Instead of your favorite book, you can here publish a list of books you recommend (for various reasons) to other forum users:

I mostly read modern Scandinavian novels, British history mystery (whodunit) novels and science (space) books, so here goes:

Eco: The Name of the Rose (Medieval whodunit)
Eco: Foucault Pendulum (Truth about all conspiracy theories)
Calder: Magic Universe (A Grand Tour of Modern Science)
Baxter: Dark Future (what would life be, when all star in Universe are already dead)
Verne: Mysterious Island (Robinson Crusoe meets Lost)
Pears: Instance of the Fingerpost (Hommage to Kurosawa's movie Rashomon. Four people are talking about the same event. Everybody is seeing it differently than the others. Who is telling the truth? Who killed an Oxford don then?)
Complete Chronicles of Conan (Forget the comic book and even movies. Only real manly hero - where he turns up, there all Marvel's and other heroes hide)
Greene: The Fabric of the Cosmos (Cosmos revealed)
The Elegant Universe (Cosmos revealed)
Complete Sherlock Holmes (All Doyle's work about Homes in one book)
McDermid: A Place of Execution (13-year old girl vanishes in small British village. Is she dead and who is the killer?)
Mankell: Firewall (the vulnerability of modern world)
One step behind (A killer kills four young men and then a police officer.)
Return of the Dancing Master (A former Nazi is killed in the middle of nowhere - in woods in northern Sweden)
Fifth woman (Woman on the killing spree)
Sidetracked (Axe murderer on the loose)
Christie: And Then there Were None (10 Little Indians) - Everybody dies. Who is the killer then?
Murder od Roger Ackroyd (shocking ending)
Palliser: Quincunx (Modern Charles Dickens. Insanity, hate, inhuman conditions, inheritence, murder - it has it all. Even more shocking ending if you do not read it carefully. It took 12 years to complete.)
Sansom: Dark Fire (secret Bizantine weapon is discovered)
Sovereign (seeking a true British King)
Dissolution (Hommage to The Name of the Rose)
Revelation (serial killer is on the loose)
Monti, Sorti: Imprimatur (Revealing some disturbing secrets about one of the most popular Popes. It is still forbidden in Italy by publishers/government/Vatican. The Italian version of the book was therefore printed in Netherlands.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/2010 06:14PM by panzer.

For example :

Durant: The Story of Civilization (11 Volumes)(written 1935-1975, about 10000 pages, Pulitzer Prize for Volume 10 1968)
- a gigantic portrait of mankind up to 1820, can be as exciting as a crime novel.
- deutsch : Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit
- Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization

Did you read it?

I bought the volumes quite a while ago and still
have not read it completely, but much of it.
It is not supposed to be read necessarily from A to Z
but you can pick out chapters dealing with an era
that interests you at the moment, and others later.
There are many offers of it at ebay.com or ebay.de or
at internet second hand booksellers like abebooks.com
or eurobuch.de, of the complete series or of single volumes,
in various languages.

Fred

Catcher in the rye - Salinger (to pay tribute with respect).

Very famous novel.
For people who don't know yet:
J.D.Salinger passed away yesterday at the age of 91.

Fred

I didn't and was shocked: our universe is a little poorer for the loss of such a unique creator. RIP! :O

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2010 07:00AM by foobarly.

Guareschi: Don Camillo

Communism vs Katolic Church in post-war Italy

Davies, Eshelman, McKay: The Relaxation & Stress Reduction (5th edition, pdf)

How to fight against stress



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2010 07:53AM by panzer.

Some consider this to be science-fiction, it was written in that style but it's a whole lot more than that, way, way beyond.

It's an unforgettable experience.

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

This is also said for A Fire Upon The Deep and A Deepness the Sky by Vernor Vinge (I haven't read them, but my friends from another forum says they are mindblowing - also sci-fi)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2010 07:26AM by panzer.

Mother London by Michael Moorcock

Wonderful, warm and human.

Mhf, if you have some more sci-fi recommendations, just tell. I know a bunch of people on some other forum which are just starving for a good sci-fi novel.

Hi panzer, OK, I'll have a think...!

Think hard!

Here's one to be going on with, it's a classic so probably known to your friends on the SF forum, but whatever ... it may be new to someone here.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller


Think, think, think...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/23/2010 08:49PM by mhf.

I read this book and follow up book Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.

They know it too.

Basically, we are writing a review of good books (mostly sci-fi).

I have some (personal and from others) recommendations for you:

Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, It by Stephen King, Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Dune by Frank Herbert, City by Clifford Simak

Edited



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2010 07:22AM by panzer.

Thanks panzer. I've read most books by Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert and Clifford Simak.

There's also the Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis that you probably know but also Till We Have Faces by him - very special.

Here are some NON-SF but which I really appreciate :

all books by William Golding but especially Free Fall - this one can be a shock for some people : so close to home.

Gate-way by Frederik Pohl

1984 by George Orwell, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Mhf, if you do not like to read a sci-fi novel which includes s-e-x with children (age 10-18, but naive, innocent and with soul much younger than their bodies actually), s-e-x with grandmother, mother, sister, etc. and r-a-p-e scenes, evade these titles at all costs:

The Night's Dawn Trilogy
Judas Unchained
The Book of The New Sun
The Nights of Villjamur
The Tales of Dying Earth
The Dancers at the End of Time



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2010 07:30PM by panzer.

Das Silberkomplott by Reinhard Deutsch ( I do not know if there is an English version out there)

thanks again panzer - I'm not bothered by anything - apart from stupidity, ignorance and excessive egoism, so I can surely read those books you recommended !

The Third Policeman and Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien

... can't describe them !!!

Quote
mhf
thanks again panzer - I'm not bothered by anything - apart from stupidity, ignorance and excessive egoism, so I can surely read those books you recommended !

Then just read The Tales of Dying Earth. (I have read only the first four books on this last list, this one I did not but it is a classic).



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2010 07:37PM by panzer.

Apart from that 2 masterpieces from Vinge, I would also some day like to read Hothouse from Brian Aldiss (far future where plants rule the Earth), Of Men And Monsters from William Tenn (where huge aliens rule the Earth and humans are living like mice) and Midworld from Alan Dean Foster (all planet is covered by jungle).

They are not as known as today's sci-fi, but are much, much better.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2010 09:01AM by panzer.

I also recommend this novels by Stanislaw Lem: The Magellanic Cloud (first contact with alien race), Eden (after crashing their spaceship on the planet Eden, the crew discovers it is populated with an unusual society), The Invincible (The crew of a space cruiser searches for a disappeared ship on the planet Regis III, discovering swarms of insect-like micromachines), Fiasco (expedition to communicate with an alien civilization that devolves into a major fiasco).

These are also good:

Till A' the Seas by H. P. Lovecraft and R.H. Barlow

Collosus by D. F. Jones (defence super computer uses its control over nuclear weapons to subjugate mankind)

War of the Worlds and Time Machine by H. G. Wells (I have not read a sequel - Time Stars)

Short stories (2-5 pages) with a huge revelation or twist at the end like Clarke's Star

Roadside Picnic (movie Stalker and game S. T. A. L. K. E. R. are based on this novel) and Beetle in the Anthill by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. D-i-c-k (movie Blade Runner is based on this novel)

Puppet Masters by Robert Henlein (alien invasion)

Death and Designation among the Asadi by Michael Bishop (meditation on anthropology and the pursuit of understanding across difference)

Oryx and crake by Margaret Atwood (post-apocaliptic novel)

Mhf, another "recommendation" from me. I am the author (it is short sci-fi story (Dying Earth/planet subgenre) so you do not have to torture yourself to read it) :

http://www.2shared.com/document/8EH45gqU/Pilgrim.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/2010 08:42AM by panzer.