Timewaster's Guide Archive

Departments => Books => Topic started by: Ratlord12 on December 12, 2007, 03:27:09 PM

Title: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Ratlord12 on December 12, 2007, 03:27:09 PM
Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures (Walter Moers), Dragonworld (Byron Preiss), Brave New World (Huxley), Eragon (Paolini), The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (Lovecraft), The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway), Around the World in Eighty Days (Verne), Survivor (Palahnuik), The Android's Dream (Scalzi), Elantris (Sanderson), Dr. Rat (Kotzwinkle), Watership Down (Adams), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a different Adams), Angela's Ashes (McCourt), NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM! (Baty), The Sword of Shannara (Brooks), The Hobbit (Tolkien), Homeland (Salvatore), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), Going Postal (Terry Pratchett), Heroics for Beginners (John Moore), The Book of Three (Alexander), Shadowfall (Clemens), Earthworks (Aildiss), Exile on Vlahil (Mayhar), Tehanu (Le Guin), Bad Magic (Zielinski), The Four Lords of the Diamond (Chalker), The Source of Magic (Anthony), Nine Princes in Amber (Zelanzy), Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein), Catcher in the Rye (Salinger),

and eventually, The Blue-Light Caterpillar (Me).

Feel free to hit me with some title suggestions if you don't like the bug.
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: charity on December 20, 2007, 05:05:05 AM
Ooh, we listened to the Old Man and the Sea this summer on a disk and really liked it! I'm surprised sometimes about how good the "Classics" really are.

Although my husband tried to read Moby Dick and couldn't get through it, he says they spend pages discussing peoples hair.

Have you tried 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'? I liked that.

Did you like Heroic's for Beginner's enough to reccomend? I saw that in SFBC and it's on my wishlist but I've never bought it. Course Elantris sat in my wishlist for a while before I bought it and look at me now! Then again I read this one that was an offshoot of the Witchworld books and haven't even attempted anything else from that world (my sister says it's cause I got a bad one, and boy was it bad! I kept thinking, how did this person get published! I can write better than this and I'm not bragging!).

My sister (different one) loves Fahrenheit 451, and 1984.

Another one that I enjoyed (it was a little different) was The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (I'm thinking that's how you spell it, don't quote me on that).

You've really got me thinking now....
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Ratlord12 on December 22, 2007, 04:37:38 PM
Buy Heroics for Beginners. Do it. Now.

John Moore's writing is possibly the lowest of low-brow. Corny nicknames and boob jokes abound. Still, Heroics made me laugh harder than I ever have at literature. If you don't buy it (or check it out from the library as do cheapskates like me,) I will hunt you down and force you to remove the lid of Artifact #16.

Talking dinosaurs and book-hunting mercenaries are right up my alley, or at least my lane, so I would also recommend Walter Moer's Zamonia novels. Warning: only a few of his  books are translated from German (by John Brownjohn, who does an excellent job) so you might rip your hair out for want of more Lindworms if you don't speak the language.

Check out Dr. Rat for a shocking dose of the truth. I hold a special passion for rats, so the book ravaged my heart. Anyone with half a drop of sympathy for animals will become antivivisection after hearing the anecdotes of Kotzwinkle's rodent protagonist.

Finally, I hope to publish my pet project by 2010. It's full of anarchist propaganda and anti-religion spews, so I might get assassinated if Caterpillar ever makes it big. Oh well, all for the glory of literature and "free speech".


Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Asundar on December 31, 2007, 07:32:35 PM
Wheel of Time series - Jordan
Dragon Prince series - Rawn
Warbreaker and Mistborn series - Sanderson
Blue moon Rising - Simon R. Green
Harry Potter series
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Sword of Shannara original three, and talismans series - Terry Brooks

More to come as I try to recall all I've read...
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: charity on January 01, 2008, 04:42:32 AM
Ah, Crime and Punishment... another my husband has read. Geeze I wish I could say it was me. Kinda.

RatLord... next time I feel like spending money on books (which will be a while since I have to get through the massive pile I've accumulated over the holiday sales) I will put Heroics for Beginners at the top of my l  ;)ist.
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Ratlord12 on January 02, 2008, 06:58:10 PM
I recently took a gander at Dostoevsky's work and was not impressed. I think it's because I've tried to surround myself with surreal elements to block out the real world, so now I have a hard time taking anything seriously. I usually don't read novels set in reality (with the few exceptions on my list) unless they are particularly humorous. Events that could actually happen or follow the laws of science don't interest me.

That's why I bailed out on Don Quixote (monotonous), Moby Dick (too flowery), War and Peace (history lesson), and several other 'classics'.

A shining example of  an exception to this preference is the HP series. Still haven't read the 7th book yet, but grandpa will get there eventually.
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers on January 02, 2008, 10:18:32 PM
uhm... if you bailed out of DQ because it was clinging to reality you weren't reading it.
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: charity on January 12, 2008, 05:44:06 PM
If it's written well, meaning where I am swept away into the book, I don't particularly care what genre it is. I really enjoyed 'Under the Tuscan Sun', because I actually felt like I was sitting there, and it's a memoir (and nothing like the movie) Another memoir I really loved was 'Three Weeks with my Brother' by Nicholas Sparks, this book was hilarious! and sad. But I don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time.

But for the most part I don't do non-fiction (this is changing, slowly).
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Ratlord12 on January 21, 2008, 08:35:30 PM
I bailed out on Don Quixote because my interest in medieval Spain was squashed by the constant obscure references to pop culture of the time. I hit the appendix for footnotes about once every two seconds. I don' t know, maybe I read a crappy translation.

Recently I picked up "Why Do Birds?" by Damon Knight. Four stars.





 
Title: Re: Booklist of Awesome
Post by: Aojo on January 21, 2008, 08:46:05 PM
Easy-peasy. ;D

"Neverwhere" by Neil Gaimen
"Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett
"Well of Ascension" by Brandon Sanderson
"American Gods" by Neil Gaimen