I’d echo the support for Clavell’s *Tai Pan *and *Noble House *(in that order) as you’ve enjoyed Shogun. *Noble House *in particular is enormous!
If you enjoy intelligent historical fiction you could try Dorothy Dunnett’s two long series. The six Lymond books (set across 16th century Europe) and the eight Niccolo books (set in the 15th century). Each individual book is pretty long and complex - you won’t read each one in an afternoon so they should keep you busy!
I had to find out what happened next in The Historian. On reflection, it’s a bit silly, but it definitely qualified as a page-turner for me.
In a similar vein of dredging up family history through books and research, there’s The Ghost Writer by Harwood, which is most notable for some fantastic nested short stories, and The Thirteenth Tale - very gothic and made for bibliophiles.
**The Gone Away World **is really interesting and fun. It meanders a lot, but that’s good if you’re trying to stretch out your reading. Plus I know lots of people finish it and start reading it again immediately.
Personally, it’s taking me forever to get through Vanity Fair. It’s good, but I just can’t whip through it.
I love the Baroque Cycle, but I do agree its a convoluted read. On the plus side, however, a good portion takes place in Germany (Leipzig, Hanover, a few other places) so you could visit the places that you’re reading about…
Another vote for this! Fantastic read.
anything by Lois McMaster Bujold. she has fantasy, sf, a sf comedy of manners, sf romance…she has 2 series, one set in a universe like our historical universe, with 5 gods who are rather capricious, the second series is set in what is a post apocalyptic society except instead of modern america it was post apocalyptic a mage society with great golden cities. She has a sf universe that is set about a thousand years or so in the future based around a planet settled by russians, french and greeks that was isolated by a shift in the wormhole jumps but is now back to being accessable. That story arc involves one main family - and has stories ranging from military adventure through murder mystery through a comedy of manners in the style of 1800 britain. They also all come as ebooks and audiobooks. If you want a brief taste try Mountains of Mourning it is a short story introducing Miles VorKosigan, the protagonist of the majority of the sf series.
If you have no problem reading ebooks, webscriptions.net is Baen Books ebook online function, they have a free library you can read online or download in a bunch of NON DRM formats. They have over 100 books in the free library so you can see if you like that particular authors style.
Actually, I can highly recommend getting a PDA or ebook reader and going electronic. There are literally thousands of legally available books [and hundreds of thousands of illegally available usenet book files] in every subject matter you can think of. I recommend mobipocket, i have it on my PC and read and sort books on my PC, and load them into my moto 9m, mrAru’s treo and our kindle. I can fit several hundred books on the chip in my phone=)
You might be pleasantly surprised at how many German bookstores sell books in English. I was in Dresden in 1995, and while maybe 1 in 10 people on the street spoke some English, lots of people were studying and every bookstore I went into had an English section.
Still, you’re wise to be prepared in any case. May I recommend some Guy Gavriel Kay? There’s the original ‘Fionavar Tapestry’, though I like all of his books.
Herodotus has been a constant companion of mine for many years. It isn’t everyone’s idea of a page turner, but I love it and have worn out my first copy.
Where are you in Germany? Most German book stores have an English book section, although the prices are a little bit more than what you might be used too. Amazon.de also has English books, but you might need a friend to navigate the website for you.
Thanks for not making me be the one who brings this book up! I feel like people are getting tired of hearing me push it…
This one I wasn’t as crazy about, but his new one, The Hour I First Believed, definitely belongs in this thread.
autz, if you haven’t read Gone With the Wind, that’s a great one too!
off to inspect IATL’s other recommendations
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. and the Saga of Recluce books. They’re nice and thick and he tells a good story.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, of course. Deservedly a classic.
Gary Jennings’s Aztec is a great big historical novel about the fall of the Aztec Empire, as seen by a peasant who rises to become a translator in the court of Montezuma, seeing all levels of Aztec society along the way. Lots of adventure, sex, intrigue, combat, diplomacy, politics, exploration, etc. I re-read it every four or five years with great pleasure.
Another vote for George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Damned big and damned good. My two other favorite Martin books are Tuf Voyaging, a wonderful sf quasi-satire about power, ecology and overpopulation, and Fevre Dream, a thriller about vampires along the Missippippi before and just after the Civil War.
Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy is big and very, very good, but stumbles badly at the very end, IMHO. Still worth a read.
I’ve really gotten into John Scalzi lately. He writes great military sf - clever, funny and page-turning. Start with Old Man’s War and, if it hooks you like it hooked me, go from there to Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony and Zoe’s Tale.
Well, dangnabit, my recs have already been mentioned: The Lord of the Rings,Kristin Lavransdatter,Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Two other long series I really really enjoyed, but are a little “heavy”, so I always hesitate to recommend: The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, and The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott.
Enjoy!
I don’t see it recommended yet, so I’ll chime in with A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. It is the longest single book I own (as opposed to my omnibus edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide). It follows a few families in India in the 1950s, through romances and marriages and politics and all sorts of things. I really liked it, and it will definitely keep you occupied for a while.
It’s more contemporary history, but “Conspiracy of Fools” is very much worth reading, and quite interesting. After 100 pages I was in awe thinking “How does this mess possibly get 600 pages worse?”
ETA: Another vote in favor of Outlander, I loved it, and have zero tolerance for soft porn.
Swan Song, by Robert McCammon.
Post apocolypse survival similar to The Stand.
Another vote for The Name of the Wind (672 pp), and ditto being very impatient about the sequel not coming out yet!
The Lies of Locke Lamora (752 pp) and its sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies (784 pp) go very fast. Another case of series-interruptus, though.
You can get several Lois McMaster Bujold titles as omnibuses. Cordelia’s Honor (608 pp) is a good one to start with. Bujold is one of my very favorites, especially in hero/military sci fi mode (e.g., Miles Vorkosigan stuff, which *Cordelia’s Honor *begins). Her two more recent fantasy series are also good.
Robin Hobb is a notorious brick-maker. The covers of her paperbacks are much more garish and mass-markety than I think they should be; I think she’s a pretty nuanced, subtle, unexpected writer. I’ve deeply enjoyed the Farseer trilogy (464/675/757 pp), the Tawny Man trilogy (688/736/928 pp), the Liveship Traders trilogy (832/864/816 pp), and the Soldier Son trilogy (624/752/704 pp) (though I understand many of her fans didn’t like that last one so well).
Connie Willis’ Passage has 780 pp in paperback. The rest of her stuff is not so long, but deliriously good, especially The Doomsday Book (592 pp) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (512 pp). Great history mixed with science fiction.
Another vote for Guy Gavriel Kay: the omnibus of the Fionavar Tapestry is 792 pp. Tigana is 688 pp. Note that this author frequently writes fantasy with very thinly disguised but well-researched European history in it; most of it takes place in some other world with two moons, but there are nonetheless recognizable medieval French, Moorish Spaniards, Vikings, etc. in various volumes. The Fionavar Tapestry starts on Real Actual Earth before moving to an alternate reality, but his others are all in-universe. He notes in several acknowledgments that he’s writing historical fiction in a fantasy wrapper, though.
Acacia (753 pp) by David Anthony Durham, who usually writes straight-up historical fiction, is a great fantasy work. Its sequel is due in September!
I adored Anathem (will be 1008 pp in paperback, but only available as hardback for now) by Neil Stephenson, but like his Baroque Cycle, it takes some work. A less glossary-intensive one of his, originally under a pen name with his uncle, is Interface (641 pp). That’s politics and intrigue with just a dash of near-future sci fi.
You can get C.J. Cherryth’s Faded Sun trilogy as an omnibus (784 pp). She’s got other omnibuses too, though I haven’t read them yet. I liked the Faded Sun. Wikipedia describes it as “military science fiction” but I think I’d call it more political/cultural or world-building than military.
Ditto the posters above on finding too much formulaic-ness in Diana Gabaldon. I really wanted to like her books, but didn’t.
This is funny, because I’m reading “A Man In Full” right now, and thought of it when I saw the title thread. And I got it precisely so it would last until our next trip to the library, since last time I ran out of reading material too soon. I also read both of these Wally Lamb books that Lorax recommends. I really liked “I Know This Much Is True,” but the other one not so much.
My wife is reading “World Without End” that many of you have suggested, and we call it “Book Without End.”
Hey, Dung Beetle, I didn’t know there was a new one, thanks! WRT She’s Come Undone, it has a lot to live up to. If it were by an unknown, it would be lauded. I considered putting I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe on my list, but it pales in comparison to some of his other works. It was a page turner, though.
[quote=“CCYMan, post:56, topic:495377”]
This is funny, because I’m reading “A Man In Full” right now, and thought of it when I saw the title thread. And I got it precisely so it would last until our next trip to the library, since last time I ran out of reading material too soon. QUOTE]
You go to the library every three days?! That’s how fast I went through that one. In fact, I’m going to start it again when I finish Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. I can’t recommend that yet, as I just started the second book, but there’s lot’s of Dopers who love it.
I go to the library every Saturday when I’m in town. I hardly ever have any overdue charges because I know my books are due on some later Saturday, and can renew or renew 'em that day, as necessary.
Where in Germany are you going to be? Virtually any large city has either English-language book stores or book sellers who also carry English books, especially if it is a university city; and Amazon delivers easily within Germany, if you have a fixed address. Not that I would deny you the right to stock up on hefty tomes beforehand, but you’re not headed to Mongolia’s deserts here…