There are already several book threads but...

My favourite author at this point in time is Hemingway. Personally, I think he's a bit hard to get into, since most of his novels don't really have strong driving narratives like a lot of people look for in novels. That combined with his understated and strictly observational style can make his novels seem really dry and boring, but I think it's really worth it to force yourself to keep on reading until you move past that and you start to appreciate his unique style and how true his characters are. My favourite novel of his is For Whom The Bells Toll. It's definitely the best war novel I've read up to this point.

I used to worship Kafka when I was younger. The way he describes these really extreme situations in a cold, exact style always gives me a really uncomfortable feeling I never get from any other writers. My favourite story of his is In The Penal Colony

darn... I really didn't mean to start another. I'll check them out as well as your recommendations.

:D

only read a few Hemingway things, was really impressed by the economy of his words. I know he's sort of known for it. Still nice to see it "in action"

IMO Hemingway has the most powerful prose in the whole english language, especially in dialogue.

also inb4 dird posts to tell everyone their taste sucks and they should read more harry potter

Harry Potter is tight though. Wizards n shit

I dont really read much but my favourite books are:

- Pitch Black (novelisation of the movie)
- The Chronicles of Riddick (novelisation of the movie)
- The Iliad
- Revelation Space

did you ever buy seeds of earth in the end

I have it in a box somewhere (just moved house). Planning to read it when I finish Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

The overview makes it seem convoluted but it's continuous sales says otherwise. Gotta pick this one up.

Beware - it is a very strange and weird book. And several hundred pages. Definitely not light literature.

edit: I read it 3 or 4 times now and I still don't really understand whats going on - thats why I like it :D

Everything by Chuck Palahniuk
Haters gonna hate

The Expanse - James S.A. Corey

sick sci-fi shit, actually decent aliens storyline

maybe best SciFi of the last dacade

I'm reading Abaddon's Gate now. It's just brilliant!

holden already dead? ;p

I hope that wasn't a spoiler. He's still alive so far :d

nah just kidding :)

This sounds good, will try to get my hands on if I get the time. Looks like its becoming a tv-show too

yeah, I'm so excited to watch it. I just hope it will stand up to the books.

It was reported as the biggest series syfy have ever made. Can't wait...

Le petit prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery

http://www.esreality.com/post/1644996/books-y...e-you-die/
http://www.esreality.com/post/2501704/book-thread-time-again/
http://www.esreality.com/post/2695358/books-thread-excession/

http://www.esreality.com/post/2429911/audiobooks-books/
http://www.esreality.com/post/1965688/recommend-me-a-book-2/
http://www.esreality.com/post/1786159/recommend-me-a-book-please/
http://www.esreality.com/post/1648158/popular-science-books/
http://www.esreality.com/post/1602516/book-recommendations/
http://www.esreality.com/post/1068850/best-sc...ent-years/
http://www.esreality.com/post/962335/books-you-would-recommend/
http://www.esreality.com/post/705458/i-need-books/

thanks xou... I feel really bad now...

gee thanks for that im dying to know what users that no longer post of these forums read

the threads serve a purpose, what's your point?

its more a dig at xou for being anal

oh in that case carry on

Do you have a GoodReads.com account? That website is excellent for finding good book recommendations.

i'll def check it out. Thanks :D

Frank Herbert.

greatest chess games by garry kasparov by nunn

(KASPAROV GREATEST EVER, karpov, anand those guys hush!)

Terence McKenna

The Witcher cyka blyat.
Translation can suck dick though. Same goes for the author.

Herman Brusselmans- M'n Hoofd Loopt Om

Robin Cook
H.P. Lovecraft
Vladimir Nabokov
Stephen King
Isaac Asimov
Frank Herbert
R.A. Salvatore
Raymond E. Feist
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tom Clancy

Still on book four of dark tower series. King is nuts.

You want to read "The Stand. The Complete & Uncut Edition" from him.

nYmPhets likes Vladimir Nobokov, what a surprise :)

lol nigga, readin is for bitches. Like 1 movie is 2 hours but 1 book takes like fucking MONTHS son, who got time for that shit?

lol...

1 book takes me 3 days...

edit: My job leaves me way too much time on my hands...

When I had sit_for_7/8_hours_and_read job reading was the shit :)

I have about 100 pages / hour average reading speed. : D

:0

Learned to read when I was 4 years old so had time to practice. :>
Still remembering my very first book that I chose at a bookstore in 1989. It was a little stand in an open area in the capital - the memories about the place are still clear up until this very day.

The title was (is) J. Beneš–Z. Burian: Az osido allatai (sorry, ESR cannot display some of the letters properly, like long "ö" and such). Original title is "Tiere der Urzeit".
A very sweet scientific book about paleontology, with Zdenek Burian's astounding paintings. I learned proper reading (and artistic sense : D) basically from this.

I really recommend getting it, it's dirt cheap at second hand bookshops (at least here, like 2 EUR and such - which is ridiculous, considering what value this piece of fine literature holds). There should be an english translation as well. It's not for kids if you are concerned about that. In regards of you nick, you might like it. : D

http://img.zvab.com/member/29358c/58609618.jpg

Hungarian cover:

http://p2.vatera.hu/photos/1f/10/dca7_1_big.jpg

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If I read hardcore, a 4-500 pages long book basically lasts for an afternoon, hehe. If I'm being casual about it, still no more than like 2 days. When I start reading something, I like to make good progress with it.

Some kids learn to wipe their toosh properly at four while others learn musical masterpieces and read adult literature. I'm awefully impressed when I hear about the latter.

I'll check into that. Might even consider moving to Japan.

I was talking coherent language before I learned to walk - the reading stuff was predestined. : D


If you have some real opportunity (for me) to move to Japan and work there legally (basically anything), please contact me. I won't be ungrateful. Literally would pay a decent sum after I set my anchor there successfully (thought about something like 2000 EUR) - and you can be sure about this. I don't forget people who helps me.

Yeah the chances of moving there are slim. I'd have better chances with winning the lottery. A guy can dream.

I'd have to be superb guitar player like Paul Gilbert or something. Well... I got a long ways to go.

Once again, we are so similar it's a bit weird.

And I use Firefox too.

>:o

(~°____°)~

(◕‿◕✿)

LOL. I'm not even gonna bother editing this.

Are you interested in specific genres? You mention Terry Brooks, do you mostly want fantasy & sci-fi suggestions?

If so, I don't particularly enjoy fantasy, and I suppose there's no point in recommending sci-fi books that you'll find mentioned everywhere (by Philip K. Dick, Asimov, Clarke, Gibson, etc.), but right now I'm very much enjoying reading Connie Willis.

Her Doomsday book was great, and I'm half-way through To say nothing of the dog, which is just as well-written. It's an incredibly fun read, too. I've already purchased Blackout and All clear and plan on reading them next.

I'm into damn near anything. Just not anything from the self help category. I'd also be interested poker books geared around poker stories. I just like reading.

Kurt Vonnegut, his most well known book is Slaughterhouse Five. Shit's beautifully written.

Russian literature is the bomb. Dostyevsky is like the C O O L L E R of Russian literature. Chekhov is great because he's mostly known for his plays and short stories, so you can sit down and read something fairly quickly, while still getting all the experience. Tolstoy is like Rapha. He's mostly known for his epics (Anna Karenina and War and Peace), but if you want to read something of his, check out some of his later works, like The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy went through some changes later in life regarding his beliefs so he switched his style to be a lot more literal, in an attempt to avoid the "superficial". Gogol was cool too, especially for the early elements of surrealism in his work (like The Nose or Viy) - he was known as a realist, which is in itself funny in a way like some events were in Gogol's stories - given that a realist would write about men waking up to find that their nose has escaped from their face and gained sentience.

+++ for Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment is easily one of my favorite books, and I recently read The Idiot which is amazing.

He is such a great writer. Tolstoy is too hard to keep up with, there's always 34398743897483974938 characters, all of which, are always addressed using their full names.

P.S. -- When it comes to Russian Lit in English, keep an eye out for translations done by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They are the best, and the closest you will find to actual Russian texts.

Thanks for that info I was curious about English translation. I'm too lazy to learn Russian, very challenging for muricans like myself.

Yeah, I once bought a copy of Master and Margarita that turned out to be a terrible translation, so far from the original text.

The translators I mentioned above do a bunch of translations for popular Russian books, so definitely keep an eye out for them.

Here's a list of translations they have done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear_a...olokhonsky

Whatever you do, be sure to read Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Last pageturner was Artie Lange's crash and burn. His life is basically comic version of Naked Lunch.

Terry Brooks

And again, I read "Terry Gobotz" at first.


Stop fucking up the multiverse.

Baited me to plus him. I gave it anyway.

I've been reading a bit of Yukio Mishima recently, currently going through The Temple of The Golden Pavillion and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment, The Idiot
J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby, The Beautiful and the Damned
George Orwell - 1984, Animal Farm
John Kennedy O' Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Anthony Burgess - Clockwork Orange
Elie Wiesel - Night
Mikhail Bulgakov - Master and Margarita

Favorite Child hood books:

Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
Lois Lowry - The Giver

20th century english language literature is the best :)

In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
War and Peace - Lev Tolstoi
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Der Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
Crime and Punishment - Fiodor Dostoyevski
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Shakespeare tragedies

samuell beckett and bukowsky if you really want to read some fucked up shit

Bukowski is awesome. I don't recognize Samuel Beckett. I'll research.

the molloy trilogy is the biggest mindfuck. a guy lies in bed and decays as he writes the book you are reading. he completely loses any coherent thought towards the end. and you my nigga will continue to read because you want to know how it ends even though the title of the last part is "malone dies" after 3 books and some 500 pages you will close the cover and realise that nearly nothing happend there is no plot and hardly any story. ultimately you will stare in the mirror and lose yourself in selfreflection concluded by the only words to describe the eternal depths of this work: what the fuck did i just read?

YES mouse* - finishing my dissertation on Beckett, especially the trilogy, at the moment

<3 Beckett

excellent choice. I would be interested in taking a look at your paper if you want to share, strictly out of curiosity of course.

Aaah should probably keep it on the down-low, at least until after it's been submitted and graded, but it covers some of the things you allude to, ie the way Beckett essentially trolls/abuses his readers, and why this experience may be of ethical benefit

Having conversations with yourself on internet forums isn't healthy mate.

Stink: Fuck you.

samuel beckett yes yes!

waiting for godot .. deep shit man

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
From Here to Eternity - James Jones
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Martin Eden - Jack London

I love two Polish writers - Lem (a man who was thought by Phillip Dick to be a group of people, becuase one man couldn't know so much) and Gombrowicz, but since their writing styles are very specifiv in their own way, I believe much must be lost in translation. Nevertheless, worth a shot. Try Solaris by Lem or Ferdydurke by Gombrowicz, their most popular stuff.

It turns out people on ESR are actually decent people as soon as the topic isn't Quake.

You cant cheat, get banned or get elo from books

yet

This thread and the anime thread really proves this point tbh

It's just that opinions don't clash on books because there's so damned many. If there were 1 million versions of quake out there, I'd bet ESR would be a more civil forum.

mein kampf by ol' hitler

My middle school (8th grade - age 13) "graduation" project was a research project about the Holocaust. My group was assigned Adolf Hitler.

I'll never forget my mom's facial expression when we went to the bookstore to buy "Mein Kampf".

For what it's worth, I feel it's important to study the words out of the horses mouth, and this book is a great way to view the state of mind of Adolf Hitler.

dang ur actually making me wanna read it :l

This is a good perspective. Reading books from the horse's mouth is exactly the reason why I avoid the conspiracy theory section in the book store. Pick up books written by the pricks who are raking in on this world if you desire truth. They love to brag.

Btw Hitler was funded by powerful leaders all across the western world. The railroads leading to Auschwitz might as well have been decorated with the United states flag.

Makes me want to puke.

The Evolution Man, Once Upon an Ice Age, What We Did to Father - Roy Lewis

I like he lady that wrote boxcarchildren. And the person who wrote summer of the monkeys

For a good laugh: Balys Sruoga - Forest of the Gods

fuck that book dude. I'm never ever reading the full version, way too depressing.

I didn't find it as drepressing as other extermination camp novels, for example Spark of Life by Remarque.

Reading some Jorge Luis Borges rn, really surprised that no one here has mentioned him.

Jorge Luis Borges is very good.
Ficciones is really amazing book!

a bit "old school" fantasy, but I've always enjoyed reading anything by robin hobb.