Favourite Novels Of All Time? by chrisisall

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
RWED ?
Really?
Talk Story, sure. But here ?

SO, novels are not a real world subject, eh? They don't exist in or have bearing on it? Okay, fine. Report me, I expect to hear the chomp of boots any time now.

So, like I asked, anyone want to list their very fine reads here?

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 1:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Dune- Frank Herbet

I've had that particular book recommended to me more times than I have fingers or toes, yet I've never gotten around to it.
Might have to see to that...

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 7:26 AM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
RWED ?
Really?
Talk Story, sure. But here ?
SO, novels are not a real world subject, eh? They don't exist in or have bearing on it? Okay, fine. Report me, I expect to hear the chomp of boots any time now.

So, like I asked, anyone want to list their very fine reads here?

Oh, I assure you. The proper authorities WILL be notified.

( as soon as I figure out just who that is, of course )

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 10:10 AM

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Persuasion - Jane Austin
Lord of the Rings - Tolkein
Cloud Street - Tim Winton
Dune - Frank Herbert

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 11:45 AM

WHOZIT

Sue Grafton's Alphabet murders.

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 11:51 AM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Smiley's People; and The Night Manager, by John LeCarre

Dune

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter Miller

The Witches of Karres by James Schmitz

most anything by Robert Heinlein

most of Joseph Wambaugh

most of David Drake

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 5:59 PM

And the #1 winner for most recommended is... DUNE!
That sinks it. My next book purchase. Thanks.

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 10:23 PM

JONGSSTRAW

I got your Dune right here pal!

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Sunday, May 11, 2014 10:24 PM

Go play in the sand.

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Monday, May 12, 2014 12:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I got your Dune right here pal!

]

That adaption was wrong on so many levels.

This is a much better version
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/

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Monday, May 12, 2014 5:37 AM

DBELL101

Hi. I don't post often, but I've lurked around this site for over a decade.
To answer your question in no particular order:

Dune
A Fire Upon the Deep
Star Ship Troopers
Almost anything by Lois MacMaster-Bujold
Winter of the World
The Boat of a Million Years
The Stand
The Honor Harrington series (I don't like Webbers characterizations but GOD can
he do a space battle.)

Those are all that come to me now. Soon as I log off I'll probably think of
another half dozen.

************************************
If History is Remarkably Clear On One Point,
It's That People Don't Learn From History.
************************************

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014 8:06 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

If I get to use a one-book trilogy, it's The Deed of Paksenarrian. Have several copies, one's a loaner.
That trilogy published in the 80's kicked off another 2 book prequel set, and recently the Paladin Legacy has followed. The final contracted book of the 10 book world is released May 27th.
By Elizabeth Moon.

Also Red Phoenix by Larry Bond. After he helped Clancy write Hunt for Red October, he did this one.

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014 10:12 PM

FREMDFIRMA

The Culture.

Which'd be what a society was if I designed it.

Quote:
"You might call them soft, because they’re very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they’re soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be."
- Cheradenine Zakalwe

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheCulture?from=Main.
TheCulture

Of course, that said, I am quite fond of the GCU "Grey Area" (aka Meatfucker) and the VFP "Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints".

But mostly SC, primarily SC....

Quote:
Zakalwe: I thought the rules were meant to be the same for everybody.
Diziet Sma: They are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws — the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe — break down; beyond those metaphysical event-horizons, there exist... special circumstances. That's us. That's our territory; our domain.
Zakalwe: To some people, that might sound like just a good excuse for bad behaviour.
Diziet Sma: And perhaps they would be right. Maybe that is all it is. But if nothing else, at least we need an excuse; think how many people need none at all.

-Frem

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 4:31 AM

Oh jeah, Ian M Banks. Inversions. Not exactly the most Culturesque of his novels, but my favourite.

Also enjoyed Use of Weapons

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 8:49 AM

MAL4PREZ

Game of Thrones

The Hyperion/Endymion series by Dan Simmons. I really like this one. In fact, it may be time to read them again...

Pride and Prejudice (Really, any Jane Austen but this is my favorite)

I enjoyed Dune, but not an all-time fave for me. I agree about the TV series being better than the movie, even with the sad lack of Sting. I just wish they'd made the TV series 2 episodes rather than 3. The third part was too drawn out. And maybe take it easy with all the colored lighting. Still, good series.

*-------------------------------------------------*
What trolls reveal about themselves when they troll:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=57532
*-------------------------------------------------*

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 1:23 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Welcome DBell :-)

Classics: Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice
Also
Foundation - Asimov
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 1:26 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
I got your Dune right here pal!

Fade...beautiful Fade!

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 2:47 PM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:

Classics: Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice

Wow, thought I was the only one here who liked that, it's why I didn't post!
Awesome!

Anything of that sort I am all over it. Little Dorrit on PBS was sooo good! Tess of the D'urbervilles, Great Expectations, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Wuthering Heights, The Old Curiosity Shop... Sometimes just listening to them speak makes me happy

I would also say the book 1984 was one of the ones that really struck me.
Last of the Dogmen was a movie, but it was one of my favorite stories of all time too, and I wish it had been a book. If books and movies became outlawed like in Fahrenheit 451, Jayne Eyre and Last of the Dogmen would be the ones I would commit to memory..

As a kid I liked 20,000 leagues under the sea, Swiss Family Robinson, and a book by Lynn Hall called Tin Can Tucker about a girl in foster care that runs when she's 16 and all she has of her history is a rodeo belt buckle and she eventually gets adopted by a couple of rodeo clowns. Also, the Misty of Chincoteague series and many of the Judy Blume books.

Add Firefly, X-files, The Unit, and Sherlock to that list and you've got about everything I've ever liked. Which leads me to the next thread title

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Wednesday, May 14, 2014 4:57 PM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
Anything of that sort I am all over it. Little Dorrit on PBS was sooo good! Tess of the D'urbervilles, Great Expectations, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Wuthering Heights, The Old Curiosity Shop...

North and South and Bleak House are also very good. I rewatch these (and Pride and Prejudice) almost as often as I rewatch Firefly. Haven't seen a great adaption of Jane Eyre yet though :-(

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Friday, May 16, 2014 5:22 AM

OONJERAH

Harrison Ford, Ridley Scott, Blade Runner 2.

Can they do it justice?

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

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Monday, May 19, 2014 2:22 AM

SHINYGOODGUY

Ulysses - James Joyce
A Separate Reality - Carlos Castaneda
The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda
Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce

SGG

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Monday, May 19, 2014 2:30 AM

KANEMAN

American Gods...
Shadow of the wind...

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Monday, May 19, 2014 3:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY:
Ulysses - James Joyce
A Separate Reality - Carlos Castaneda
The Teachings of Don Juan - Carlos Castaneda
Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce

SGG

Awesome list. I forgot about Carlos Castaneda whom I return to periodically.

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Monday, May 19, 2014 1:13 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Disregard this post. Hyperlinks don't work right here....

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Monday, May 19, 2014 1:50 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Sorry, you'll have to look them up yourself since this website is broken when it comes to hyperlinking wikipedia....

1. 1984 ~ George Orwell
2. Brave New World ~ Aldous Huxley
3 or 4. Jesus on Mars ~ Phillip Jose Farmer
3 or 4. Animal Farm ~ George Orwell
4 or 5. To Your Scattered Bodies Go ~ Phillip Jose Farmer
4 or 5. The Great Explosion ~ Eric Frank Russel
5. 100 Years of Solitude ~ Gabriel García Márquez

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, May 20, 2014 1:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I'm not into the whole school taught curriculum, but I did really like and even relate to Great Expectations.

Even (and possibly espeically) if you don't care for me, you shouldn't discount the last on my list.....

100 Years of Solitude ~ Gabriel García Márquez

It's likely been 10 years since I read that story.

I know, on the surface, that by name it might sound like something "right up 6ix's alley".

I assure you that it's not. It's not Sci-Fi. It's not government conspiracy theory.

It seems to be far too interesting to be "absolute truth" but it's likely a lot of truth mixed in with ancedotes.

Most everyone over 30 in the US that has access to the internet and posts here already grew up with local government controling things if not state or fedral government.

This was a story of a few generations of a village, possibly only in our wildest fantasies today, that managed to live a life of "solitude" from the rest of the world on their own merit.

It's not that they had to fight. If memory serves, at least 50 of those hundred years were spent without anyone even knowing their Name.....

All I can say is the more you might dislike me, the more you might be interested in this one.

I might even have to re-evalute my rankings, considering I've grown up.

1984 and Brave New World no longer have any hold on me.

It was just a knee-jerk reaction to list them on top......

Seriously....

Please.

Somebody here read 100 Years of Solitude and tell others about how awesome it is.

I'm a little less than credible round here these days.... :(

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, January 13, 2024 2:38 PM

Forever War in this thread, if only they read it before Afghanistan

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Saturday, January 13, 2024 5:16 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, been a long time since I had time to read anything. In the scifi category (top down ranking):

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle

Left Hand of Darkness and short stories by Ursula
Le Guin

The first book of the Rissa trilogy, Young Rissa, FM Busby

Stranger in a Strange Land, and Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein

Dune, Frank Herbert

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, January 13, 2024 5:26 PM

BRENDA

Dune

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Thursday, May 23, 2024 8:59 AM

Can you class the Bible as a fictional novel, but it might have some true events or historical place names inside?

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Friday, May 24, 2024 7:03 AM

Not my favorite but Watch Mojo

Top 10 Greatest Novels of All Time

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Friday, May 24, 2024 8:12 AM

ANONYMOUSE

I have several. To say I'm an avid reader is like saying cats love catnip (aside)(mine, rest her soul, went doolally when I got her a catnip mouse. Not for Tigger the typical chilling out, oh no. With her it was business as usual: she ended up running madly around my flat and up and down the stairs for an hour, and the one time I tried to stroke her to calm her down she went for me! I hid that damn toy and never ever got it out again!).(/aside)

Anyway.

Altered Carbon, a dynamite debut butchered by Netflix.

Old Man's War, which if it's ever made for TV as it should be, hopefully it won't be treated the same.

Guards! Guards! - a brilliant take on the SF trope of guards who seem to get slaughtered for no reason.

On Basilisk Station - should definitely be TV! Nimitz and other treecats would be a doddle with CGI. The main problem there is finding an actress who's 6'+ and young-looking - and who can cut through battle steel with just her voice, not even raising it. Hmm. Gal Gadot, digitally de-aged, with camera trickery and/or CGI to accentuate her 5'10"?

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide - sorry, Americans, but although some bits were good and very Douglas, the movie was not what we diehard fans had hoped for. You cannot Americanise British humour. Plus Zaphod should've been done properly with CGI - a two-headed three-armed guy? Again, a doddle! (Loved the POV Gun, though, a great creation from Douglas). The Guide got me through my 'O' Levels with the most sage piece of advice: DON'T PANIC.

One I really really wish they'd adapt for TV is Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Somehow that one struck such a chord I borrowed it from the library for 10 weeks straight.

- damn my post-stroke memory, I forgot Glory Road!

"People tend to confuse the words 'new' and 'improved'."

- Phil Coulson, Level 7 S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent

Windows 11, anyone?

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Friday, June 14, 2024 2:51 PM

Collectors - There are people who buy books for their bindings or Cover or quality Look

Tragic Truth About Beautiful Books

Everything you need to know to read “The Canterbury Tales” - Iseult Gillespie

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Monday, June 17, 2024 7:09 AM

If there is a positive about 'Covid' and Corona lockdowns is that it got people back into reading again

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Monday, June 17, 2024 7:27 AM

Not my pick but some vids that review books

You could say scifi has been around a while with Frankenstein, Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, maybe even to the time of Greeks talking about clockwork machines but more fantasy where the line between myth and fact was blurred, H. G. Wells one of science fiction's most important authors begis the Aline Invasion, before the political questions of Cyberpunk there was 'We' by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, one of the first dystopian novels the true story of the Scientific Revolution enters books as science advances and the Age of Enlightenment, new discovers in math, computers, biology, chemistry and astronomy.
Then For a while it was all Philip K Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, Artur C Clark, John Brunner, Herbert's Dune books, Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Finney, Wilson Tucker, Joe Haldeman, Larry Niven and from behind the Iron Curtain the Russian and Polish ideas and movies, Stanislaw Lem, as people went overseas they got inspired William Gibson's first novel, Neuromancer, helped popularize cyberpunk and the word "cyberspace".

in the 80s and 90s it opened up to Japan cultural exports

and of course you now have the Visual Comicbook medium or Graphic Novel accepted

Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

‘The Three-Body Problem’ by Liu Cixin

'Top 10 Sci-fi Books of All Time'

The Paper Menagerie Review and reading Ken Liu and Ted Chiang

DARK MATTER BY BLAKE CROUCH

However culturally since Akira, Japan video games, SKorean movies there has been a cultural change an explosion of material from the Far East including Chinese would would have been considered closed but now an opening of material coming from China's mainland.

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Monday, June 17, 2024 7:30 AM