Recommended Reading
 

I thought I would make a thread where we could all discuss books we like, are in the process of reading, or are planning to read.

Right now I'm reading:
Heat Stroke (sequel to Ill Wind, in the Weather Warden series)
Snow Crash
Life of Pi
and Revelation Space

Is anyone else reading any of these? I'd love to discuss them.

I haven't read any of those, though Life of Pi has been recommended to me. I've had very little reading time lately... read the first couple of chapters of a Robertson Davies book I picked up cheap (Murther and Walking Spirits), but that's about it.

Life of Pi was recommended to me to, but I rarely can find time to read these days other than when I'm on holiday (when I catch up a bit by reading about 8 a week :wink: )

Sitting on my desk in front of me is an ANCIENT copy of Dune...I haven't read it, or seen any films or TV series of it. I have, in fact, no clue what it's about *ducks for cover* But everyone else seems to love it, including my dad, the owner of the ancient copy.

So, eventually, I will pick it up and read :mrgreen:

I heartily recommend Cryptonomicon. It's Neal Stephenson's longest book, and it's got tons of interesting things going on, not the least of which is that you get a - comprehensible - introduction to various theories of cryptography.

Read it and be a better geek for it. :)

Gatac

I'm reading the Sherlock Holmes books at the moment. They're ok, but not all that I expected them to be.

I did immediately recognize a lot from TNG, of course. ;)

Oh, you'd better.... :twisted:

I would recommend:
The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy series,
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman,
Christian Jacq books,
1066 and all that by Sellars and Yeatman,
the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (although in North America they are very hard to come by, apparently, and are in inferior covers.)
A Black Hole In Neasden ( by David Sutherland).

Quite liked that one. Some fascinating historical stuff there, although I thought that the ending left a few things hanging.

I'm re-readed Mr. Midshipman Hornblower while waiting for the library to put Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies back on the shelf. I highly recommend that series. Roddenberry used it as one of the inspirations for Star Trek, and is the source of "Aye aye, sir", "belay that" and all the other nautical gibberish spouted by the characters (although I've yet to see anyone say "Man the scuppers and keelhaul the halliards!" on the show).

Harry Turtledove's novels are good if you like alternate history, not so good if you like well-drawn, believable characters or sparkling dialogue (think Chakotay as a writer). He has a degree in Byzantine history, and writes like a college professor: belabouring the point in a dry, boring voice.

Better alternate history (although with a decidedly military bent) is written by David Drake (eg, The General series written with -->) S. M. Stirling (eg, Island in the Sea of Time, which was ripped off by -->) Eric Flint (1632 has a similar premise as Island, but the Belisarius series written with David Drake is pretty good, even if is does cover similar material to The General).

And, of course, there's always Discworld, or anything by Arthur C. Clarke.

William Gibson! I liked all the books of his I've read, and recently read Pattern Recognition. It's tres bien.

I haven't read The Difference Engine yet, because everyone I know who's read it said it sucked.

I've read a lot of the Discworld books already, and I do love them more than I would my own children, if I had any.

I've also read Neverwhere, very good book, if you like gross under-society stories, and I'm working on American Gods...that's a weird book.

I've also read parts of the Hitchiker books, I have that leather-and-gold-leaf compilation book, everyone at school thought I was carrying around a bible, hehe, how little they know me!

I'd recommend the Dragonriders series by Anne MacAffrey. Always a good read.

The later novels more than the early ones. Anne's got a choppy writing style. The very first novel began life as a short story, and it feels very much like she just tacked on some stuff at the beginning and end to make it longer.

Hmmm, I thought that was a good one. Go figure.

Gotta go with Sa'ar on the Clarke. His and Asimov's short story anthologies are muy bien.

Starlight 2 was good, too.

I've never read Asimov,all his stories seemed to have depressing views of the future and technology...or maybe I'm misinterpreting?

Well, if anything by Gibson, then the Neuromancer trilogy. Gotta be old-school.

As for Cryptonomicon's ending, yeah, it felt a bit rushed, but I can forgive that.

Gatac

Not necessarily. Bicentennial Man is fairly feel-good as robot stories go. Movie sucked, though.

If we're doing "sci-fi writers you recommend" here, first and foremost I recommend Ray Bradbury. I've only read one of his full-length novels, but he's a master of the short story. His originality and talent for description and atmosphere are among the best I've ever encountered. Bradbury is one of the writers most responsible for building sci-fi into a full-fledged genre. (Additional note for ENT S3 viewers: Bradbury's novella "Frost and Fire" is about a character named Sim, born on a world where humans live only seven days. Sound familiar?)

Other authors... C. S. Lewis is best known for the Chronicles of Narnia and for his theological writings, but he also dabbled in sci-fi. He wrote three books now generally known as his Cosmic Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra (Voyage to Venus in the U. S. edition), and That Hideous Strength (which I understand MmeBlueberry is reading). They're all remarkable books; of the three, I think Perelandra is the deepest, but they're best read in order. A word of warning, though... like the Narnia books, the Cosmic Trilogy turns out to be based in Christianity. The books explore questions like what a world would be like if it were "unfallen," i. e. no Original Sin, and whether it would be right to intervene and prevent the Fall from happening on another world. (That's where the title of the first book comes from -- the "silent planet" is Earth, whose spiritual communication with the rest of the solar system has been broken by the growth of evil.) In other words, if Christianity annoys you, you probably shouldn't try reading these.

John Wyndham and Arthur C. Clarke are very good too, and if you know French, I recommend trying some untranslated Jules Verne. The French in his books isn't difficult at all. The Dune books are amazing, though each is less amazing than the last. As for franchise sf novels, my abiding love of the Reeves-Stevens' DS9 trilogy Millennium is on record, and my favourite one-shot Trek novel is The Devil's Heart by Carmen Carter; in SW, Timothy Zahn is fantastic, and Kevin J. Anderson's not bad either.

When I was in France, I bought a book in French, J'accuse by Emile Zola, I bought it mostly because I learned about that case in Euro History.

And yeah, I can actually read some of it, but it isn't easy.