Favorite Books (excluding Rowlings and Tolkien works)

[Risingblade]

The Wheel of time series is pretty good

 

[lacktheknack]

I assume I will have to hand my man-card in (again) for this. But my all time favourite book is "Pride and Prejudice".

Why would you have to hand in your man-card for that? It's the only good romance novel out there.

I also love Pride and Prejudice, but my favorite overall is the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. Close second is Lewis Carrol's work... all of it. Even Phantasmagoria. ESPECIALLY Phantasmagoria.

 

[Eleuthera]

Why would you have to hand in your man-card for that? It's the only good romance novel out there.

Because we are MEN[sup]tm[/sup] *flex* GRRR, we are not to like romance... or something like that, I wasn't paying attention when they handed out the man-cards...

 

[Hypno-Sheep]

The Dark Tower series by stephen king is a great read.

 

[w@rew0lf]

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
World War Z by Max Brooks
I've also got a thing for the Starcraft expanded universe novels

 

[Tom_green_day]

Bill Bryson is an excellent author. He is a comedy writer but does loads of comedy travel writing too.

 

[Zanderinfal]

Skulduggery Pleasant is pretty damn good. Magic and stuff in a modern setting with guns, axes, necromancy, etc. The characters are really well developed and there are alot of books in the series so far, so if you start now you have about 7 books worth of reading right there.

Also, it doesn't have too much to hide. Don't mean to reveal spoilers, but there is one moment where [MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD] the book describes trying to blink, but your eyelids are slashed open so it doesn't work. Yeah...

 

[Kirke]

Does anyone really consider Tolkien's work to be their favorite? He did some amazing world building and indelibly left his mark on modern fantasy but a good writer he was not.

My favourite book of all time is Bilbo. Personally I think he is a fairly good writer, certainly not the best, but he makes up for it with good world building.

OT: I like the Artemis Fowl series. It's quite long by now, and the earlier books are more childish, but it gradually gets more serious.

 

[Relish in Chaos]

The Catcher in the Rye, because I find the main character immediately relatable and I just like the unique writing style.

 

[Westaway]

Man, not sure what I expected but after browsing a few of the posts I'm disappointed in the Escapist. Do you guys even READ?

Remarks like this always confuse me. What exactly disappoints you? That the majority of people here prefer fantasy to period drama? That you don't recognise many of them to be classics? Or that people aren't listing enough books (or wearing enough hats)?

I would suggest pretty much everyone here has read the classics, if not for pleasure, then at least for school. Not listing them as their favourites has no bearing on whether or not they enjoyed them. And wouldn't it be rather boring if every post listed the same selection of books? True, there's very little diversity in terms of genre going on here, but that excludes those who flat-out dislike science fiction or fantasy novels; for everyone else this thread must be a goldmine of opportunity.

I'm sorry if this comes across as confrontational, I'm just disappointed people criticise each other for the type of fiction they enjoy.

See, the thing is that most people haven't read the classics, which is why I bothered making the comment. But, like I said, I don't know what I was expecting. The thing that got to me was all the pulp fiction and teen-trash books people were posting like The Hunger Games. That really shouldn't have bothered me though, considering I'm posting on a video game forum, which is easily the trashiest and least intellectually stimulating form of media existing, so the average person on here really wouldn't be reading James Joyce I guess. Especially since the Escapist's descent into a majority of people under 18.

I'm sorry if this comes across as pretentious, I'm just disappointed people don't care if they read shit mass produced for the lowest common denominator.

 

[afroebob]

Lord of the Flies is always a great one to read. Even if you don't completely agree with the theme of the book its definitely food for thought.

 

[RandV80]

Well George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice (or Game of Thrones as it's known on HBO) is an obvious one.

Apart from that I'll also throw in my recommendation to Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, as well as Brandon Sanderson's great Mistborn trilogy and the start of his own planned 10 book epic The Way of Kings.

While the two have been mentioned together a few times in this thread I don't think anyone actually pointed out the link. With the 11th book released, and supposedly only one more book left to finish the series, Robert Jordan died. You can imagine the shock and horror this caused to all fans of the series. But Jordan left notes, and to the rescue his widow chose young up and coming fantasy author Brandon Sanderson to finish the series. He took the notes, determined it would take three books, not one, to wrap it all up, and the guy delivered. The final book A Memory of Light came out just a month ago, though I don't like collecting hard cover books so I'm still waiting for my library hold to come in. I should be reading it some time next month, finally!

I went through Sanderson's own work the past year though and found it to be just as good, if not better, than Jordan's best.

 

[Kungfu_Teddybear]

My favourite book series is The Old Kingdom series/The Abhorson Chronicles written by Garth Nix. Amazing books, about necromancy and the undead.

 

[Teoes]

I liked Bill Bryson's stuff back in the day, along with Jurassic Park. 1984 and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy don't really count for being mentioned again..

Classic old-school sci-fi anyone? No-one's mentioned Isaac Asimov's Robot short stories or the Foundation series, wow.

More recently I've been digging to the point of binge-reading Christopher Brookmyre's work. Gruesome violence, black humour, blunt-force satire and plausible-yet-ridiculous events unfolding in a crime thriller. Helps if you live/grew up in Scotland (or better yet, in the Central belt) to get some of the references, dialects and humour but I'd recommend to anyone regardless. Highly entertaining.

 

[SirDeadly]

Rangers Apprentice Series
Brotherband Series
The Night Angel Trilogy
The Chronicles of Siala

They are my top four book series of all time (excluding HP and LOTR)

 

[afroebob]

The Catcher in the Rye, because I find the main character immediately relatable and I just like the unique writing style.

To be honest I despised that novel. To me, Holden was unbarable to listen to. He was just a whiny pile of angst. Then again that was kind of the point of his character, so if you like angst than I guess that book is perfect for you.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Crime and Punishment

The Foundation series

Animal Farm

Heart of Darkness

Atlas Shrugged (Just to see how it inspired the original BioShock)

 

[Jeff Gennick]

Well since I can't pick my favorite book (The Hobbit). I suppose I'll chose my second favorite, Sherlock Holmes The Complete Novels and 56 Short Stories.