Your Favourite Book(s) of All Time

happyninja42

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Terry Prachett deserves to be in there but I’m not picking a favourite
Yeah that'a s good call. Can't really isolate a single book of his as a favorite, as all of his stuff just sort of floats on this disc of awesomeness. They all have great things to them, but in different ways.
 

BrawlMan

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Kinda hard for me since I am a on and off reader.

The Masque of Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe.

The Marriage of Heaven & Hell by William Blake. You can thank V for turning me in to a William Blake fan.

Battle Angel Alita - I still have yet buy the hardcover box set, but I will later in the summer.

Nothing Lasts Forever - Die Hard is based off this novel.

Bruce Lee: Striking Thoughts
 

twistedmic

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My favorite series of all times is the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. And within that series my favorites are Memories of Ice , House of Chains and The Bonehunters (books three, four and six respectively.
 

Hawki

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Frankly, I'm surprised anyone could make it past the first Malazan book.

It's written like no book I've ever read, and I don't mean that in a good way. Someone said it best when they said that reading Book 1 feels like you're reading Book 10, expected to know what happened in Books 1-9.
 

Trunkage

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Frankly, I'm surprised anyone could make it past the first Malazan book.

It's written like no book I've ever read, and I don't mean that in a good way. Someone said it best when they said that reading Book 1 feels like you're reading Book 10, expected to know what happened in Books 1-9.
It doesn't get any better in further books. In fact, he goes to totally different continents which have their own array of characters you need to keep track off.

Other people call this 'not having your hand held.' So it's the Dark Souls of fantasy. Its not an easy or light read
 

twistedmic

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I lost interest in 9. So close. I find his books are prone to a middle slog. I think that book maintained the pressure for most of the book. The siege of Capustsn comes second
Book 10 had some really good pay offs for the series, but I will admit parts of 9 and 10 felt sluggish (mostly the Ribby Snake) to me.
 
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Trunkage

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Book 10 had some really good pay offs for the series, but I will admit parts of 9 and 10 felt sluggish (mostly the Ribby Snake) to me.
It was a bigger problem. It's my last book I ever read. Kids take up way to much time these days
 

Agema

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Frankly, I'm surprised anyone could make it past the first Malazan book.

It's written like no book I've ever read, and I don't mean that in a good way. Someone said it best when they said that reading Book 1 feels like you're reading Book 10, expected to know what happened in Books 1-9.
Agreed. I liked the series, but it just throws things at you. Stuff happens with characters that you don't get and - for long stretches - characters running round carrying out long-running agendas that will be opaque until another quite a few books' time. There are vast swathes of backhistory that people in the world can be expected to know but you as reader do not, leaving you struggling to comprehend the actions of numerous characters. At various points, he just whisks you off to a whole new part of the world with a whole load more characters where you're in exactly the same situation, again. And finally, it's not a 10-book series, it's a 14+ book series where the rest are written by Ian Cameron Esselmont. His books are actually really handy, because they give a much better idea what the hell is going on with numerous characters.

This is also without considering that Erikson does not write in a nice, plain style. His Malazan books are, frankly, quite a slog. This makes it even harder to keep track of what's going on. Apparently Erikson was a big fan of Glenn Cook - and I can see the similarity in style. If you enjoyed the Malazan books, you could also try R. Scott Bakker.
 

Kyrian007

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Much like Hawki I'd have to say Brave New World. But I am a big fan of the classic sci-fi era guys like Clarke and Matheson. I'd point to something like Clarke's collaboration with Steven Baxter for "The Light of Other Days" as something really special.

And off beat choice for fiction and non-fiction... "Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined" by Drew Carey is surprisingly good. The first half is nonfiction, his life, his career, the tv series, and being a comedian. And it is fine. Good if you are a Drew Carey fan. But Drew described it in the book as "the part he wrote with a gun to his head." What he wanted to write was the second part of the book, a collection of short stories. These short stories are really outstanding. The audiobook version read by Carey himself is pretty good as well, but a warning to any who go that route. The audiobook does not contain ALL of the short stories, but does include a sequel to one of the stories that is NOT in the audiobook version. Better to read the book, or at least that story before going audiobook.

But if I'm honest I have a amalgamated hardback (gilded edge too) copy of the entire Hitchhikers Guide series that is actually my favorite thing to read in the world.
 

Gordon_4

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I don’t read many novels these days - to my shame and detriment - but used to when I was younger. I do however remember one book very vividly. “The Power of One”, by Bryce Courtney. Probably as well known for a film adaptation in ‘92 is an epic tale set before and during World War Two, with the action mainly taking place in South Africa. Before I read this, well, there was a few gaps in my lexicon of red flag words.
 

Drathnoxis

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Probably a toss-up between Titus Groan (Mervyn Peake) or the Lyonesse Trilogy (Jack Vance). Probably after that I could add The Iliad (Homer) and The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky).
How do you think The Iliad compares to The Odyssey?
 

Xprimentyl

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Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles: Beautifully written, highly descriptive, but what I like most about them is how her vampires eschew much of tired tropes of traditional vampires and makes them actual characters who are intellectually and emotionally layered and who develop throughout the course of the series. They’re not monsters in a horror series who celebrate their occult lives; they’re troubled, lonely individuals in a tragic series who’re constantly lamenting their distance from the human experience while barely being able to endure their own kind save for a few, rare and tenuous bonds and connections with one another. The 1994 Interview with the Vampire movie (based on the first book) does a really good job of setting the tone, but the books that weren’t made into a film are where the true richness of the larger experience exists. And ignore 2002’s Queen of the Damned movie (based off the third book) entirely; completely misrepresentative of the book, so much so, Anne Rice pulled her own name from the marketing. They took some seriously questionable creative license choices; first time I almost walked out of theater.
 

ObsidianJones

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Ok, I had to admit that the Outsiders spoke to me in a way that I didn't expect mandatory reading would.


Also, because I have to honor my teenage years. The Belgariad


I've been a real big fan of Sci-Fi my entire life. So Snowcrash fit the bill.


If anyone can relate to me some good Shadowrun books, I'll love you forever. Shadowrun is my ideal setting for anything.

Sidebar... Snow Crash needs to be adopted to Netflix. And only one person could play Hiro.

Donald Glover.
 

Satinavian

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Welll, one of the best is probably Dune. But that comes as a series and it loses a lot without plot arcs and twists spanning more than one book. If i really had to chose the best of the bunch, i would probably take God Emporer of Dune

I also really enjoyed Eded by Stanislaw Lem. I admit that Solaris might be more intellectual, but Eden is a better read imho. I also enjoyed his Summa Technologiae which proved incredibly accurate considering it was written in the sixties

For non science fiction, when i was young i did enjoy Dracula a lot, though part of that came probably from how weird that victorian society was for an adolescent from a communist country. I also liked Sons of the Great Bear.

Something contemporary, lighhearted and a bid silliy I enjoyed recently is the webnovel of "ascendence of a bookworm".
 

09philj

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There's a few books that are particularly important to me:
- A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond is utterly delightful and the opening of the first chapter is liable to catch me off guard and make me cry.
- The Player of Games by Ian M Banks is one of many books he wrote about The Culture, but it's my favourite. The section where Flere-Imsaho shows Gurgeh the dark heart of Azad's society and his following match against the judge is just fantastic.
- Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is my favourite of her books. Atwood is a really engaging writer and makes the central character of Jimmy as interesting as he is repulsive.
- Roger's Profanisaurus is a swearing dictionary compiled by the editors of Viz, and is one of those books that no household is complete without.