Favorite Books (excluding Rowlings and Tolkien works)

[Zeke63]

The Seventh Tower Series, A Song of Ice and Fire series, Broken Sky series (so sad this one spiraled into obscurity even though itd make the best anime ever), 1984, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, The History of Sexuality, the Bartimaeus Sequence (lot like HP except wizards aren't behind the scenes and directly control the government and society, also demons are the source of magic so alchemy circles come into play and the like), and East of Eden

 

[Ishal]

I personally just finished my first dresden files book, Turn Coat, and it was the best book i have read in years.

Current favorite authors are Joe Abercrombie and Patrick Rothfuss, with the standard boring nod to George R.R. Martin if he can ever get his series out of the ditch he's driven it into.

Did you read "The Name of the Wind"? A few of my friends swear by that book. They sing praises to it more than a church choir sings praise to God.

I'm a fan of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series. Would I enjoy Rothfuss?

 

[The_Echo]

The Pendragon Adventure. It's probably the best fantasy fiction series I've read.

As for standalone books, Of Mice and Men never gets old.

When it comes to manga, I think Black Cat would have to be my favorite. (I'm not counting series that I wound up finishing with the anime.)

Also, honorable mention goes to John Dies at the End, because it's just great.

 

[kortin]

Ugh why is everyone always hanging over the same teenage fantasy bestseller soon-to-be-movies franchises? They're all the same!

Literature Elitists: The most utterly nonsensical elitists in the world.


My personal favorites would probably be the Artemis Fowl series and the Pendragon series. Both genuinely entertaining books.

 

[kortin]

The Witcher novels of course but they probably have not been translated to EN yet.
Also WW2 pilots memoirs and aircraft technical manuals but i doubt that would interest you much.

Really? I would have thought because they were turned into games that they were already translated.

Explains why I can't find them, I guess.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Ugh why is everyone always hanging over the same teenage fantasy bestseller soon-to-be-movies franchises? They're all the same!

Literature Elitists: The most utterly nonsensical elitists in the world.


My personal favorites would probably be the Artemis Fowl series and the Pendragon series. Both genuinely entertaining books.

Hey, I have another one for you. Purple prose: not literature. Your turn, this is fun!

 

[Lt._nefarious]

John Dies at the End is pretty much the second coming of Super-Batman-Jesus. Seriously, read that book! Do it...

Also Mogworld and Jam are really fucking good and I'm a massive fan of the Dexter books...

 

[Bill Nye the Zombie]

I've just got to recommend Ciaphus Cain series, just because it's so good. Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books are always awesome reads, his Kain Chronicle books were ok, but not really much like his other stuff. E.E. Knight has some awesome stuff, his Vampire Earth series is a somewhat refreshing take on vampires/aliens/mythology as a whole.

 

[cwmdulais]

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

i shall forever remember Captain black and his loyalty oaths

 

[theparsonski]

A Song of Ice and Fire - Seriously, George R.R. Martin has written not only the most realistic and well-crafted fantasy world around, but he also shocked and surprised me with his plotting. You never know who is going to die next, and that is a horrible and wonderful place to be.
Noughts and Crosses - My favourite books going into my teens, great characters, great plots, and they don't hold back with the emotional punches either.
The Edge Chronicles are great too, such an original and wonderful fantasy world, crafted with such care, creativity and devotion. The illustrations kick ass too.
The Hungry Cities series - Are so original and highly recommended for both adults and teens alike. Philip Reeve is a genius, and I can't stress enough how great these books are. Read them. Especially if you like steampunk.
The Chaos Walking trilogy - Never has a book series made me invest in the characters so much and taken me on such an emotional rollercoaster - and the ending. Holy crap. Also wins a prize for the best dog in literature.

 

[Deadlock Radium]

I'm currently at the 2nd book in the A Song of Ice and Fire-saga, and I really love the books. Brilliant litterature that I recommend for everybody.
Also, another one of my all time favourites must be The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Such a good book.

 

[IGetNoSlack]

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

 

[briankoontz]

I enjoy books about totalitarianism, as they give great insight into our present reality. So Hamlet and The Metamorphosis are great, as well as The Trial and The Tempest.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is critical reading and is unfortunately horribly underread. Faust is awesome. Marry Shelley's Frankenstein is great.

For modern authors I enjoy Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Zizek.

As far as "why" goes the best answer is that these works and others like them teach us the most about reality.

 

[McShizzle]

Ugh why is everyone always hanging over the same teenage fantasy bestseller soon-to-be-movies franchises? They're all the same!

Well I'll give you these favorites of mine,

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kenedy Toole - a pretty humorous book about a silly man, that I think more people should read.

Drood, by Dan Simmons - I seem to like everything I've read of his, this one is a sinister historical narrative based around Charles Dickens.

Blood Meridian, By Cormac McCarthy - A crazy, violent, sickening journey through the West. Awesome story but not recommend for younger readers.

Dictionary of the Khazars, by Milorad Pavich - I like it, but I can't really recommend this one. If you want to try twisting your head around this historical (sort of) "story" about a people in Eastern Europe, give it a shot.

I cut the Escapist a little slack. I'm pretty old (by forum standards) and they're mostly fairly young I think which accounts for the glut of teen and genre fiction mentioned in here. Long ago, before I finally couldn't take any more,
I read far more of RA Salvatore's Drizzt books than I'll admit to having read in polite circles.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Did you read "The Name of the Wind"? A few of my friends swear by that book. They sing praises to it more than a church choir sings praise to God.

I'm a fan of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series. Would I enjoy Rothfuss?

I can't say there's much similarity between Wheel of Time and the Kingkiller Chronicles. Wheel is epic grand-scale fantasy, the other is far more personal. I will say that Rothfuss is one of the best new authors in the genre. The acclaim for his series is not unwarranted.

 

[Brainwreck]

Blood Meridian from Cormack McCarthy if you feel that happiness is overrated.

Winnie the Pooh from Milne if you're... 6 years old? I guess?
I'm not very good with books.

 

[ClockworkUniverse]

To me, the current big trio of fantasy authors is Jim Butcher, Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson.

I kind of like A Song of Ice and Fire, but it's really drawn-out. About a third of the way into the third book, I put it down and just never got around to picking it back up.

Also, if you read The Dresden Files, watch the TV show first. It's only vaguely related to the books, taking place in its own continuity, and while it's pretty good in its own right, if you watch it after reading the books, you'll hate it because it's just not as good.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Sherrilyn Kenyon writes a few good series. The Chronicles of Nick has the least amount of sex(thus far) of all her books. The Dream Hunters, The Were Hunters, and The Dark Hunters series are more sexually charged(but fair share of violence). And then she has The League series which if I recall(it's been a few years and I've yet to have the money to buy them yet) isn't as sexually charged.

Laurell K. Hamilton has The Anita Blake series which starts out not very sexually charged but as the books are coming out now are more sex less plot but started out very plot heavy. Her Merry Gentry series is sex with a plot. Merry Gentry is a story about a fairie princess and her Anita Blake series is vampires, werewolves, ghouls, etc.

Kim Harrison is about a half witch half demon who gets into a bunch of situations that she has to get out of/fix. Little bit of sex but more plot/action.

R.A. Salvatore The Legend of Drizzt series which is freaking amazing as hell.

Shakespeare and Poe are some of my favourites.

On the topic of Tolkien I prefer more his stuff that isn't The Hobbit/LOTR trilogy(not to say that I don't love them but his other stuff is pretty damn good).

Anything by Dean Koontz/Neil Gaiman/Clive Barker.

Marquis De Sade. Anything you can get your hands on.

Candide by Voltaire. That is good and I read it in high school and still go back and re-read it from time to time.

Trainspotting by Irving Welsh. If you can get over the Scots dialect it is a very good book.

The Rose That Grew From Concrete by Tupac Shakur. Yes it's poetry. Yes it's good. I just finished it.

Jennifer Armintrout has her Blood Ties books(it's a 4 book series) that is about vampires that don't sparkle.

The Beautiful Creatures series(y'know the books that came before the movie that came out on valentine's day about the witches?) is pretty good. I only have the first two books but I'm enjoying them.

The Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth is pretty good.

Cassandra Clare has The Mortal Instruments series and The Infernal Devices series out so far. Both of which have another book in the series coming out soon. And The Mortal Instruments has a movie coming out as well. She is also working on starting a few other series.

The Star Wars books are good.(I'm including everything: Bounty Hunters, Jedi, Sith, etc) But that might just be because I'm a huge star wars fan.

The Doctor Who books are also good.

Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy is one of my favourite series.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is a good author in my opinion. I have a fondness for The Great Gatsby.

These are just what I can come up with off the top of my head.

(I don't read at all can anyone tell that?)
Other than that I can link you to my goodreads account and you can browse through the books I've read there. For anyone who cares and wants the link: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1410521-april-marie

 

[Lewg999]

A big fan of Phillip K Dick's and of the ones of his I've read I'd say my personal favourites are The Penultimate Truth and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep.

Other than that The End Specialist by Drew Margary ( I believe its called The Postmortal in the US ) is really good if you like a fairly realistic view on humanity discovering immortality and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a really well written novel that's kind of like The Matrix meets Second Life and WoW if it constantly referenced geek culture.

 

[BaronUberstein]

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

In the Gunsight of the KGB by Alexander A. Ushakov