Engaging Books

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Flippy the Squirrel

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I have a lot of spare time on the train ride home lately, and I've taken to plowing through my "to read" list. It's been a real pleasure, and I've finally read some books I'd been meaning to read for ages, like the seminal and fantastic Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

However, I'm running out of books to read. I just recently picked up Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and will be busy for a while with that. Once that's done, though, I'm going to be looking for new reading material.

I'd love to have some suggestions from folks on what might be really engaging stuff to read. If any of you can offer up some suggestions, I'd be eternally grateful.

Oh, and if you want to know what I've read and liked so that you can have some basis for comparison, you can look at a small collection of stuff I've read in the past little while here:

http://www.shelfari.com/afroninja/lists/IsReadhttp://www.shelfari.com/afroninja/shelf
 
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From your To Read list, make sure you read the Zombie Survival Guide. Not engaging reading, but fun and necessary!

Now....

You need to read Dune (Frank Herbert), it is absent from all your lists. You might also enjoy Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld Series (starting with To Your Scattered Bodies Go). I also highly recommend Farmer's Dayworld if you can find a copy.
 
Quest said:
You need to read Dune (Frank Herbert), it is absent from all your lists.
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You are so correct. I'm a monkey, and forgot to record when I read Dune. That book was absolutely stunning, and it's no wonder that it's such in influential work.
 
I see that you've read Starship Troopers. A good antithesis to that book is The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.

Judging from your interest in Fantasy you might check out some of Stephen Donaldson's works. I enjoyed the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series including Lord Foul's Bane/The Illearth War/The Power that Preserves in the first series and The Wounded Land/The One Tree/White Gold Wielder in the second series. There is a third series which I've not read.

Jack McDevitt also is a pretty good Sci-Fi author. My favorite of his is Eternity Road but he has others that are good too.
 
Excellent recommendations, Superduck. Again, I failed to record the Stephen Donaldson books I read, because I was 12 at the time and that was a long time ago. Perhaps I'll go read them. I've been meaning to for a while.

I've read the first four of the Hitchhiker's books (dang, gotta update the shelf), although I never got around to the fifth.
 
If you read the Tao, you must read Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Paul Eps. Also add to that the Blue Cliff Records and the Gateless Gate, it in a nice collection of Zen Classics by Sekida.

Some Albert Camus should be there as well. And even some Aristotle, I recommend The Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8 and 10 on Friendship and Pleasure are quite unmatched by anyone else.

The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery. Not long, and very well written.
 
Lets see. I have to agree with Dune...the original series at least. Also the Hitchhiker's series is one of the greatest out there.

The Dark Tower Series is up there for me, despite the Anti-climatic ending.

Oh, and Catch-22 is the best book I've ever read.
 
ever read SnowCrash? and George R. R. Martin has a fantastic 4-book series. hmmm...also check out C. S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy.
 
You read Ender's Game, but not Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind?? Those three books continue Ender's story. Very good reading.

If you want a REALLY thought provoking book, read Hyperion stuff By Dan Simmons http://www.mostlyfiction.com/scifi/simmons.htm Very very good stuff.

If you want some 'funny' stuff, read almost anything by Glen Cook. He's best known for his "Black Company" works (which I have read in total, 3 times). But my favorite is the The Garrett Files (12 books in all).
 
Here's some of my favorites:

All the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.

Most anything by L.E. Modesitt Jr.

The Obsidian Chronicles by Lawrence Watt-Evans, I also like the Ethshar novels.

The Temeraire series by Naoimi Novik.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Caverns of Socrates by Dennis L. McKeirnan


Those should keep you busy for a month or so.
 
David Eddings books are pretty good

its like a fantasy lotr-esque story about sorcerers.

also to be a bit morbid. American Psycho. Gory, but if you look beyond very intelligent.
 
Frank Booth said:
If you read the Tao, you must read Zen Flesh Zen Bones by Paul Eps. Also add to that the Blue Cliff Records and the Gateless Gate, it in a nice collection of Zen Classics by Sekida.

Some Albert Camus should be there as well. And even some Aristotle, I recommend The Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8 and 10 on Friendship and Pleasure are quite unmatched by anyone else.

The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery. Not long, and very well written.
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I love me some philosophy, although I have to take it in small doses, because I'm not a young man determined to change the world anymore. I get fed up with pedantic descriptions of how I'm supposed to think. (I think I'm getting crotchety.)

I have liked the one thing by Camus I read, which was a short story called The Guest in an English class I took a while ago. I've meant to read more. He's a cool existential nut.
 
imitation said:
20,000 leagues under the sea, or Cyrano De Begerac
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Wow. It's amazing how similar people's tastes are here. I actually starred in Cyrano de Bergerac in high school. (I played LeBret, although I was a far better fencer than the guy who played Cyrano.)

I've not read enough Jules Verne, although, as I understand, one must be careful about the version one gets, as translations have generally be exceptionally poor.
 
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