Favorite books / What are you reading now?

[thez]

Because I read way, way too much, I often run low on reading material. As such, I frequently need to search for suggestions. Figured I'd post the sorts of stuff that I've gotten in to, and see if anyone has any tips on places to look.

Stephen King - read almost all of his stuff, absolutely love The Dark Tower
Bernard Cornwell - Warlord Chronicles, Archer's Tale
George RR Martin - Song of Ice and Fire
Stephen R Donaldson - Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever (all of the books to date)
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time
Terry Goodkind - Sword of Truth (though I'll admit, my excitement about these faded after the 4th or 5th one)
Neil Gaiman - Bad Omens, American Gods
L.E. Modesitt Jr - Chaos stuff, though I got bored after the first couple of books about the same character with different names; the Alector trilogy
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon
SM Stirling - The Emberverse series
Jim Butcher - Dresden Files and Codex Alera
Orson Scott Card - All of the Enderverse, but preferred the Bean stuff, Empire
Tad Williams - Otherland series
Dan Simmons - Ilium/Odyssey, Hyperion/Endymion
Raymond Feist - first couple of Riftwar books, got bored after a while
Iain M. Banks - The Algebraist
R. Scott Bakker - Prince of Nothing trilogy
Frank Herbert - Dune et al
Read through the first Shannara book and didn't have any desire to continue.

There's a lot more, but that's the sort of stuff that I have sitting on my book shelf. I tend to enjoy epic fantasy, but the sort of books that have a continuous plot where characters develop over many books -- one of the turn offs for me in the Chaos series and the Riftwar series was the lack of character continuance. I'm also a huge sci-fi fan, but it's harder to pin down series of sci-fi books...I've got almost every Star Wars book, but I haven't touched those in years.

Anyways...yeah...any suggestions?

 

[JimJohnson]

Sword of Truth
Wheel of Time (last book comes out in 09)

 

[johnnylongmire]

GREATEST SCI-FI DECOLOGY

MISSION EARTH

 

[Zajiku]

I am reading the trilogy by Philip Pulman called "His Dark Materials" they made a movie out of Book 1 called The Golden Compass, anyway its:

The Golden Compass - Book 1
The Subtle Knife - Book 2
The Amber Spyglass - Book 3

Fantastic books, if you enjoyed the movie you will enjoy the book(s) even more.

-Zaj

 

[elric]

This might be an obvious answer for me, but Michael Moorcock's series The Elric Saga is an excellent fantasy series. The entire Eternal Champion line from Michael Moorcock is a good read.

If you're a fan of Sci-fi I'd recommend Frank Herbert's Dune series...all of them are excellent books...his son Brian Herbert put out a few prequels which are also a good read.

 

[DT]

Finished Sword of Truth and I was pleased with it.

I actually need to read more. Always wanted to read Wheel of Time series, but haven't been able to find any copies.

 

[PRWraith]

The Wheel of time is good but for me it runs into the problem of to many books.

 

[thez]

Yeah, DT -- I was surprised by how well he finished the series, as the past couple of books before the last one hadn't really been that good for me.

The list *is* long, but Wheel of Time is on there somewhere =p

I tend to think of HDM as more of children's books, but those are great books as well.

Will look into Moorcook.

 

[Anthrax]

Check out David and/or Leigh Eddings, he has a great series revolving around a character named Belgarion.

Also would check out Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon line with the character Takeshi Kovacs. Really enjoyed these books.

 

[thez]

Completely forgot about Richard Morgan -- loved all of the Kovacks books, and Market Forces completely blew me away.

Guess we can also add Gibson's Neuromancer on there, too.

I've heard the name Belgarion brought up before, and will also look into that!

 

[lachica]

If you like books about vampires,

Twilight is really good

There's a series of 4 books all together. I'm picking up the third book today

 

[Brano11]

The only book i have ever actually sit down (outside of school) and read was called Hot Zone. It was about the eboli (sp?) virus outbreaks in africa. I thought it was a good book, but im into that kinda science type of stuff.

 

[nox]

I've read everything by Augusten Burroughs, he's by far my favorite writer. Went to his signing and talking about his newest book, A Wolf at the Table.

Currently, I'm reading The Eight by Katherine Neville. If you liked The Da Vinci Code, You WILL love this book. It has gotten on my top 5 favorite books. HIGHLY recommend it.

 

[GnobodyGnows]

Dan Simmons - Ilium and Olympos have elements of epic fantasy, science fiction, and history. A shitpot better than his Hyperion crap.

F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack stuff is excellent.

For an oddball take on vampires, I enjoyed Brian Lumley's Necroscope stuff.

Some of Harry Turtledove's alternate history stuff is pretty good.

Just about everything by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston (separately or jointly) is pretty good.

Kelly Armstrong's Women of the Underworld books are pretty good as well.

I've got a bunch more "go to" books and authors that I reread consistently, but these are a few that I'd recommend since they tend to be off the beaten path, yet they are similar in feel to some of the books on your list.

EDIT: Oops, just noticed that you have Dan Simmons listed already. Missed that when I read yer post. Oh well - the Ilium/Olympos tale was good enough to list twice I guess

 

[dulak]

Wow, I'm amongst fellow nerds here lol. As far as books go, I've got tons and all of them are really good.

R.A. Salvatore: All of the Forgotten Realms books
Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman: Dragonlance, The Death Gate Cycle
Glen Cook: The Black Company: There's like 6-9 books in that set
E.E. Knight: Vampire Earth series
Eragon and Eldest (have Brisingr preordered)
Anne Rice: Vampire Chronicles
As previously mentioned, David Eddings: The Redemption of Althalus
Stephen King: The Eyes of a Dragon

Now I would go through and list my library but that would take a while as I am only missing a very few books from having completed the Dragonlance series as well as the Forgotten Realms series. I also have the first 6 of the Black Company. He's released another 3 but I can't get my hands on em lol.

 

[thez]

Oh, well...if we're going to list specific Steven Kings...All of the DT books were amazing, but you can see his progression as a writer...there's a marked difference in the quality of the first four vs. the final three, so that as good as the first four are, the finale is breath-taking. Outside of the DT series, though, I'd have to say that Insomnia was my favorite of his. Past that, I really liked Duma Key, Salem's Lot, It, and Dreamcatcher (though I absolutely hated the movie). I've read a lot of his other works...Tommyknockers, Needful Things, Dead Zone, etc, but those are my favorites.

While I'm entertained by the Eragon series, it feels extremely derivative. I felt like I was reading fantasy versions the Star Wars plot lines mixed with Baldur's Gate or something...if Eragon gets his legs chopped off or falls in lava in the third book, I'll probably start crying.

 

[hawthorne]

If the only Shannara book you have read was the first one, I highly recommend you give it another glance. My suggestion is to start with either the Word and the Void series, or the newest, Genesis of Shannara. Highly entertaining post-apocalyptic fantasy.

Many good suggestions in this thread so far. I recommend the Morgaine series by Cherryh if you can find it. Anything by Philip K. Dick is good sci-fi. Certain of Robert Heinlein books are quite outstanding. However, I heartily recommend the Amber series by Roger Zelazny. It's one of my favorite series.

 

[burntbulb]

I've read many of the books listed in the op and others listed here. one book i read long time ago that has actually stuck with me is: The Shattered World
by Michael Reaves. i always thought the cloak fighter would have made an interesting story... also i was in the USMC and i liked: Grunts! by Mary Gentle
it had an interesting point of view with a twisted mix of real military and fantasy.

 

[CJxthree]

Oregon Drivers Manual..





lol

 

[Excellent1]

Lot of good books being discussed here--my kinda thread.

A couple of series that I would highly recommend that not a lot of people have read (that I've talked with) would be Michael Scott Rohan's Anvil of the Ice trilogy, and Patricia McKillip's Riddle of Stars trilogy. Both of these are very good reads, albeit admittedly harder to find these days...

Also, even though they may be geared for "younger" readers, if you haven't read Ursula K. Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, they are very good as well. Very short books, but very good reads, in my opinion.

Some of the stuff I read tends to be a little obscure, but I like finding old series that I've never heard of and discovering a new fantasy world that isn't well known. Ok, that's geeky, but it's the best form of escapism I know that doesn't involve partaking of illegal substances.