Need to Read...What?

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I recently bought the first book of The Dresden Files and enjoyed it so much that I went out and got the rest of the books in short order. I just finished the next-to-last (so far) book and I'm worrying about what I'll read when I'm done. FYI: I've read all the Codex Alera books out so far too. I'm running out of books! I need to find something to read next!

I've discovered a lot of books, movies and series through Milliways, so I'm going to come right out and ask for book recommendations. Any book goes, as long as it's not a romance novel. I am allergic to most romance novels. Really.

So if you're always keen to get someone to read your pup's canon, this is a golden opportunity! Tell me what I should read next! Please!

Comments

[tinylegacies.livejournal.com]

Not my canon (in fact, I don't think it's represented in Bar at all), but I highly recommend the Kelley Armstrong "Women of the Otherworld" series.

[acts_of_gord]

I have a deep and powerful fondness for the works of HP Lovecraft, though I freely acknowledge that a lot of them are crap. (He did too. He really wasn't pleased with having to write "Herbert West, Re-Animator", among others.) The Shadow Out Of Time, which is where the Great Librarian's people come from, is one of his better novels. So is At The Mountains Of Madness. It might be good to read his short stories first, though, since the man does suffer from elephantiasis of the adjective and can be very much an acquired taste.

(Side note: at some point I kind of want one of the Snow Crash pups to wander by Ray when he's working with Jhalak on linguistic comprehension. He's been teaching the little alien to speak and read Sumerian.)

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I've actually read Lovecraft's short stories, including "Herbert West, Re-Animator" (which I actually enjoyed more than his other stuff). In fact, I posted in my journal once about an idea I had for an H.P Lovecraft drinking game after reading his work...but that's another story.

With regards to your thread request, I think YT and Ray actually discussed Ray's knowledge of Sumerian way, way back, shortly after she first came to Milliways. If you want a Snor Crash pup to overhear a language lesson, though, you might want to bug Austin about having Hiro tag in. He's more likely to recognize Sumerian based on hearing a snatch of it.

[aberrantangels]

If I hadn't been frazzled by work yesterday (see icon, more or less), I'd have had Hiro tag in. I may still do it sometime today; I've been hoping for a chance to have it happen since I apped him.

[52-dropoff.livejournal.com]

I think that Kelsier and Marsh and Spook's muns will forgive me if I tell you to read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and Well of Ascension. Both are very good fantasy novels, which is saying something since I tend not to like fantasy novels.

Canonically, I can recommend that track down Batman: Huntress - Cry for Blood, Greg Rucka and Rick Burchett's 200- miniseries that brought the Question back to prominence after years of obscurity. It's also a great crime story and a great character study of the Huntress.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I'm only familiar with the Question from the DCAU Justice League series. Can I get a TPB of the Huntress series somewhere, rather than tracking down individual issues?

[52-dropoff.livejournal.com]

/a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563898012/ref=s9subs_c3_img1-rfc_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0MDTBGM9Q7XP7H2YG87G&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846">Here is Amazon's page for the TPB. DC has also collected the first year of the Question's own series in two books (with a third coming), but I can't say that the tastes of today's reader will be met by a comic from the mid-80s. Personally, I loved that series. And the DCU Question is much less of a conspiracy freak and less dark than his animated self, though it was hinted in the 52 stories that he likes conspiracy theory in the comics too.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Cry for Blood was fucking AWESOME.

[misslucyjane]

Books I have read because of Milliways:
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
The Fool series by Robin Hobb
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
Pretty much everything by Neil Gaiman

...gah, this would be a lot easier if I were anywhere near my bookshelves.

Generally recommended:
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
About a Boy by Nick Hornby
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

Heh. I read Dark Tower already because of Milliways too, I read most of the Wheel of Time series (and became disenchanted with it) long before coming to Milliways, and I've been reading Gaiman since, like, forever. XD

I haven't read the other books you mentioned, though.

[ceitfianna]

I've just discovered Elizabeth Bear through the Bar and anything by Diana Wynne Jones is wonderful.

If you haven't read it, Paul Creswick's Adventures of Robin Hood is my favorite version of Will's canon of all of them out there.

Also I've lately been reading the Star Wars X-Wing books, again because of Milliways and they're like candy, short fun and with lots of explosions.

[minkhollow]

I'm just getting into the Dresden Files myself, on the strength of many good recommendations. (Though I'm saving the bulk of the book for vacation reading. XD)
Otherwise, Pratchett's always a good bet.
And you're probably going to have a hell of a time tracking down a copy of this, but it's well worth the bother: Villains By Necessity, by Eve Forward. Epic fantasy meets Fractured Fairy Tales, and it falls to the bad guys to save the day. (If all goes well, I'll be calling it canon soon.)

OH YES ALSO: Foundation trilogy, Isaac Asimov. Brilliant series of books (complete with a plot twist that keeps you waiting for at least a book and a half).

[muji]

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day is my only book canon.

While interesting, and I love it, I feel as though I love it because I see the movie in my head.

(RENT THE MOVIE. AUGUST 19TH.)

[shecalledmefred.livejournal.com]

Breakfast at Tiffany's!

It's short.

[shecalledmefred.livejournal.com]

Oh and then there are all of those Bond books...

[imthegoodguy.livejournal.com]

And while Lost is not a book canon -- er. (http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Literary_works)

That is to say it ... extensively features a ... extensive list ... of literary references.

[mogget_cat]

The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix is well worth reading. It's quick, adventureful, and has a snarky little cat in it.

A bunch of other stuff happens, but everyone knows that the cat is the main focal point. Right?

Also for quick reads that will stay with you forever, try The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper. Modern day could use more Arthurian legend. Even if modern day means the mid-70s.

For great storytelling in a post-apocalyptic vampire-haunted world, try Robin McKinley's Sunshine. It's entertaining and funny, dramatic and scary... and it makes you hungry from all the descriptions of the desserts created by the main character. Because every vampire slayer needs to be a baker for a family-run coffee shop, making cinnamon rolls as big as your head and killing vampires with a breadknife.

[gorgonfondness]

And we all know I'll have to read Sunshine sooner or later.
*noshes on Lemon Lechery*

[art-and-brian.livejournal.com]

All of Terry Pratchett's stuff.
The Time Travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (OMG SO GOOD)
The Belgariad, shortly followed by The Mallorean, both series' by David Eddings

[gorgonfondness]

My recent book purchase, and thus what I recommend to you, is Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott. It's a satire on Victorian society as told by the geometric figure aptly named A Square (who, if I ever thought I could pull it off, would be a happy, two dimensional patron in the bar).

My favorite part is the story where the isosceles triangle colors his sides so that he looks like he's a higher polygon in order to trick a line to marry him and the unhappy line ends up committing suicide.

If that didn't make you want to read it, nothing will.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I have that book somewhere around the house (or back in Michigan) and I've read it, but it was a long time ago.

[aberrantangels]

I don't know how you are on RPGs you're never going to play, but I want to recommend the Trinity Universe, the canon of md_donighal and slidingjennifer. The dead-tree editions are out of print, but you can find PDFs here (or the d20 editions of the core rulebooks here). Also, if you've never visited SB&TC's canon, you need to, and if I still need to recommend Star Wars at this late date, there's probably no point in my doing so. (-8

[magic_ferret]

Jerry's first book of canon is available free at the Baen free library. You should, well, beware of puns. There's a fair number of them.

Whole selection is here:
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm

And that doesn't count what you can find with the Baen Free CDs. Plenty of reading to go around there.

[wellthrownstone.livejournal.com]

The Belgariad by David Eddings
The Elenium by David Eddings

The Hawk and Fisher books by Simon R. Green
The Nightside books by Simon R. Green
The Deathstalker Series by Simon R. Green

The Riftwar Saga etc. by Raymond E. Feist

Mirror Mirror by Gregory Maguire

The Wizard in Rhyme by Christopher Stasheff

The Watch Tetralogy by Sergei Lukyanenko (I know I spelled that wrong)
...others.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

I second the recommendation of the Watch books by Lukyanenko, although I strongly suspect they read even better in Russian, based on the Russian versions that I've skimmed. Most vampire/werewolf/witch/warlock fantasy leaves me cold, but the Watch books are something supremely wonderful.

Do you read Lukyanenko's LJ?

[wellthrownstone.livejournal.com]

I can't read Russian, but I've had him friended for about a year and I tend to toss his entries into a translator program 4/5 times.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'm blessed with some Russian, and his entries are mostly awesome. Have you ever read Gene Wolfe's work? If you like incredibly awesome worldbuilding, Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun are completely epic - see longer comment to Hannah below.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I think you recommended Christopher Stasheff's books to me before. I see there are a few compilations on Amazon but I have no clue what order they go in. If you can help me out with that I will be glad to get them and start reading!

I got yer recommendations right here.

[kali921.livejournal.com]

I'm just reading the Dresden books for the first time, too!

My recommendations - I'll give a little description of what I'm recommending, because I hate recommendations that don't tell you what kind of book it is you're going to get into:

Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun tetralogy.

Actually, there are five books, not four. It is EPIC, and correctly considered one of the finest literary works of the 20th century. Technically it's science fiction, but it takes place on an Earth so far in the future that all knowledge or memory of our time has long disappeared, so there aren't any cute and pat references to human history that we'd be familiar with. The reader is thrust into a truly and profoundly alien landscape, and it's a fantastic, epic story following the journey of the single most unforgettable hero/protagonist that I've ever encountered in literature, that being Severian, Journeyman of the Order of Seekers for Truth and Penitence. It's got everything you could want and more, and it's a brilliant vision of the far, far future of humanity, when we've burned out empires in the stars and Earth has become a backwater.

Seriously. Read it. It's effin' brilliant. Wolfe went on to then write Book of the Long Sun, which is baroque and epic and takes place in the same universe, but thousands of years before, and that all takes place in the whorls, the massive worldships that humanity sent out to space to colonize other planets with. (The shipes are so big that they have their own atmosphere, weather, and suns.) Again, an absolutely appealing and wonderful hero/protagonist in the form of Patera Silk and his faithful android servant Maytera Marble. Absolutely exquisite writing all around.

Next up, have you read Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion cycles? Also epic and incredibly well written sci fi of the far, far future, although this is high space opera coupled with a fantastically vivid cast of characters, and shows a universe where humanity has sprawled outwards to hundreds and hundreds of worlds. (Brawne Lamia is one of my favorite female characters in sci fi EVER.)

Simmons went on to write what I consider his magnum opus, that being the Ilium and Olympos books, which is another vision of humanity's future entirely, and features sentient robots reading Proust, Greek gods and goddesses battling android shock troops, and lots and lots of Mars.

You can't go wrong with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a time travel comedy of manners featuring two people displaced in Victorian England, and it's hilarious. The fact that a dog and a cat - Cyril and Princess Arjumand - are two of the main characters should tell you how awesome this book is. Also, there's this wonderful crackling chemistry between the hero and heroine. It reminds me of the Thin Man films. So. Good.

Re: I got yer recommendations right here.

[miss-yt.livejournal.com]

I've read To Say Nothing of the Dog and The Doomsday Book. I actually met Connie Willis at a Philcon convention after I read To Say Nothing of the Dog and got to tell her how awesome I thought her book was. ("It's like Jane Austen does time travel!" was pretty much what I said, much to her amusement.)

[eirenikos]

The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Because, you know, Merlin's innit, and while it's ten books, they aren't that long, plus each one is packed full of WTFery by one of science fiction's masters.

A Night In the Lonesome October also by Zelazny; my favorite non-Amber novel by him.

George RR Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series.

The Remo Williams Destroyer books by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. Serious crack, and I'm tempted to app Remo someday.