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Hey darlings

Can anyone recommend a good book to read?? I love fantasy/sci-fi but not a fan of horror or mystery

Any ideas on such a small amount of information?

Love you xxx

 

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

 

Go read the dictionary.

Seriously though, I can't really recomend anything without knowing what you've already read. The Forgotton Realms books are always a fun read. I like Ed Greendwood and R. A. Salvatore the best.


Oh, and I love you too!

 

Read Neil Gaimen, George Orwell, Terry Pratchett.

Never tried the Forgotten Realms Books

 

If you like SF then the Dune books are excellent (the original Frank Herbert books, not the prequels his son wrote). Douglas Adams has the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels, as well as the Dirk Gently books, though the latter mix SF, mystery and modern day in strange ways.

 

I agree with the earlier comments that it's tough to know what to recommend to you if I don't know more about what you're already read. However:

I just got my wife hooked on George R.R. Martin's A Song of ice and Fire sequence, and she is loving it.

Despite some flaws, I can hearily recommend Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. On the same note, any and all of Terry Brooks' stuff is always a fun read, if a little on the lightweight side at points. If you like humor juxtaposed with some pretty perceptive socio-political commentary, then Pratchett is for you. For a VERY quick read that is humorous as hell, Robert Aspirin's Myth books are a hoot. For stuff that is most assuredly not funny but totally worth reading, try the Ender books by Orson Scott Card, as well as his Alvin Maker sequence. If you are a gamer or comic fan, you can be like me and pick up the recently released Order of the Stick complilation, War and XPs. Though I recommend either getting the first two books in the linnear series at the least and the two prequels first (if you don't have that kind of money to drop, go to the website and you can read the linnear comics for free -- not to mention the rest of them, I suppose, but the compilations have some fun extras and some good commentary from the author.)

Hmm, what else? For classic stuff try Middlemarch. It's one of my favorite "literature" books. Others in the classics area that I personally liked were Frankenstein and Dracula -- I don't consider either of these books to be horror books but rather social commentaries veiled in symbolism. Most Dickens is fun, too.

For a modern take on a classical time, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a good doorstopper that'll take a bit of your time to read, and I found it quite satisfying. If you can get them from the library, the Wild Cards shared world anthology, as well as the Thieves World one, are interesting experiements in multi-author collaboration.

Speaking of Thieves World, that reminds me of my friend David Drake. His recent Lord of the Isles series was fun, if somewhat formulaic. His thinly veiled rants against stupid wars in the Hammers Slammers books are nonetheless exciting reads, though you'll need a strong stomach for some of the violence and his skills as a writer were not, at that time, as polished as in his later Isles series.

I could go on, but this post is already a bit of a doorstopper in and of itself, so I'll shut up now.

 

Well, I've read one by Salvatore, no offence but that is certainly not what I'd call literature. As something to waste time on it's ok though.

Have you read anything by Jack Vance? More precisely The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel Saga, Rhialto the Marvellous, Tales of the Dying Earth?

These stories were a major source of inspiration for the original Dungeons and Dragons.

 

First of all, Kitrax clearly hates you. There is no other conceivable reason he'd recommend the Forgotten Realms stuff.

China Mieville - King Rat: in which a young man discovers that modern day London ain't quite what he thought it was. Wererats for the win!

George R. R. Martin - Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, A Song of Ice and Fire: they're all awesome. Go read them. Now.

Richard K Morgan - Altered Carbon: for all your high-tech ultraviolence needs. Think noir detective story. With, um, sentient murderous hotels. Among other things.

David Drake - LKD also hates you. I know this because he recommended the Isles series, which is easily the weakest bunch of novels Drake has ever written. Go read Redliners instead; probably Drake's single best novel. A colony ship crashes in what's basically a Semi-Sentient Death Jungle! of Death! Things rapidly go to hell.

Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamorra: Essentially a heist novel. With swords! And street urchins! And so on. If you like that sort of thing, give it a shot.

 

Dunno about the books but for some reason I now feel a little unloved!

 

Well, that's a start. Truth be told I don't care much for the Care Bears (I used to find them cool some 25 years ago but not anymore unfortunately).

 

I love ya, Silvery! And now I know something about AMaster's opinions on books, which is also informative. Clearly every author is not every fan's cup of tea.

Oh, for your hardcore sci-fi needs, try Walter Jon Williams cyberpunk stuff, or William Gibson's Neuromancer.

Also, if you like D&D sort of stuff, the original Dragonlance books by Weis and Hickman were pretty good, though again they're not likely to win any Nobel prizes for Literature anytime soon.

 

I've got a massive collection of Dragonlance books. I love being able to escape. I suffer from quite bad depression so I need to get away from the world sometimes!

 

Join the club, darlin'! Plus, books like that take me back to my younger days.

 

I tend to recommend the classics of fantasy and sci-fi:

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy -- J.R.R. Tolkien
The Earthsea Trilogy (plus one) -- Ursula LeGuin
The Chronicles of Narnia -- C.S. Lewis
The Dark is Rising Series -- Susan Cooper
Watership Down -- Richard Adams
The Mars Series -- Edgar Rice Burroughs
The inaccurately named Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy -- Douglas Adams
Dune (the first three are the best) -- Frank Herbert, actually you can't really go wrong with any of his books.
The Incarnations of Immortality -- Piers Anthony
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (and second chronicles) -- Stephen R. Donaldson
The Chronicles of Amber -- Roger Zalazny
Fafhrd and Grey Mouser Series -- Fritz Leiber
The Eternal Champion Saga (in particular Elric, Corum and Hawkmoon stories) -- Michael Moorcock (true hack and slash books)
The Heechee Saga -- Frederik Pohl

I could go on, but I think that's a reasonable start.

 

Since T2 brought up Donaldson, I'll add my usual note: his Gap Cycle is vastly superior to his Thomas Covenant stuff. Although it's also substantially more unpleasant.

For that matter, his detective/noir novels (The Man Who Killed His Brother) are also better than his Thomas Covenant stuff. Not as good as the Gap, but also not as, ah, disturbing.

 

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Steven Erikson or Robin Hobb yet. They are worth considering if you like fantasy-adventure.

 

Vance? Is this the guy who inspired the "Vancian' casting system of D&D - basically the entire spell slots idea?

 

Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds

Just read it.

 

Steven Erkison, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, and Terry Brooks. Can\t go much wrong with those blokes.