Kevin's Watch

I am going to be very conventional and just say that I really like 'The Lord of the Rings'. Of more obscure things there are several, let me just recommend Roger Zelazny. His books are usually good. With a few which are just average.

(Forgot to mention the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin.)

Hmm... SRD's Gap Cycle, of course. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Ingrid & Reiner Klimke's Cavalletti (It's a horse-training book. Sue me), Thucydides' Peloponnesian War (except the dreaded original Hobbes translation), and I'll confess to having read several Star Trek and ST:TNG books multiple times. Also Douglas Adams, Tom Holt's Who's Afraid of Beowulf?, Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind , Harry Potter, and James A. Michener's Chesapeake. Pretty fond of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by GRR Martin at the moment, too. In general, I've read so much that I have a wide range of favorites, but I have a short memory and I've forgotten a lot of the books I read.

Alynna Lis Eachann wrote:I'll confess to having read several Star Trek and ST:TNG books multiple times.

Have you read Vendetta? My favorite Trek book! Spock's World is great too, and Sarek was nearly as good. Federation was tons of fun. Also, if I'm remembering the right Q book, Q Squared, where the Squire of Gothos and Gary Mitchell are given more detail.

Fist and Faith wrote: Have you read Vendetta? My favorite Trek book! Spock's World is great too, and Sarek was nearly as good. Federation was tons of fun. Also, if I'm remembering the right Q book, Q Squared, where the Squire of Gothos and Gary Mitchell are given more detail.

Yup, read Vendetta and Federation, and Q-Squared. I've only just lately become interested in TOS books, so I haven't read Spock's World or Sarek yet. I love Strangers from the Sky, though, and Best Destiny and Prime Directive were a lot of fun - especially Best Destiny; seeing Kirk as a teenager was great.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Prince of Nothing
The Gap Cycle
Outlander Series

that's pretty much it for me right now and most of this year.
i'm engrossed by these.

McCaffrey's Pern (as if my user name wasn't hint enough)
Rowling's HP series
Pierce's Circle of Magic amd The Circle Opens (still on the waiting list for the new one)

and I agree with Avatar. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a must read for everyone, IMO.

Menolly wrote:
and I agree with Avatar. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a must read for everyone, IMO.

Nah, I think I'll just sit through Kevin Costner's The Postman. I'm the guy in the conversation who goes, "Uh, no, I didn't read the book, but I saw the movie..."

Favorite non-Covenant opus by SRD: Mordant's Need
Favorite non-Covenant book not by SRD but still sf/fantasy: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Is that the asteroid one? No wait, wasn't that Hammer of God or something? Been too long.

See we have another Iain M Banks fan in The Somberlain too...excellent stuff. I think that Against a Dark Background is my favourite, closely followed by Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Feersum Endjinn.

--A

Er, how is The Postman like A Canticle for Leibowitz? Other than being post-apocalyptic, I mean.

Alynna Lis Eachann wrote:Er, how is The Postman like A Canticle for Leibowitz? Other than being post-apocalyptic, I mean.

That's probably what readers of the the book were thinking when they saw the movie.

LOTR, Chronicles of Narnia, Pendragon Cycle by Stephen Lawhead, 3 Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tale of Two Cities, Left Behind series, Shelby Foote's Civil War Narrative, all military novels by Michael/Jeff Shaara, and most of Stephen Ambrose's stuff, especially on WWII.

And all the books in the Bible.

THE SWORD OF SHANNARA(TRILOGY)Terry Brooks
HIS DARK MATERIALS(TRILOGY)Phillip Pullman
ICEWINDALE(TRILOGY)R.A. Salvatore
DARK ELF(TRISLOGY)R.A. Salvatore
THE ELRIC SAGA: Michael Moorcock
LOTR (TRILOGY)Tolkien
DUNE:Frank Herbert
EARTHSEA(TRILOGY)Ursula K. LeGuin
WIZARD FOR HIRE (TRILOGY) Jim Butcher
ROMEO AND JULIET: Willian Shakespeare
JULIUS CAESAR: William Shakespeare
THE GAP: (Do I need to say it?)
OF MICE AND MEN
TO KILL A MOKINGBIRD
THE SECRET GARDEN
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
(plus many more)
Anything by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
......Sorry I can't remember the name of all the Authors

Strangely enough, apart from SRD my other favourites are pretty much non fantasy.

- Charles Dickens - Pickwick, Martin Chuzzlewit, Hard Times - I rate Dickens even higher than SRD *ducks*
- DH Lawrence - Women in Love. But everything I've read of his is brilliant.
- Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
- David Mitchell. If you havent read "Cloud Atlas", run out and grab a copy and start reading this instant! How this didnt win the Booker two years ago I'll never know.

Lucimay wrote:The Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Prince of Nothing
The Gap Cycle
Outlander Series

that's pretty much it for me right now and most of this year.
i'm engrossed by these.

i can add Heart of Darkness to this list now. phew. LOVE Conrad!

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstader

An excellent book! But wasn't it cowritten by Daniel C. Dennett? Or was that The Mind's I? Anyway, both men are amazing philosophers.

Could you tell when the book ended? (I think this is the ONLY book for which such a question could be asked!) If you remember, the characters hint that the end of the book will not be determined by the last printed page, but instead by a thematic or formal ending that should be obvious to those paying close attention to the whole. After that, the last couple dozen or more pages was just stuff that sounded similar to the rest of the book, but for the attentive readers was obviously filler. Now THAT is a challenge: to know when such a deeply philosophical book has ended! An amazing read.

All the books by Peter Straub - he is up there with Stephen king, but overshadowed by the greatness of King

All the James Crumley books

The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Whittaker (?)

The Belgriand Series

Everything by Donaldson, of course!!...
The Gap in particular

Welcome to the Monkey House, and A Man Without a Country - K. Vonnegut
The Catcher in the Rye
The Fountainhead
The His Dark Materials Triology

The Leper Fairy wrote:Welcome to the Monkey House, and A Man Without a Country - K. Vonnegut

Huh. I'm a huge Vonnegut fan, but I didn't think much of AMWaC.

I'll recommend:
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Tool of the Trade - Joe Haldeman
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Great observation on the ending of G, E, B Malik!

A Canticle for Liebowitz is definately one of my fav books of all time!

interesting tidbits and corrections:
It's Lucifer's Hammer (the book about the asteriod) by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournell
It's Fred Saberhagen, who lives in New Mexico, and is good friends with SRD, Jack Williamson, Ben Bova & Roger Vardeman
MM: The book The Postman by David Brin starts out like the movie but is entirely different in the end, especially the Corvallis stuff.
The Education of Little Tree was written by Forest (Asa) Carter. I became familiar with it as a "book-monkey" work-study at the UNM Press--while I agree it is a very good groundbreaking book for it's time it was originally and immediately exposed as a fraud, but people liked it so much they tryed very hard to forget who actually wrote it. Here's a fascinating aticle about the whole controversy: archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/12/20/carter/

Pride and Prejudice.