Best Book(s) You've Ever Read?

A Storm of Swords is fantastic.

The Host. That is the most awesome book I have ever read. i recommend it to everyone. just it's magical *-*

@Chango said:

Don Quixote is my favorite novel.

100 Years of Solitude, 1984, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and The Savage Detectives are up there as well.

I'm a Spanish major, and you just posted the three books on the top of my "must read" list. I own them all in Spanish, but am too scared to start reading them cover to cover.

Over the past year, Hemingway has become my absolute favorite author. For Whom the Bell Tolls has to be my favorite book. I just started A Farewell To Arms, which is the last of his major works that I have to read. It's just as great as the other three. I've also read tons of his short stories.

Outside of that, I really like The Brothers Karamazov and Alice in Wonderland.

@Meltac said:

I read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, and found it quite good. Enjoyed it more than the movie, so I was wondering what else by him could be recommended? From what I understand his works after Lullaby are more horror-satire stories?

Survivor. If you have to pick another one of his books, this is the choice.

It's a weird fucking read though. It was supposed to be adapted to a film soon after the success of Fight Club, but the subject matter became way too touchy because of the 9/11 attacks. The whole book is a ex-cult leader reading his life's story to the black box of a hijacked commercial aircraft while it plunges to the ground.

It's a deranged satire of commercialism and organized religion. I liked it even better than Fight Club.

(The book was released in 2000, so any mention of hijacked aircraft had ZERO chance of making it into a feature film during that time)

@Pessh: I thought you were banned?

I feel obligated to say The Bible but... The lord of the rings is pretty good also.

@jerseyscum: Sounds really intriguing. Someone else in the thread also recommended it, so I've already bought it from Amazon. Going to finish up Ender's Game, while it's on the way.

The Road, All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Rayuela by Julio Cortazar.

La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri.

El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami.

@jerseyscum: I really want to re-read Survivor, I remember finding it a hell of a lot of fun. I can understand the criticism of Palahniuk to some extent, & Choke really didn't jive with me at all, but Survivor really was great fun to read. It was the sort of thing where I read it & just went I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T HAVE THAT IDEA IT IS SO OBVIOUSLY BRILLIANT.

As for my actual favourite book, well. If we are talking fiction then I'm probably going to say The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch really left a huge impression on me. It wasn't the first Dick I read (hur hur, Dick) as I started with my dads copy of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? after playing the Blade Runner video game some 14 years ago. And a lot of the usual Dick tropes are there, an unspectacular protagonist, the every-man, a dystopian view of the future, psychedelic drugs, the monotony of life. But it really holds a special place for me. As does another of his books, Flow My Tears, The Police Man Said which is a poignant take on celebrity culture, as well as the usual themes like paranoia. And the forementioned A Scanner Darkly is wonderful. Philip K Dick is probably my favourite writer, I'm quite unashamed to admit. Not going to be confused with the literary classics, but he wrote a great yarn.

I read a lot of non-fiction these days, & so I'd double up the recommendation of The Battle For Spain by Anthony Beevor, as wonderful an account of the Spanish Civil War as you can find. I'd also recommend George Orwell's personal experience, An Homage To Catalonia, of his time in the POUM militia on the Republican side. And John Keegan has an excellent history of the Second World War that I'd recommend if you are into wars. On a popular science writing kick I'd really recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Everything. As a popular science book I think it really captures the imagination. My copy has done the rounds, to share my love of all things sciencey. It's informative & interesting but without requiring a degree in physics or anything else.

And lastly I'd suggest The Making Of The Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Which is all about how we went from the discovery of the electron, the splitting of the atom to Los Alamos & then Hiroshima & Nagasaki. It's a marvellous book.

Pirate Latitudes. Best pirate book I've ever read (well, I've only read one pirate book, but hey, details).

Generation X - Douglas Coupland

The Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac

The Stranger - Albert Camus

Candide - Voltaire

Job: A Comedy of Justice - Robert Heinlein

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

Otherland - Tad Williams

Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

@Islaja: Nice to see another Coupland fan.

If your looking for a cyber punk thriller then I recommend Altered Carbon. It's a fantastic book and is not incredibly long but has a truly interesting world

I'm sure it's been said a bunch, but both A Song of Ice and Fire and also The Kingkiller Chronicles are great low fantasy series. If you'd like more historical fiction, try The Company by Robert Littell. One of my favorites.

Also, anything by Nelson DeMille or Vince Flynn. The new Jack Reacher movie previews might turn you off (no fucking idea why they chose Tom Cruise) but Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels are awesome.

A Storm of Swords - Holy shitballs.

@Sooty: I threw that book across my room after reading The Red Wedding.

Catcher in the Rye

The repetitions are worth repeating:

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Terry Pratchett especially the Discworld series

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - Not to be dismissed as a girly read

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

On a side note, Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World are interesting to read side-by-side or simultaneously.

I think poetry/short story genre is more than worth reading too:

T.S. Elliot - A lot of people remember The Hollow Men

Edgar Allen Poe

Franz Kafka - Especially The Metamorphosis and The Trial

W.B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Oscar Wilde, Henry David Thoreau, e e cummings, Robert Frost, etc.

hyperion by dan simmons

I know it probably sounds like a weak choice but the Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) books really are very good.

@Napalm: Nope, just havn't been on the forums in a while.

The fact that its star wars will probably put alot of people off, but I really liked the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn.

@MattyFTM said:

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Without a doubt.

Word.

Love me some sci-fi and fantasy. Ender's Game is downright amazing, as has been pointed out by several people already. I'd also recommend Hyperion for it's mind-boggling time travel concepts and vivid imagery.

Also, Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire are both great when it comes to fantasy.

If you are into fantasy and can handle adult content then I would recommend Song of Ice and Fire / Game Of Thrones

Also Another I just read and really loved was Mistborn series

@SpikeSpiegel: Nice profile picture

I would have to say Game of Thrones. I am just getting finished with it and it really is quite amazing. Also if you have never read Jurassic Park I would recommend doing that as well. Though I liked The Lost World more, the book is far different than the film.

My all-time favorite book has to be Wise Guy by Nicholas Pileggi. It's the book that was adapted into the screenplay for the movie Goodfellas. It's a stunning account of life in the Mafia back when the Mafia was in it's heyday, and actually had influence in, well... anything. It's a fascinating read and really well written, I can easily recommend it to just about anyone.

It's between The yiddish policeman's union, every single discworld book but especially Night Watch and Guards! Guards!, Phantoms in the Brain and the tell-tale brain by VS Ramachandran, Ender's Game, Snow Crash or Robert M. Price's The reason driven life.

post office by charles bukowski changed me.

@Haruko: I read House of Leaves recently it was one of the best most original things I've ever read both in form and subject matter. But it also disturbed me so much I'm not sure i would want to read it again, it was absolutely fascinating though and stays with you long after you've finished it.

I generally read more Non-Fiction books like:

• Bad Science
• Whoops! Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay
• Freakonomics & Superfreakonomics

But some Fiction I enjoyed:

• American Gods
• Sherlock Holmes
• Eisenhorn & Ravenor & Bequin
• Of Mice and Men

@Video_Game_King said:

How about some Japanese?

STOP HIJACKING EVERY THREAD WITH YOUR BLOG.

@Pessh: I love the Beach. It's the best travel novel out there. Adventure in the classical sense.

The Wheel of Time series is a crazily detailed series... final book in january, yeah!

Beyond that, Dune is great, as is some of the other books in the series (I've heard questionable things about Brian Herbert's sequels, though), pretty much anything by Dan Abnett (Eisenhorn, Ravenor series, Gaunt's Ghosts).

(And yeah, I need to get around to some of the more classical literature...)

@Sweep:

To be fair, it was directly relevant, this time.

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Catcher in the Rye. Dat shit is life changing.

Of Mice and Men is great too.

Orwell's 1984. Every time. And maybe Camus' L'Étranger.

Also, if you're looking for anything outside of novels, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal would receive my recommendation.

@HerbieBug said:

Fantasy:
Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. This is book #2 of a lengthy series still in progress. It remains the best book in the series as far as I'm concerned. Probably want to read book #1 first though

Just want to mention that the series is actually done. But you have several books that also happen in the same universe, like his "Bauchelain and Korbal Broach" novels. And you got Ian C. Esslemont who write books in the "Novels of the Malazan Empire". Have yet to read some of those.

This actually make perfect sense as well, since Erikson and Esslemont made the Malazan world together as a backdrop for their D&D game... they are both archaeologists as well, and Erikson is an anthropologist. I was at a Q&A with Erikson a few years ago, and he said that specific training helped him in making the world a more believable place, and it sure does. So read the whole "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series, please.

Other great books you need to read:

• American Gods - Neil Gaiman
• 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
• Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
• The Road - Cormac McCarthy
• At The Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft (hell, anything by Lovecraft)
• His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Two of my favorite books were ones I read in school: 1984 and The Great Gatsby. Most of my friends disliked Gatsby, but I think it's great.

Also, I think American Psycho is a work of genius.

The graphic novel Maus is pretty astounding as well, its one of the most effective works of literature Ive ever read.

@mosespippy: I owned a copy of Life of Pi for several years before reading it at last earlier this year. All the while, I kept picturing how I'd want to make it into a film, and whaddayaknow, turns out it was in the works already. Really lovely book. And about books in their own languages, it's actually a hobby of mine to buy The Little Prince and at least one Winnie the Pooh book in the native language of any country I visit. Got quite a few already, but hopefully many more to come.

@pyromagnestir: You're cool in my books.

I don't read as often as I'd like to,but I recently read Bioshock Rapture.It was surprisingly good.If you're at all interested in that fiction,go for it.

A small list containing a few of my favorites:

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Second World War by Winston Churchill (it's actually a book series)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
• Lilith's Brood series by Octavia Butler
• Ubik by Philip K. Dick
• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Blood Meridian is probably the best book I've ever read. Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut would be up there too. All the King's Men is another.

I just realized that I didn't even list off any graphic novels.

• Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis
• Black Summer by Warren Ellis
• No Hero by Warren Ellis
• Supergod by Warren Ellis
• Revolver by Matt Kindt
• Watchmen by Alan Moore
• The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb
• Kingdom Come by Mark Waid
• Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn
• Preacher by Garth Ennis
• Daytripper by Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba

Of all of those, I would HIGHLY STRESS that you read Daytripper. That is one life-changing graphic novel. Fucking BEAUTIFUL piece of work.

Anyone read The City & the City? Looking to pick this book up next.

Old school book series from the 80's called Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster. In fact anything by Alan Dean Foster if you like trippy weird sci-fi fantasy type books.

@Mogoping said:

No Country for Old Men

The Road

World War Z

You like your literature to be hella downer, huh?

I'm actually really into poetry and the best poet, I feel, is Walt Whitman.