Ahem…actually, you can find books in English pretty much anywhere in Germany…most bookstores have an entire section of books in English, every train station and airport has a wide selection…just in case.
I have to say that my experience in Frankfurt last fall does not support this. Bookstores had an English section, sure, but in only one of the maybe six we visited was there anything in that section that I wanted to read. It was mostly non-fiction glossy picture books, actually, with some Shakespeare and other public-domain material. In the airport, it was business titles and Harry Potter.
You ought to have called me up to show you around. We have the British Bookstore (near the Boerse), and another English bookstore right next to the English movie theater. Plus, frankly, if you did not find anything you wanted to read at our largest German bookstore, whose English section must carry about five thousand different titles, you either have already read a lot or are a fairly picky reader…
I have to third (fourth?) Guy Gavriel Kay. Tigana, Lions of Al-Rassan, and the Sarantium duo Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors are ones I tend to recommend.
Also for a giant set of books with a complex world and some great characters, you could check out Michelle West’s Sun Sword set, starting with The Broken Crown. I believe there are 8 total with some prequels coming out now. I liked her world a great deal and each book is nice and fat, so there’s a big bonus!
Also pick up anything by Dan Simmons. Try Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion and move right on to Illium.
Seconded, Conspiracy of Fools is excellent. But I prefer the Kurt Eichenwald’s earlier book The Informant for sheer holy-sh!t-how-can-this-be-a-true-story-ness.
Oh, I believe you. We were only there three days, and only went to bookstores that we saw on our way to somewhere else. My husband speaks German and found plenty he wanted in these smallish, mostly used or specialty book stores. I just wanted to point out that it’s not quite as easy as “every bookstore in Germany has lots of great English page-turners.” You’d have to go to the right stores.
I’ll be in a small town called Kleve. It’s not a tourist or university town, so I doubt they’ll have much selection of books in English
I’ll have to third Steven Erikson’s Malazan series. It is initially unforgiving, but the characters, plot and prose are excellent. I got books 3 and 4 at the same time, and had finished them both in 5 days. I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but I had a good time.
Gone With The Wind!
The collected short stories of William Somerset Maughm.
Carla Emory’s Old Fashioned Recipe Book. ( If you can find it. This is a telephone-book sized guide to living off the land, printed on cheap pulp paper. Everything from buying a piece of land, how and what to plant, how to buy, nurture, breed, and slaughter your own livestock, how to grind flour, bake bread, grow herbs, make cheese, pickles, …you name it. It’s gotten me through many a long dark night of the soul.)
How about the Otherland series by Tad Williams?
Triggered by Corvidae’s user name - what about ‘The Crow Road’ by Iain Banks?
And by Iain M Banks: Against a Dark Background and Consider Phlebas, both large books with a space opera theme, and fun to read.
Most of my recommendations have been mentioned already. But here’s a couple of others:
Haruki Murakami: Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Cancer Ward - I know, I know. It sounds like it would be heavy and too depressing but actually it’s an easy read, VERY thought-provoking and really moving. And brilliantly written.
That’s a great recommendation. I second it. Also, if you haven’t yet read:
Lonesome Dove
Shogun
Forever Amber
All the Harry Potter books
The Stand
I’d put those on your list as well.
I haven’t read any of his stuff, but people go wild for Patrick O’Brian. The movie Master and Commander was based on one (two?) of his books. I can’t vouch for their thickness, however.
You said you enjoyed “The Stand”; now I haven’t read that one, but my personal favorite Stephen King book, one I’ve re-read countless times, would be It. Or Bag of Bones – that’s another good one.
(But It is truly the best one.)
I might suggest much of Tad Williams’ work. His Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, and Otherland as well.
Also the Wars of Light and Shadow series by Janny Wurts. It’s a long one, 8 books so far and two more on the way, but I’ve enjoyed most of them (the last one kind of sucked.) In my opinion the first three Curse_of_the_Mistwraith, Ships of Merior, Warhost of Vastmark are the best.
As a few others up there have suggested purchasing a Kindle as a means to take along a lot of books, I might suggest as an alternative, to load up a bunch of audio books on to your mp3 player if you have one. It’s no substitute for an actual book, but if you’re like me and just can’t look at a screen for that long without your eyes startting to smart than it might be something to consider.
I was going to suggest these. The first set is fantasy, the adventures of a boy who works in the palace kitchen, but ends up deeply involved in a civil war and the plot by non-humans to destroy the entire human civilization. The second is science fiction, but most of it takes place in a virtual-reality system where almost any setting Williams can think of gets used.
I would also recommend any book collaborated on by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Each one is excellent, and they’re all long. Footfall is my favorite, I think, but Lucifer’s Hammer is great as well. And The Mote in God’s Eye (and it’s shorter sequel, The Gripping Hand) features some truly alien aliens.