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Sup. Here's a thread to chatter incessantly about surprisingly good books.

Going first; Revenge of the Sith the novelization.

I thought this book would be unimaginably gakky. It was the novelization of a mediocre, visually oriented movie. The only reason I got it was because I had an unhealthy obsession with Star Wars at the time.

But...

The book was amazing in every way. The dialogue was way different (almost none of the original lines from the movie remained), the fight scenes were much more intense and the characters much more indepth. Matt Stover made Revenge of the Sith awesome. Here, look at this free sample of it.

Biography of Colin Powell
Grunts
Forgotten Soldier
Iron Druid

Grunts is pretty good.
I'd second that.

 LoneLictor wrote:
Sup. Here's a thread to chatter incessantly about surprisingly good books.

Going first; Revenge of the Sith the novelization.

I thought this book would be unimaginably gakky. It was the novelization of a mediocre, visually oriented movie. The only reason I got it was because I had an unhealthy obsession with Star Wars at the time.

But...

The book was amazing in every way. The dialogue was way different (almost none of the original lines from the movie remained), the fight scenes were much more intense and the characters much more indepth. Matt Stover made Revenge of the Sith awesome. Here, look at this free sample of it.

Did the book explain what those seemingly purposeless power fields were in the final fight with Darth Maul?

I thought they were there to annoy Obi-Wan...
Apparently a village in Poland named a street after Obi-Wan...

The Godless World series by Brian Ruckley, I was bored and had absolutely no clue what I wanted to read next so I grabbed a book from an author I had never heard of. In the end it worked out very well.

A while back I started a thread asking for books on American history and decided to check out some of the recommendations.

A few bloody noses (The American revolution from the British perspective) is a damn good read. Seems the British were not as bad as they have been made out to be, and more surprisingly, after the revolution, strange stuff happened. High taxation, a standing army, and a central government were established i.e all the things they rebelled against in the first place. And the poor radicals in the individual states were swept away!! Still a good book though.

American Caesar (biography of General MacArthur) is another cracking read.

And finally, Gods and Generals (American Civil war) is probably something a lot of people on this site have read, but it's another good book. In fact, in the next few months, I will be raising my own force for use in civil war historical games. Can't decide on what phase of the war, or even which side I should go! Leaning strongly towards New Hampshire volunteers simply because I've been there!

So yeah, American history is insightful, full of drama and tragedy, and very entertaing, if that's the right word to use. But you know what I mean

I've been reading the thoughts of Terence McKenna recently in print form and find them riveting.

Suggest them for all.

Brom's The Child Thief, a dark retelling of Peter Pan was a surprisingly good read.

Mosquito Empires by John Robert McNeil. Its a history book I had to read for a class and I looked at the title and just thought "A book about Mosquitos and history? WTF?" Dreaded it at first but ended up loving the book. If you like history of the Caribbean, or of the early Colonial era, get it. Its not that long, but its concise and well written.

In the area of fiction: The Host. Its from the same author as Twilight (and almost as poorly written) but I have to say, I really did like it. The story is no where near as asinine, the characters aren't as trivial, and its actually kind of enjoyable for a once through (she still used cringed to damn much).

Area of fiction written by authors who can actually write: Beautiful Creatures. Fairly standard version of the typical teen supernatural romance story, except it doesn't suck (skip the sequels).

I used to like reading the pulps like the Mack Bolan or the Destroyer series of books.

Totaly over the top type action.

 LoneLictor wrote:
Sup. Here's a thread to chatter incessantly about surprisingly good books.

Going first; Revenge of the Sith the novelization.

I thought this book would be unimaginably gakky. It was the novelization of a mediocre, visually oriented movie. The only reason I got it was because I had an unhealthy obsession with Star Wars at the time.

But...

The book was amazing in every way. The dialogue was way different (almost none of the original lines from the movie remained), the fight scenes were much more intense and the characters much more indepth. Matt Stover made Revenge of the Sith awesome. Here, look at this free sample of it.

Actually, all of the prequel books were pretty good and nothing like the movies. In AotC, Anakin even admits to himself "gak, why did I say that? I sound like a whiney asshat." Obviously not those words, but he admits when he sounds like a dumbass. But yes, Matt Stover's RotS was by far the best-it was dark, violent, lots of character depth and you feel yourself as torn as Anakin choosing sides: Windu REALLY lashes out at him, while Palpatine uses seriously sugared words to sway him-hell, just from reading the book I'd tell the Jedi order to suck it too and ask where I sign up for my red lightsaber.

I also have to throw a few non-SW books on the list:
The Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings. Okay, well...any early work by DE-Redemption of Althalus is amazing, The Losers is what Catcher in the Rye SHOULD have been, Elenium and Tamuli are great as well, and even High Hunt was pretty good.
Almost Home by Damien Echols. You've heard of the West Memphis Three? Three guys on death row/in jail for life for a crime they didn't commit. This is the auto-biography of the guy who was facing death row-it's his tale of his whole life, it'll make you laugh, cry, swear and go through every emotion. Good luck finding it though-it's out of print now, and runs you about $200. It was $30 when it came out. Glad I got my copy early.

I really liked Longitude by Dava Sobel. It looked like some boring history book, but its very imformative and really, really well written and entertaining! Can only recommend it!

"The Sword of Truth" novels by Terry Goodkind is great.

"The Dresden FIles" series by Jim Butcher is awesome-sauce.

I discovered the Wild Cards series and have read three of the books and love them all.

The Syncronicity Trilogy by Michael McCloskey
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the trilogy. It's the same series of events from different perspectives across the 3 books.

The saga of the 7 suns by Kevin J Anderson

Bran Dawri wrote:
Brom's The Child Thief, a dark retelling of Peter Pan was a surprisingly good read.

read that myself a wee bit back, it was damn interesting

Metro 2033. Damn, that was an awesome book. Stumbled a bit at times because of the translation, but freaking awesome nonetheless.

Also, most of the Halo books are quite awesome as well.