Favourite books

Crims

Wethermon
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I'm returning to a lot of my favourite classic novels, and am curious if any of the so-called deep books of the last decade are actually deep. There's a lot of informative books with research about particular topics, though I'm more interested in adventure novels.
Anywho:

This is the place to share and review books
 

Crims

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A lot of the books of the last decade are kind of meh, though I'd recommend Stephen Fry's Greek Gods stuff.
 

Tiffany

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I've been doing more on-line reading then reading novels in the past few years because my reading has been more for research and gathering of information. When I do read though, I enjoy tech novels, like by Tom Clancy, and historical novels written by James Michener and mysteries from various authors.
 

Crims

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I've been doing more on-line reading then reading novels in the past few years because my reading has been more for research and gathering of information. When I do read though, I enjoy tech novels, like by Tom Clancy, and historical novels written by James Michener and mysteries from various authors.
That's really unique. I admittedly didn't include Jack Reacher, and the Tom Clancy novels because they're sort of Dan Brown-y. I've had a lot of nonfiction books to read, which makes the occasional hobby novel stand out.
 

Retro

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I used to read such a lot of books when I was a kid, which really helped to give me my decent English skills.

I liked mostly sci-fi stories from the big names like Asimov and Silverberg, two authors who really knew how to write well.

I did read some detective thrillers in later years too, especially many of the Spencer novels. I remember how satisfying it was when Spencer finally shot some serial killer psycho at the end.

I hardly read books nowadays as there's too much TV and other things to do, especially on the Internet. When I do read however, it's now exclusively on the Kindle, which is great. It really helps with my somewhat less than perfect eyesight, being very comfortable to read.

I don't have a favourite book, but at the moment, I'm reading this interesting book when I get a chance to read it. I don't agree with everything in it, but it does give a good insight into how to spot them.

 

Arantor

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I used to read a lot more when I was younger. I'm not quite sure when that stopped.

Of the things I have read, though...

Douglas Adams in all his myriad forms, whether that's the Hitchhiker's Guide series, or the Dirk Gently series, or even The Meaning of Liff (a dictionary of the really important words that we seem to have forgotten. It's all place names, of course, but the words do capture feelings for which I strongly believe we do need to coin actual words for sometime. I give you "ardcrony - a remote acquaintance passed off as 'a very good friend' by someone trying to impress people", or "bathel - to pretend to have read the book under discussion when in fact you've only seen the television series".

David & Leigh Eddings, The Redemption of Althalus - while most of the Eddings books are either dry and dusty fantasy military guff (e.g. The Belgariad) or mystic fantasy that's trying to feel like it has a point (see The Dreamers), Althalus stands alone as an interesting fantasy tale. I pick it up every so often and have a re-read.

Jasper Fforde, the Thursday Next series (The Eyre Affair onwards) - this one gets decidedly meta in the vein of a 'literature detective' called Thursday Next, in an alternate version of 1985, whose normal job is dealing with rogue copies of Shakespeare or Dickens, until it gets infinitely more meta and Next finds herself inside the book of Jane Eyre, which in this universe... plays out differently. And Next may have to do something about that. On a side note, when Eoin Colfer came to write the sixth and so far final Hitchhiker's Guide book based on Adams's notes, I wished he hadn't, because as much as Artemis Fowl is a fun enough series, Colfer is far too normal and by the book, and not nearly observational humourist enough - Fforde on the other hand feels like he would have gotten into the spirit of the thing and been delightfully bonkers while making those dry sardonic observations.

Mike Carey's Felix Castor series (The Devil You Know onwards). Carey is originally a comic writer - wrote for Hellblazer and Lucifer, and ended up writing his own novel series. The universe is, broadly, our own - except in the late 2000s, the dead have risen. Plenty of people see ghosts, and unsurprisingly, came forth the exorcists, of which Felix himself is one, dispelling ghosts with a tin whistle. But he has some scars from his travels, and some of them almost end up killing him. More than once. What's really neat is that it's a five book series and by the time it's done, it goes full circle. I don't know if it was *planned* like that but it's a finished series and by the time it's done, everything wraps up cleanly.

Unfortunately I have a library of unread books, just like my library of unplayed games...
 

Crims

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I've heard of Dirk Gently, but never knew the author was Douglas. Eddings sounds quite good too, and I'd definitely keep an eye out if I recognise those authors appear in my reading lists in the future. Goodreads is a start.
 

Retro

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@Arantor @Crims there's an overload of content nowadays for sure. One doesn't have enough years in their life to get through it all, never mind hours in the day. For example, I really liked 24 and would like to watch it all again, but I'll never have the time to do it, because the ever incoming flow of new content takes a higher priority.
 

Arizona

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I can't get into reading novels anymore except short stories and maybe novellas. My favorite novella is a relatively unpopular book, Memories of Amnesia. The title alone is a great koan, and the book is very zen and paradoxical. Most fiction seems too fake to me for some reason, as I have gotten older :eek:

Last weekend, I read the non-fiction book Looking for Madeleine, which I found after watching the related Netflix documentary that came out in 2019. I was happy with the book since it was pretty engrossing. Basically, the book explained why the parents are likely not guilty of accidental death (or homicide).

I like poetry and short stories -- basically anything short and sweet :)
 
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