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Just looking for some good stuff to read. Can be novels light or serious. (If it is too dense and literary...I don't want that.) Or can be interesting non-fiction. No science fiction/fantasy series. I generaly hate series. (There are a few I like...LOTR, HP...but usually they are too boring. Big tome like stretched out stories.)
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Do you like Tom Clancy? He's always got some good spy stuff out.To us, it is the BEAST. -
I'm currently reading The Years of Sand and Rice by Kim Stanely Robinson. Pretty good "what-if" type book covering the 600 year development of a world dominated by China and dar al-Islam in the absence of Europeans (who all died in the plague).Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard DawkinsComment
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ooh, that sounds cool Starchild....To us, it is the BEAST.Comment
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I've read all the Clancy stuff. It is generally good but some books are a little too blatently Republican. It is uncanny some of the things that he has written about and what similar things have occurred.
I like Robinson. Some of his stuff is a little overworought (the mars series). But I liked his backpacker book and his California surfer stuff. I've got somehting in common with him there...Comment
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Read your Keagan?I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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If you like Space Opera, you could do little better than Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn "trilogy" (3 books in Britain/US hardback, 6 novels in American paperback). Mr. Hamilton posits a universe with a sizable (800+ planets and thousands of asteroid settlements) human interstellar civilization, a couple of cool alien races, and a religious split amongst those who use nanotech enhancements (Adamists (Christians/Moslems)) and those who use genetic enhancements (Edenists (Buddhists, Rationalists, Greens)).
Into this mix there arises the dilemma that the dead are coming back to life by possessing the living... and not just the dead, but the damned. Even worse, you are possessed only upon by being tortured by the possessed, and the possessed have almost a compulsion to release more souls from Hell.
Pretty heady stuff.
If you're into more pain than that, go and check out the 5 volume Gap series by Stephen R. Donaldson. This is a series that I implore you to finish if you dare start, because it can be a painful and repetitive read. But the repetitive nature has it's purpose, and things will be revealed that makes you realize you're reading a totally different story. The Gap series is a bravura performance in plotting and pacing, though you will feel every damned bump and bruise that these people suffer.
But start the Gap series only if you're man enough to handle the challenge. I do not recommend it for the faint of heart.
Otoh, if you're looking for some wimpy 400 page "novel" to read, go with Sherri Tepper's Grass. It is one of the few novels where the protagonist fails in the crucial deciding moment.
If you want something even shorter, I'd recommend Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale. OMG, is this a good book!
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D'oh! Didn't even see the part about "not liking series." Mind if I tell you that you're wrong?
Aren't the Jack Ryan books a "series" of a sort?
Anyway, go with the Atwood. You will NOT regret it.Comment
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I'm reading The Bourne Identity by Robert Lublum. It is pretty entertaining so far.I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator RubioComment
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I second Atwood's Tale, a great "what if" (right-wing Christians take over) in its own right.
Sticking with the female, I'll also highly recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" a Hugo AND Nebula award winner.
Though you are averse to series', I would be remiss if I didn't turn you on to the Riverworld series by Philip Jose` Farmer. An excellent adventure full of historical characters (Twain is a major protagonist) who all wake up naked and shaved on a global riverfront and proceed to seek its source.
Kerouac's Desolation Angels is a great wilderness to city introspective.
I might also suggest absolutely anything by a little known but extremely excellent author named John Fante, who was a Hollywood screenwriter to pay the bills, but wrote some wonderful novels, namely Ask the Dust, one of my all time favorites.
KW Jeter's Noir is a really good futuristic pot-boiler, with people obsessed with "plugging in" to the neural Net, and doing anything to get the latest and greates hardware.
Though I didn't like it much initially, I really enjoyed the whole Ender's series.
And, if you can handle a gritty, ugly world of archaic fantasy sans fairies and dragons, I recall Gene Wolfe's Executioner series....excellent, two fisted tale.
No one is complete without having read "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. D*ck.Life and death is a grave matter;
all things pass quickly away.
Each of you must be completely alert;
never neglectful, never indulgent.Comment
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If we're talking shameless space opera, might I recommend David Brin's Uplift Saga? I just finished reading the latest book for the third (fourth?) time. Any sci-fi idea that could get thrown in did (except for a few, like transporters).
The only problem being is that, like any self-created mythos, you really have to start from the beginning of the first trilogy. Actually, you can't probably skip Sundiver but Startide Rising is essential to understand the Jijo Trilogy.
Edit: Ooops. Missed that bit about not liking series.Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard DawkinsComment
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Screw it...series are there for a reason--they're good!Life and death is a grave matter;
all things pass quickly away.
Each of you must be completely alert;
never neglectful, never indulgent.Comment
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I second that!Originally posted by Starchild
If we're talking shameless space opera, might I recommend David Brin's Uplift Saga? Great series!
As a standalone, Frank Herbert's "The Dosadi Experiment" is a superior psychological sci-fi thrilller. Nothing I have ever read (fiction or otherwise) compares to it.
DComment
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Eddie Kantar wrote several entertaining bridge books. Not sure where you'd find them, though; I never see them in bookstores.
Humorist Dave Barry has written more books than I can count, every one of them hilarious. He even wrote a novel, Big Trouble, which was also hilarious. They made it into a movie which was out recently, although if you blinked you would have missed it. It was supposed to come out last September, but it had to be pulled after 9-11. If you read it you won't have any trouble seeing why."THE" plus "IRS" makes "THEIRS". Coincidence? I think not.Comment
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I recommend a little known British author whose name is Tolkeen I think. Really nice books, it's what they based that movie last Christmas on, that one about Spiderman coming and fighting the Green Goblin. Maybe I'm mixing it up with something else.John Brown did nothing wrong.Comment
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