Book recommendations!

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**Asherian Command**

So last year I asked you all for some book recommendations, and this year I am going to restart that thread that I made as I don't really want to necro it!

Anyway this is a bit different as well, as any books count, Ebooks, web books, Helk PDFs count.

I am back to ask for more book recommendations and they could be anything from fantasy to well whatever you deem is a must read.

If anyone has any book they recommend for writing purposes. Like to learn how to write or linguistic books. Please list them! Also I am wondering if someone would recommend any lovecraftian stories or good books a writer should read before starting their own set of stories.

Hopefully this will also start up some conversations on some of your more favorite books that you usually recommend to people!

**curran12**

My favorite classic novel, and one that I always recommend, is The Plague by Camus. Great existential stuff if that is your taste.

Now as far as books about writing, the only one that comes to mind is Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art but that is less traditional novel writing and a greater emphasis on comic design and storytelling.

**jasper76**

For fiction:

The Egyptian by Mika Waltari is IMO the best fiction book I've personally read. I've read it like 8 times,and it never gets boring. Waltari wrote many other excellent books as well. They are hard to find in English, but the Egyptian should be readily available.

I Claudius and Claudius the God , both by Robert Graves, both were excellent books written from the perspective of the Emperor Claudius writing memoirs to later generations. There was also a great BBC tv series adaptation in the 70s hat still stands up.

If you are into fantasy and writing, the Silmariliion by Tolkien is a good read as it exposes you to one man's way of creating a backdrop over time for his fantasy world.

I know Hawethorne and Melville are major icons in the short story genre. Not that they may be writing fantasy or whatever interests you, but just for craft, it would be worthwhile to read their classic short stories.

**ColonelFazackerley**

I enjoyed "the Martian" by Andy Weir. A rare sci fi that attempts to be as accurate as possible, and has proved very popular.

**Hordini**

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

**Ensis Ferrae**

Non-Fiction:
The Thirty Years' War by Peter H. Wilson
The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark
The Conquest of Gaul by Caesar
Baseball, an Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

Fiction:

Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Reliquary by the same guys
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories by HP Lovecraft (cant get much more Lovecraftian, eh?)

**sub-zero**

If you like inspiring short stories, might I suggest this: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/536970.page#5796729

**jasper76**

Some more historical fiction recommendations:

Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar

Creation
by Gore Vidal

Julian
by Gore Vidal

King Jesus
by Robert Graves

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
by Jose Saramago

Shogun
by James Clavell

**Haight**

If you like dry humor, with a victorian bent, and more than a pinch of the occult (and more than a touch of Necromancy!) I can't recommend John Howard's Johannes Cabal series enough.

It's a wonderful series, and very well written. There are four books in the series, and they are all very good.

The first book (Johannes Cabal the Necromancer) is arguably the best, but they are all very very good.

**Paradigm**

The ones I always trot out when this comes up:

Anything by Patrick Ness. Chaos Walking is a stunning sci-fi epic that is superbly written, and both More Than This and A Monster Calls are very thought provoking (and the later has amazing illustrations, it's very much a picture book but not at all a children's book).

Michael Grant's Gone series is another good sci-fi, a combination of X-men-style social commentary, some kickass superheroic fight scenes and above all, a cast of characters that are exceptionally authentic, definitely not stereotyped and who all go through extraordinary development over the 6 books. It's violent, dark and rather creepy in places, but excellent nonetheless.

On the Fantasy side of things, Stuart Hill's Icemark trilogy is well worth a look. Very well written, some very original takes on classic Fantasy tropes and battles that make Pellenor Fields look like a playground scrap. It's a modern book, but definitely classic in its feel.

The Skulduggery Pleasant series makes the list as well. Forget the fact they're sold as children's books, they are the most hilarious, most fun, most awesome series about a skeleton detective who thows fire and drives a Bentley you'll ever read... Scratch that last bit, they're just the most fun books you'll ever read, period.

Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' are required reading for anyone who wants intelligent, meaningful fanasy, as are Phillip Reeve's 'Mortal Engines' and prequels and Cornelia Funk's 'Inkheart' series.

Finally, Susanna Clarke's 'Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrel', the brilliant tale of two magicians and their fall from the greatest friends to the worst of enemies. It's a 1000+ page whopper of a novel, full of footnotes and tangents, but worth the time it takes. It's also been made as a superb TV series that's just about to end if you don't fancy all the reading!

**jorny**

Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Absolutely fascinating read about the disintegrating soviet union. One of my favorites.

This is what the back cover says:

"Imperium begins with Ryszard Kapuscinski's account of the Soviet occupation of his town in eastern Poland in 1939. It culminates fifty years later, with a forty-thousand-mile journey that takes him from the haunted corridors of the Kremlin to the abandoned gulag of Kolyma, from a miners' strike in the arctic circle to a panic-stricken bus ride through the war-torn Caucasus.

Out of passivity and paranoia, ethnic hatred and religious fanaticism that have riven two generations of Eastern Europeans, Kapuscinski has composed a symphony for a collapsing empire—a work that translates history into the hopes and sufferings of the human beings condemned to live it."

**Asherian Command**

I might as well add the list of books I have read and would recommend to everyone

The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
A Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Anything by Ray Bradbury

Anything by Ernest Hemingway

"The Angel of the Odd" (1844) Comedy about being drunk

"The Balloon Hoax" (1844) Newspaper story about balloon travel

"Berenice" (1835) Horror story about teeth

"The Black Cat" (1845) Horror story about a cat

"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) A story of revenge

"A Descent Into The Maelström" (1845) Man vs. Nature, Adventure Story

"Eleonora" (1850) A love story

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (1845) Talking with a dead man

"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) An old house and its secrets

"The Gold Bug" (1843) A search for pirate treasure

"Hop-Frog" (1845) A midget seeks revenge

"The Imp of the Perverse" (1850) Procrastination and confession

"The Island of the Fay" (1850) A poetic discussion

"Ligeia" (1838) A haunting supernatural tale

"The Man of the Crowd" (1845) How to follow someone

"Manuscript Found in a Bottle" (1833) Adventure at sea

"The Masque of the Red Death" (1850) The horror of the plague

"Mesmeric Revelation" (1849) Conversation with a hypnotized dying man

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841) A detective story

"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1850) A comedy with a moral

"The Oval Portrait" (1850) A tragic love story

"The Pit and the Pendulum" (1850) A torture chamber

"The Premature Burial" (1850) About being buried alive

"The Purloined Letter" (1845) A detective story

"Silence - A Fable" (1838) A dream

"Some Words With a Mummy" (1850) A mummy speaks

"The Spectacles" (1850) A great little comedy about love at first sight

"The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether" (1856) Inside an insane asylum

"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1850) A murderer's guilt

"William Wilson" (1842) Identical twins or something else?
by Edgar Allan Poe

Anything by Robert Frost

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics

The Hobbit

The Lord of the Rings

The Silmarillion

Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth

Mr. Bliss

The Children of Húrin.

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

The Fall of Arthur

Manuscript locations

by J.R.R. Tolkien

Old Man's War By John Scalzi (And the entire trilogy)

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Killing is Harmless: A Critical Reading of Spec Ops: The Line by Brendan Keogh

Night by Elie Wiesel

Charnel Houses of Europe: The Shoah by Jonathan Blacke (Author) , Robert Hatch (Author)

**jasper76**

Since you listed a Joseph Campbell book so high up, let me recommend his Masks of God series, which includes the following four books:

-Primitive Mythology
-Oriental Mythology
-Occidental Mytholoigy
-Creative Mythology

Of the four, I have only read Primitive Mythology and Occidental Mythology. I find his "one-world, one-myth" hypothesis (he calls it the "monomyth") to be somewhat fanciful and based on confirmation bias, but the two books I read were excellent compilations of mythologies and common trends between them.

In a similar vein, I'd recommend The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion by James Frazer from 1890. Pretty much all of Campbell's thinking on mythology is derived from this book.

**alanmckenzie**

Asherian Command wrote:
Also I am wondering if someone would recommend any....good books a writer should read before starting their own set of stories.

In response to this particular request, I can't recommen enough the short stories of Roald Dahl; Over To You, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, My Uncle Oswald, Switch Bitch, Sweet Mystery of Life, etc.

Perhaps the best writing that I've ever cast my eye over.

Otherwise, I'm currently on the 7th (I think) book of the Bernard Cornwell series which starts with The Last Kingdom. It's been a great series. Historical fiction set around the times of the early viking invasions of Britain.

Non-fiction? I like to recommend The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin whenever I can.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and sci-fi wise, I've recently read the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov. Can heartily recommend that also.

**kronk**

I only read fiction. Non-fiction is boring, and I have enough boring gak to read at work. gak Kronk likes:

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne (A 2000 year old Druid in modern times interacts with Vampires, Werewolves, Gods, Demons, and lawyers. Funny and action packed.)

The Lord of the Rings by J RR Tolkein You should know what it's about. Other than the first 100 pages talking about a fething birthday party and a bit of marijuana inspired hippyism that is Tom Bombadil, it's a really good book series.

Horus Heresy books 1-4, the First Heretic, and Fulgrim. Best of the bunch.

Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. Exactly the way I picture Black Templars behaving.

Heart-Shaped Box, Horns and NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. This is Stephan King's kid and these are three excellent books. Horns was funny as hell. NOS4A2 was fethed up.

**Jimsolo**

The Damned trilogy by Alan Dean Foster- best scifi series ever. (Begins with A Call to Arms.)

On Writing by Stephen King is a good writing guide, as is The Marshall Novel Writing Plan.

**jasper76**

Here are some popular science books that are each excellent and accessible to non-science trained readers.

One Two Three... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science by George Gamow (general science)

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryosn - (general science)

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - (biology)

Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson - (cosmology and astrophysics)

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan - (skepticism and the scientific method)

Anything I've ever read by Carl Sagan has been pure gold.

**alanmckenzie**

Further to my earlier post about recommendations for the budding writer. George Orwell's Why I write is also well worth a quick look. Very interesting.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jasper, that Bill Bryson book is on my list. Been recommended to me a few times.

**Asherian Command**

jasper76 wrote:
Since you listed a Joseph Campbell book so high up, let me recommend his Masks of God series, which includes the following four books:

-Primitive Mythology
-Oriental Mythology
-Occidental Mytholoigy
-Creative Mythology

Of the four, I have only read Primitive Mythology and Occidental Mythology. I find his "one-world, one-myth" hypothesis (he calls it the "monomyth") to be somewhat fanciful and based on confirmation bias, but the two books I read were excellent compilations of mythologies and common trends between them.

In a similar vein, I'd recommend The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion by James Frazer from 1890. Pretty much all of Campbell's thinking on mythology is derived from this book.

Oh my god i need those books!

Joseph Campbell and Lovecraft are my two favorite authors, yet I haven't read that much of Lovecraft other than all the ones on this website (http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/)

Yeah I love all the ones about writing, as mythology is one of the things i always love to talk about. Especially Arthurian, Anglo Saxon, Celtic, and Nordic.

**jasper76**

That website may very well be a complete list of all extant Lovecraft works....I don't think there's a whole lot of Lovecraft material out there to begin with.

**kronk**

I've read some of the modern stories written with a Lovecraftian style. Some were OK, but most were crap. I stopped reading those.

But the originals were excellent.

**Jihadin**

Iron Druid Series

**Asherian Command**

alanmckenzie wrote:
Further to my earlier post about recommendations for the budding writer. George Orwell's Why I write is also well worth a quick look. Very interesting.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jasper, that Bill Bryson book is on my list. Been recommended to me a few times.

George Orwell is a great author.

But I would for anyone recommend a cute book that I have its called The Discovery of Dragons (http://www.amazon.com/The-Discovery-Dragons-Graeme-Base/dp/0810932377)

Great for kids and really sparks their imagination. I remember reading it to a bunch of boy scouts and they took it from me afterwards and all read it by themselves. (Though clearly it is not really for adults)

Watership Down of course, great book, especially because it was fascinating,

Dinotopia for kids of course. Though adults might like it.

The Green Rider.

I would also recommend for anyone that likes Edgar Allan Poe, get this book: Its basically everything he ever wrote,

For anyone interested in dark fantasy I would recommend the series on Dark souls the Design Works. Which features everything from how they designed the game to the artwork of the game.

Fantastic read and one of the best out there period for Game Design.

Also Killing is Harmless another game design book on the concepts in Spec Ops: The Line.

Fantastic read and very interesting take on the whole shabang.

For anyone that wants a brief overview of famous figures in mythology (ranging from classic to norse to Celtic) I would recommend The Encyclopedia Mythology

Anyone interested in how game design ACTUALLY WORKS!

Here a free PDF!

Automatically Appended Next Post:

kronk wrote:
I've read some of the modern stories written with a Lovecraftian style. Some were OK, but most were crap. I stopped reading those.

But the originals were excellent.

I would suggest playing Bloodborne then

Lovecraft game at its best.

Most modern lovecraft is pretty gakky because they really don't know how to write or include things that leave it up to the imagination. Lovecraft often let people imagine the monsters for themselves. The more described the less scary, the less described the more terrifying. Hence why my most favorite creatures are those who we can't actually see. (Also just to bring it up A great book to read is the Writers Journey which is about organization of a story. And how to organize a story correctly!

For anyone interested IN VERY DARK SETTINGS!

I highly recommend Berserk the Manga series. Basically Dark Souls and lovecraft had a beautiful baby. Other than Bloodborne. I would also highly recommend the Dark Tower Series. (Though I have yet to read them...)

**Gordon Shumway**

Ian Banks, Neal Asher, or Alastair Reynolds for Sci Fi/space opera.

Steven Erikison's Malazan series for epic fantasy. Glen Cook's The Black Company series for gritty fantasy.

Thomas Ligotti for Lovecraftian horror.

Those should keep you busy for the next few years.

**Asherian Command**

Gordon Shumway wrote:
Ian Banks, Neal Asher, or Alastair Reynolds for Sci Fi/space opera.

Steven Erikison's Malazan series for epic fantasy. Glen Cook's The Black Company series for gritty fantasy.

Thomas Ligotti for Lovecraftian horror.

Those should keep you busy for the next few years.

With my schedule probably for the next five years. AS my list of books I still have to read are exorbitantly high. I have several programming books I have to learn and languages I have to master. I also have to read about design of documentation and linguistics.

**Kilkrazy**

In Nevada by David Thomson.

Still the best book I think I have ever read.

**DarkLink**

Berserk is like Dark Souls insomuch as Berserk is one of the direct inspirations for dark souls, according to the creator of dark souls.

**Necroagogo**

Charles Stross' 'Laundry' series is well worth a look. I've just finished 'The Rhesus Chart' and it's the best of the bunch so far. It's Le Carre meets Lovecraft, kinda.

**thedarkavenger**

Anything by Raymond E Feist. Man, that guy can engage his readers.

**Haight**

I'll add anything by Jared Diamond is at least worth a read ; in particular "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "Collapse".

These are sociological books, but are incredible reads.