 "2006-04-26T18:16:15Z")
I’ve read The Wasp Factory, and another Banks title, which I’ve forgotten, and it wasn’t on Amazon’s list. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/36 "2006-04-26T18:24:21Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > I’ve read The Wasp Factory, and another Banks title, which I’ve forgotten, and it wasn’t on Amazon’s list. There is a complication with Banks… He publishes his non-SciFi titles (such as the Wasp Factory) without the M, just as Iain Banks. I prefer his SciFi title, Player of Games and Feersum Endjinn are some of the best modern SciFi I’ve read (though his latest books have not been all that great IMHO). ---
**Author:** ![HeadNinja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b4bc9f/32.png) [@HeadNinja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeadNinja)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/37 "2006-04-26T18:45:33Z")
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. It is a remarkable survival horror book. It still holds up about 50 years later, and you can see its echoes in works by Steven King and Steve Niles on paper, loads of Zombie Vampire films, and a bunch of successful game franchises. The book feels like its full of cliches because every part of it has been cannibalized and made into horror cannon. Definitely a worthwhile read. He also has a bunch of original twilight zones to his credit. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/38 "2006-04-26T18:50:36Z")
**HeadNinja** – it’s also been filmed twice, but not very faithfully. Vincent Price (!) starred in **Last Man on Earth** , which was closer to thwe book than Charlton Heston’s **The Omega Man**. Maybe someday they’ll get it right. Matheson also wrote the book and screenplay for **the Shrinking Man** (filmed as **the Incredible Shrinking Man** and **Somewhere in Time**. He wrote lots of excellent short stories in the fiftyies which were subsequently anthologized. He wrote, as you note, a great many of the original **Twilight Zone** scripts. One of his TZ scripts that wasn’t done at the time was later filmed for Steven Spielberg’s **Amazing Stories** series. Matheso is very familiar to Sf/Fantasy fans, but he’s woefully unfamiliar to lots of ordinatry readers/viewers who have seen his work and not realized it. ---
**Author:** ![Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Boulter\_s\_Canary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boulter_s_Canary)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/39 "2006-04-26T19:09:03Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > You should also seek out **Steam Bird** , a collection of two novellas: “Steam Bird” (about an atomic powered steam airplane) and “Hurricaine Claude.” I _love_ **Steam Bird!** That final scene… (I’d better not spoil it). I lost my copies of **‘Silverlock’** and Steinbeck’s Arthurian stories years ago and haven’t been able to replace them over here - are they still in print in the US? ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215/40 "2006-04-26T19:23:21Z")
Silverlock is in print. I bought it on DungBeetle’s rec last year but haven’t read it yet. I just remembered a couple more relatively unknown goodies – **Rude Tales and Glorious** and **1339 or So** by Nicholas Seare – one of Trevanian’s pen names. Trevanian’s **Incident at Twenty Mile** is a good read too. It’s a historical western with a serial killer. Like his other books, you can read it straight or as satire. I haven’t run across anyone else who’s read it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-youve-read-that-nobody-else-seems-to-know-of/354215.md?page=3)