What do you recommend?

[Howl]

I have not read a lot of books in my lifetime, but here's what I've scathed so far:

Completed reads:
The Claidi Journals by Tannith Lee
The Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice
Memoirs of a Geisha by Aurthur Golden

Incomplete reads:
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

My upcomming reads (things that I recently ordered in the mail):
Blood and Gold by Anne Rice
Jurrasic Park by Michael Crichton
Dracula by Bram Stroker


Seeing that this is my general preferred genre...
What would you recomend...?

 

[Amizon]

Harry Potter.

Unless you've already read it.

Or if you like, read Animorphs, which has over forty books, mind you ...

 

[Ilyena]

The Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams
Prey by Michael Crichton
Timeline by Michael Crichton
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

 

[Howl]

Well come on, at least tell me what these books are about! ^.^

 

[Grimoire Valentine]

A lot of deep reads there Rhea! I used to love Anne Rice when I was younger, now I can't tollerate her.

My reccomendation is somthing a little different, try "The Curious Incident of the dog in the nighttime" by Mark Haddon. Its very different, but an easy, relaxing but exciting read.

Its about a schizophrentic boy who... oh just give it a shot, its very good!

Or you can read Harry Potter. Oh bugger it, I did, and I loved it!!!

 

[Howl]

The Curious Incident of the dog in the nighttime??


You give me a totally random title and don't tell me what it's about?? XD

 

[Amizon]

Harry Potter is about a boy wizard who goes through seven years about defeating the Dark wizard, Voldemort, that killed his parents, but failed killing him when he was a baby. There are many elements and issues to this book, you'll love it.

Animorphs is about five kids who accidentally stumble across an injured alien who gives them a glowing box. When they touch the box, they are given special powers. Whenever they touch an animal or person and concentrate hard, they can acquire that form. However, they have a limit of being in that form for one/two hours. They have to stop an invasion from other aliens, including the leader of the invasion, Visser Three. They have to destroy the Yeerks, aliens that look like worms and possess humans by entering via the ear. It's a great book and will keep you hooked.

Phew! Happy, Rhea?

 

[Grimoire Valentine]

Its better if I don't Rhea, its a short book, and is is pretty well known, at least here in the UK. I loved it.

Hope you do.

 

[Ilyena]

The Death Gate Cycle is about Haplo, a member of a race of Demigods that has been locked away in a prison called The Labyrinth by their enemies, the Sartan (another race of demigos). He is one of the few who have managed to escape the labyrinth. His lord sends him on a journey through Death Gate to explore the four worlds that the Sartan have created by sundering the old world. The four worlds are based on the four elements. There are seven books in all and I really enjoyed it.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is about a young scullion named Simon who inadvertently gets caught in a war between two princes.

Prey is about an unemployed computer programmer whose wife is vice-president of a company developing nanotechnology. The company hires him to come in and debug a program they purchased that he developed. The program was based on predator-prey observations in the wild. Any more would ruin the story.

Timeline is about a group of archaeologists working on a site in france. The company funding their research is developing time travel technology (it's not really time travel but you have to actually read the book to understand). The professor leaves with some of the company reps and disappears. Members of the archaeological team have to and find him.

 

[Howl]

Do you happen to know off the top of your head who writes these:

The Death Gate Cycle
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn

I really like the description. ^.^

jakfjkj Now my font is purple. >__<

 

[Ilyena]

jakfjkj Now my font is purple. >__<

Copycat.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is by Tad Williams.
The Death Gate Cycle is by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

They should be fairly easy to find. I see them in the bookstore here all the time.

 

[Grimoire Valentine]

Oh OK Rhea, here you go... this is what the book is about (not my words)

Writing his first novel from the point of view of an autistic 15-year-old, Mark Haddon takes the reader into the chaos of autism and creates a character of such empathy that many readers will begin to feel for the first time what it is like to live a life in which there are no filters to eliminate or order the millions of pieces of information that come to us through our senses every instant of the day. For the autistic person, most stimuli register with equal impact, and because these little pieces of information cannot usually be processed effectively, life becomes a very confusing mess of constantly competing signals.

Christopher, at fifteen, has been attending a special school for most of his life, living at home with his father, a heating contractor who works long hours. A savant at math, he sometimes calms himself by listing prime numbers and squaring the number two in his head, and he tells us that his "record" is 2 to the 45th power. His teacher Siobhan has been showing him ways to deal with his environment more effectively, and at fifteen he is on the verge of gaining some tenuous control over the mass of stimuli which often sidetrack him. Innocent and honest, he sees things logically and interprets the spoken word literally, unable to recognize the clues which would tell him if someone is being dishonest or devious or even facetious. "I find it hard to imagine things which did not happen to me," he says. He can understand similes ("[The rain] was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks.") because he can see the similarities in appearance between the heavy rain and white sparks, but he cannot understand metaphors, which omit "like" and "as" and simply make statements, which, he feels, are not true. As he explains, "When I try…[to imagine] an apple in someone's eye, [it] doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about."
When Wellington, the pet poodle who lives across the street, is stabbed with a pitchfork and killed, Christopher decides to solve the mystery and write a book about it. Using his favorite novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as his model, he investigates the crime, uncovering many secrets involving his own family in the process. As he applies the lessons which Siobhan has given him for dealing with his overwhelming outside world, he also embarks on a most unusual, if not unique, coming-of-age story, and ends the book a much more mature 15-year-old than he was when he started.
Using the simple subject-verb-object sentence pattern in which Christopher tries to order and communicate with his world, Haddon tells his story with warmth and often humor, making us see and understand Christopher's problems at the same time that we experience everyone else's frustrations in dealing with him. All Christopher's conversations and the events he experiences are recalled from his own point of view, and the reader can easily see how difficult his world is, both for him and for those around him. As he seeks to order his day by the number of cars he sees of the same color (four red cars in a row mean a wonderful day, while four yellow cars mean a bad day, in which case he does not eat lunch and will not speak), we see how desperate he is to find some pattern which will enable him to make sense of his world. He hopes that by writing his book about the death of Wellington, he will be able to emulate his idol, Sherlock Holmes, about whom Watson says, "His mind…was busy in endeavoring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted."
Investigating Wellington's death requires Christopher to venture forth from the safe world of familiar people and places, and this venturing forth is fraught with problems. Strange places are particularly traumatic. As he explains, "When I am in a new place, because I see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn't any space left to think about other things….And sometimes when I am in a new place and there are lots of people there it is like a computer crashing and I have to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears and groan, which is like pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting so that I can remember what I am doing and where I am meant to be going."
Christopher's difficulties with his emotions are particularly poignant. "Feelings," he says, "are just having a picture on the screen in your head of what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry." Removed from his feelings, Christopher can only respond with logic, or with the anger which sometimes overwhelms him as result of fear or frustration, and the reader, responding to his difficulties as any loving caregiver would, cannot help aching for Christopher and empathizing with his family.
As Christopher investigates Wellington's death, he makes some remarkably brave decisions and when he eventually faces his fears and moves beyond his immediate neighborhood, the magnitude of his challenge and the joy in his achievement are overwhelming. Haddon creates a fascinating main character and allows the reader to share in his world, experiencing his ups and downs and his trials and successes. In providing a vivid world in which the reader participates vicariously, Haddon fulfills the most important requirements of fiction, entertaining at the same time that he broadens the reader's perspective and allows him to gain knowledge. This fascinating book should attract legions of enthusiastic readers.

 

[eisprinz]

I'm not really big on fantasy, but you should check out the Farseer Trilogy and the subsequent books by Robin Hobb. Of course, neither should you skip over the Dark Tower series by Stephen King; I haven't read them, but a friend of mine who is well-read in fantasy recommends this to me all the time.

Here are other books that are awesome, no matter what genre you prefer:

You have to read the Christopher Moore books. Many of them are interrelated, although it's not really necessary to read them in a certain order or anything (except for one book, which is a sequel). He writes hilariously absurd novels usually regarding supernatural events.

His best book by far, in my opinion, is his latest one: A Dirty Job. Here's an excerpt from Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
Cult-hero Moore (The Stupidest Angel) tackles death—make that Death—in his latest wonderful, whacked-out yarn. For beta male Charlie Asher, proprietor of a shop in San Francisco, life and death meet in a maternity ward recovery room where his wife, Rachel, dies shortly after giving birth.

Though security cameras catch nothing, Charlie swears he saw an impossibly tall black man in a mint green suit standing beside Rachel as she died. When objects in his store begin glowing, strangers drop dead before him and man-sized ravens start attacking him, Charlie figures something's up. Along comes Minty Fresh—the man in green—to enlighten him: turns out Charlie and Minty are Death Merchants, whose job (outlined in the Great Big Book of Death) is to gather up souls before the Forces of Darkness get to them.

Another must-read by Moore is the novel Lamb: The Gospel of Biff. It's about the "lost years" of Jesus Christ, as told from his perverted and bawdy best friend Biff. Like many of his other novels, it teeters on the edge of irreverence, is hilarious, and manages to still have moments of poignancy.

Other great easy reads: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, any of Roald Dahl's books (don't be embarrassed to totally raid the kid's section), and The Book of Lost Things by Charles Connery.

As far as more literary reads, I'd recommend The Great Gatsby, A Separate Peace, and House on Mango Street. If you're into Victorian Lit, I'd also add in anything Jane Austen has written. Oh, and my FAVORITE book, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (perfect on every level, whether looking at it as allegory, as a fable, as a philosophical manifesto, or simply as a child's tale).

Oh, and if you like plays: Arthur Miller's plays, The Crucible and Death of a Salesman are really great and very emotional. Oscar Wilde's plays, specifically The Importance of Being Ernest, are the most witty things you could ever read - hilarious if your quick enough for the jokes. And of course, Shakespeare's comedies (my favorites are Much Ado About Nothing and Midsummer Night's Dream) are always great fodder to pass the time; they're not as difficult as his tragedies as well as incredibly influential to today's sitcoms and romantic comedy movies.

 

[Lorellin]

Rhea ..think I already pointed out... in some other thread...WARNING...AVOID BLOOD AND GOLD LIKE A DAMN PLAGUE...no no no..that is an absolute atrocity of a book...actually told you already anything after Memnoch she wrote is an insult to writing....do not even waste your valuable time , save your self from that...

Nephry recomended Frankenstein,...brilliant read, beautiful book...and again another set brilliant reading material here recomended by Eisprinz.

Though the Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is just awesome..that is one of my favourite books too...I cry every time.

Finish LOTR....it is worth it ..or try Hobbit..maybe that will get you going.

Harry Potter ...she ripped off every damn fantasy book going but at least does it in a good way

....or try His Dark Materials too by Pullman, maybe that you will like, that will be out in cinemas too soon.

Stephen King is great....good if you like horror or fantasy, does not matter which you prefer. Clive Barker is great too.

Prattchet's Discworld books - if you fancy comedy and fantasy mixed up, and there is plenty of those.

Barclay and his Raven Chronicles are awesome read too.

James Patterson if you like crime/ mystery or thrillers...or good oldies such as A.Cristie for example, no matter which one you pick up they are all good and not very long either.

Neil Gaiman is you want a bit different more like fairy tale fantasy, Stardust I am reading now, which is been made into film with De Niro recently....think it was already out in States....