Topic

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colifer

Many would disagree I think but this is mine:

The Demon apostle

This is the only book where the ending left me bazzled. I can't describe it but it had me leaving in a state of.....DAMN.

I like too many to pick a single one out :) Though the Dark Elf trilogy was excellent

:hmm:

It prob be one of these

The Hobbit
Silmarillion
Also Sprach Zarahustra

I don't know why but I really liked The Redemption Of Althalus but Homeland from the dark elf trilogy was great to.

Wow, this is hard. I'd have to say that the best book I read is the one that impacted me (and the way I think) the most. In that case, it was probably The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

This is a tough one. I don't have a single best. In no particular order:

Intervention
The Saga of the Exiles
The Galactic Mileiu (sp) Trilogy
The Farseer Trilogy
The Liveship Traders Trilogy
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

Hm i don't know the exact translation but it must be "Speech" or something like that by M.Kemal Atatürk. It tells the Turkish Independence War, and is (was) a good read.
Other than that it can be "The Lord of the Rings"

@Tarsakh: how old are you? That book was written for kids. To answer the question I'd have to say that the Dark Elf Trilogy Collectors Edition was my favorite book. It had all three Dark Elf books in one.

@Tarsakh: how old are you? That book was written for kids. To answer the question I'd have to say that the Dark Elf Trilogy Collectors Edition was my favorite book. It had all three Dark Elf books in one. that i see as being hypocritical. All of the slavatore/dragonlance/dark elf/forgotten realms were written for children. Or at least adolecants.

I gotta say that no one book can really outrank any other, as there is so many different genres.
But, here are my fav.

Childrens - Squids will be Squids or the 'Just' series.
Fantasy - Too many. Jordan, Martin, Hobb, Elliot, Feist. All good.
Sci-Fi - The Decent, forget the author.

Well now i'm not a children and i bet that more than half of Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance readers are not children too.
*groans*
I love Drizzt books.Yeah Dark Elf Trilogy is a good read.

The entire Foundation series written by Isaac Asimov was amazingly good, and I enjoyed it more than any other books I have ever read. However, I have to say the *best* book I've ever read is a more difficult question, I think I'll just give a top fifteen, that's about as closely as I can narrow it down.

1. The Tin Drum
2. 100 Years of Solitude
3. Point, Counter Point
4. The End of Science (The Undiscovered Mind wasn't nearly as interesting)
5. Metamorphosis
6. Ulysses (need to clear up that although I greatly disliked reading this book, I cannot deny its greatness)
7. Animal Farm
8. Farewell to Arms
9. The Bell Jar (probably one of the toughest reads ever)
10. The Sound and the Fury
11. Unto This Last, and Other Writings (John Ruskin)
12. The Ethics (Benedict de Spinoza)
13. Crime and Punishment
14. The Aenied
15. The Divine Comedy (seriously considering learning Italian just to read this in its original language)

There's a great deal of other books too, that's not even the tip of the iceberg.

[ May 08, 2003, 06:56: Message edited by: enjan ]

The Return of the King by J.R.R.TOLKIEN is my favorite. (It could be Silmarillion but I'm still on page 34)

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It's really a shame that only the first book of the Song of Fire and Ice is translated to swedish. Or finnish. I guess I'll have to read it in english then.

That's a tough question, as "best" has a lot of different shades. Best Mystery? Best Adventure? Best Interpretive novel? Too many genres and types.

I have to give some credence, though, to those English theorists who have claimed "Middlemarch" by George Eliot as the best written novel of all time. Magnificently organized and put together.

Helter Skelter-The True Story Behind the Charles Manson Muders by Vincent Bugliosi.

It left me saying "What the ****, who thinks of this stuff ",and it's a true story.

Animal Farm
The Godfather
1984
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Catcher in the Rye
His Dark Materials Trilogy

The best book i ever read would certainly be Silmarillion (JRRTolkein)or Hitch-Hickers Guild to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)

The Silmarillion without a doubt. Crazier and just plain more insane then LotR.

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan...i always like teh personal 1v1 fights in fantasy writing...and i like the style he puts them in.

The Pearl Saga by Eric Van Lustbader
The Rigante Series by David A. Gemmel
Anything by Anne Rice besides her earlier works on erotic fiction(left me with a headache and a totally twisted view on The Sleeping Beauty)
Many and many of Salvatores books!

Servant of the Shard can race with any fantasy book!
Entreri and Jarlaxle forever!
(found Artemis Entreri fan club)

Beside fantasy I like most of all "Catch 22", "Picture this", "Good as Gold" - almost everything of Joseph Heller...

The last think I read beside fantasy was "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck. It was magnificent book... Just magnificent... It almost made me cry :cry:

Lord of the Rings. Period.

It was after all voted Book of the Century :heh:

LoTR of course.

Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons.

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

Strangers in a Strange Land by Heinlein.

JOB: A Comedy of Justice by Heinlein.

A Song of Ice and Fire by Geogre R.R. Martin.

Wheel of Time by Jordan, though I wish he would finish it!

And finally most of the Redwall book by Brian Jacques.

The first three Dune books, I think they're better than LOTR.

Not one book, but a serie. R.Jordan: "The Wheel of Time." Although the protagonist is a typical "Oh, she died! I guess I must now jump over a cliff! The misery!" -hero, the story is just too good to be passed. A pity that it has taken a turn to worse with the newest book.

Hmmm, definately one of the R.A. Salvatore books. I've only read parts of the series because my friend has the books and let's me borrow random ones. The Thousand Orcs might be my favorite, but I can't remember the name of the others I read.

Mine are the 2 first books of Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth"- series and maybe "The Riftwar Saga" By R.E. Feist...

It's really hard to just pick books like that, but right now i can't think of any other.

EDIT: I just remembered a book, reather two wich i loved, "Ogniem i Mieczem" - roughly translated it means With fire and Sword, it's written by a polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz :)

[ June 12, 2003, 20:41: Message edited by: Ameorn ]

Applying the criteria of "books that I re-read the most" as my definition of best, here's my top few favorites in no particular order:

Witch World Series - Andre Norton
Duncton Wood - William Horwood
Emergence - David R. Palmer
Warlock Series - Christopher Stasheff
Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov

Mission Earth books 1-10 - L Ron Hubbard

A Song of Ice & Fire - George R R Martin

The Sword of Shannara - Terry Brooks

A Darkness at Sethanon - Raymond E Feist

Hyperion saga - Dan Simmons

The Dig - Alan Dean Foster.

It struck me as a very odd book, and when you read through it the second time it all begins to make sense. I love the ending, though they do leave it a tad unclear.

Trivia:
Steven Spielberg wanted to make The Dig into a movie, but gave up the project, either because the costs were too high, or not enough interest, I don't know. But it was made into a computer game by LucasArts. That's actually how I got the book. My parents saw the game, it came with a copy of the novel it was based on, they knew I liked both computer games and reading, so they bought it for me.

The Lord of The Rings. I first read it way back when I was in grade two and have read it at least once a year ever since. It was what got me hooked on Fantasy novels which led to RPGs, computer games, movies etc. It is now twenty years, and eight seperate book reports for various English classes, later and I still love it.

I currently own my original boxset of paperbacks (which are falling apart), a large single volume 100th anniversary of Tolkien's birth edition, and the Easton Press leather bound set.

Can't really say for sure what the best I have ever read was, but the best I have read recently would have to be Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk. Note that is also the author or Fight Club which by comparison is rather tame. Highly recommended to all. Lack of time is no excuse not to read it, you will finish it in one sitting. It's that good. :)

Ithink I said above the Silmarillion. I changed my mind. Now it is Gates of Fire. And I suggest all of you should read it.
It is about the Spartans who faught in Thermopyles.

Dante, Boccacio
Odysseia
Joyce: Ullyses
Herbert: Dune,...
Dick: Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Eletric Sheep?
Gibson: Neuromancer
Tolkien: Lotr,...
LeGuin: Earthsea books
Sapkowski: Wiedzmin cycle and short stories
Vonnegut's books
Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Lem: Solaris
Strugackij bros: Stalker/Pycnic by the road
Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Golding: Lord of the Flies
Burghes: Clockwork Orange (how could I forgot, Alex's slang is simply great - EDIT)

P.S.: There are so many *great* books out there and so many of you put there Salvatore's easy reading (not that I did not like it, but...)

Despite the many sentiments that R.A. Salvatore's work is "easy" I never really thought it was any easier than things like the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged or Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye. I think it's one of those things that the more symbolism and theories a book has, the more difficult a book seems to people but in that case why don't they consider things like C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy really tough?

In any case my favorite book series is probably the Crimson Shadow Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. I love the characters and plot to it! I also individually loved Servant of the Shard (another R.A. Salvatore book) he defintely needs to do a follow-up with what happens to Jarlaxle and Artemis though. And I want to know the history behind Entreri and why he's so untruting.

Go Ask Alice (love that book...well, diary)
Nightfall (Isaac Asminov)
The Hobbit (you all know)
The Fellowship of the Ring (planning on reading the second one soon)
Darwin's Black Box (Micheal Behe)
Dragon's of Autumn Twilight (Weis & Hickman)
Sphere (M. Crichton)
Contact (Carl Sagan)
The Princess Bride (Morgenstien but the abridged version)

My favorite(i dont really know which book is my fav so ill just say series) would be either wheel of time or the sword of truth, i can normally finish the first 2 of each series in a day, i get that hooked on em

Like I can pick just one...

Like I can pick just one... you dont need to pick just one.

I'm going to have to go with Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I can't count the number of times I have either read the entire book or just parts of it.

This book fascinates me with the passion involved. People either really love the book or think it is the worst piece of drivel they have ever read.

In no special order:

The Divine Comedy
Canterbury Tales
Walden
Hamlet
The Lord of the Rings
Twice Told Tales
To Kill a Mockingbird
Njal's Saga (best of the Icelandic Sagas, IMO)
The Killer Angels
Henry IV Pts 1&2
Moby Dick
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (and Other Stories)