Rate The Dude's Fiction Bookshelf (+diablo and others too!)

[El Diablo]

quids,

Post whatever bookshelf(ves) you like!

[ZeTurd]

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Some low-brow but funny fantsy: Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

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Actually, I would consider Terry Pratchett to be at least mid-brow when judged in a sci-fi/fantasy context. There's a lot of good social commentary and references in his Discworld novels that'll be interesting for your average literate guy.

OP: I stopped reading at Terry Brooks! The only Terry that belongs in a good sci-fi/fantasy book shelf is Terry Pratchett. Brooks/Goodkind are auto-DQ..

[Zeno]

I enjoyed moneyball. I also read The Professor and the Madman, a book lent to me by a co-worker, and I enjoyed that also, a unique and interesting story. IIRC, the same author wrote a book titled, River at the Center of the World, about his journey up the Yangtze in the mid-1990's. Also a good read and I recommend it.

-Zeno

[Zeno]

Books and stuff about Zeno's abode. No too clear and too dark but that is a good metaphor for me so I'll let it stand as is.

[image]

[KJS]

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I swooned at Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon is good...so, so, so unfairly good. In fact, he may be god.

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Reading this right now and very much enjoying it.

KJS

[Starkes]

I don't have a pic handy but here are a few books that I cherish most on my shelf:

Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series
Roger Zelazny's Amber books (1-5 being my all time favorites)
Robert E. Howard's Conan books
Michael Moorecock's Eternal Champion series (I've only read vol 1. and 2. of the Borealis editions but I've enjoyed them both so far)

[ilya]

It's been a while since I read them, but I really enjoyed The Lost Sword books by Fred Saberhagen back when I read a lot of fantasy. If you like Tolkien and Terry Brooks these may be up your alley. Very epic and take a lot from Nordic mythology.

For sci-fi, check out the excellent SF Masterworks series from Gollancz, an imprint of Orion. The editions are hard to find in US bookstores but you can find a list here and then go crazy on Amazon or wherever. Some I've really liked are Cities in Flight, I Am Legend, and The City and the Stars. But there seems to be something for almost any sci-fi sub-taste.

Don't have a lot of recs for thrillers except maybe see if you like Elmore Leonard or Raymond Chandler or the insanely prolific spy novel author Georges Simenon. If it turns out you like Simenon you'll have over 300 books to enjoy. If you like creepy [censored] check out Maupassant, he's like the form boy's Stephen King. Also Gogol's horrifying short stories in Nights on a Farm Near Dikanka.

Hope you try & enjoy some of these.

Sorry if ppl have mentioned some/all of these already; I couldn't finish the thread cos of the retarded Brothers Karamazov flame war

[Aloysius]

This is a cool thread idea.

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I don't really know how to take this. Is it an April Fool's joke? I'm hardly a lit snob, but you seem to be missing...well...EVERYTHING. I mean, no Dostoevsky, Nabakov, Proust, Shakespeare, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Warren, Updike, just to name a few?

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I kind of stopped reading fiction after undergrad (English lit was one of my majors, kind of just got burned out), so my deepest familiarity fiction-wise is what I guess you'd consider "classics", or say stuff written before 1950.

I am also by no means a literary snob (I really am pretty apathetic about literature, I have a pretty uh "deconstrucion-ist" view on fiction in general ), but there is a noticeable dearth of "classics" in these bookshelves except for Econo.

I would just highly recommend reading Jane Austen she's a peerless writer (if you read one go "Persuasion").

The Diablo bookshelf pictured kind of looks like a greatest hits NY Time Bestseller list from the past 10 years. Nice mix of genres. Haven't thought about Coupland in years (whatever happened to that guy? I think I read some of his stuff in The New Republic couple years ago).

-Al

[ilya]

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All,

Here are some of my books. Comment away. Note that many of my books are "loaned" out, so this does not include a number of my favorites.



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You never told us you are a contributing editor at The New Yorker!

[AJackson]

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I saw the one "Odd Thomas" book. Thoughts? I fell away from Koontz as he got too supernatural for my tastes after Intensity, but the Odd Thomas series looks promising.


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Odd Thomas is his best book by far and is one of my favorites. The second and third installment are good, but I didn't enjoy them nearly as much as the original.