Books and Authors I think you should read

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

That was my favorite book in high school.

We studied Lord of The Flies in Grade 11 English - it was my favourite unit

and Watership Down - I remember the movie vaguely - Bright Eyes

My dad has alot of Pratchett and Wodehose -- he has almost everything by Roger Zelazny (sp)

Since you appear to be a sci-fi fan...You may want to check out the Posleen war series by John Ringo
A Hymn Before battle
Gust Front
Whe the Devil Dances
Hell's Faire

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is great as well, and a good counterpoint to 1984. I recommend them both.

Yes, that was the question I forgot to ask: What do you think I should read?

The Cobra Event by Richard Preston

Gravity by Tess Gerritsen

Jinn by Matthew B.J. Delaney

The Ender's Game series (and just about anything else) by Orson Scott Card. I ignored these books for a long time, but I'm very glad I finally got around to them.

Fantastic books. I do, however, tend to think of them more as Ender's Game and then a trilogy that follows. Ender's Game just has such a different feel than the three books that follow it. But I really love them all. I am looking forward to the conclusion of the Shadow series that follows Bean. OSC is one of my all time favorite authors.

BlueDev, if I'm not mistaken, that series has concluded. It's just a trilogy and that last part is out in paperback, even.

TW, my brother and I snuck over to the house of a friend who had cable when we were in high school to watch A Clockwork Orange on HBO. Very good, powerful movie/book that presents some great dilemmas.
And can you tell me a little bit about the books you mentioned?

trina, my school never studied much in the way of real classics; I got a lot of my best reading material from my brother's school (he went to a public school, I went to a private one). He read Lord of the Flies in class (probably 11th grade), I read his copy of it later that year. Along with Catcher in the Rye. Which I failed to mention (though I certainly should have included it) because I don't own a copy.

SSGG, yes, I certainly am a fan of SF. There are a lot more SF authors that I also follow regularly but who just weren't engaging enough to make the "short list." Charles Sheffield, Robert Forward, Dave Duncan, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Jack Chalker, Greg Bear, David Brin, Harry Harrison, etc. I also read a whole lot of Asimov and Heinlein when I was younger, but again I didn't include them because they're not in my library. (I got them from the public library before I started my own collection.)

Although, now that I'm thinking of it, there is one more author I can't believe I forgot to mention: Patricia McKillip. Her best-known series is The Riddle-Master of Hed, which is certainly a classic trilogy, but all of her work is somehow simultaneously dense and ethereal, like having your brain wrapped in a magical fog through which phantasms and wonders loom and roam. She writes mostly straight fantasy. It's absolutely brilliant; for most of a book, you are completely immersed in what's going on without understanding more than about a quarter of it. Finally, though, everything falls beautifully into place as the key underlying elements are revealed.

Cacto, those are great additions to the list. Read them both, loved them both.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Very interesting take on the legend of Arthur.

That one looks good. I'll keep an eye out for it.

I recommend "We Were The Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates (if you ever had a concept of a "normal family" this one's a good read), "A River Out of Eden" by John Hockenberry, and "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science" by Atul Gawande. I made my students read that last one. It was an eye-opener for most of them, but some were still (pardon my bluntness) dumb enough to not get it.

Bonus novella: "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean. Best book ever. The movie is almost as good, but the words are beautiful in the book. It's poetry disguised as prose. I love it. I really, really love it.

-A.

BlueDev, if I'm not mistaken, that series has concluded. It's just a trilogy and that last part is out in paperback, even.

Nope. There is a fourth book due to come out. The rumored title is "Shadow of the Giant" - hinting at Bean's genetics. I have Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Shadow Puppets in hardback and am quite positive that there needs to be a fourth. Shadow Puppets just left too much hanging.

Oh, and I frequent OSC's website where there was a lot of talk about "Shadow of the Giant" a while back.

TW, my brother and I snuck over to the house of a friend who had cable when we were in high school to watch A Clockwork Orange on HBO. Very good, powerful movie/book that presents some great dilemmas. And can you tell me a little bit about the books you mentioned?

I read the book first and then looked for the movie . . . I'm surprised I actually found it. At the time, the message of the book had a very profound effect on me . . . I have almost forgotten what it was about entirely with the passage of time. Sad, huh? I actually watched the movie with my mom, and I remember thinking once we were already watching it that it was a bad idea.

The Cobra Event is a bioterror thriller. I think it's my favorite book ever. Richard Preston typically writes non-fiction about diseases and bioterror, and those are also good. It was just a really great book.

Gravity is also a disease book . . . I am quite interested in that type of thing and have read many a book about Ebola and about bioterrorism.

Jinn is about a lot of stuff . . . I enjoy reading gory thrillers like Jinn, and it is an excellent and fast-paced read.

I read brainless stuff. You would never have guessed that about me, huh?

I'll probably recommend those to my woman, TW, but I'm not much into that sort of thing myself. (She loves Patricia Cornwell, Mary Higgins Clark, and Sue Grafton in particular.)

That's great to know, BlueDev! I guess I'll be out looking for that soon too.

Good list citahellion.  I've read most of those books, although I  haven't had the chance to read Ender's Game which I have heard so many good things about.  Have you read Underworld by Don Delillo? it's a great book with incredibly vivid imagery.  I agree with you on Ray Bradbury, I've only read Fahrenheit 451 but it was a great book.  I think you should list Chuck Palahniuk on your list he is another great contemporary writer.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Ender's Game series (and just about anything else) by Orson Scott Card.

SiddharthaI and Demian by Hermann Hesse

Terry Pratchett or P.G. Wodehouse,

citahellion, these are all on my 'already read' list, except for the orson scott card (i've only read a few of his but i loved them), and some wodehouse, pratchett, and one hesse . i'll add the rest to my 'to be read' list. great stuff !


mig XX

Dig into some John Irving. My favorite of his is A Prayer for Owen Meany, but almost anything he's written is good.

If you're into A Clockwork Orange, you might try some Chuck Pahalunik. You may remember Fight Club, made from one of his books. Warning though, not for the weak of stomach. I particularly recomend Survivor

Bonus novella: "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Maclean.

damned fine author, read the whole collection by the same name, not just the one story though.

And the Ender books have several....well, not sequels, call them "side" books as well, covering things from Bean's "and others" viewpoints.

read the whole collection by the same name, not just the one story though.

Very true.

-A.

Dig into some John Irving

I went through a John Irving phase in high school, I think; The World According to Garp, Hotel New Hampshire, Setting Free the Bears, and at least a couple others. I don't remember A Prayer for Owen Meany, though. I'll try to look it up.

I liked A Clockwork Orange specifically because of its conundrum regarding the consequences of free will. (Nadsat, the Russian-English slang, was also very interesting). But I'm not much into most depictions of violence. I don't have a weak stomach per se, I just find no interest in such things when I could be reading something else. (Never saw "Fight Club", either. Sorry.)

I guess I'll have to check out A River Runs Through It, too.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Oh, and mig, congratulations on having already covered so much of my list. I especially recommend the Doris Lessing stuff, though. While the Canopus in Argos: Archives series does technically qualify as Science Fiction, it is still in her greater context of classic fiction/literature as social commentary.

The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas. A truly amazing story. It's pretty long, but worth it. It is my favorite book of all time.
Le Morte D'Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory. The original compilation of the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Great stories, but a very difficult read. I've only manage to get to page 750 out of 1100.
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke. Even better than the movie, although the movie was amazing in it's own way. The three follow up books are good too, but not as good as the first.
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. The book upon which the movie was based. Goldman also wrote the screenplay. It's 100 times funnier than the book, and a more satisfying story.
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. One of the best novels from the originator of private investigator mysteries. Just read this one for my detective fiction class. I absolutely loved it.

Even though I spent the first 16 years of my life neglecting tv, movies, friends, and girls in favor of reading, that's all I can come up with right now. Hope you read some of those and enjoy them

All excellent recommendations, nmrhth. (I haven't read the last 2, though I did see "The Princess Bride". ... Did you really mean that the movie is that much better than the book?)

And of course I should have recommended almost anything by Robert Heinlein, but in particular Starship Troopers (nothing like the movie, thank heavens) and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I meant that the book was 100 times better than the movie. I also really liked The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I haven't read Starship Troopers, although I'd like to.