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List your all time favorite books if you feel like it


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5 hours ago, Rodders said:

Pratchett ( Guards, Guards and Good Omens top the list ), PG Woodhouse, Douglas Adams ( Hitchhiker's book 1 and 2 only, 3 is abysmal ), Rankin's rebus series, Cornwall's Sharpe books, currently loving Mick Herron's slow horses series. Le Carre's The Man Who Came in From the Cold, and A Perfect Spy are superb. Donna Tartt's A Secret History. I was really impressed by Girl Woman Other, by Bernadine Evaristo this year too. 

 

I love the first 3 author's on the list, and have never heard of any of the other, so I'll be checking them out.

I'm a big fan of Patrick Rothfuss, thoguh I've given up on the Kingkiller Chronicles actually being finished. John Scalzi is my favourite contemporary sci-fi writer, the Old Man's War series is fnatastic, but so are some of his standalone novels. 

Flashman is a series I have a huge soft spot for, too. 

 

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17 hours ago, KentVillan said:

The internet has ruined my ability to read books. Really thought I would spend lockdown reading books, and didn't make my way through a single one.

Agreed.

My concentration levels have dropped off a cliff in the last few years. 

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Big fan of Irvine Welsh. Trainspotting and Filth are great reads. Glue and Porno, a level below. 

Also love The Beach by Alex Garland. One of the few books i've read multiple times. 

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Oh bloody hell, where to begin? 

Malcolm Lowry  - Under the Volcano 

Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain 

Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago 

Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo 

Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet 

John Dos Passos - USA trilogy 

Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace 

James Ellroy - The L.A. Quartet 

J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings 

Isaac Asimov - Foundation trilogy 

V.M. Yeates - Winged Victory 

Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions 

Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 

Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire 

Marcel Proust - A La Recherche du Temps Perdu 

Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities 

Cervantes - Don Quixote 

Ford Madox Ford - Parade's End

M. John Harrison - Viriconium 

James Salter - The Hunters 

Adam Thorpe - Ulverton 

Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms 

Olivia Manning - The Balkan Trilogy 

Truman Capote - In Cold Blood 

Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove 

(That'll do for starters)

Now I need to think about the non-fiction list... 

Edited by mjmooney
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2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

I love the first 3 author's on the list, and have never heard of any of the other, so I'll be checking them out.

I'm a big fan of Patrick Rothfuss, thoguh I've given up on the Kingkiller Chronicles actually being finished. John Scalzi is my favourite contemporary sci-fi writer, the Old Man's War series is fnatastic, but so are some of his standalone novels. 

Flashman is a series I have a huge soft spot for, too. 

 

Flashman yes now that's good fun, though the most recent one I read was focussed on his involvement during the slave trade. The language made me wince. Flash being racist isn't new but that one was uncomfortable in places!

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7 hours ago, Chindie said:

Good Omens

Night Watch/Men at Arms/Feet of Clay/Interesting Times/The Last Continent/The Fifth Elephant/Lords and Ladies/Carpe Jugulum/Maskerade/Reaper Man/Hogfather/Thief of Time... The Discworld is really **** good.

American Gods

The Crow Road

Complicity

The Business

The Player of Games

Use of Weapons

The Algebraist

I've got every Discworld book and read them at least 3 times for the newer ones and probably 4 or 5 or even more times for the earlier ones.   Every couple of years I'll just start again. 

Same with all David Gemmell books. 

I'm just reading through A Song of Ice and Fire for the second time and praying George R. R. Martin finally releases The Winds Of Winter soon because it's getting ridiculous now.  

My favourite book of all time is probably The Stand by Stephen King followed by The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. 

I'll also read The Hobbit / Lord of The Rings every few years. 

Just read the first book of The Dwarves (I think someone on here recommended them) by Markus Heitz.  They will feature heavily in my Christmas list and should keep me out of mischief for a few months. 

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21 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I've got every Discworld book and read them at least 3 times for the newer ones and probably 4 or 5 or even more times for the earlier ones.   Every couple of years I'll just start again. 

Same with all David Gemmell books. 

I'm just reading through A Song of Ice and Fire for the second time and praying George R. R. Martin finally releases The Winds Of Winter soon because it's getting ridiculous now.  

My favourite book of all time is probably The Stand by Stephen King followed by The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. 

I'll also read The Hobbit / Lord of The Rings every few years. 

Just read the first book of The Dwarves (I think someone on here recommended them) by Markus Heitz.  They will feature heavily in my Christmas list and should keep me out of mischief for a few months. 

I used to read the Discworld stuff on a constant rotation. I've read all of them at least 3 times. Some like Night Watch I'm into double figures.

Just brilliant, brilliant reads. 

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33 minutes ago, Xann said:

He had a strong relationship with the Andromeda bookshop iirc

Yes, he writes a tribute to them and also mentions Birmingham a couple of times in his dedications at the beginning of his books. 

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19 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I used to read the Discworld stuff on a constant rotation. I've read all of them at least 3 times. Some like Night Watch I'm into double figures.

Just brilliant, brilliant reads. 

Just a totally immersive world. 

Not a fan of the TV adaptions though. 

I love how major characters from some books will have minor parts in others.  Like when anyone is just visiting Ankh-Morpork, they're going to meet Sam Vimes at some point and probably get ripped off by Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. 

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I've read almost all of Discworld at least 2 or 3 times, except for the last two. They remain on my shelf, unopened, because there will come a time when I can never again read his words for the first time, and it upsets me too much. I'll read them one day, but I don't know when. 

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29 minutes ago, Xann said:

Robert Graves - 'I Claudius'

I read "Goodbye to All That", and I thought it was a masterpiece, a  fantastic piece of writing (should really be in my list above), so I looked forward to "I, Claudius" with high anticipation. Hated it. Had give up before the end. Can't quite put my finger on why, but nothing about it worked for me. My missus tried it (she's a very good judge of books - although we disagree about Dickens). She felt the same way, and also abandoned it. 

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36 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Hated it. Had give up before the end.

Found his drift under the radar through the bloody intrigue at the start to be entertaining. Livia's the best character, her exit spells a change of tone. He's less likeable at the back end of the book.

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8 hours ago, Xann said:

Found his drift under the radar through the bloody intrigue at the start to be entertaining. Livia's the best character, her exit spells a change of tone. He's less likeable at the back end of the book.

I may yet give it another chance. "The Magic Mountain" is on my list, and the first time I tried that I abandoned it as dull and unreadable. Gave it another go about a year ago, and couldn't put it down. 

Won't be giving Dickens any more chances though. 

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On 02/11/2020 at 07:20, rjw63 said:

The Jack Reacher series.

Just got the new one, remains to be seen what they'll be like now Lee Child is handing the reins over to his brother.

I still remember the shock whilst reading one of the Reacher novels when one of the characters started banging on about 1982 European cup final, had no idea he was a villan at the time 

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