Best Books You've Ever Read?

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Ennis wrote the entire run of Preacher (#1-9 in TPB form). Before that, yes, he did quite a bit of stuff for Hellblazer.

While you're at it, read Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis/Darrick Robertson, 10 TPBs). Very, very well done.

 

Well, Douglas Adams wrote very good books.Hitch Hiker's Series are perhaps the best.

 

i just might. heard good things about transmetropolitan even back when i was collecting comics around 5 years ago

 

Here's some of my favourites (not in any particular order):

The Egyptian - Mika Waltari
The Crow Road, and other works - Iain Banks
Culture series and other sci-fi - Iain M Banks
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (best tragicomical horror stories ever!)
The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco
Neil Gaiman's work, all of it.
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
Stalker - Arkadi & Boris Strugarski
The Earthsea trilogy - Ursula LeGuin

...and many more! Of course William Gibson's great (Pattern Recognition, wow)! Need not to say about the importance of Tolkien! Who can deny Terry Pratchett's merits?

Not every possible book is as good as one might want to hope, but there are so many great stories that one could only wish that there'd be enough time to read the best of them.

[ November 23, 2005, 17:41: Message edited by: Ichor ]

 

Here are some of my favorites, listed by type:

Classics: Parts of "David Copperfield" moved me to tears, but my favorite Dickens' are "Bleak House" and--a little offbeat--"Dombey and Son". It's been many years, but I still think Balzac's "A Harlot High and Low" is one of the best books I've ever read.

History: Gibbon, of course; but somewhat less formidable: "The Armada", by Garrett Mattingly; or "The Swordbearers"--about WWI--by Corelli Barnett. "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives", by Alan Bullock, is thought-provoking and brilliant, if you can stand 800 pages about two extremely unpleasant people. And a special recommendation for "Testimony", the memoirs of Dmitri Shostokovich, which show that humane feeling can survive damn near anything.

Science-Fiction: The current stuff is well-covered above, so I'll recommend a couple of classics: "The Stars, My Destination"--"Tiger, Tiger" in the UK--by Alfred Bester; "The Weapon Shops of Isher", by A.E. van Vogt; Azimov's Foundation Trilogy--but NOT the later continuation--and just about any early Heinlein, up until "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". (I personally often find Heinlein a little hard to take, a minority view; but his earlier stuff is less so, and many of the short stories are very good by any standard.)

Detectives (Hard-Boiled):
Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett
The Getaway--Jim Thompson
Bordersnakes--James Crumley
Raymond Chandler--All of them (except "Playback").

Science: Any of the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould.

 

Agreed.

 

too many to mention... but just off the top of my head:

anything by Neil Gaiman and Agatha Christie.
Shogun by James Clavell.
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
A Game of Universe by Eric S Nylund.
aSoIaF by GRR Martin.
Farseer + Tawny Man Trilogies by Hobb.
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. The 1st book is the best, the rest of the series kinda fluctuates.

too lazy to try and type the rest

 

"The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Stephen Donaldson (7 books written, 2 to come).
"The Hollow Chocolate bunnies of the Apocolypse" by Robert Rankin, extremely funny.
"The Wind Singer Trilogy" by William Nicholson, a young adults book, but very well written.
"Mortal Engines", and "Predators Gold"by Philip Reeve.
"The Last Legion" by Valerio Massimo Manfredi.
"His Dark Materials Trilogy" by Philip Pullman.
"The Abhorsen Trilogy" by Garth Nix.
"Slapstick" and "The sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut.

They are but a few of my faves

 

Seeing as how you're English, BA, I should add the magnificent series of Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian to my list: the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. This series has been so extravagantly praised that I will only say that if you choose to try it, start with the first one: "Master and Commander".

 

I've been thinking about this one, AMaster, but it is a trilogy. What are your thoughts on this series?

 

@Chandos

from the posts of SPers that have read it, the main opinion that emerges is "a good series if you can take all the porn" lol

 

Well, they sound a bit like those horrid, tasteless "romance" novels. Yet, I've heard they are well written, and more like the Renaissance in setting, rather than the Middle Ages.

 

*shrug* As Enagonious said, more or less. I would add that the sexuality of the series is integral to the setting (whores are incredibly important to the society, for religious reasons. It is, as you mentioned, a rennaisance society, albeit rather skewed; France, Italy, and Greece are civilized. The rest of the world, not so much. At least so far as the narrator is concerned) and the character (first person narration). It could not be removed without, in my opinion, drastically weakening the books.

As for the writing, I do believe it is rather well done. Amazon has some sample pages of the book up--you could try there to get a better idea.

Basically, if you feel you can handle erotic overtones, I recommend it. If it helps, I'm most definitely not a fan of erotica or romance novels, but for this I make an exception.

 

Petru I -A. I. Tolstoi
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
War and Peace -LevTolstoi
The Count of Monte-Cristo -Alexandre Dumas
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan
Shadow's Witness - Paul S. Kemp