Book Recommendations

Off Topic
21

Like @Nimhain I was going to suggest the Belgariad and the Malorean by David Eddings.

Another couple are Influx By Daniel Suarez and The Player of Games by Iain Banks.

And I just finished The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North (read this one twice back to back).

Right now I’m into A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.

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22

Oh, I am about the audiobook these days. I’ve read more books with my ears than my eyes the past two years. Some of the best ones I’ve had that aren’t already on your list:

Feed - Matthew Tobin Anderson: It’s a young adult novel, but really well done in audiobook form, and has an excellent hard-hitting ending.
The Rook - Daniel O’Malley: Extremely British secret society with agents who have psychic powers. Superbly written.
Toys - James Patterson and Neil McMahon: Pretty fun super-spy stuff. Definitely some dystopian future setting here for ye who are into that. I enjoyed it.
Armada - Ernest Cline: Not as good as Ready Player One (but really, so little is), and made me yell out “This is just The Last Starfighter!” a couple times, but still quite good.

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23

What would you recommend of Butcher’s?

24

The stainless steel rat books by Harry Harrison are done of my favorites also.

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25

His main series, the Dresden Files, is great urban fantasy. The series starts off fun, and continually gets even better with each new entry. The most recent book might be the best one yet. The Codex Alera series is more standard fantasy, but it’s also a good read.

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26

“Bring out the ---- comfy chair!” Monty Python

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27

Naomi Novak has a series, I think it’s called the Temeraire series, that is the Napoleanic Wars if we had dragon riders. It’s very interesting! I need to go back and finish the last couple of books, and I think there is one more in the works.

Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey got me hooked on reading when I was a kid. Both have large catalogs with some really good stuff. Lackey is primarily fantasy, and McCaffrey has both fantasy and sci fi.

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28

I also like to mix in some nonfiction (primarily historical stuff). A few audiobook recommendations:

  1. Big fan of Bill Bryson. Loved A Short History of Nearly Everything, In a Sunburned Country (or Down Under for you Brits), and A Walk In The Woods. With all of his books you feel like you’re being entertained, laughing, and learning all at the same time. And he’s a good reader too.
  2. Also recently read Washington’s Crossing, by Fischer, which was quite good (and obviously took as its central contention the turning point of the Revolutionary War).
  3. McCullough’s Truman is perhaps the best biography out there, and the audiobook is great (and read by him to boot).
  4. The Fabric of the Cosmos by Greene is great. Touches on lots of core concepts covered in something like A Brief History of Time but is often much more accessible and by far the better audiobook.
  5. Given the audience, I also recommend Console Wars. It’s a history of the rise of Sega and its rivalry with Nintendo in the early 90’s and how it set the stage for the big business that is now video games.
  6. Definitely recommend What If? It’s by the guy that does XKCD (and spawned from his website), both informative and funny as you’d expect, and its premise is “serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions”. I understand there are some great images in the physical version, but the audiobook is quite good as well.
  7. Finally, I highly recommend the Podcast “Hardcore History” if you aren’t already familiar. I’m not a big podcast guy, but Dan Carlin’s series is fantastic, and his 5 part series on the Monguls entitled the “Wrath of the Khans” is well worth your time. Last I checked these were free too!
29

What would you suggest if there was one Lackey and one McCaffrey that everyone has to read?

30

For McCaffrey, her all time classic is Dragonflight. It’s actually the first in a trilogy, and also the earliest published in a long line of books in that setting - all of which are worth a read. Except for the ones her son wrote or collaborated on, those ones are boring and derivative, sad to say.

For Lackey, I’m going to go with The Black Gryphon. Also the first in a trilogy, it was not the first she wrote but it was the first I read. The rest of her Valdemar series is worth a read as well. Her writing is generally a bit simpler and fluffier than McCaffrey’s - though it’s not all white horses and rainbows - good for a relaxing vacation read.

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31

Now there’s a name I recognize. I remember being completely obsessed with
Dragonriders of Pern from the moment I discovered it in my school’s library. :relieved:

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32

Great thread!

Studs as you are a history buff, consider the Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia. It is an alternate 1930s reality where “actives” have developed magical abilities.

There are a lot of interesting quotes from historical figures, dirigibles fill the skies, and the balance of power among countries has been significantly impacted by Cogs who have developed technologies that make our modern weaponry look primitive by comparison.

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33

I first read Dragonflight on a cross country train trip when I was a kid, and I was totally hooked.

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34

I remember playing the video game based on the book series (yes there really was a game).

35

I forgot to mention that Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens is the funniest book about the coming of the Antichrist that’s ever been written. It would be in my top five of the funniest books ever period.

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36

Hey all…

My all time favourite in the fantasy genre is the Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay… It’s very Tolkienesque (the author also worked on the Silmarillion with Christopher Tolkien) and beautifully written…

Guy Gavriel Kay had also written many standalone novels which are great:

  • Tigana is wonderful
  • A Song For Arbonne, The Lions Of Al-Rassan and many others have a half-historical style and are beautifully done
  • Ysabel is more modern and a change in style, but also beautiful and haunting

I’m unsure which of these are on Audible, mind… But anyone who hasn’t tried Guy Gavriel Kay really should do so…

Other authors I like:

  • Stephen Donaldson (prefer the lesser known Mordants Need to the Thomas Covenant books)
  • Pratchett
  • Eddings (more for the younger reader though, sorry @Nimhain! My ten-year old is enjoying the Belgariad now)
  • Julian May (Saga Of The Exiles)
  • Michael Moorcock
  • Scott Lynch (as @studs noted above)

…many others I’ve forgotten and I haven’t unpacked my boxes of books since we moved house two years ago…

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37

You should check out the Douglas Adams books;

Dirk Gently’s holistic detective agency
And
The long dark tea time of the soul

Anathema device ftw.

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38

No offence taken, I started reading it when I was 10-12 myself. I still enjoy it, along with a couple of other fantasy novels I said as a kid).

39

Brandon Sanderson has been mentioned, but deserves mentioning again - my favourite is the Steelheart trilogy set in a near-future superpowered dystopia.

Also agree with pretty much all the other recommendations in the thread - need to re-read a few of these!

40

I recently reread the Belgariad, which I first read as a kid back in the 80s. It holds up surprisingly well.