This is for research purposes as much as anything. I'm getting into reading a lot lately and want to know what to read next. So, I want people to put down their favourite books so I know what to look out for :) . Over to you, SP!

In no particular order, my top 10 or so:

The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Deadhouse Gates - Steven Erikson
Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson
House of Chains - Steven Erikson
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
A Clash of Kings - George R. R. Martin
The Cider House Rules - John Irving

1. The Coming of Conan of Cimmeria by Robert E Howard
2. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
3. The Crystal Shard by R A Salvatore
4. The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
5. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
6. Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra
7. Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Weis and Hickman
8. The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
9. Mission MIA by J C Pollack
10. From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorites.

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Farseer Trilogy - Robin Hobb
The Liveship Traders - Robin Hobb
A Song of Ice and Fire - GRR Martin
Revelation Space - Alastair Reynolds
Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds
Redemption Ark - Alastair Reynolds
Absolution Gap - Alastair Reynolds
The Saga of the Exiles - Julian May
Intervention - Julian May
The Galactic Milieu Trilogy - Julian May
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Last T'En Trilogy - Cory Danniels
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Blindness - Jose Saramago
Snow Crash - Neal Stephanson
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephanson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephanson
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Count Zero - William Gibson
Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin
Frankenstein - Mary Shelly
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Children of Men - PD James
Jennifer Government - Max Barry

That's everything that comes to mind for now - I'll edit if I think of more.

[ November 16, 2005, 10:15: Message edited by: Aikanaro ]

Steven Erikson, if you are looking for fantasy. His books are epic length, and they will keep you busy for quite some time.

My favourite fantasy novel would have to be The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance. Strange lands, stranger peoples and a loathsome anti-hero who is just engaging enough that you want him to win through. Wonderful stuff.

I won't repeat other people so here's some others

Demon Prince series - Javk Vance
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
anything by Roger Zelazny (my favourite author of all time)
Pride and Predujice - Jane Austen
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Divine Comedy - Dante Aligheri
Candide - Voltaire
The Black Company series - Glen Cook
Anything by Sean Russell
The Ender series - Orson Scott Card
The Book of Words - J V Jones

And just in case graphic novels
Ronin - Frank Miller
The Sandman series - Neil Gaiman
Watchmen - Alan Moore
V for Vendetta - Alan Moore
The Dark Knight returns - Frank Miller
Camelot 3000 AD - Mike W Barr

Any particular genre?

Anything by Hemmingway (especially The Old Man and The Sea)
Anything by Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men is amazing)
All the Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Anything by John LeCarre (start with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)
The Evil that Men Do (authors name is Hill -- sorry, don't know the first name)
The Eagle has Landed by Jack Higgins
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
The Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edit: Catcher in the Rye has quite an infamous reputation... be afraid of anyone claiming it to the their favorite book. :eek:

From the Corner of His Eye-Dean Koontz
It was just so good, it was the first book he strayed from sraight horror to more of pyschological horror. Barty was such and interesting child

Odd Thomas-Dean Koontz
The first book I almost cried at the ending off. Odd Thomas is such a great character. It was just a great book.

The Killing Kind-John Connolly
I've read lots of detective novels but none of them were nearly as interesting as Charlie Parker. A tortured ex-cop whose family was killed by a serial killer sent on a case of finding what happened to a young women and it leads him to a cult with a murder filled past. It was great.

Helter Skelter-Vincent Bugliosi
I was interested in the whole Charles Manson thing and read this book. It was so crazy, it honestly scared the hell out of me. I slept with a golf club next to the bed for like 3 months after reading it.

LOTR-JRR Tolkien
Started the whole obsession with fantasy for me. I actually read LOTR before The Hobbit. Aragorn was such a classic character.

Mossflower-Brian Jacques
I read it when I was in like grade 5, and loved it. I can still remember the whole story. Brian Jacques stories really slipped after Mattimeo. Mossflower is heads and tails above the rest.

Thats all I can think of for now.

My favourite graphic novels are The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

I can't believe I left off Frankenstein -- one of the best books ever written. It is not a gothic horror novel as portrayed by Hollywood, but rather an engrossing novel about prejudice.

The last time we had a similar thread here, _Gates of Fire_ by Steve Pressfield turned up several times also. It's really very good.

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The first man in Rome by Colleen McCollough (chances are that I mispelled that name). The road to Jerusalem (and the three other books in this series) By Jan Guillou Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Anerssen Nexø (The book I'm named after :heh: ). Ditte Humanchild (bad translation, I think) again by Martin Anerssen Nexø. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet Homers the Illiad and the Odyssé (really, really bad translation, I think) is also two great works.
No nearly all of them, but some of the books I charish the most. Other books of interrest, which I, mind you, haven't read thrtough yet, but only begun are: Gates of Fire and With fire and Sword.

Funny that noone has mentioned J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter books. Personally I find them to be great books, though writing-wise nothing that would reach my top-ten.

too many to try and name... but it appears that Darkstrider and I have the same taste in graphic novels :) have you ever tried reading John Constantine: Hellblazer or Lucifer? Great stuff as well.

Too many, but I'll try and put some of the best ones:
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
Silmarillion (Tolkien)
War and Peace (Tolstoi)
The Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy (Douglas Adams)
The brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky)
Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges)
History of the Peloponysian War (Thucydides. Father of all historians, and an absolutely brilliant analysis of wars in general)
The Count of Monte-Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
The Stranger (Albert Camus. Went into depression for several weeks after reading this)
The Culture of Terrorism (Noam Chomsky)
The Sound and the Fury (and mostly anything else by William Faulkner, but this one stands out)
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
Petersburgh Stories (Gogol)
Short stories by ETA Hoffmann
The unberable lightness of being (Milan Kundera)
The Call of Cthulhu (HP Lovecraft)
An American Dream (Norman Mailer)
Le Horla (Guy de Maupassant)
The birth of Tragedy (Friedrich Nietzsche)
A la recherche du temps perdu (Marcel Proust)
La jalousie (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Season of Migration to the North (Tayeb Saleh)
A confederacy of dunces (John Kennedy Toole)
Autumn in Pekin (Boris Vian)

If you include graphic novels:
Nikopol Trilogy (Enki Bilal)
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)

And many others. Yes, I like reading :)

Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
This Day All Gods Die - Stephen R. Donaldson
Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey
Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb
Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

I'm sure there're quite a few I'm forgetting, but whatever.

have you ever tried reading John Constantine: Hellblazer or Lucifer? Great stuff as well. Hellblazer's good, Lucifer's better. But you really need to read Preacher, dammit! Preacher!

A song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin.

Best series I have ever read.

have to disagree with that master. Lucifer gets away with stuff because 1) he's so smooth 2) he's so powerful that people always think twice before messing with him anyway. Constantine on the other hand can't even fight properly but he always finds a way to screw everybody over in the end. So I prefer Constantine :cool: Yeah, I think I'll try reading Preacher, it used to be by Garth Ennis anyway, right?

I'm sure there will be duplications from others' lists, but hey, great minds think alike...

The Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Neuromancer, et al. - William Gibson
Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy
Team Yankee - Harold Coyle
Ringworld - Larry Niven
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Starship Troopers - Heinlein
A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Dune - Frank Herbert
Shogun - James Clavell
Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Watchmen - Alan Moore

"The Third Policeman" by Flann O'Brien - surreal and funny
Any "Books Of Blood" by Clive Barker, particularly #1 & 2 - imaginitive horror short story collections
Anything Joe R. Lansdale has written - nasty, exciting, yet hilarious
Thomas Harris' books that feature Hannibal Lecter - carefully constructed, thoroughly researched thrillers

Yeah, I think I'll try reading Preacher, it used to be by Garth Ennis anyway, right? Ennis wrote the entire run of Preacher (#1-9 in TPB form). Before that, yes, he did quite a bit of stuff for Hellblazer.

While you're at it, read Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis/Darrick Robertson, 10 TPBs). Very, very well done.

Well, Douglas Adams wrote very good books.Hitch Hiker's Series are perhaps the best.

i just might. heard good things about transmetropolitan even back when i was collecting comics around 5 years ago

Here's some of my favourites (not in any particular order):

The Egyptian - Mika Waltari
The Crow Road, and other works - Iain Banks
Culture series and other sci-fi - Iain M Banks
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco (best tragicomical horror stories ever!)
The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco
Neil Gaiman's work, all of it.
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
Stalker - Arkadi & Boris Strugarski
The Earthsea trilogy - Ursula LeGuin

...and many more! Of course William Gibson's great (Pattern Recognition, wow)! Need not to say about the importance of Tolkien! Who can deny Terry Pratchett's merits?

Not every possible book is as good as one might want to hope, but there are so many great stories that one could only wish that there'd be enough time to read the best of them.

[ November 23, 2005, 17:41: Message edited by: Ichor ]

Here are some of my favorites, listed by type:

Classics: Parts of "David Copperfield" moved me to tears, but my favorite Dickens' are "Bleak House" and--a little offbeat--"Dombey and Son". It's been many years, but I still think Balzac's "A Harlot High and Low" is one of the best books I've ever read.

History: Gibbon, of course; but somewhat less formidable: "The Armada", by Garrett Mattingly; or "The Swordbearers"--about WWI--by Corelli Barnett. "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives", by Alan Bullock, is thought-provoking and brilliant, if you can stand 800 pages about two extremely unpleasant people. And a special recommendation for "Testimony", the memoirs of Dmitri Shostokovich, which show that humane feeling can survive damn near anything.

Science-Fiction: The current stuff is well-covered above, so I'll recommend a couple of classics: "The Stars, My Destination"--"Tiger, Tiger" in the UK--by Alfred Bester; "The Weapon Shops of Isher", by A.E. van Vogt; Azimov's Foundation Trilogy--but NOT the later continuation--and just about any early Heinlein, up until "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". (I personally often find Heinlein a little hard to take, a minority view; but his earlier stuff is less so, and many of the short stories are very good by any standard.)

Detectives (Hard-Boiled):
Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett
The Getaway--Jim Thompson
Bordersnakes--James Crumley
Raymond Chandler--All of them (except "Playback").

Science: Any of the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould.

Science: Any of the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould. Agreed. :thumb:

too many to mention... but just off the top of my head:

anything by Neil Gaiman and Agatha Christie.
Shogun by James Clavell.
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.
A Game of Universe by Eric S Nylund.
aSoIaF by GRR Martin.
Farseer + Tawny Man Trilogies by Hobb.
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. The 1st book is the best, the rest of the series kinda fluctuates.

too lazy to try and type the rest :p

"The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" by Stephen Donaldson (7 books written, 2 to come).
"The Hollow Chocolate bunnies of the Apocolypse" by Robert Rankin, extremely funny.
"The Wind Singer Trilogy" by William Nicholson, a young adults book, but very well written.
"Mortal Engines", and "Predators Gold"by Philip Reeve.
"The Last Legion" by Valerio Massimo Manfredi.
"His Dark Materials Trilogy" by Philip Pullman.
"The Abhorsen Trilogy" by Garth Nix.
"Slapstick" and "The sirens of Titan" by Kurt Vonnegut.

They are but a few of my faves :D

Seeing as how you're English, BA, I should add the magnificent series of Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian to my list: the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. This series has been so extravagantly praised that I will only say that if you choose to try it, start with the first one: "Master and Commander".

Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey
I've been thinking about this one, AMaster, but it is a trilogy. What are your thoughts on this series?

@Chandos

from the posts of SPers that have read it, the main opinion that emerges is "a good series if you can take all the porn" lol

Well, they sound a bit like those horrid, tasteless "romance" novels. Yet, I've heard they are well written, and more like the Renaissance in setting, rather than the Middle Ages.

I've been thinking about this one, AMaster, but it is a trilogy. What are your thoughts on this series? *shrug* As Enagonious said, more or less. I would add that the sexuality of the series is integral to the setting (whores are incredibly important to the society, for religious reasons. It is, as you mentioned, a rennaisance society, albeit rather skewed; France, Italy, and Greece are civilized. The rest of the world, not so much. At least so far as the narrator is concerned) and the character (first person narration). It could not be removed without, in my opinion, drastically weakening the books.

As for the writing, I do believe it is rather well done. Amazon has some sample pages of the book up--you could try there to get a better idea.

Basically, if you feel you can handle erotic overtones, I recommend it. If it helps, I'm most definitely not a fan of erotica or romance novels, but for this I make an exception.

Petru I -A. I. Tolstoi
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Dune - Frank Herbert
War and Peace -LevTolstoi
The Count of Monte-Cristo -Alexandre Dumas
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan
Shadow's Witness - Paul S. Kemp