Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Anything by Brandon Sanderson is great. I love the Mistborn Trilogy. I just finished Steelheart not that long ago, and enjoyed it. He is one of the few authors that can write twists that I don't see coming.

A song of Fire and Ice is great.

The Lies of Locke Lamora is great, sadly the sequal not so much. The Kingkiller books are good so far, with the Protagonist being quite a mary-sue though.

The First Law is pretty great. I would love to read more in that universe.

Codex Alara and the Dresden files were great.

Inheritance Cycle

I cannot recommend this. I Feel these books were very poorly written, and pretty boring. The way the plot advances in the first book is pretty much the protagonist being "Knocked out" over and over again.

 Sasori wrote:

The Lies of Locke Lamora is great, sadly the sequel not so much.

I quite liked the Sequel, there is also a third book, recently released.

 Sasori wrote:

The First Law is pretty great. I would love to read more in that universe.

There are three more books in the same universe, The Heroes, Best served Cold, and Red Country.
All worth a read.

 Sasori wrote:

Codex Alara and the Dresden files were great.

Inheritance Cycle

I cannot recommend this. I Feel these books were very poorly written, and pretty boring. The way the plot advances in the first book is pretty much the protagonist being "Knocked out" over and over again.

I really don't rate the Inheritance Cycle, it reads like the worst sort of fan-fictiom.

In terms of science fiction, I've only ever read stuff by Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, lots of Black Library stuff (which you don't want), and tons of Star Wars and Star Trek novels. I'm gonna assume you don't have loyalty toward those IPs or the migration to them would have been pretty natural.

So, let's shift away from science fiction. My next preferred genre isn't fiction at all, it's actually history.

I suggest reading:

Inside the Gas Chambers by Shlomo Venezia
Elie Wiesel's Night, Dawn, and Day.
The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry by Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg.

As you can tell, those books are holocaust-oriented and not for the faint of heart but they are really - in my opinion - some of the best accounts of that dark, dark time in human history. Venezia's book was so engrossing I read it in about 8 hours. I literally was unable to put it down.

Any by R.A. Salvatore. The legend of Drizzt series is a great read and beautifully written. I highly recommend it.

Also, how did we forget Raymond Feist for fantasy?!

I did forget another good anthology "series"...

Robert E. Howard's works, most especially Solomon Kane, and his Conan the Barbarian works.

The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance. Those are some of the most hilarious fantasy books I have ever read. My only sadness with them is that he hadn't written more in that setting.

Here is an excerpt from that series, at the start of Cugel's misadventures:

http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage_New.aspx?isbn=9781466821958

Ever since university I've lost my interest in reading books.

guess i should list off a few things
Sandman Slim series
The Spirit thief
Johannes Cabal the necromancer
A Madness of Angels (and any other books featuring matthew swift)
Broken Blade (follows an assassin who was a follower of a goddess of justice, til the other gods offed her)
Blood of Ambrose
Shadow's Lure
Emperor Mollusk versus the sinister brain (any pretty much anything else from the author)
most anything from Simon R. Green (though the nightside is my personal favorite series)
Confessions of a d-list supervillian
Iron Druid series
The Tome of Bill (imagine if the average dakka poster got vampired)
Blackjack villain

i could ramble on more, but i'll hold off for now (i spent years working nights and had a lot of reading time)

 Wyrmalla wrote:

The Star's My Destination

This. Its by Alfred Bester (and it was released as Tiger! Tiger! in the US). Its basically the Count of Monte Cristo in space but it is so much more than that and its the only book that I read annually. Bester's other books are also decent, the Demolished man is probably the best.

The Count of Monte Cristo itself is a good book although it tails off towards the end.

I have recently started reading Iain (M) Banks and so far I have been impressed, the Crow Road in particular is well worth reading.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also, how did we forget Raymond Feist for fantasy?!

Only the Riftwar and Empire books though. After that they go distinctly downhill, although the Serpentwar books are passable. Alternatively I have just outgrown them and they are all terrible

 Palindrome wrote:

 Wyrmalla wrote:

The Star's My Destination

This. Its by Alfred Bester (and it was released as Tiger! Tiger! in the US). Its basically the Count of Monte Cristo in space but it is so much more than that and its the only book that I read annually. Bester's other books are also decent, the Demolished man is probably the best.

The Count of Monte Cristo itself is a good book although it tails off towards the end.

I have recently started reading Iain (M) Banks and so far I have been impressed, the Crow Road in particular is well worth reading.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also, how did we forget Raymond Feist for fantasy?!

Only the Riftwar and Empire books though. After that they go distinctly downhill, although the Serpentwar books are passable. Alternatively I have just outgrown them and they are all terrible

Actually, I really enjoyed the origin series of Talon. Quite good, and it was a lot of fun. Duke Olasko's rebirth was pretty well done, going from a pompous, arrogant prick to being less than nothing and having to rebuild himself from the ground up.

 timetowaste85 wrote:

Actually, I really enjoyed the origin series of Talon. Quite good, and it was a lot of fun. Duke Olasko's rebirth was pretty well done, going from a pompous, arrogant prick to being less than nothing and having to rebuild himself from the ground up.

I read the first one (I think) and it was OK but it had more than a touch of boy's own adventure about it, rather like Black Library books in fact

Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. There are 3 books in the series and all of them are pretty awesome.

That being said, World War Z as well. The movie did nothing to give it the proper justice it deserved.

And the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force saga is excellent all around. As is the Republic Commando saga, though it will never be finished.

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. There are 3 books in the series and all of them are pretty awesome.

That being said, World War Z as well. The movie did nothing to give it the proper justice it deserved.

And the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force saga is excellent all around. As is the Republic Commando saga, though it will never be finished.

To be fair, the WWZ adaptation didn't have a chance in hell of really capturing that book. I imagine writing a screenplay to effectively convert all the stories into a coherent film would have taken many installments. Upon hearing of its production back in the day, I was thinking they'd select three or four of the best stories and try to tie them together into a 2-hour movie, but the finished film was obviously different.

I'll be honest, I loved the movie. I considered it to not even be a film adaptation of the novel. It's a completely original work that just used the clever name of the book. As a zombie movie it's one of the better ones imo.

 PrehistoricUFO wrote:

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Day by Day Armageddon by J.L. Bourne. There are 3 books in the series and all of them are pretty awesome.

That being said, World War Z as well. The movie did nothing to give it the proper justice it deserved.

And the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force saga is excellent all around. As is the Republic Commando saga, though it will never be finished.

To be fair, the WWZ adaptation didn't have a chance in hell of really capturing that book. I imagine writing a screenplay to effectively convert all the stories into a coherent film would have taken many installments. Upon hearing of its production back in the day, I was thinking they'd select three or four of the best stories and try to tie them together into a 2-hour movie, but the finished film was obviously different.

I'll be honest, I loved the movie. I considered it to not even be a film adaptation of the novel. It's a completely original work that just used the clever name of the book. As a zombie movie it's one of the better ones imo.

I'd have liked to see them start with Todd Wainio and the Battle of Yonkers. And then advance into the future with him where we've learned how best to fight the zombies.

I'll echo support for both the Monster Hunter International Series and Steelheart (superheroes basically creating fiefdoms of whats left of the US).

For a nice Fantasy/Sci Fi blend I recommend the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

I read his other books first, so finding tiny little connections to all these amazing other works in that series gave me a special kind of joy, but I see no reason you couldn't do that in reverse by reading his other works after.

Totally different than the sci/fantasy/pulp that most folks are suggesting (not that there's anything wrong with sci/fantasy/pulp), but if you want some real Literature* here's a couple of my favorites.

-The Secret History by Donna Tart.
Hard to describe, but it involves a murder.

-A Good Man is Hard To Find and other Short Stories by Flannery O'Connor.
Not at all what the title suggests. Most of these are dark stories of flawed people who often come to surprising, yet well deserved, consequences.

Here are a couple of quick reads i've enjoyed...

Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez - Game designer creates intricate computer daemons to trigger on his death. I don't want to spoil too much, but cool sci fi with a lot of action and near future technology. Themes of questioning society.
http://www.amazon.com/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731/
http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-TM-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451231899/

Apathy and Other Small Victories - Comedy about an apathetic loser, his career driven girlfriend and his weird habits (stealing salt shakers, sleeping on toilets, etc...). Includes a murder mystery.
http://www.amazon.com/Apathy-Other-Small-Victories-Neilan/dp/0312352190/

Jennifer Government - Near future sci-fi about how all services have been privatized, where people take the surnames of their employers. Follows a number of intertwining characters including an unlikely anarchist.
http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Government-Max-Barry/dp/1400030927/

There's nothing wrong with genre fiction, but it is definitely worth broadening your literary horizons beyond sci-if/fantasy, if you haven't already.

If you want to read one of the (in my opinion) most powerful pieces of literature written this century, so far, I'd recommend The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

Haruki Murakami is also worth checking out if you want to read some fairly surreal contemporary fiction. The short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes is where I'd start--there's some wonderfully haunting stuff in there. Subtly bewildering is probably the best way I could describe Murakami.

If you're into thrillers: Michael Crichton. Period. Taut, suspenseful, and unlike so many "thrillers" these days, intelligent. The thriller genre shoul have called it a day after Crichton and quit while it was ahead, before post 9/11 spec ops war on terror wet dreams became all the rage (see, Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, et al).

If you want something a little more cerebral, I'd recommend Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Camus' The Stranger, Nausea by Sartre, and Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. If you're a masochist, there's also plenty of books by 19th century Russian novelists with unspellable names; many of them don't even require a full size forklift to move around. The best of those, (at least, I think) is Crime and Punishment.

As far as classics, Frakenstein and The Great Gatsby are both excellent. As are Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, Brave New World, and Lord of the Flies. Also can't go wrong with Their Eyes Were Watching God, Huckleberry Finn, The Bell Jar. These are just off the top of my head.

Also, any interest in non-fiction? Because that's a whole other can of really awesome worms to get into.

Also, Wikipedia. Best casual/bathroom reading since reading while pooping=awesome was discovered.

 rubiksnoob wrote:
If you're into thrillers: Michael Crichton. Period. Taut, suspenseful, and unlike so many "thrillers" these days, intelligent. The thriller genre shoul have called it a day after Crichton and quit while it was ahead,

I agree, but only until he became popular enough that everything he wrote was guaranteed to become a movie. At that point the entire tone of his books changed and they started reading less like novels and more like screenplays - less motivation, more set and appearance description. If you look at this chronological list, I would recommend nothing later than Timeline. I can heartily recommend nearly every single other book on there, though - there are a handful I have not read. 5 Patients is terrific if you're into medical things, The Great Train Robbery is a terrific heist book, and Sphere, Congo, Andromeda Strain, and Eaters of the Dead all have an incredible re-readability to them.

Since you say you like the Black Library stuff, check out Point of Impact, which is a terrific book later adapted into a sort of lame movie. You'd probably like it. There are some sequels; those are all pretty poor.

Finally,if you like legal procedurals, I really like the Paul Madriani series. I think I linked the first one.

Also, if you like historical writings, check out All God's Dangers. It's the autobiography of Nate Shaw, a black sharecropper/tenant farmer who lived and worked in post-Reconstruction Alabama. Because he was illiterate, Shaw dictated his story to Theodore Rosengarten, a grad student. It's probably one of the most sweeping, compelling stories I've ever read, and surprisingly due to Shaw's illiteracy, one of the most eloquent. The man knew how to tell a story. It is also fascinating to watch how as one man's life intersects with every major theme/event in American history of the first half of the twentieth century. It's a crash course in the post-civil war American South, except taught by someone who actually lived it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 rubiksnoob wrote:
If you're into thrillers: Michael Crichton. Period. Taut, suspenseful, and unlike so many "thrillers" these days, intelligent. The thriller genre shoul have called it a day after Crichton and quit while it was ahead,

I agree, but only until he became popular enough that everything he wrote was guaranteed to become a movie. At that point the entire tone of his books changed and they started reading less like novels and more like screenplays - less motivation, more set and appearance description. If you look at this chronological list, I would recommend nothing later than Timeline. I can heartily recommend nearly every single other book on there, though - there are a handful I have not read. 5 Patients is terrific if you're into medical things, The Great Train Robbery is a terrific heist book, and Sphere, Congo, Andromeda Strain, and Eaters of the Dead all have an incredible re-readability to them.

Since you say you like the Black Library stuff, check out Point of Impact, which is a terrific book later adapted into a sort of lame movie. You'd probably like it. There are some sequels; those are all pretty poor.

Finally,if you like legal procedurals, I really like the Paul Madriani series. I think I linked the first one.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Read Ernest Hemingway and Patrick O'Brian. They're all you'll ever need.

Oh, Robopocalypse was really good, and so was The Postmortal.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Achtung-Schweinehund-Story-Imaginary-Combat/dp/0349115680/ref=la_B001HOIHXA_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385118604&sr=1-6


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Who-Was-Thursday/dp/193604109X

and

http://www.bernardcornwell.net/series/the-arthur-books/

I almost forgot one of my favorite classic books. Check out the Picture of Dorian Gray. The themes of rampant hedonism still hold up well after all this time.
http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Gray-Oscar-Wilde/dp/1492740381/

First and foremost, I always recommend Robert Charles Wilson's Spin to anyone with even the vaguest interest in sci-fi. I find a lot of the writers who write the "science" well tend to be lacking in terms of writing the human element of their books, making it hard to relate to their awkward characters. Robert Charles Wilson for me manages to write real, believable characters whilst keeping the strong science fiction background.

Other personal favourites include Dan Simmons' Hyperion, Issac Asimov's Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man.

The Road= Over. Rated.

As for an actual recommendation.....
The Face of Battle/Mask of Command/Price of Admiralty- John Keegan (R.I.P.)- Military History stuff.