Favourite Books of All Time?

Off the top of my head:

Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Lila <&^ by Robert M. Pirsig. Only books I've re-read multiple times & dog-eared the living shit out of.

The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien. His whole incredibly rich mythology crammed into one volume.

Geek Love - Katherine Dunn
From Hell - Alan Moore
Cat's Cradle &
Deadeye Dick - Kurt Vonnegut

A Canticle for Liebowitz - Walter M. Miller

The entire Aubrey/Maturin series (20 books) by Patrick O'Brien

Anything by H.P. Lovecraft, but my favorite 5 stories would have to be:
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dunwich Horror
The Call of Cthulhu
At the Mountains of Madness
The Silver Key

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein might make the list 'cause I read it a year ago and it's still eating away at me.

More later if any glaring omissions rear up.

There's a fair number of comic books I read again and again. Among them: Watchmen, the Grendel series, the Sandman series, Tank Girl (the first 4 or so b&w ones), and Why I Hate Saturn.

For actual books, LOTR and Ender's Game are the only ones I've really read more than once of late. I like just about anything Stephen Ambrose has done, A Bridge Too Far, and The Killer Angels. The novelization of Star Wars is nice in that it is in many ways truer to Lucas' original "vision" than the film or any of the re-edits. Little scenes that didn't make it into the movie, like Luke's friends on Tatooine, C3PO being much more of a con man/used car salesman, hints at the Sith Lords, the Old Republic, and the Clone Wars that are far more engaging than what eventually came.

Yeep, a bit late getting back to this...."Night Chills" was the one about mind control through highly advanced subliminals combined with drugs. Gave me nightmares for weeks <shudder>

A Red File For Callan

Catch-22

Bill the Galactic Hero

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born/Gets Drafted

Dogs of War

Kidnapped

Neuromancer

Day by Day Armegeddon

To Hell and Back

The Complete Compleat Enchanter

D'oh! "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas"! (And to a lesser degree, "The Curse of Lono".)

And I forgot that I've read the complete Sherlock Holmes more than a couple times.

OOH! "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. (Well, up to and including "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.")

Book Series:


J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter Series
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord Of The Rings
Jack McKinney - Robotech Novelizations
Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Series
Isaac Asimov - The Robots Series
Lloyd Alexander - The Prydain Chronicles
Timothy Zahn - Star Wars 'Thrawn' Trilogy



Individual Books:


Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz
Frank Herbert - Dune
H.G. Wells - The War Of The Worlds
James Clavell - Shogun
Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park
Steven King - The Stand
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables



These are most of my personal favorite books, but I don't claim that they are all of high literary quality. Some are just guilty pleasures...

Lolita - V. Nabokov

Red Azalea - A. Min

The Hunt for Red October - T. Clancey

Slaughterhouse Five - K. Vonnegut

Crime and Punishment - F. Dostoevsky

The Hammer of God - A. Clarke

The Guns of the South - H. R. Turtledove

Blood Meridian - C. McCarthy

Stephen King, It

If you like that kinda stuff, you need to read James Clavell's "Shogun" immediately. It's fucking long, but it's the only book that long I've read twice. In fact, I think I have to credit that book for helping me develop who I am as a storyteller.

So yeah, Shogun would probably be my all time favorite fiction, with maybe The Killing Joke #1 for comic book stories.

Pretty much anything Heinlein or S.M. Stirling.

Ender's Game

So many favorites...

The Deed of Paksenarrion series (brain fart-can't remember who wrote it)
Armor by John Steakley
Time Enough for Love - Heinlein
LOTR Trilogy - especially Fellowship
The Recluce novels - L.E. Modesitt
The Stand - King
Almost all of the Hammer's Slammers books
the Dorsai novels
the Malazan books of the fallen
I've read all the Wheel of Time novels

And bunches more that I can re-read almost anytime. I was pleased to see Alas, Babylon on someone else's list, that was one of my favorites for some time.

I'm going to get that shortly, I think. Is it a difficult read?

I thought that the film was also excellent, but the book was pretty devastating, so I can't separate the two.

I've read most of what Welsh has published since. The follow-up (Porno) is a step down in quality. And none of the rest of hos work is as good either.

Dune (first three books)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, The Universe, and Everything.
Foundation (original three books)
Incarnations of Immortality (first two)
Ender's Game (I read 'em all but I stop right there as far as "favorites" go)
Sword of Truth series
The War Hound and the World's Pain (Moorcock)
The Princess Bride
Everything I have ever read by Heinlein (Starship Troopers, Glory Road, Job, Farmham's Freehold, Tunnel in the Sky, the list goes on)
Deathbird Stories (Ellison, several short stories with related themes)

Oh, you're cracked!
God Emperor is where it finally really got good!

It even got made into a Billy & Mandy episode!
Now that's a tribute!

I did not mean to imply that I disliked the fourth and subsequent Dune novels.

I have only read the first three. And they are amongst my favorite books.

I just finished Keith Richards' autobiography, called Life, and have to say it vaulted in to my top 10. An amazing story, the way he tells it, from his humble post-war beginnings in Dartford to how him and the Rolling Stones change not only the musical scene but the social order of things in the '60s to the drug induced '70s and '80s to him finally cleaning up and exploring other projects and things in life. It's funny as sin, heartfelt and just damn interesting.

I canot recommend it enough. Then again, I'm a huge Stones fan so probably a bit biased.

I did. Well, when I read them as a teenager, I loved them all. When I reread them as a thirtysomething I thought they were akin to the Ender series. The first book was wonderful and the subsequent ones got progressively terrible.

tv guide.
cheers and jeers is great chapter

You could continue on with Foundation's Edge. I enjoyed the book, a more mature Asimov gets to further develop the universe he began as a younger man.

Read the I,Robot short stories first. Then Caves of Steel...

Asimov's Robot novels are quite good.

"Atlas Shrugged."

Dan, I'm gonna have to recommend Hyperion and it's sequels, by Dan Simmons.

Fantastic.

Read Dune. You'll be glad that you did.

But do NOT read the sequels...