Thursday Book Club

[pagan8th 14039xp 2]

It just so happens to be a Thursday when this idea occured to me… but I think it might be good idea to share a list of books and authors that inspired us all over the years.

So I’ll start things off with:

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (and the Hobbit that led me to LotR).

Magician by Raymond E. Feist

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (a series I have not finished yet)

Discworld novels (especially the ones with the City Watch) by Terry Prachett

The Belgariad By David Eddings

Dragons of Autumn Twilight (and the two sequels) by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Dreampark series by Larry Niven & Steven Barnes

Hopefully others will add to the list.

[grantinvanman 8266xp 1]

The first three books of GW’s Horus Heresy series – they are quite good; the fourth one is as well, but it’s near impossible to find for some reason.

[jeffersonpowers 610xp 1]

I’ll echo The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Lord of the Rings, both incredibly formative books for me. Also:

Dune by Frank Herbert. I’ve never made it past the third book, but I re-read the original novel regularly.

Just about anything by Robert E. Howard. He’s most famous for Conan, and those stories are arguably his best work, but the Kull and Solomon Kane stories are great too, and he wrote a series of comedy/action boxing stories that are terrific.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. There’s a reason these two graphic novels get talked about so much.

The original Star Wars: Heir to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Cast your mind back to a time when Star Wars consisted entirely of 3 movies, an ill-conceived TV special, one original novel, and a run of comic books which no one expected to be consistent with anything else. Zahn’s trilogy was a much more well thought out and exciting sequel to the original films than anything that came later.

Imaro by Charles R. Saunders.

The Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi.

Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton.

And if you can chase it down, Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe by George Takei and Robert Asprin is a surprisingly fun read.

[limburger 22377xp 0]

I think I’ve got plenty that haven’t been mentioned yet :

• JRR Tolkien – The Hobbite / Lord of the Rings
• Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers’ Guide trilogy in 5 books … (yeah, the first two are the best.)
• Stephen King – The Dark Half / It / Tommyknockers / The Shining / Pet Semetary / Eyes of the Dragon / Misery / Carrie / Christine / The Dead Zone
• Jack Vance – Planet of Adventure / Demon Princes / Emphyrio
• Isaac Asimov – Bicentennial Man / Second Foundation / The Caves of Steel / his Robot-stories
• Robert E. Howard – Conan The Barbarian
• Stephen R. Donaldson – The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant:Lord Foul’s Bane (not sure if that was the one)
• Larry Niven – Ringworld

Various collections of Sci Fi stories and probably too many books I can’t even remember.
These days I’ve started listening to audio-books :

• Rob Grant – Red Dwarf : Infinity welcomes careful drivers / Red Dwarf: Better Than Life
• Dennis E. Taylor : The Bobiverse-series
• Craig Robertson : The Forever-series (which are several sets of books at this time)
• Yahtzee Croshaw : Will destroy the galaxy for Cash / Will Save the Galaxy for Food
• Rick Partlow: Earth at War (books 1-3)

[pagan8th 14039xp 1]

Good call on the Zahn trilogy. Excellent Star Wars.

I can’t deal with GW fiction because they have so many factions and characters with names that can’t be pronouced in what I assume is a feeble attempt at copyright protection. If I get to name that I can’t say out loud then I puts me off the book.

[limburger 22377xp 0]

@pagan8th yeah … heck, the background for 40k/AoS itself is sooo unapproachable. It’s like someone used the letters from scrabble to create names and places.

It’s bad enough that I need to read them in a foreign language, but dealing with those things really puts me off. It’s simply bad writing at that point IMHO.

It’s why one can appreciate the research that Tolkien did for his world.

Remember when ‘the horus heresy’ was merely a single sentence stuck somewhere in the rules … those were the days.

[grantinvanman 8266xp 0]

I’ll add the

– Fritz Leiber Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser series

– Michael Moorcock’s Elric series

[limburger 22377xp 0]

see … other people posting names makes me remember.

Definitely remember reading some of Fritz Leiber’s stories.

[sundancer 44283xp 1]

I’ll throw these in:

• Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• George Orwell – 1984
• Bernard Cornwell – The Arthur Books (The Warlord Chronicles)

[TinyHeadbones 117xp 0]

The ‘Culture’ novels by Iain M Banks are a favourite, and the fact that I can’t think of one to recommend signals to me that I should do a re-read.

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