I read one to two books a week from varying genres so I spend a lot of time in the bookstores. Lately things have started to look stale so I could use more input.
Anyway, my top 10 favourite books with series counting as one:
The Aztec by Gary Jennings
Very interesting and foreign feeling historical fiction. Jennings is probably my favourite author. though Aztec Autumn and Aztec Blood are serious hack work. The latest book by him was actually ghost written off of his notes after the author died. I would guess that the one prior to that was also written off of notes since it seemed to be almost a total rehash of the first one.
I, Claudius (and Claudius the God) by Robert Graves
Some definitive historical fiction. Graves really knows his stuff and can tell a story.
The Lord of the Rings Series by Tolkein (not the Hobbit though)
The definitive fantasy series. It set the mark for what fantasy should be.
The Dragon Lance chronicles by Weiss and Hickman
This was the first fantasy series I read all the way through. It had its own problems but definately their own unique charm. It was also the first story where I felt a definate link to some of the characters.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The definitive Cyberpunk novel. My friends and I used to say that Gibson was raised by a voodoo high priestess and computer geek turned super criminal because he seemed so knowledgeable on so many varied fronts.
My above list is fiction-centric but yours does not have to be. Tell me about what your favourite books are andwhat you are currently reading.
Currently I am reading Robert Aspirin’s MYTH series. They are entertaining but I wouldn’t say they are actually good.
Jennings is your favorite author and Aztec your favorite of his works? Interesting! I liked it least, my favorite being The Journeyer, followed by Raptor, then Spangle. Though I liked Aztec very much, it just didn’t seem to thrum with life the way his other books did. I didn’t bother with Aztec Blood and read just a few pages of Aztec Autumn (though I think he did in fact write that one himself) before putting it aside.
My top five, in terms of the amount of joy and enjoyment they’ve given me over the years …
The World According to Garp, John Irving
The Stand, Stephen King
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
Ahab’s Wife, Sena Jeter Naslund
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
I’ve got another five or 10 (or 20) that have had equal impact but these are my favorite books in the world. I think.
What I’m reading now: Good Omens by Gaimen and Pratchett. I have to say it’s not all that, based on the build-up it got on these boards. For my money, this type of quirky apocolyptic stuff is covered much better by Tom Robbins! But still enjoyable. I see they like the little trademark symbol, which may account for its popularity around here.
Wow! I opened the thread, and saw that the first two listed in the OP (Aztec and I, Claudius) were two of five I’d list. In addition to those, I’d add (in no particular order):
Catch-22. I lied… this is easily #1.
Cat’s Cradle.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
All of which I assume are familiar to the average doper and need no further description.
Mine are: 1. The dragonlance 9-ilogy
2. A clockwork orange (gotta love the dialect)
3. BlackHawk Down
4. Raw Deal
5. Rip Tide
Those are subject to change as the old memory improves…
It wasn’t a tough decision for me to rank the Aztec so highly. I used to live very close to Mexico and the public schools actually focused on Mexican/Aztec history pretty heavily.
Of Jennings’s works I would rank them as follows: The Aztec, Raptor, The Journeyor, Spangle, and the other two Aztec books equally as the worst.
I don’t particularly like Steven King but I have been meaning to read more Irving. Looks like I will be back to the bookstore tonight. Thanks for posting that one Ellen Cherry. I have also been meaning to read Catch-22 for years but keep putting it off.
G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. This one is so much fun I’m reading it again, for the umpteenth time. The annotated version by Martin Gardner.
Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm.
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.
Knut Hamsun’s Pan.
Now reading Little Dorrit,…yeah, right, still not finished. Maybe because I’m dipping back into the Chesterton instead of concentrating on Dickens. (Sister Fanny has just set her cap for Mr. Sparkler, to Amy’s horror, not so much because Fanny likes him, but to irritate Mrs. Merdle.)
> Douglas Coupland’s Generation X.
> Geoff Ryman’s 253.
> The first (later) volume of The Alan Clark Diaries.
> Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho.
> Shawn Levy’s Rat Pack Confidential.
Currently reading Douglas Coupland’s All Families Are Psychotic; just finished an earlier Coupland, Damien Thompson’s The End of Time and Max Hastings’ history of the Falklands War.
Iam trying to write a mystery story with my mother, so the last few books I have read are along those lines, Sue Grafton’s P is for Peril, Hard Eight oh, and am in the middle of Salmon of Doubt.
How close to Mexico? I also admit that that was one of the reasons I picked up the zillion-page book, myself, and couldn’t put it down (of course, it helped that when I left for a 6-week stint of field work I made sure that it–and “Teach Yourself Calculus”–were the only books I took, thus forcing me to read nothing else!) It is a fantastic book–though quite graphic and disturbing at times. I bought the sequel looking for more of the same, and it seemed to me just to be a repository for all of the graphic violence and gratuitous pedophelia that he cut from the first book; not only did I stop reading it forever after the second chapter, I may just throw it away instead of trading it to a used book store lest somebody else accidentally purchase that travesty. Yuck. And such a shame, too, after Aztec…
To answer the second part of your OP, I am currently in the middle of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. For some reason, I’ve never read it before and thought, “why the hell not?” It is, so far, a bit less than I expected and I think I’d have enjoyed it more if I’d picked it up ~15 years ago.
I’m working my way through all the Hugo award winners right now, but I have a hankering for some elves, orcs and such. I’m thinking of doing some of Wiess and Hickman’s Dragonlance stuff. Any other suggestions?
For those that like SF, the Hugo and Nebula award winners are great places to get reading suggestions. Is there a similar award for fantasy?
Oh man, so many great books. My favorite author is Mark Twain. Love that guy. My favorite books are:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Far and away. Fantastic.
Roughing it by Mark Twain. Pretty funny and very interesting as a sketch of what frontier life was like.
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Classic. Love it.
Poland by Michener. I absolutely loved that book.
Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Good stuff.
Honorable mentions: The Innocents Abroad, All Quiet on the Western Front, Alas, Babylon, and Strange Victory (an excellent book on the German invasion of France in WWII and why it turned out why it did).
Oh yeah, I’m almost done with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and next on my list is either a collection of Kafka stories or Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.
Barnes and Noble/B. Dalton is selling hardback classic literature for about $7 per book and now with a buy two get the third book free deal. So I’ve bought many a classic novel and am now chewing my way through my new collection.
The Liaden Universe series by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
The Jhereg series by Steven Brust
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (I just reread this over the weekend)
The Fletch & Flynn novels by Gregory MacDonald
I just finished reading The Bean Trees (as listed above) and Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons over the weekend. Right now I’m reading House of Leaves and Memory of Fire, and re-reading The Stand and I plan to start Coraline by Neil Gaiman later this week.
1- The Company series by Kage Baker. Cyborgs, time travel, conspiracy theories…this suker’s got it all!
2- Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. Set in Georgia in 1906 it’s funny, sweet, and delightfully weird just like good Southern fiction should be.
3- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. The first sci-fi/fantasy I ever read as a kid and it just opened up a whole new world for me.
4-The Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries by Reginald Hill. I’m a sucker for British police procedurals.
5- Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. Just takes the whole vampire thing to a different level.
Right now I’m reading Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs (a forensic anthropoligist solving murders kind of thing), Ramona the Pest with my six year old, The Giver with my nine year old, and listening to Gaiman’s American Gods on tape.
I have also been meaning to read Catch-22 for years but keep putting it off.