OT: Favorite books/authors

[Ted]

I thought this would be an interesting thread. I'm always looking for good books to read.

My favorite has to be Tolkein. I've read all of his works, including the Silmarillion, the Book of Lost Tales, and Unfinished Tales, which everyone who loved the movies should read. My most-read author is probably Louis L'Amour. I've read almost all of his books at least once. My L'Amour favorites are Last of the Breed, The Walking Drum, Flint, The Sacket Brand, The Haunted Mesa, the Kilkenny books, and Jubal Sackett.

Bernard Cornwell is also a favorite of mine. His Sharpe series is great, and his 100 Years War series is pretty good. I've just started his Civil War series, and it seems to be pretty good to.

Favorite individual books are as follows:

The Lord of the Rings
The Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
Of Mice and Men
The Walking Drum
The Unvanquished
Moby Dick
Last of the Mohicans (the movie version is good cinema, but it jacks up the story big time)
The Deerslayer
My Antonia

Hardest book to get through of all time: Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce.

[Laker Fan]

Toughest read is Tolstoy, War and Peace. NEVER want to do that one again!

A very long and hypercomplex but masterpiece of a book is Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, read that book twice and getting ready to read it again. Man the French, and especially Hugo, sure seem to think the world revolves around Parisean culture. I've seen the musical with my oldest duaghter twice on Broadway, 3 times in LA, once in Salt Lake, and will see it this year in London. ValJean's journey to redemption is a story for the ages.

Duma's the Count of Monte Cristo

Jack London, Call of the Wild and a little short gem called To Build a Fire

My daughter likes to tease me that I am not into novels but rather factual history and so I read, in her words "textbooks" and call them entertaining.

To that end, Dee Brown's Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee wil break your heart, as will In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

[spursfan101]

Alex Haley: Malcom X.
Diary of Nat Turner.
My Life by Russell Baker.
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
The Godfather.
Penthouse Letters. (uh...oh...never mind.)

Harry Potter books are cool reads. My other fav's are:

[ziggy]

Any book by Fredrick Forsyeth.  I like Ludlem but he  gets to be a little overly melodrmatic.  Forsyeth is more intense, less slurpy.

I really liked Cardinal in the Kremlin by Clancy.

I also really like books by Micheal Crichton, the movies generally suck (except for the first Jurassic Park).

Robin Cook is also good.

[jn]

Tolkien tops the list definitely.  I haven't read the the Lost Tales and such but I have read the Silmarillion no less than three times.  

Hunter S. Thompson.  I've probably read Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas almost as much as the Rings Trilogy.  His most recent has a hilarious story about attempting to give Jack Nicholson a frozen Elk Heart as birthday present that naturally ends up involving machine gun fire and the FBI.

H.G. Wells.  The Outline of History had a profound impact on how I view the world.  Malcolm X said the same thing as it was the first thing he read in prison.  The Open Conspiracy and Experiments in Autobiography are also interesting.  

Karen Armstrong.  A former Roman Catholic nun who's pilgrimage to Jerusalem led her to write terrific histories of Jerusalem and the Crusades.  

Ambrose Bierce.  The Devils Dictionary is the greatest piece of curmudgeonry ever written, bar none.

Books. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  Its the only thing he wrote before commiting suicide.  His mother turned in the manuscript years later and it ended up winning a Pulitzer.  

The Tetherballs of Boganville by Mark Leyner.  A bizarre and hilarious rapid fire book about Leyner in Junior High with a deadline for play that could net him $250,00, watching his fathers failed execution and professional teterball in Micronesia.  That and about a thousand other topics.









 

[JoMal]

I read Crichton religiously. Timeline the book was great, but I hear the movie sucked. A pity.

I also have read A Confederacy of Dunces. We go to New Orleans annually and that book helped us understand the place perfectly. A classic.

I finally read Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' and was very impressed with how she wrote. She was good.

If any of you are into ancient historical novels about the Roman Republic era, Colleen McCulloch's six book series is about as good a read as you will ever find on the subject. She brings that era to life, detailing the lives of Sulla and Gaeus Marius and Julius Caesar's rise to power so clearly that you feel she found the history written down for her. The first book is called 'The First Man in Rome', which is mostly about Marius and a young Sulla. Absolutely riveting.

Currently I am reading Master and Commander by O'Brien. I will probably read all of them. I have Forester's Hornblower series, which is a good easy read.

Used to read Steven King but not so much lately.

I like Grissom, but Scott Turow is a better writer regarding true lawyer stories that contain a mystery. Not being as prolific a writer, he does not get near the recognition.

 

[Lurker]

For reading I enjoy sci-fi the best.  Tolkein is at or near the top.

Frank Herbert's Dune series ranks right up there with Tolkein IMO.  Especially the original trilogy.  Series totals nine books as his son has continued the story.  Herbert also wrote some other interesting stories.

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.

Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man & Farenheit 451

Anne McCaffery's dragon rider stories about Pern

Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars series.

Non sci-fi reading:
John MacDonald's Travis McGee series.
Crichton, Clancy, Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie

[WayOutWest]

I read all the required books in school (i.e. Lord of the Flies, Scarlet Letter, The Pearl, Great Expectations, bunch of Mark Twain stuff, etc...).  But no book made such an impression on me as did The Good Earth.

That book changed my outlook on life and it did it in the last sentence, of the last paragraph, on the last page of the last chapter of the book.  The first time I read it I didn't really give it much thought but I read it again on a flight from London to L.A. and that last piece of info at the end of the book blew me away and changed my outlook completely.

I typically don't read books for pleasure cause I do so much reading for my job but every now and then I get hooked onto something.  I don't like reading books based in reality so I typically am drawn to Sci-Fi or fantasy books.  I've read all the Tolken stuff, some Issac Imisvo but the only books of any note to me personally are by Timoth Zahn.  I picked up and read a Star Wars book by him and it pointed me towards his "Conquerors" trilogy.  I read all three and still re-read some of the parts of the last book.  The first and last book in the series are great.  Love stuff with a twist like that, the major plot line is very believable considering our history.

[spursfan101]

You've been to London?  Knowing you, you probably went over to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day.  <_<