[GirlsDeadMonster]

On another thread, we talked about a TV series based on a novel and I realized, we should have a thread for novels readers. I get most of my recommendations from other readers on what books to read next. Sometimes, it can be frustrating just browsing the aisles reading covers and back ends trying to justify the book's cost and afraid that the story may not be that great. I would love to have a place where I can get the opinion of other readers on books to read. Pray tell, what is a favorite book of yours and why? What do you like to read on the beach? Are you Romance, Drama, Thriller? Are you 30s Shades of Something? Who's your favorite writer and why?

[Creeper]

I think taste in books varies so wildly, I find it hard to get recommendations from other people unless I know we share a lot of the same tastes. My own taste varies quite a bit. I find it hard to put a finger on "favorites", but some of the books I've read a number of times:
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - romantic and sweet. Jane has a great character and Mr. Rochester is wonderfully flawed.
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - a classic. Romantic, but horribly messed up. Pretty dark for when it was written.
3. A few Jane Austen books such as Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. I find her to be a little too bland for me though. Too much dialog, too little description. She isn't a very "pretty" writer(I don't like the language she uses, and sometimes I have to reread stuff to understand what she is trying to convey)
4. Life of Pi by Yann Martel - I found this book to be intriguing..it makes you think. I also enjoyed his "Beatrice and Virgil" book.
5. Harry Potter by JK Rowling - I love these books. I kind of grew up with them, and they are just so easy and enjoyable to read, without being empty at all.
6. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - I love his language. He can be very poetic.
7. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - one of my absolute favorites. Historical fiction/romance at it's best. Unforgettable characters.
I also love Dracula, Memoirs of a Geisha, Lord of the Flies, Peter Pan..the list goes on. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is a great book, but it is seriously heavy slogging. The characters are amazing and the themes are powerful, but I find that I need to be committed to finish it.

When I go on holidays I like reading stuff that isn't at all dull, but isn't exactly "popcorn"..I want it to have depth. "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philipa Gregory is a favorite for that. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that something like "The Hunger Games" is great for a holiday too(I have to bring all 3 because they are such easy reads) because I can just burn right through them.

I really want to read some more Charles Dickens. I've only read A Christmas Carol.

Oh, and I almost never buy a book I haven't read, unless it is in a series that I'm following. I get stuff that is new to me from the library, so my books at home are only those that I love.

[Steph]

Please excuse me while I run out of this thread screaming wildly about killer clowns.

[Creeper]

I forgot to add some of the books that I think are worth reading, but I haven't bothered to buy: I enjoyed The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and especially Still Alice by Lisa Genova. That is a heartbreaking read. I also really liked The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author.

And another one that I would probably put on my favorites list is Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson. It is a really interesting, vivid historical fiction that also has a fair bit of romance. It is about a little white girl who was kidnapped by Comanche natives in 1836 and then raised by them. It is a true story(or at least based on one.) It is brutal and feels very "real". And a really interesting look into Comanche life at that time, if you have any interest. I didn't find it boring at all. It's sad, though!

[farswell7]

I'm just thinking of the books I read recently so here goes.

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) is a great series to get into. It starts off slow mainly because of all the different characters, but once you get to know them it just gets better and better.

The Deluge by Mark Morris. Its an apocalyptic type book about a flood that wipes out most of the world. The ending is a little rushed but besides that it is really good.

It may seem childish but A Series of Unfortunate Events is truly an amazing series. Adults could enjoy them just as much if not more than kids.

[D_Piece]

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) is a great series to get into. It starts off slow mainly because of all the different characters, but once you get to know them it just gets better and better.

If you're into the fantasy genre, you HAVE to pick this series up. It's tastefully written and so exciting. Depending on reading speed, it could be your summer reading!

[DeadCave]

Reading a lot when I was a kid, teenager, young adult, aging adult (ha), has at least helped me understand how to build a story. I do have an annual reading list and I'll pick up a few new ones along the way and if I enjoy them enough then they'll replace an older annual reader.
In no particular order
The Stand
The Hobbit & LOTR
Dune
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever: parts 1-3
It
Lightning (by Dean Koonz)
Harry Potter (all 7 novels)
Favorite authors have been Alan Dean Foster, Stephen King, Dean Koonz, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Stephen R. Donaldson, Frank Herbert and dozens of others.

Mostly horror, sci-fi, thrillers, crime, and anything truly educational.

[GirlsDeadMonster]

Reading a lot when I was a kid, teenager, young adult, aging adult (ha), has at least helped me understand how to build a story. I do have an annual reading list and I'll pick up a few new ones along the way and if I enjoy them enough then they'll replace an older annual reader.
In no particular order
The Stand
The Hobbit & LOTR
Dune
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever: parts 1-3
It
Lightning (by Dean Koonz)
Harry Potter (all 7 novels)
Favorite authors have been Alan Dean Foster, Stephen King, Dean Koonz, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Stephen R. Donaldson, Frank Herbert and dozens of others.

Mostly horror, sci-fi, thrillers, crime, and anything truly educational.

Lightning is one of my favorites. It started me on reading for fun and actually enjoying myself. There are actually a lot of great books in here already and I'm taking notes.

[GirlsDeadMonster]

Sorry for the clown, Steph. Creeper I like your favorites too. I like to see what others like and why and I take down notes so I can pick up the book too. My current collection is massive, I really should donate them to the local library.

[Viridiana]

Everyone's already listed the popular or classic books, so I'll just tell you about a great fantasy book (series) Kushiel's Dart, set in a world similar to ours, but with alternative history and religions, extremely interesting and poetically written.

[Jon W]

The Postman

Pretty much anything by John Ringo

If I'm in the mood for a lark, I'll reread one of "The Stainless Steel Rat" series.

The Belgarathian by David Eddings (five book series. Give it a chance... it takes him about 50 pages to clear his throat, then the dialoge gets amazing).

The Miles Vorkosian series (lots of books, amazing main character).

[DeadCave]

Lightning is one of my favorites. It started me on reading for fun and actually enjoying myself. There are actually a lot of great books in here already and I'm taking notes.

It is a great book by Koonz... time traveling nazi's ... what a concept.
I actually tried writing a screenplay based on the book. I may try again someday. I think it would make a good quirky sci-fi action thriller movie.

[lone star walker]

My favorite classics are The Grapes of Wrath, The Jungle, and Gone With the Wind. I re-visit them every few years. I also read anything by Stephen King; my favorites being The Stand, Salem's Lot, and the entire Dark Tower series.

I think I'll check out Lightning and Kushiel's Dart. They sound interesting.

[KidSeventySeven]

I also read anything by Stephen King; my favorites being The Stand, Salem's Lot, and the entire Dark Tower series.

This this and this. I'm a massive King fan, with TDT novels being my favorite books of all time. I really enjoyed The Long Walk which he wrote under the Bachman alias...I'm also a big fan of the Harry Potter series with no shame, the Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and I've started reading the GoT novels although I've yet to settle down and get myself get wrapped up in them yet. The House of Leaves book has to be the most insane, intricate and confusing thing I've ever read, but I liked it a lot.

I'll be honest guys, I've tried reading a couple of Koontz novels and I literally couldn't make it past the first two chapters in either. I hated the way it was written, he was so overly wordy in his descriptors that it irritated me to no end, and I'm no stranger to "wordy" books as it's a signature of King's...

[farswell7]

Has anyone read Pillars of the Earth?

I haven't read it yet but I've been told by multiple different people that it is the best book they have ever read and it is almost impossible to put down. I have a copy but I haven't started it yet, as I've been pretty busy. But thought I'd ask some of you if you guys have the same opinion as some of my relatives/colleagues/friends. I haven't heard one negative thing about it.

[DukeSilver]

The House of Leaves book has to be the most insane, intricate and confusing thing I've ever read, but I liked it a lot.

That book took me about a year to finish, but man...

My list (and I'm sure there's plenty I'm forgetting):

- Anything by Ray Bradbury, particularly The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles, or Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Kurt Vonnegut
- The Plague by Albert Camus
- 2666 by Robert Bolano
- Nine Stories and Catcher in the Rye (of course) by J.D. Salinger
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Children of Men by P.D. James
- Atonement by Ian McEwan (have some tissues on hand)
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I tend to lean more towards dystopian / science fiction, but now that I'm reading ASoIaF, I'm much more open to the fantasy genre.

I also will admit without shame to enjoying the Harry Potter series, as well as The Hunger Games trilogy (although the last one was a bit too bleak). Nothing wrong with enjoying novels in the young adult category... unless it's Twilight. Because no.

I've always enjoyed reading, and I had an amazing English teacher in 10th/12th grade that introduced us to a lot of the classics that I really fell in love with: The Great Gatsby (always one of my favorites), Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Stranger, Things Fall Apart, The Metamorphosis, Sound and the Fury.

Although I will admit I've lost interest in his more recent work, I also really enjoy a few of Chuck Palahniuk's novels: Fight Club, Survivor, Lullaby and Choke. Nothing revolutionary, but they are enjoyable to read if you like that kind of stuff.

[DeadCave]

I really enjoyed The Long Walk which he wrote under the Bachman alias...

I'll be honest guys, I've tried reading a couple of Koontz novels and I literally couldn't make it past the first two chapters in either. I hated the way it was written, he was so overly wordy in his descriptors that it irritated me to no end, and I'm no stranger to "wordy" books as it's a signature of King's...

The Long Walk is another story that I think would make an interesting movie... however given the subject matter and mass-shootings... some would find it disturbing.

Koonz is an acquired taste and yes he is wordy but I have no problem with his story telling. It's influenced me much in the same way that King and several others have. My only tiff about Koonz is his tendency to do a "speedy" wrap up in the last two or three chapters after a long suspenseful build up. It's almost as if he has rushed his way to the ending. Something I've noticed about my Caught In A Bind story ...

[KidSeventySeven]

The Long Walk is another story that I think would make an interesting movie... however given the subject matter and mass-shootings... some would find it disturbing.

Koonz is an acquired taste and yes he is wordy but I have no problem with his story telling. It's influenced me much in the same way that King and several others have. My only tiff about Koonz is his tendency to do a "speedy" wrap up in the last two or three chapters after a long suspenseful build up. It's almost as if he has rushed his way to the ending. Something I've noticed about my Caught In A Bind story ...

If it makes any difference, the last DK novel I tried to read was "Your Heart Belongs to Me" and it seems to have gotten very mixed reviews...I found one by a reader on GoodReads that pretty much hit the nail on the head as to how I felt about it. This excerpt is a bit lengthy, so I apologize in advance.

Spoiler

"Now, on this Wednesday morning, he said, “Pumping six-footers, glassy and epic, sunshine that feels its way deep into your bones.”
“I’ve got a deadline to meet.”
“You’re too young for all this talk about death.”
“Are you riding another train of manic insomnia?”
“Slept like a baby. And I don’t mean in a wet diaper.”
“When you’re sleep-deprived, you’re treacherous on a board.”
“I may be radical, but never treacherous.”
“Totally insane, like with the shark.”
“That again. That was nothing.”
“Just a great white.”
“Well, the bastard bit a huge chunk out of my board.”
“And—what?—you were determined to get it back?”
“I wiped out,” Ryan said, “I’m under the wave, in the murk, grabbin’ for air, my hand closes around what I think is the skeg.”
The skeg, a fixed fin on the bottom of a surfboard, holds the stern of the board in the wave and allows the rider to steer.
What Ryan actually grabbed was the shark’s dorsal fin.
Samantha said, “What kind of kamikaze rides a shark?”
“I wasn’t riding. I was taken for a ride.”
“He surfaced, tried to shake you off, you rode him back down.”
“Afraid to let go. Anyway, it lasted like only twenty seconds.”
“Insomnia makes most people sluggish. It makes you hyper.”
“I hibernated last night. I’m as rested as a bear in spring.”
She said, “In a circus once, I saw a bear riding a tricycle.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It was funnier than watching an idiot ride a shark.”"

I once read that Koontz bases his characters on his real life friends. I don't know who he knows, but he sure oughta make some new acquaintances becuase his characters always talk nonsense 24/7. What's more, Koontz awful descriptions take the cake:

"She was as perfect as a mirage, blond hair and golden form, a quiver of light, an alluring oasis on the wide slope of the sun-seared sand." '

"beauty of a degree that seemed mythological, radiant eyes the precise shade of a green sea patinaed by the blue of a summer sky, golden hair crowned with a corona of sunlight, goddess on a holiday from Olympus."

"The only leaf shadows that touched Samantha's face were braided across her golden hair and brow, as though she wore the wreath of Nature's approval."

"The sun searched her eyes and revealed in them the blue of the sky, the green of the sea, the delight of being in harmony with millions of tons of water pushed shorward by storms three thousand miles away and by the moon now looming on the dark side of the earth."

I once admired Koontz for being able to describe a scene in vivid, almost cinematic detail. But now his writing is so fake, so forced you can literally see how he thinks for hours about every word and where it might be in his collection of thesauruses. He lost the ability to pace the story with natural flow, to use words in a way that appeals to readers; it's a wonder that he doesn't include a footnote saying "Yes. I'm THAT good".
Maybe he has " green eyes in which the striations were like the bevels in a pair of intricately cut emeralds" - yes, that's a quote too.

[Jon W]

The Long Walk is another story that I think would make an interesting movie... however given the subject matter and mass-shootings... some would find it disturbing.

Koonz is an acquired taste and yes he is wordy but I have no problem with his story telling. It's influenced me much in the same way that King and several others have. My only tiff about Koonz is his tendency to do a "speedy" wrap up in the last two or three chapters after a long suspenseful build up. It's almost as if he has rushed his way to the ending. Something I've noticed about my Caught In A Bind story ...

Scuttlebutt that I've heard is that he has a tendency to 'wrap up' when his deadline approaches.

[Creeper]

Has anyone read Pillars of the Earth?

I haven't read it yet but I've been told by multiple different people that it is the best book they have ever read and it is almost impossible to put down. I have a copy but I haven't started it yet, as I've been pretty busy. But thought I'd ask some of you if you guys have the same opinion as some of my relatives/colleagues/friends. I haven't heard one negative thing about it.

I've read it. It is hard to put down and it certainly is interesting..but for the most part I didn't like it. I don't know how else to say it without sounding sexist, but..I could REALLY tell it was written by a man. There are quite a few graphic sex scenes in the book that had me either shaking my head/rolling my eyes or laughing out loud. It was like some bloody teenage boy fantasy. And he used some really ridiculous language to describe these scenes that was completely out of place in a historical fiction. That was a huge turn off for me, so yeah. I can't say I liked it. It has been quite awhile since I've read it, I know there were other things that really irritated me about the author's "voice", but I know the way women/sex scenes were portrayed was a big one for me.

[theglassintheguvseye]

Great suggestions folks. A long time ago I made the mistake of leaving my book at home while on a trip to I think Arkansas. Anyway, I went into a dollar store for something and picked up a novel called "Almost Adam" which I no longer own. It was surprisingly good for a light read. Now I want to find another copy. It's not serious literature but it was highly enjoyable to me. It's about a man who ends up somehow in the deep jungles of Africa and comes across living prehistoric humans. If you see a cheap copy, it's worth picking up.

[Jon W]

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever: parts 1-3

I agree with the rest of your list, but I just have to quibble about this one.

Understand - I bought all three books. I read all three books cover to cover.

And *hated* the entire series, the entire time I was reading it. I was so hugely annoyed at Covenant the Whiner (and other things - pretty much his first action in the Land) throughout that I was reading just in the desperate hope that he would get his... and he never did.

It was well written and it acomplished the purpose of getting me to buy it... but I (personally) hated the entire series.

YMMV.

[DeadCave]

I agree with the rest of your list, but I just have to quibble about this one.

Understand - I bought all three books. I read all three books cover to cover.

And *hated* the entire series, the entire time I was reading it. I was so hugely annoyed at Covenant the Whiner (and other things - pretty much his first action in the Land) throughout that I was reading just in the desperate hope that he would get his... and he never did.

It was well written and it acomplished the purpose of getting me to buy it... but I (personally) hated the entire series.

YMMV.

I can see how Covenant would be un-likable ... he was written to be that way. In my opinion he was written well enough for that purpose. Most authors tend to write heroes or anti-heroes to be likable... Donaldson turned that concept on it's head and wrote a character that readers would loathe. Remember that he (the author) has personal experience with people who suffer from Hansen's Disease or leprosy. Lepers are still shunned by society. I think he was trying to make a subtle/not so subtle point about how those fellow human beings feel about that.
The people of the Land still accepted him (out of ignorance of his condition) and in many cases believed in him because he truly did (in that universe) carried a talisman of enormous power. Another reason I loved the people of the Land was their own love for the Land and how they worked dilligently to preserve and try to become ONE with the energies that emanate from it. The way the Lords devoted their entire lives to their respective lores. People here on (this) earth simply have forgotten or don't care anymore as they should. *blushes* I'm a tree-hugger so naturally I'm going to love people like the Lords, Ramen and the people of the Land.
I didn't like Covenant (or Linden Avery as well)... but the Giants and the Haruchai I simply adored. The Giants in the second chronicles shone brightly and (for me) they made reading the chronicles enjoyable... dunno about the third chronicles... only got through the first two books (or is it three) ... still waiting on the final to be published. Lord Foul is a typical enough villain a lot like Sauron from LOTR, but at least you can understand him when he speaks, and his malice comes through nicely in the pages.
What put a LOT of readers off from Donaldson is his heavy use of $35.00 words throughout... at first it seemed to a lot of people that he was making those words up... turns out he has an enormous vocabulary and knows how to use it.
I like it... I don't like his other works but Covenant remains on my annual list.

[GirlsDeadMonster]

It is a great book by Koonz... time traveling nazi's ... what a concept.
I actually tried writing a screenplay based on the book. I may try again someday. I think it would make a good quirky sci-fi action thriller movie.

I hear ya. I've read most of Koontz's stuff. Have you tried By the Light of the Moon? A man wakes up in his hotel room strapped to a chair while a crazed doctor injects a strange liquid in his arm and tells him this will either kill you of change your life and oh by the way, men in black will try to capture you, better run. Very interesting plot line, I couldn't put it down.