The D&D Book Thread (recommendations in OP, free novels on page 7)

Jacobkosh

TAKE A LOOK, IT'S IN A BOOK!

This is the thread where we talk about what we're reading and why, recommend things to each other, and maybe find out about some things we never would have known otherwise. Because if you're anything like me, you're always on the lookout for something new and interesting, even if you have a stack of unread books climbing halfway up to your ceiling.

Many PAers have been listing and reviewing our books on Goodreads. Join us!

To get us started, here are some books that a lot of people in these parts have enjoyed.

The (Semi)Official D&D Recommended Reading List

GENERAL FICTION

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Yiddish Policemens’ Union by Michael Chabon
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
Dubliners by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Harauki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Harauki Murakami
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
The Quincunx by Charles Palliser
Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
Life with Jeeves by PG Wodehouse

SCIENCE FICTION

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Dune by Frank Herbert
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1984 by George Orwell
Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Ilium by Dan Simmons
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
Dread Empire’s Fall by Walter Jon Williams
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe

FANTASY

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Little, Big by John Crowley
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart
The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
The Scar by China Mieville
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Once and Future King by TH White
Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

MYSTERY/CRIME

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Myron Bolitar series by Harlan Coben
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
American Tabloid by James Ellroy
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett
The Ripley novels by Patricia Highsmith
Fletch by Gregory Macdonald
The Wallander novels by Henning Mankell
The Inspector Rebus novels by Ian Rankin
Keeper by Greg Rucka
The Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L. Sayers
Hardcase by Dan Simmons
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

ESPIONAGE/THRILLERS

Complicity by Iain Banks
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
The James Bond novels by Ian Fleming
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer
A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka
The Crook Factory by Dan Simmons

HORROR

Weaveworld by Clive Barker
World War Z by Max Brooks
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
It by Stephen King
The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Demons by John Shirley
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

NONFICTION

Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein
D-Day by Anthony Beevor
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind
The Centennial History of the Civil War - Bruce Catton
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
The Iranian Labyrinth by Dilip Hiro
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk
In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan by Seth Jones
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Pauline Kael
I Lost It at the Movies by Pauline Kael
On Writing by Stephen King
Battle Cry of Freedom by James MacPherson
Fear of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk and Disco by Gary Mulholland
This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco by Gary Mulholland
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes by John Pierson
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

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If anyone wants to check out the multiple-Hugo-winning Miles Vorkosigan science fiction series, you can get a free electronic compilation of the entire series in several formats here.

So what's on your bedside table these days?

Rikushix

Good thread Jacob!

I just finished The Man Game, and I have to say, it's one of the best novels I've read in a long, long time. The book is solid yet graceful, much like many of the characters contained within.



(It also receives top marks for painting a fascinating historical picture of Dominion-era Vancouver, however fictional some of the stories are)

At some point while I was reading it, I realized that if someone asked me what it was about, I honestly wouldn't know how to answer them.

Well, now I know.

In one word, The Man Game is a book about movement. In more ways than one.

edit: If you get the chance to read this, please do and tell me what you think! Finding a copy may be a bit of a stretch for you Americans but I definitely recommend it if you happen to come across one.

I'm hoping they'll have Guns, Germs and Steel at my local library, I can't wait to read that.

Uncle_Balsamic

Just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray and now I'm starting the Iliad. After that I'll read the Odyssey, and then attempt Ulysses.

Kakodaimonos

The Fagles translations? Those are excellent. His attempt to recreate the meter is in them is very good.

Alchemist449

Reading Franzen's Corrections when I'm not swamped by coursework. It's ok. I understand why he gets bandied about as CRAZYOMFGAWESOMEGUY, but it never reaches that level with me. Everything is interesting, but nothing is amazing, if that makes sense.

Thomamelas

Kakodaimonos wrote: »

The Fagles translations? Those are excellent. His attempt to recreate the meter is in them is very good.

And they tend to be much more approachable for modern audiences then others like the Fitzgeralds.

setrajonas

Thomamelas wrote: »

Kakodaimonos wrote: »

The Fagles translations? Those are excellent. His attempt to recreate the meter is in them is very good.

And they tend to be much more approachable for modern audiences then others like the Fitzgeralds.

I rather like Lombardo's recreating it in somewhat more modern vernacular, though I did like Fagles as well.

Jacobkosh

The Lombardos were what I read and I really, really liked them.

SithDrummer

Currently in the middle of Musicophilia and The Sword in the Stone but the going is tough since I've very nearly got more work than I know what to do with.

Jacobkosh

I've just started reading Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana, Jr., a memoir of an 1840 sea voyage around the Americas from New England to California, written by a rich Harvard playboy who ditched everything to enlist in the merchant marine. It's considered a classic of nautical and travel literature and I can see why; the guy was really smart and very observant so his descriptions of these foreign ports in South America and Mexican California are rich with local history and culture.

The prose style is, obviously, nineteenth-century but it's loose and very easy to follow. The author has some of the views one might expect for the era but is also very progressive (he later became a major abolitionist) and passionate about the rights of the underclasses, particularly sailors.

It's pretty fascinating stuff and as a fan of O'Brian, Melville, Conrad et cetera I think I'm going to chew through it quickly.

Kalkino

That does sound interesting, I almost started rereading my collection of Conrad this morning

Mojo_Jojo

It's still strange that you guys have The Algebraist floating about in the recommended Sci-Fi. It was an awful book from about a third in until the end.

Echo

Charlie Stross has been writing a series of articles about books he won't be writing. Really interesting stuff - the latest part is about why he won't write any more Eschaton books (a bit spoilery, obviously). But I love his idea for what would have been the third Eschaton novel and hope he recycles it for something else.

(no spoilers in this quote)

Starships are expensive, intricate pieces of machinery. They are difficult to build and maintain, and have to be continuously in motion, transporting cargo and passengers, in order to cover their running costs.

There are space pirates. They, too, have to pay huge amounts of money to keep their starships running, and they can't afford to be stupid about it.

The space pirates' business model is this: they identify a likely target merchant ship, match courses with it, and board.

They do not, however, rape, pillage, and murder the passengers and crew. That would leave them having to transport a lot of bulk merchandise and find somewhere to fence it, taking an inevitable hit in the commodity's resale value. It would also set everyone's hand against them. Not good for life expectancy ...

Instead, they audit the cargo. Then they search out for any secret items the ship is transporting, stuff that is of high value but not publicly announced. Many times they don't find any. But sometimes they stumble across a passenger liner with a safe full of quantum computing chips, or a bulk liquid carrier with much less freight volume in its cargo holds than expected and something extremely massive tucked away — a lump of stabilized neutronium, for example.

They do not steal the secret cargo. Instead, they notify their accomplices by means of their private causal channel to buy commodity options based on their insider knowledge of the secret cargo's impending arrival. Then they give the hijacked ship an armed escort (under communications silence) all the way to its destination, to ensure it arrives on time.

Thus: your typical space pirate in the Eschaton universe metaphorically wears a grey pin-striped suit, swarms aboard a merchant vessel with a spreadsheet between his clenched teeth, and has retirement plans involving a senior partnership in a firm of accountants. (Captain Jack Sparrow he ain't.)

Such pirates are tolerated by the majority of sane merchant captains (although they drive commodity traders up the wall) because space is big, space is dark, and space contains a small but worrying number of idiot barbarians who will, if they see a foreign merchant vessel, board it with rape, pillage and murder in mind. Idiot barbarians are bad for commerce. Professional space pirates strongly disapprove of this and will take drastic preventative measures when they run into them.

This just sounds so fun to me. :P

Kakodaimonos

It does. After all, one man's pirates are another man's tax collectors.

Stormwatcher

I'm in Goodreads, and I'm gonna add people here.

I'll try to add mostly non-english authors, you dudes need more Mario Vargas Llosa.

fshavlak

Stormwatcher wrote: »

I'm in Goodreads, and I'm gonna add people here.

I'll try to add mostly non-english authors, you dudes need more Mario Vargas Llosa.

There's a few on the lists, or maybe it just seems that way because the last two authors I've read are Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) and Roberto Bolano (2666).

Adrenaline

Just finished The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons - pretty good. Starting The Lies of Locke Lamora.

fshavlak

Adrenaline wrote: »

Just finished The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons - pretty good. Starting The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Let me know if you think this is as good as everyone says it is.

Phisti

I just finished:



And to be honest, before I saw it I had no idea Hugh Laurie was an author beyond the usual letters to the editor type things. But I quite enjoyed it... it has all the fun of Hugh Laurie, but in book format.

Outstanding!

It now makes me yearn for more Hugh Laurie writting, alas, there is none I am aware of.

dasZombie42

I didn't know Hugh Laurie wrote a book. I'll have to add it to my Goodreads list.

celandine

I just found Charlie Stross's blog today!

He made a very good point I never thought of.
It's really unrealistic to write "space westerns" with rugged individualists out having interstellar shootouts. It is hard to survive in space. If humans lived on other planets, they'd need terraforming. There would be vast expenses. It would require many people to run a colony and keep it self-sufficient -- much more than to homestead in 19th century Utah or something. Space exploration would probably be done by governments, or by things as big as governments.

I suspect he's just trying to pick on rugged individualist/libertarian types, but the point stands. The place to write a story about one man against the elements is not space, because the elements will kill the man.

YamiNoSenshi

I've been reading Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. If you like any of his other stuff, especially High Fidelity, you'll probably like this.

lwt1973

I'm about halfway through Top Producer by Norb Vonnegut.

It feels like a Grisham novel except instead of lawyers you have Wall Street managers.

tallgeeze

I'm reading Infected by Scott Sigler now. I heard him on a couple of podcasts I listen to and the plot interested me.

So far it's given me a fucked up dream, so I think I like it :P

DoctorArch

Still reading the first volume of Sherlock Holmes. Still fantastic.

Good OP Jacobkosh.

YodaTuna

I just finished reading Altered Carbon and thought it was ok, are the sequels worth reading? Are they on worse, on par or better than the first?

Echo

YodaTuna wrote: »

I just finished reading Altered Carbon and thought it was ok, are the sequels worth reading? Are they on worse, on par or better than the first?

The second one is so-so (it's more mil-spec scifi than cyberpunky noir stuff), and then the third one is great again.

Raiden333

Still reading Mistborn #2, about halfway done.

Ellund just got the boot from the assembly and Vin thinks she figured out what the Deepness is but hasn't decided to let the audience in on the secret yet.

Vin still bugs the shit out of me (yeah, that Zane dude seems like a totally levelheaded awesome guy, nevermind that he works for our enemy, I'm going to pine for him every night! He's the only one who can understand me!), but the story and other characters remain awesome. I'm even starting to like OreSeur

BobCesca

I went to the library today and picked up China Miéville's The City & The City, Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora and Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men.

I then had a shitty afternoon and attempted to make myself feel better with Waterstones' 3 for 2, so also have Trudi Canavan The Magician's Apprentice, How To Teach Quantum Physics to your Dog by Chad Orzel, and Transition by Iain Banks.

I will have a fun weekend

GenlyAi

The City & The City, I think, is pretty great. I like a book where the premise is so out there you can't tell if it's retarded or ingenious.

But it's definitely original, so Mieville wins in my book. Has anyone tried Kraken?

Echo

GenlyAi wrote: »

But it's definitely original, so Mieville wins in my book. Has anyone tried Kraken?

I liked most of it, but I think it fell apart a bit towards the end.

The main bad guy really made me think of certain Stephen King villains.

GenlyAi

Hm. I haven't read too much Stephen King, but Mieville has never really had a compelling bad guy.

I'm not sure what to expect of Kraken; I love City and The Scar, I really liked aspects of Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, but Kraken just sounds so ... Mysterious London Underworld. It sounds like The Somnambulist or Neverwhere, both of which I didn't like much. Is it more like those, or more like Mieville's other work? Does it have that furious politics I've come to love?

Echo

No, Kraken's scope is a lot more local. Has some great villains though.

Adrenaline

Kraken was good, if somewhat disappointing, much like The City & The City to me.

Collingswood was a pretty awesome character, though.

Styrofoam Sammich

Glad to see Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norril on there.

Rainbulimic

I literally just finished John Dies at the End by David Wong and I enjoyed the crap out of it. Now I'm lost in a sea of booklessness. I might try The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as I've heard good things...

Ketar

Rainbulimic wrote: »

I literally just finished John Dies at the End by David Wong and I enjoyed the crap out of it. Now I'm lost in a sea of booklessness. I might try The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as I've heard good things...

I just read John Dies at the End as well. Definitely funnier than I expected from someone at Cracked.com, though I don't think it lived up to the billing as far as being scary. Still an enjoyable quick read though, and a nice change of pace. Now on to either Drood or Anathem.

HamHamJ

Raiden333 wrote: »

Still reading Mistborn #2, about halfway done.

Ellund just got the boot from the assembly and Vin thinks she figured out what the Deepness is but hasn't decided to let the audience in on the secret yet.

Vin still bugs the shit out of me (yeah, that Zane dude seems like a totally levelheaded awesome guy, nevermind that he works for our enemy, I'm going to pine for him every night! He's the only one who can understand me!), but the story and other characters remain awesome. I'm even starting to like OreSeur

I found that Mistborn the whole "hero has crisis of faith" trope better than most. Which is not to say that it's a good trope.

Evil Multifarious

finally tackling Gravity's Rainbow

the prose is, as i mentioned in [chat], excruciating

i really don't like pynchon's style.

ducknerd

Pynchon has a couple other narrative voices he doesn't pull out until later, though you might like them even less; I definitely enjoyed Part 1 more than the rest (though the second half of Part 4 made the rest of the slog worth it).
I've been trying to get into You Bright And Risen Angels because I'd gotten convinced that early Vollmann is better or at least more justifiably neurotic, but oh my god it is pure dreck. It reads like what people who hate difficult books seem to think difficult books are like. He tries all these insanely ambitious things that he pulls off pretty well in his later books, but here it's really obviously his first stab at a novel and about 80% of them flop.
So instead I've finally (re)started Autonomous Technology, which is absolutely fantastic but pretty dense. I might not make it too far this time, as school's starting to pick up and I probably can't afford the brainspace.

Jacobkosh

Holy awesome: Out of Print, t-shirts featuring classic book covers.