Book Suggestions

Grid System

The downtown branch of my local library is doing its yearly purge, which means a chance for me to pick up tons of books on the cheap. I will probably reprise last year's strategy of throwing anything that looks vaguely interesting into a large sack, though it might be useful to have some names to look out for as well. The D&D Top 100 Science Fiction Books thread has provided a useful starting point, but I'd like to expand it.

To keep things simple, just recommend whatever you like. I'll read just about anything. A short description would be appreciated, but isn't necessary.

If you want to see some of the books I already own and what kinds of stuff I enjoy, click here, or follow the "My Books" link in my sig.

2868

I always recommend the recent stuff from my good friends first:

Philipp Meyer, American Rust
Doug Dorst, Alive in Necropolis
Stephen Elliott, Happy Baby, The Adderall Diaries

Then

Junot Diaz, Drown, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay
Barry Hannah, Airships
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume


See if they have the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote

As fpr Sci Fi/Fantasy you've probably read what I've read, consider I just dabble. I do like old pulp collections, so I'd look for those, either anthologized, or in paperback.

LunchboxV3

Cosmic Banditos by A.C Weisbecker.

Probably the most enjoyable read ever.

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Banditos-C-Weisbecker/dp/0451203062

Iceman.USAF

One Second After It's about life after an EMP detonation over the US. Very interesting.

Sheep

Anything by the following:


Vladimir Nabokov
Cormac McCarthy
Raymond Carver
Hemingway




Your library should have plenty of those.

Sir Carcass

My favorite series of books is the Arthurian Legend books by Mary Stewart. My favorite is the first one, The Crystal Cave, but they're all good.

Hypatia

If it's going to be old books, these are all ones that are mostly out of print which you might find:

Sos the Rope, Var the Stick, and Neq the Sword are all short and pretty fun reads by Piers Anthony, they're sort of post-apocalyptic stories where the human race has been reduced to a super simplistic tribal structure where almost everything is broken down into trials of single combat

Isle of Glass, The Golden Horn, The Hounds of God, Alamut, and The Dagger and the Cross by Judith Tarr are all historical fiction with what are essentially elves/elemental spirits. It's set in the time of the Crusades and I think they're really nice reads.

The Hall of the Mountain King by Judith Tarr is more of a fantasy setting, it follows the life of the son of the sun god as he tries to reclaim his mother's kingdom.

Any of the Elric of Melnibone books by Michael Moorcock, also pretty fun, Elric is sort of an anti-hero figure, old-school sci-fi/fantasy writing style.

The Amazing Powers of Ashur Fine by Donald Sobol, it's a super fast read because it's a young adult book. It's about this guy who's given the powers to temporarily (for 15 minutes) assume the abilities of anyone who's ever lived, once.

There are a few by Jack Chalker (Flux and Anchor, Changewinds) which are kind of interesting, and the first book of this Joel Rosenberg series "The Sleeping Dragon" is a fun read, it's about a D&D group that gets shoved into their characters in their characters world, and their attempt to cope with that and to find their way back to the "real" world.

Hrm, those are most of the ones that are out of print that come to mind that you might stumble on.

Sipex

Assuming you don't already own them, anything written by Terry Pratchett.

There are a couple 'meh' books from what I understand but with his record and current library size the chances of actually coming across those are slim.

Even then I hear they're not bad reads, just not as good as his other stuff.