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Book Love
Passerbye
I am much older than you.in Beach CityRegistered User regular
I am much older than you.in Beach CityRegistered User regular
I know there have been plenty of 'what books are good' debates both here and in H/A, but I'm not just talking about 'good' books here. I'm talking about big love affairs. Books that have had an impact on your personality, changed how you see the world. You know what I mean - those books you just can't put away. You've read them 5, 10, 15 times already. The covers are tattered and the spine's in sorry condition, but you keep rereading it because you've fallen in love with a character, a setting, or a plot twist.
Please, share the secrets of your life long romances. They don't have to be 'insightful' books, they can have simple story lines, shallow characters, or even be a child's book - the only prerequisite is that they had some kind of impact on your life, enough so that you either still own and read a copy, or at least get nostalgic whenever you see a copy.
My book love list could end up a bit on the long side (seeing as I'm one of those stay-inside bookworms), so I'll just list the top five here.
1) Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey.
2) This Alien Shore, C. S. Friedman.
3) The Lily Theater, Lulu Wang.
4) Belgarath the Sorcerer, David and Leigh Eddings.
5) Locker Room Diaries, Leslie Goldman.
Please, share the secrets of your life long romances. They don't have to be 'insightful' books, they can have simple story lines, shallow characters, or even be a child's book - the only prerequisite is that they had some kind of impact on your life, enough so that you either still own and read a copy, or at least get nostalgic whenever you see a copy.
My book love list could end up a bit on the long side (seeing as I'm one of those stay-inside bookworms), so I'll just list the top five here.
1) Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey.
2) This Alien Shore, C. S. Friedman.
3) The Lily Theater, Lulu Wang.
4) Belgarath the Sorcerer, David and Leigh Eddings.
5) Locker Room Diaries, Leslie Goldman.
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The Guns of Avalon
The Sign of the Unicorn
The Hand of Oberon
The Courts of Chaos, all by Roger Zelazny.
These are the first half of the Chronicles of Amber. Everytime I finish them, I'm left with a feeling of awe, and disappointment that I've finished them, and the magic is gone until I read them again.
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
edit:
Now that I think about it, this was probably the book that really got me started with reading novels. I was (am still) obsessed with videogames, but this really made me love reading a good book.
... Now I have a backlog of videogames and books that will take me the rest of my natural life to get through... not that I'll live that long if one of the book towers decides to crush me in my sleep
That series was the beginning of Sci-fi/fantasy for me. My mom found a boxset for free in front of a store, and the rest was history.
Are the other books as good as Belgarath? My local library system doesn't have a copy of any of them and I generally like to read before I buy.
Face Twit Rav Gram
The Garion and Sparhawk cycles are both good. Also, if you're really curious as to what goes through the head of a fantasy writer, it's not a bad idea to get The Rivan Codex, which is basically all of the notes for the Garion books with some discussion from the author.
It just had such an amazing story and breathed life into the background of the game. I dunno why I love it so much.
Also, Dan Simmon's Hyperion Cantos. Four of the best books of sci-fi I've ever read.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
If you haven't read The Belgariad and The Malloreon, you definitely should. The Belgariad came first, followed by The Malloreon, then the Eddings went back and filled in the history with "Belgarath the Sorcerer" and "Polgara the Sorceress." "The Rivan Codex" is a sortof collection of flavor material, interesting to read after you read the meat. "Belgarath" and "Polgara" are really just run-ups to the main events, "Belgariad" and "Malloreon." I loved them, read them through tons of times.
The Eddings also wrote a separate series, "The Elenium" and "The Tamuli" - different world, same formula. Also enjoyable to read, a little grittier, but a perfectly respectable more of the same.
I just finished Rise of Endymion. I agree.
I'm trying to remember books that I read over and over and over and I really can't remember any. I know I used to read Black Stallion books alot, but that was when I was a kid. Recently? I've been more looking to read new stuff even though I do pull out my older books often.
For instance, I'm reading John Dies At The End for the third time now that I've finished all the new books I got.
For some reason, the Amoite Spectrum Helix really touched me.
Also,
Choose Again
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The Power of One
Atlas Shrugged
Ender's Game
Series
Piers Anthony's Incarnation of Immortality
David Eddings' Belgariad
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth
Hah, yes. Guards! Guards! Is the only one I've read of that series so far, but I did like it quite a bit.
Also, majority of the Xanth novels from Piers Anthony.
Face Twit Rav Gram
Also one I've read fairly recently, Special Topics in Calamity Physics. It's not actually about physics but I loved the crap out of it.
And finally the Magic Faraway Tree as a very young child. Moonface and toffee! Lovely.
I've read about two thirds of that series and I can say that they are "ok" but I wouldn't put any of them on my top five, they just aren't that great.
In no particular order, here are 5 author I like (well 6, so sue me).
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
David Eddings
Terry Brooks
Douglas Adams
Issac Asimov
Edit: others come to mind like Robert Jordan, but he died before finishing his series. Pierce Anthony is good too. Adding tolkien.
The rest are just as, if not more, awesome. It really is a fantastic series.
Reminds me, I need to pick up a new copy of the Foundation Trilogy as mine is close to disintegration.
Read them all:
Guards! Guards!
Men At Arms
Feet Of Clay
Jingo
The Fifth Elephant
Night Watch
Thud!
there's a couple of other's they're involved in but they're my favourite books.
Apart from that my oter favourites are:
By Joe Abercrombie:
The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
Last Arguement Of Kings
By Lian Hearne:
Across The Nightingale Floor
Grass For His Pillow
Brilliance Of The Moon
(The Harsh Cry of the Heron is nowhere near as good as the others, and I haven't read Heaven's Net is Wide)
The fucking Harry Potter books. Yeah, I loved them *embarrassed*
Ach, damn, I can't remember which book of hers I read - part of why I can't get my own copy of it. I remember it had a vampire-like person as the main character, he'd lost his lover a while back or something, who was another vampire. The main character ends up meeting a member of an alien race which (if I remember correctly) could change it's shape. It had a dark green lizard-looking creature on the cover. I really liked that book.
Face Twit Rav Gram
Yeah, I don't know. I need to read more of her stuff actually.
It's awesome but quite dense and the narrator is a lying ass
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
Why?
Made my imagination run wild for Pip/Flinx
And the others made me more aware of other people, and just deeply affected me.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
Interesting Times by Pratchett.
Le Morte d'Arthur by Malory
The Garrett File's series by Glen Cook.
Back in 5th and 6th grade, I read several of the Star Wars novels an embarrassing number of times.
Every once in a while I'll go back to my Heinlein collection and pull something out.
The Day After Tomorrow (AKA Sixth Column) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress get the most play. The former because it is an easy way to spend an hour or two on a boring afternoon, and the latter because I love it so. Probably read it 8 times.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
He's a great author and did much to advance science fiction, but even he wrote some pure shit. Sixth Column comes to mind.
Heinlein's okay, as long as you can get past the misogyny and proto-libertarian stupidity. Seriously, Heinlein and Rand are the two faces of the same coin.
I'm curious to how you're getting the misogyny out of his work. Almost all of his male characters tend toward reverence of women and very few of his female characters are fairly capable.
Strong female characters in Heinlein still ultimately bow to the authority of men.
There's also a strong argument to be made that Heinlein's version of enlightened female sexuality - simplistically, walking around naked and having casual sex with any moderately attractive male acquaintance - is basically a male masturbatory fantasy.
I have mixed feelings about it, personally. I think his ideas on sex and gender lack sophistication, but they're not fundamentally misogynist - at least, not any more so than the zeitgeist of his time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Narnia is OK, but it doesn't compare to LoTR or many of the other series mentioned here. I can see how it holds a special place in some peoples hearts, but much like harry potter I can enjoy it without seeing greatness. Not top 5 worthy IMO.
This.
Also, I sense a Freudian slip in Thomamelas's quote
My Top 3
As I Lay Dying - It was my first longer work by Faulkner, and while it's certainly not his most accomplished I love it all the same. I did a linguistic analysis of a section for a class last semester, and I had to turn the paper in late because I decided to reread the entire novel instead of reading and analyzing the very short chapter I was writing on.
Lolita - I've read it three or four times since I first read it in undergrad. It holds up very, very well. It even has a bitchin' audiobook version read by Jeremy Irons.
To the Lighthouse - Pretty goddamn close to perfect.
Dresden Files
Wrinkle in Time series by Madiline L'Engle
Belgariad and others by Eddings
Harry Potter