# Name a good book that you're pretty sure nobody else has read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 22, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941 "2008-08-22T17:32:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2008, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/101 "2008-08-25T22:39:30Z")
Also the “Finn Family Moomintroll” series by Tove Jansson. I was and still am absolutely mesmerized by these books. I actually found Moomintroll magnets at a shop in Honolulu. Jill M. from Junior High introduced me and she and I are the only people I know of that have even heard of the Moomins. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2008, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/102 "2008-08-25T22:40:14Z")
**The Golden Age** , by John C. Wright. Incredibly well-imagined far-future sci-fi. [QUOTE=Struan] Down to a Sunless Sea, by David Graham. It’s a horribly dated, racist and sexist post-apocalyptic thriller concerning the passengers of a trans-Atlantic airliner in the aftermath of a nuclear war, but there are a couple of passages that have stuck with me for twenty years - particularly the bit where the Russian plane needs to lighten the load. [/QUOTE] I read it that long ago as well and had the same reaction, and it has stuck with me in the same way. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/103 "2008-08-25T22:44:16Z")
Well, I’d say this one qualifies, as when I posted a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=375619) about it, nobody answered me: [Extinction](http://www.hammond.co.uk/extinctionpageandprologue.html), by Ray Hammond. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2008, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/104 "2008-08-25T23:03:55Z")
[QUOTE=Hazle Weatherfield] Also the “Finn Family Moomintroll” series by Tove Jansson. I was and still am absolutely mesmerized by these books. I actually found Moomintroll magnets at a shop in Honolulu. Jill M. from Junior High introduced me and she and I are the only people I know of that have even heard of the Moomins. [/QUOTE] I read the Moomin books, as a child. Warm memories of a very lonely childhood. ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/105 "2008-08-26T00:20:20Z")
_The Dykemaster_ / _The Rider of the White Horse_ (depending on the translation, german title _Der Schimmelreiter_) by Theodor Storm, published 1888. It deals with the career of an ambitious young dykemaster in the marshes of North Frisia. It’s a fascinating depiction of the life of this man, his relation to the rural society around him and the world in which he lives. It’s a novella of a hundred and something pages that you can easily read in one go. Many people are put off by novellas by I tend to like them - a single idea, done right. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/106 "2008-08-26T00:55:20Z")
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor] If so many people read the darn thing, howcome Hambly didn’t write that promised sequel? Or put out a hardcover edition? :dubious: :mad: ☹ [/QUOTE] I’m not sure about the “so many”… I understand that _Bride of the Rat-God_ wasn’t a great seller… and a hardcover would be up to the publisher not the author (wouldn’t it?) Doesn’t mean it’s not a good book though, and you’re surprised that amongst the Dopers there’d be a few who’d read a lesser known book by a well-known fantasy author? 🙂 (I do wonder though – just WAG here – whether timing has something to do with it… Hambly said she was planning a sequel back in 2001… which wouldn’t have been long before her husband died… perhaps other priorities took over). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/107 "2008-08-26T03:44:15Z")
[QUOTE=Baker] …The Vicar of Christ, by Walter Murphy. It’s about a former American Chief Justice of SCOTUS, who winds up, after a chain of circumstance, becoming Pope. [/QUOTE] Nitpick: it’s simply “Chief Justice of the United States.” See 28 U.S.C. 1. Another vote for _Replay_ by Ken Grimwood, a very thought-provoking, well-written time travel story. I like lots of books that’ve already been mentioned in this thread. I’d add _Founding Father_, by Richard Brookhiser, a fascinating book about George Washington in the American popular imagination; _Tuf Voyaging_, a wonderful SF novel by George R.R. Martin; and _Aztec_ by Gary Jennings, an amazing historical novel about the Aztec Empire both at its pinnacle, and during its breathtakingly swift fall to the Spanish conquistadors. All are well worth a read. ---
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/108 "2008-08-26T04:57:17Z")
**1601** by none other than Mark Twain. Not really a book; more like a pamphlet which you could read in ten minutes. It is set in the court of Elizabeth I, and features Shakespeare, Raleigh, and a few other literary luminaries as the queen’s guests in extremely bawdy conversation. Twain set out to imitate Samuel Pepys’ style, and did an admirable job of it. Pepys himself would have described it as “Nott safe for ye work”. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/109 "2008-08-26T10:34:45Z")
The Broken Sword by Pohl Anderson,quite a few years old ,a Sword and Sorcery story set in the Viking ages but written long before the S&S craze(Apart from Tolkien of course). A bloody good read and I most higly recommend it. ---
**Author:** ![JackHandy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@JackHandy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JackHandy)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/110 "2008-08-26T10:41:35Z")
My Bloody Life ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/111 "2008-08-26T10:45:18Z")
Becker’s Ring by Steven Martin Cohen - a darkly humourous novel about a serial mutilator who uses surgical techniques to deform his victims. Honest, it’s funnier than it sounds. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/112 "2008-08-26T11:07:29Z")
[QUOTE=ivan astikov] Becker’s Ring by Steven Martin Cohen - a darkly humourous novel about a serial mutilator who uses surgical techniques to deform his victims. Honest, it’s funnier than it sounds. [/QUOTE] I think this one’s going on my Christmas list. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/113 "2008-08-26T11:08:32Z")
_Faithful Ruslan_ by Georgi Vladimov. _My Sweet Orange Tree_ by Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos, though technically I know that the one person I recommended it to also read it - and hated it. I’d have nominated _Mr God, This is Anna_, but I know of one other Doper who has also read the thing. All three made me weep when I read them for the first time. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/114 "2008-08-26T11:43:38Z")
[QUOTE=Ranchoth] I think this one’s going on my Christmas list. Thanks! [/QUOTE] Ya more than welcome, **Ranchoth**. 😉 Have you seen it’s price on Amazon though? $61! What’s all that about? ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/115 "2008-08-26T20:33:09Z")
[QUOTE=Equipoise] Am I one of the few who’s read **Norstrilia** and **The Best Of** by [Cordwainer Smith](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith)? For as highly influential as he was, I rarely see him mentioned. He’s still my favorite SF writer. [/QUOTE] I have damnnear everything Cordwainer Smith wrote. You are not alone! 😃 I fell in love with his hand with the English language ever since I read “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” in high school. (Authors with lovely hands for language generally sucker me in even if the story itself is kind of meh. An example is the Hellflower trilogy by eluki bes shahar, aka Rosemary Edgehill, which I doubt too many people have read. While it’s a pretty pedestrian story, the dialect and vocabulary that the author used for the protagonist fascinated me so much I read the entire thing) Has anyone read [The Winter Prince](http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Prince-Action-Packs/dp/0142500143/ref=pd_sim_b_2) by Elizabeth E. Wein? It’s an AU retelling of the Arthurian legend from Medraut’s POV, and has stayed with me for years after I first read it. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/116 "2008-08-26T20:53:18Z")
Two of my very favorite books: _ **The Assyrian** _ and _ **The Blood Star** _, both by Nicholas Guild. It’s actually a single story, the second picking up exactly where the first one left off. What frustrates the hell out of me is that the second book (the better of the two) was never published in paperback, and is nearly impossible to find (without paying $80 from an online seller). ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/117 "2008-08-26T22:05:37Z")
[QUOTE=Equipoise] Oh, ha, I did a search after the fact and Voyager [mentioned him](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10089272&postcount=53) August 11, in a thread I started, no less! [/QUOTE] A great writer. I have the original paperbacks (from Pyramid, I think) - The Boy who Bought Old Earth (The Planet Buyer in my edition) and the Underpeople. Nobody wrote like Mr. Linebarger. Everyone go out and get Norstrilia - you won’ t be sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/118 "2008-08-26T22:16:57Z")
[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew] **Space War Blues** by Richard Lupoff? [/QUOTE] Don’t have that, but how about _Sacred Locomotive Flies_ by him? It is based on his Ova Hamlet satires from the Ted White Amazings and Fantastics. And there is \*Ardor on Ardos \* by Andy Offutt, a Barsoom parody with sex, with a heroine who looks like Elizabeth Taylor. I should mention that this was written long enough ago so that this is not a description of a horror story character. How about Richard Hooker’s sequels to MASH - the real ones, not the ones based on the TV show. The ones I read are \*MASH Goes to Maine \* and _MASH Mania_. In these, the standard curse word for the characters is “Democrat” and in the final one Hawkeye tells a fable of how he convinced a sea monster to incinerate Hiroshima when it was discovered that the bomb wouldn’t work. Designed by Hooker to give Alan Alda the cold shivers no doubt. 🙂 As for TV shows, Tom Disch wrote two Prisoner novels, Keith Laumer wrote one for The Invaders, and Murray Leinster wrote for Time Tunnel and Land of the Giants. Theodore Sturgeon did the novelization of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - the original movie. ---
**Author:** ![Gulo\_gulo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bcef8e/32.png) [@Gulo\_gulo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gulo_gulo)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/119 "2008-08-26T22:17:35Z")
I have a minor obsession with [Flicker](http://www.amazon.com/Flicker-Novel-Theodore-Roszak/dp/155652577X) by Theodore Roszak. There’s something about his idea of movies within movies that intrigues me. (And another fan of _Bride of the Rat-God_ here. Great book!) ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2008, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941/120 "2008-08-26T22:44:53Z")
[QUOTE=Gulo gulo] I have a minor obsession with [Flicker](http://www.amazon.com/Flicker-Novel-Theodore-Roszak/dp/155652577X) by Theodore Roszak. There’s something about his idea of movies within movies that intrigues me. [/QUOTE] That book made me afraid of movies for awhile. I don’t know if I understood what he was saying, but it affected me anyway. How about one from a best-selling author? _Anything for Billy_ by Larry McMurtry? Anyone else read it? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/name-a-good-book-that-youre-pretty-sure-nobody-else-has-read/460941.md?page=7)