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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

Yes, an excellent choice.
I recently found an old copy of the Groucho Letters (Mr Marx was a prolific letter writer). Joyous.
 
Found an interesting murder mystery book called
The Athenian Murders, by J.C.Somoza (the legend reads that it is the winner of the 2002 CSA Macallan Gold Dagger---wooo).
Anyhoo, v.fortean. There is an Athenian tale of a murder that is being re-translated as it unfolds. There is an underlying eidetic text to the greek story that the translator is attempting to also uncover. Also, as the translator is doing this, his world (in footnote form) is starting to reflect elements of the orginal story. A true paranoid descent. It's odd, but very gripping. I'd recommend it for a wet sunday afternoon.
 
Its well worth a read :)

Try The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow lots of fun considering the narrator :)
 
Well today when I went shopping I found a second edition of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook ('83) and that brought back some memories of Saturday nights as a teenager!! Got Fortean Times to finish reading too so my weekend's gonna be good!! :lol:
 
For anyone who has ever felt excluded or divorced from the ebb and flow of what's going on around them (which, lets face it, is most of us at some time in our lives) try Steven Sherrill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. Utterly convincing and recognisable despite the fact that the central character is a creature from Greek mythology. I'd love to have been in on the authors pitch.

SS: Well the main character is a bull headed man and Medusa and Pan make fleeting appearances.

Publisher: Sooo, we're talking Ancient Greece then?

SS: No, most of the action takes place in a trailer park and a restaurant in North Carolina where the Minotaur works as a chef - he's a keen mechanic as well.

Publisher: ..............................erm!
 
A Game With Sharpened Knives by Neil Belton. A fiction based on Ernest Schrödinger's time In Dublin during WW2. Quite dense and heavy going at times but haunting and gripping for reasons I haven't quite worked out yet. Also one of those books that seems to catch the atmosphere of the time and place perfectly (Ireland during WW2 was an utterly surreal place in many ways). It's also made me want to know more about Schrödinger because I suspect I've been looking at a lot of what he said from completely the wrong direction. Was going to post this on the Schrödinger's Cat thread but I can't find it - maybe I imagined it. Also would have liked to put a link to the old How could Ireland remain neutral etc thread but I think that might be closed after a certain ex-player and (ahem) yours truly, crossed swords a little too forthright a manner. Still, the book has a lot of very interesting stuff to say about neutrality. Recommended.
 
Am really enjoying (2nd time around) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Laurence Sterne). Warning, you do need to plough through the notes section and get your head around the 18th century wordplay etc, but it really is worth it.
 
So - I would really appreciate a suggestion for some great books.

I like Sci-fi with great thoughts like Nivens Ringworld. I like horror like the silent creping terror of Lovecraft. I like King & Koontz. I was quite fond of The Mothman Prophecies. Anne Rice' Vampire saga of are a favorite.

Although I love fantasy and I think Terry Pratched has wonderfull ideas, I never quite got to become fond of his writing style.

I need books with monster and UFOs, Alternative realities and time travel. Great writers of fiction preferred.

Any suggestions? I've ordered and read most of the books already mentioned in this thread.

R.
 
Excuse me while I once again deliver myself of the opinion that Diana Wynne Jones is the Greatest Living Author in the English Language.

If you prefer satire, start with Archer's Goon. If you prefer romantic comedy, start with Howl's Moving Castle. If you like epic fantasy, start with The Homeward Bounders. If you hate epic fantasy as it is mass-marketed, start with The Tough Guide to Fantasyland. If you prefer domestic horror, start with Aunt Maria or Time of the Ghost. If you prefer domestic fantasy, The Ogre Downstairs, Wilkins's Tooth, Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?, or Power of Three. If you like elaborate worldbuilding, the Dalemark Quartet - The Spellcoats, Cart and Cwidder, Drowned Ammet, and Crown of Dalemark. If you like worlds dashed off as casually as sandwiches in the world's best deli, Deep Secrets and The Merlin Conspiracy, or the Chrestomanci books, but those are (by her standards) deeply flawed, so you won't know what I'm raving about just yet.

Once you're hooked, you'll happily read her grocery list if you can find it, sure that by the time you reach the toothpaste you'll have learned that it wasn't just a grocery list...
 
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Ordered a selection. Thanks for the advice.

Others? I still need the UFO and monsters :)
 
PeniG said:
Excuse me while I once again deliver myself of the opinion that Diana Wynne Jones is the Greatest Living Author in the English Language.
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I agree that she's great; but, Margaret Mahy is an amazing writer, too. If you can find "Door in the Air," do read it (short stories).
 
Mahy seriously does not suck, but there are three reasons why I prefer DWJ.

1. Not enough Mahy stuff is available in the U.S. so I may not have reached the critical mass necessary to be addicted to an author.
2. My first editor told me repeatedly that I reminded her a lot of Mahy, while I have yet to read a DWJ book which at some point or another didn't leave me thinking desperately: "I'll never write this well, never." We naturally admire most those who do what we cannot and undervalue those whose accomplishments resemble our own.
3. Every time I look for DWJ's first published novel, the mid-70s political satire Changeover, I find Mahy's fantasy Changeover instead - naturally enough, since the Jones Changeover was published in Britain in the mid-70s and appears to have been remaindered in a week by an ignorant publishing industry while the Mahy Changeover did pretty well and got international publication. (I'm willing to assume that Jones didn't hit her stride till her next book, but not that any work of hers deserves obscurity.)
 
I've been reading a lot of Gene Wolfe recently (coincidentally this period was preceded by a month-long re-read of certain Nabokov and HG Wells stories, both of whom I see echoes of in Wolfe's fiction).

For epic 'SF,' the 'Book of the New Sun,' a four-volume work, is amazing and very re-readable. For high strangeness and a bit of conspiracy, 'Free Live Free' I highly recommend. The latter is also set in modern-day Chicago!

Anyway, I'm sure he's been mentioned on this thread before. But if you must read something, and you want it to be really damn good, check out anything by Mr. Wolfe.
 
Don't know if they've been mentioned but here are two good authors:
Jude Fisher: Wild Magic, Sorcery Rising and Rose of the World (the Fools Gold Trilogy) The author has been the publiser of the works of J.R.R,Tolkien for the last 20- odd years so there are a lot of scandinavian themes in the books.
Philip Reeve: Mortal Engines, Predators Gold and Infernal Devices: These three are more for teenagers, set in a future where, in order to make best use of dwindling rescources, cities have had to become mobile, becoming Traction Cities.
 
RonniHH said:
So - I would really appreciate a suggestion for some great books.

I like Sci-fi with great thoughts like Nivens Ringworld. I like horror like the silent creping terror of Lovecraft. I like King & Koontz. I was quite fond of The Mothman Prophecies. Anne Rice' Vampire saga of are a favorite.

Although I love fantasy and I think Terry Pratched has wonderfull ideas, I never quite got to become fond of his writing style.

I need books with monster and UFOs, Alternative realities and time travel. Great writers of fiction preferred.

Any suggestions? I've ordered and read most of the books already mentioned in this thread.

R.
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I haven't trawled through the whole thread, so I don't know if he's been mentioned yet, but if you like hard SF then British author Stephen Baxter would be a good bet. His earlier stuff is a bit poor on characterisation but even that's still worth reading. Better still he's very prolific.
 
Tom Holland's stuff is quite good too :D If looking for a bit of horror
 
Sci-fi/Fantasy

It might have been mentioned but George R.R. MArtin is writing the best and most believable fantasy at the moment. The Song of Ice and Fire series is one of the brilliant ones that actually does manage to keep surprising you. You start to like one group of people, maybe the good ones, maybe the more questionable ones, and then suddenly, BLAM! they are either assassinated, executed, or slaughtered at a feast in their honour.

I've been reading Um,berto Eco books recently as well - FOucault's Pendulum contains a lot of interesting information about the various secret societies down through the ages, and has a brilliant storyline.

Apart from that, Pratchett, Robert Rankin, Neil Gaiman (yes I know lots of people have mentioned him, but he's awesome), Haruki Murakami. I would know more, but so much of my time is dedicated to Fortean readings...
 
RonniHH said:
So - I would really appreciate a suggestion for some great books.

I like Sci-fi with great thoughts like Nivens Ringworld. I like horror like the silent creping terror of Lovecraft. I like King & Koontz. I was quite fond of The Mothman Prophecies. Anne Rice' Vampire saga of are a favorite.

Although I love fantasy and I think Terry Pratched has wonderfull ideas, I never quite got to become fond of his writing style.

I need books with monster and UFOs, Alternative realities and time travel. Great writers of fiction preferred.

Any suggestions? I've ordered and read most of the books already mentioned in this thread.

R.
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Read any Iain M. Banks? He does some very accessible epic sci-fi.
 
Warning - contents may not contain Elves or traces of Elves.

The Great War for Civilisation - The Conquest of the Middle East by Robert Fisk.

Don't let the breezeblock size of the thing put you off. Fisk is one of the most readable Western journalists around and, to my mind, one of the best - he's also a bloody good historian (In Time of War - Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 1939 - 45 is one of the best history books I've ever read).

The Great War for Civilisation is part history, part reportage, part memoir - a product of thirty years of experience reporting the Middle East. It'll make you frustrated and very angry but will also occasionally have you howling with laughter. It also reminds you how incredibly brave some news people were (and I suppose still are) - and this isn't Fisk blowing his own trumpet, you are reminded that such stalwarts as Jon Snow once risked their necks (quite literally - not to mention their testicles and any other extremity vulnerable "to a ten-rupee jezail" as Kipling would have it). It also makes you remember how mind bogglingly difficult it was for those at the razors edge to report on stories such as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the days before mobile phones, email and digital recording.

The most depressing thing is that..well, yes we all realise that history repeats but does it really have to do so on quite such a regular basis?

Awesome.

(To be fair I haven't quite finished the book. There may yet be Elves).
 
Inspired by his simply jaw-dropping 'The Men Who Stare at Goats', I've just finished reading Jon Ronson's earlier work 'Them: Adventures with Extremists', and can't recommend him highly enough. Baffling, sad, weird and frequently hilarious, Ronson's faux naif gonziod investigations into the baffling, sad, weird and frequently hilarious subcultures that pervade western society are always eye-opening and truly funny.

For anyone interested, 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' is a bizarre fact-finding tour of the strange underbelly of the American Military community. 'Them: Adventures With Extremists' pretty much does what it says on the cover, involving Omar Bakri, the Tottenham Ayatollah (a bit of a buffoon, as it turns out), weird - and strangely tragic - survivalists, a visit to the Aryan Nations (highly disturbing), David Icke (pretty much what you'd expect), some very stupid Klansmen (their confusion as to the best way to light their cross is very funny indeed), and Ian Paisley, among others. More than anything, this book serves to show just how plain silly these figures/organisations are. As to whether or not we should be reassured by that, I don't know...
 
I just picked up Pig Island by Mo Hayder, cheap from Tescos for a bus ride. Checking the net just now it has bad reviews but it has been ok so far in a cheap thriller kind of way. It centres on a journalist who specialises in exposing supernatural hoaxes and so far has talked about how he has searched for the Chubacabra and sold one of his stories to the Fortean Times so it may be of some interest to people here.

[edit]

Ok so not brilliant but, definatly not the scariest thing I will read all year as advertised but does touch on a number of Fortean themes and have read worse in the past.
 
For those who want a serious read, try "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. Its set in Munich during the second world war and is narrated by death.
 
I just finished Everlost, by Neal Shusterman. A favorite author of mine, but all the same I was surprised at my degree of blown-awayness. This book (about the afterlife of two children who are in a car in a head-on collision, and knock each other sideways out of the tunnel before they get to the light) is Fortean, funny, true, and completely unexpected, covering things like ghost clothing, ships, vehicles, and buildings; Roswell, possession, fortune cookies, Amityville, monsters and mysterious disappearances. The prose is clean, the plot uncluttered and beautifully structured, the ending nicely ambiguous. I don't want to give away any of the delightful surprises, but here's a couple of sample paragraphs, introducing the ghost ship, Sulphur Queen:

The Sulphur Queen was an old World War II tanker that was now being used to transport liquid sulphur- also known as brimstone. however the eerie smell, combined with the fact that the ship mysteriously vainsihed in the Bermuda Triangle, naturaly led people to consider a dark, supernatural end to the unlucky brimstone barge.

In truth, the death of the Sulphur Queen was extremely bizarre, but not exactly supernatural. Stated simply, the Sulphur Queen was overcome by a very large ocean fart.
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Consider this Spam ;)

Flagrant puffery, I know. Strictly unpaid, as usual. I just thought I'd mention that Joss Whedon has done Buffy the Vampier Jager, in comic book form, for series 8. It's being put out by Dark Horse Comics.

From The Editor:
Scott Allie, Editor
WHAT'S NEW WITH BUFFY?
Updated 2/28/2007
http://www.darkhorse.com/zones/buffy/index.php

The puff about Issue N°1.

14111.jpg


Buffy the Vampire Slayer Returns! The Contest Results:
http://www.darkhorse.com/news/contests.php?id=85

The first American comic i'll be buying, in a long time. :yeay:
 
Found The Museum of Lost Wonder (Jeff Hoke) while on holiday. Well worth a look (tho' pricey), it even comes with things to build.
 
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