Your Favourite Book

[Solbasa]

This is not an easy choice for me, but I've managed to cut it down to a few:

Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov. The whole metaseries of the Foundation series, the four Robot books, the Empire trilogy and the robot short stories are all great, but it's those two books that are far and away my favourites. If I ever need to choose a single favourite book, Foundation and Earth is my default answer. It makes a lot less sense if you read it without having read the original Foundation trilogy and the Robot novels first, but if you are willing to invest the time, you'll definitely get returns. It's some rock solid old-school sci-fi.

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. Just because I don't agree with his stance on homosexuality doesn't mean he isn't a great author, and won't change the fact that Ender's Game is a damn good read.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I haven't read the fifth one yet, but the four I've read so far are just brilliant. I love British comedy.

The Thrawn trilogy, those Star Wars Expanded Universe novels by Timothy Zahn featuring the most awesome character to ever appear in any Star Wars media, ever, without exception. Those books are what I wish the new movies would be based on, and the main reason why I'm upset that the intire EU has been declared non-canon.

 

[liza01]

book? hmm i love the book written by DAn Brown,Clive Cussler and rick warren's purpose driven life,oh before i forgot i also love this one from Nicholas Sparks dear john. so inspiring

 

[happyninja42]

mono-polytheistic atheism

*blinks* um, not sure how that even works at all, since that is completely contradictory to what an atheist would believe exists.

 

[Tanis]

mono-polytheistic atheism

*blinks* um, not sure how that even works at all, since that is completely contradictory to what an atheist would believe exists.

That's, kind of the point.

For me the book series is right up there with Dune or LOTR or any 'o gawd do we HAVE TO read this in HS because it's a 'classic' or whatever'.

Though, it might be better to say 'mono-polytheistic secularism' or something.
It's very...odd.

But, in this weird way, it works.

 

[DisasterSoiree]

Emil Cioran's The Book of Delusions [http://www.nietzschecircle.com/Cioran_Hyp_May_10.pdf].

??A decomposed corpse in its unending cells; every cell containing a sum of vibrations; all the cells whirling in a vortex; the detachment of all the organs in the tremor of individuation; the return of life to its prime material, to the first memories.

...

I only love the one who goes beyond there is; the one who can feel his beginnings and the things that precede them; the one who remembers the times when he was not him, the one who jumps in anticipation of individuation.

He who has not trembled realizing the deep meaning of individuation, has understood nothing of this world, because he will never have sensed the zones of his beginnings, nor will he able to foresee the moment of his own end. Individuation reveals our birth as an isolation and death as a return....

Individuation gives life a name. We all have a name; the world which precedes individuation is the life without a name, it is the life without a shape. Only individuation gives life a shape. This is why the crashing of individuation in death is a disfiguring. Man doesn't love his face, which is an accident, but its shape, which is a metaphysical sign. The trembling of individuation is an antecedent of disfiguring, it is the suspicion about losing our world. Man is a world within a world.

 

[ghalleon0915]

Hm, this is a tough one. I don't think I could narrow it down to just one book...but if I had to choose...

Count of Monte Cristo. I have re-read that so many times it's not funny. Despite my preference for fantasy/sci-fi, this would be my go to book. Honourable mention to The Walking Drum by Louis L'amour, for someone known for his western books, I was surprisingly enthralled by this historical fiction and saddened that he died before he got a chance to write the sequel.

 

[Mullac]

I've just read, well about to finish reading, Catch-22 and it really caught me off guard. It is one of the most hilarious books I've ever read, but also manages to have fairly serious undertones, classic black comedy.