Recommend a book

Topic was inspired by Lexx and Sindy's posts in the "Doesn't deserve it's own topic thread" where Lexx is looking for some good sci-fi.

I agree with Sindy on the L. Ron Hubbard books (pre that scientology crap). Battlefield: Earth is ok, but I liked the Mission: Earth series - all ten books.

John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" is a really good one I've read recently - http://www.scalzi.com/books/2005/11/old_mans_war.html - I keep looking for the sequel at the library but they don't have it yet.

Elizabeth Moon's "Serrano Legacy" series is also good. I haven't read all of them but actually picked up the series in the middle (where a new lead character starts coincidentally). I've read Once a Hero, Rules of Engagement, and Change of Command. Looking for Against the Odds at the library still and will read the first books at some point as well. This series is easy to pick up at the Once A Hero spot if you can't find the earlier books.
http://www.elizabethmoon.com/biblio-sf.htm

David Weber and John Ringo's "March Upcountry" series of books is great. Excellent military Sci-fi.
March Upcountry
March to the Sea
March to the Stars
We Few

You can actually download some of those books from the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/

I've been reading the "Sharpe" novels by Bernard Cornwell of late. There are 21 or 22 of these novels and I have read 15 or 16 of them in the past couple of months. They take place just before and during the Napoleonic Wars and follow the exploits of a truly bad-ass English Soldier in India and Europe. If you are a fan of historical fiction I highly recommend these books. They are generally set around actual battles or other events but the hero is inserted into the story. There is a BBC series of shows made around some of these books (starring the guy that played Boromir in the LOTR). I haven't seen the shows, but intend to at some point.

http://www.sharpebooks.com/index2.cfm?page=1&seriesid=1

Anyone else have good book recommendations?

Sarge wrote:

Elizabeth Moon's "Serrano Legacy" series is also good. I haven't read all of them but actually picked up the series in the middle (where a new lead character starts coincidentally). I've read Once a Hero, Rules of Engagement, and Change of Command. Looking for Against the Odds at the library still and will read the first books at some point as well. This series is easy to pick up at the Once A Hero spot if you can't find the earlier books.
http://www.elizabethmoon.com/biblio-sf.htm

David Weber and John Ringo's "March Upcountry" series of books is great. Excellent military Sci-fi.
March Upcountry
March to the Sea
March to the Stars
We Few

You can actually download some of those books from the Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/


Anyone else have good book recommendations?

Moon's earlier series were great before she got into the science aspect, series centered aound Paksenarrion. It is rather interesting, starts off as just some backwoods merc novel with swords and horses, you know those things that dominated pre-firearms.
THE DEED OF PAKSENARRION:
Sheepfarmer's Daughter. Baen Books. June, 1988. ISBN 0-671-65416-0
Divided Allegiance. Baen Books. October, 1988. ISBN 0-671-69786-2
Oath of Gold. Baen Books. January 1989. ISBN 0-671-69798-6
It was a good read, the first was/is a favorite of the series.

After that Moon started into the sci-fi but never really got into that aspect of her work.

B:E was a good novel, soo much better than the movie.

Isaac Asimov did a good job with his Foundation Series. Most of his other work was not something I either saw or was willing to get into. They were all books that were slow started but once you got a few dozen pages everything started to match, rather interesting.

Heinlein.. well need I say more? I don't know if I can think of a single booksof his that I didn't like, and the way he matched them all together in a single universe through sly comments and references.. all of them have been good reads..

Geaorg R.R. Martin with his A Song of Ice and Fire series is a good one to read, though I started his without the knowledge that he had not finished his series, just came out with a book last year, don't remember if I read it but the others were good. Sword-Fi again rather than Sci-Fi.

Terry Goodkind's first few books prolly the first 3 or 4 were good, Faith of the Falen is were he started drop off bad for me, but then again it was a case of not knowing he wasn't finished with the series when I started so it lost a bit as time dragged. He got too deep into philosophy and forgot to finish the story in the book, normally each book was a story in and of itself solved at the end of the book but fitting into the overall scheme.. He failed to finish anything in Chainfire I believe.

Currently I am finishing up Robin Hobb's TawnyMan Liveship and Farseer trilogies that my wife found me.. very good. and finished, a bit piratical for those pirate lovers in some cases.. the Liveship trilogy is the piratical one.

There are a few other books that I had started and gotten itno only to find that the author had not finished her/his series.. annoying to say the least.

I have not had much time to read lately, but I have been listening to books on audio. Two I have really enjoyed include Eragon and Eldest, books 1 and 2 of a trilogy. Eragon may sound familiar as it has been made into a movie. If you like Tolkien, these books are worth the read or even listen.

If you are looking for a good story that is easy to read, I recommend a book called InkHeart. It is considered a childrens book, but I found it a great story that I was really drawn into. This is also being made into a movie. I have a few other books from the same author, but haven't had the time to read them.

If you are looking for some great SciFi stories and don't have a lot of time to read, look for a DAW book series called "Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories". They are paperback books with Yellow covers. Each book is a collection of some of the best SciFi stories from the early pulp magazines grouped by the year they were published. I believe it includes the 40's, 50's and 60's. There are at least 23 seperate editions.

As crazy as it sounds, I have read some of my best short stories in these books and when I see a new used bookstore, I always see if they have any. Keep in mind, most of these are not written by Asimov, but he has a knack for finding the best of the best.

http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/sf_fan...story_list.html

The Mission Earth series was a great set.

And as far a Asimov goes, that man was truly twisted. And I think I read somewere that he was truly insane, but the man could write. His stories have always been some of my favorites. Of course along with Poe. I haven't has much time to read lately either, but I can listen to audio books while I work. I just haven't been to the library either...

Battlefield Earth and LOTR were both so much better books than movies. There's just soooooo much that goes on in those books its impossible to make a movie that even encompasses half of the story.

Atomm wrote:
I have not had much time to read lately, but I have been listening to books on audio. Two I have really enjoyed include Eragon and Eldest, books 1 and 2 of a trilogy. Eragon may sound familiar as it has been made into a movie. If you like Tolkien, these books are worth the read or even listen.

Eragon had a good story line, I still have to reread that one not that the Eldest has come out. Was good the first time through though a bit short for my taste.

That book came along the time when I mired myself into about 5 series that were not finished.. I was not happy. I have been making it a habit to only get into series that are finished now.

Now then, a very good and quite sarcastic yet entirely funny and lividly humorous book is a little beasty called Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch or just Good Omens for short. Quite an enjoyable read and a quick read at that, picks you up and carries you throughout the book.. not sci-fi more like funny-fi without anything too quirky going on.

I envy you guys. I know Lexx and DocJon read a lot. I used to but with work etc... I never seem to take the time for casual reading. I am always reading server books or computer related stuff.... Kills my reading pleasure anymore. <SIGH>

I admit it, I read a lot of Sci-Fi mainly, though not nearly as much as Lexx. When I was a teen ager I collected and read a lot of the Star Trek books, over 70 of them. Some were not bad, they were easy reading. Okay you can stop laughing now..... 🙂

I sort of stopped doing anything fun somewhere along the way.... I just stopped collecting them.

I love Science fact books as well. One of my favorite authors is Asimov. I like his physics books.
I also love Bradbury. His short stories are GREAT! I love various Sci-Fi authors as well as normal fiction. I read all the Sherlock Holmes Books and am a hug fan of that genera.

I did read all the Harry Potter Books and I am still unsure why 😉
I am kidding, they were okay with some good characters etc.. but I honestly do not get why they got THAT popular. Hell she keeps killing off characters and the books are so bleak... 😉

I got really into E-books as well and have TONS of them. I keep my Palm T3 with me at all times loaded with all kinds of cool stuff including books. I read when I can. I started the Da Vinci Code E-book but never got back to it. I had 4 books started in the last year that I did not continue.. Weird....

I never see a movie without reading the book first. When LOTR came out, I reread the books. Favorite series of all time has to be Dune. I *bought* the box set and the last two by herberts son. Fantastic writing with plausible futures. I've read the entire set twice. By product of speed reading while sleepy 🙂

CSLewis....everything. Loved his cheesy nature and bad science. Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars was captivating with the space elevators and real to life science.

SciFi turnoffs for me were StarTrek and Babylon5. I'm very visual when I read, and reading them just fills me with visions of soap operas 😉 Used to like Trek, but the second series was too unrealistic. One by Shatner with fluff skipped over, might have been long enough to fill a short story.

Ebooks? No can do. Cannot see that 2x screen. I need to take a book to bed and read it sideways, drop it on the floor when exhausted, and dream the story in advance. Curse of an insomniac. 😉

Paladin wrote:

I did read all the Harry Potter Books and I am still unsure why 😉

I love the Harry Potter books.. They are not childish as they have been marketed to be. The stories are fantastic and, in some places I would think, quite scary for children. I have always been more of a Fantasy and Horror story fan then Sci-fi. My favorite of the HP books are the 4th and 6th. I really liked those.

I used to read alot of the DragonLance books, they were always pretty good.

I really need to go to the bookstore and get a good story... 🙂

And how did I forget Dune... The Fremen suits always were a strange concept to me.... EWWWWW! Excellent story though.

I enjoyed the Harry Potter books as well. If you have a chance to hear the audio books they are great as well. The same guy has done the reading for all of them and he has a different voice for each of the characters which makes it really much more entertaining.

sindy wrote:
I used to read alot of the DragonLance books, they were always pretty good.

You beat me to it, I was going to say something about them.. The original few trilogies were my favorites, or the Heroes sets.

Another good author is R.A. Salvatore, he did some good action with little fluff, more Fantasy-fi than anything though.

As for keeping the books unbroken, thats me right there. Sometimes my wife wonders if i read all of my books because of the unbroken spines, it annoys me when they are broken even the big 650-800 pagers with the wafer pages which are sometimes inevitable to get a wrinkle in the spine I enjoy reading the book almost as much as I enjoy looking at it pristine and able to be enjoyed again. Though normally all I have to do is pick it up and look at it to remember most of the story.

A good book from a while ago that was an interesting read was 'Through the Ice' to be had now for an amazing penny.. hah. That one was a favorite when I was a kid worthy of being thrown around and broken in..

Piers Anthony has almost always produced a realatively short and easy to read story that kept you going.. his Xanth series is a quick read for anyone looking for a funny fantasy mix.

A year or so ago I read a bunch of stuff by L.E. Modesitt. Flash, The Octagonal Raven, and Archform: Beauty take place in a future not too far removed from now where things are different but they are the same. Enough so that you could see how things may have evolved from now to then.

The Ethos Effect, the Parafaith War and Adiamante take place further in the future. All of these books deal with issues of faith, religion vs. technology and the effects of immortality or near immortality. Very cool, thoughtful reads.


Another series that I enjoyed was Stephen R. Donaldsons "Gap" series. Pirates and battles and interstellar conspiracies make this a fun set.

Sarge wrote:
Another series that I enjoyed was Stephen R. Donaldsons "Gap" series. Pirates and battles and interstellar conspiracies make this a fun set.

I read his Covenant series, never really got into them, wll written just at the time was not too interested. I was reading some tough to get into reads at the time I believe I was trying to read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy

Kinda turned me off of his writing thouh.. I may pick them up again sometime, I have them in a corner rucked away somewhere.

Silent Cold wrote:
I read his Covenant series, never really got into them, wll written just at the time was not too interested. I was reading some tough to get into reads at the time I believe I was trying to read C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy

Kinda turned me off of his writing thouh.. I may pick them up again sometime, I have them in a corner rucked away somewhere.

I think I started to read the covenant series as well and never got into it. The Gap series sucked me in immediately.

I've also been a big Stephen King fan, but like Paladin I stopped having time to read them and just started collecting them. I have a few cool things from him. Not really a book, but the Creepshow Graphic Novel is kind of cool. I also have the world first printing of the Dark Half from the UK. It came out a month before the US and it had a different cover. It's still in sealed plastic and has never even been opened.

lexx wrote:
I never see a movie without reading the book first. When LOTR came out, I reread the books. Favorite series of all time has to be Dune. I *bought* the box set and the last two by herberts son. Fantastic writing with plausible futures. I've read the entire set twice. By product of speed reading while sleepy 🙂

Oh man. This is one of those topics that people are firmly set on. This will start some conversation.

I actually am the opposite. I like seeing a movie first. The reason is a movie is visual, the being scared or surprised factor is ruined if you read the book and know what is coming. You know what happens to the characters. It ruins a movie.
Also the visuals of some movies is just way better than a book can ever do. A picture is worth 1000 words etc...

I read the Harry Potter Books first except the first two. When I saw the movie, it was not as good as it would have been had I not read the books. The first two movies were better because I did not know what was coming. Not only that there was soooooo much missing in the movie that I would not have noticed otherwise 😉

Watch the movie, enjoy it as is then read the book to fill in the gaps.

lexx wrote:
SciFi turnoffs for me were StarTrek and Babylon5. I'm very visual when I read, and reading them just fills me with visions of soap operas 😉 Used to like Trek, but the second series was too unrealistic. One by Shatner with fluff skipped over, might have been long enough to fill a short story.

You never were a Babylon5 fan anyway. Well I have read a half dozen Babylon 5 books and they are not bad. There are only a few printed anyway. Sadly it kind of died as a literary subject.
Second series of Trek? You mean the STTNG (Next Generation), that was a really good series. I actually loved all of them. Again you are just not a fan so are an idiot 😉

lexx wrote:
Ebooks? No can do. Cannot see that 2x screen. I need to take a book to bed and read it sideways, drop it on the floor when exhausted, and dream the story in advance. Curse of an insomniac. 😉

I understand that. However I have mine tweaked with fonts etc.. so they are very similar to reading a paperback. I love it because I always have many many books with me no matter where I go. You cannot drag paperback around like that. Maybe one 😉
I read all the Potter Books on my PDA even though I also bought the books, just more convenient. They are not supposed to be available in E-book form but I know guys that know guys. 😉

My PDA is chick full of cool stuff. Books, lists, tons of cool info, GPS software both personal (for geo-caching) and navigation, Astronomy programs, converters, Oh and tons of games 😉

It is one of the best things I own. 😉
You really should get one 😉

Hehehe, you said Chick Full.....


I'm with you on Star Trek. I've enjoyed every single series. To this day, I still catch myself stopping to watch old reruns of DS9.

StarTrek and B5 reference were only to books. B5 was one of my favority TV shows, but the acting was very cheezy in seasons 1 and 2. STTNG, ohhh it seemed to get so cheezy after 3rd season, but all the books read like soap operas 😉

I kinda prefer plausable science. Startrek is too cutysy and polished. No one gets thier hands dirty in it, and the words they invent while they only touch coloured overlay panels cracks me up.. Now Scotty got his hands dirty. 😉 Real to me better suits Alien, with no cutsie warpdrives, dark interiors, and speed so slow you need to sleep during the journey.

If science isnt a factor, then CSLewis space triliolgy is a hoot, as well as the Hitchhikers Guides.

lexx wrote:
StarTrek and B5 reference were only to books. B5 was one of my favority TV shows, but the acting was very cheezy in seasons 1 and 2. STTNG, ohhh it seemed to get so cheezy after 3rd season,

Can anyone say Farscape?

Silent Cold wrote:
Can anyone say Farscape?

Oh do NOT get me started on Far-fetched scape!!!! Talk about a good thing gone bad. man that started out as one of my all time favorite shows. GREAT characters and cool ideas!!! Second year it started to get a bit weird...still good...3rd season I think it was, when Scorpy got into Crichton's head, it totally tanked. Jumped the space shark! Could it recover, NO they introduce new even worse characters. I HATED GRANDMA!!!!! Not to mention I could not follow what the hell was going on half the time. It was totally F*&^ed up!!!!

Like Andromedia... Man I watched all of those damn shows just waiting for it to get better and make some kind of sense.. It never did...I could not follow that damn storyline to save my life. I got so sick of it I was actually happy to see it, and Farscape, end.

Now we all know the best Sci-Fi show of all time was Firefly 😉
Babylon5 as well of course 😉

Paladin wrote:
Oh do NOT get me started on Far-fetched scape!!!! Talk about a good thing gone bad. man that started out as one of my all time favorite shows. GREAT characters and cool ideas!!! Second year it started to get a bit weird...still good...3rd season I think it was, when Scorpy got into Crichton's head, it totally tanked. Jumped the space shark! Could it recover, NO they introduce new even worse characters. I HATED GRANDMA!!!!! Not to mention I could not follow what the hell was going on half the time. It was totally F*&^ed up!!!!

Like Andromedia... Man I watched all of those damn shows just waiting for it to get better and make some kind of sense.. It never did...I could not follow that damn storyline to save my life. I got so sick of it I was actually happy to see it, and Farscape, end.

Now we all know the best Sci-Fi show of all time was Firefly 😉
Babylon5 as well of course 😉

Andromeda was pretty good, I watched it for a while, never seemed to catch any show when it actually aired in a row so it was always just enjoy the current show story.. Enjoyable enough to pass the time.

Farscape is hilarious just for the fact that noone really cared about 'reality' it was all made up and fun.. once again though I only caught it in re-runs or bits and pieces.. great late-night watching though.
Honestly I never even heard of Firefly before this forum.. 😳

Farscape was actually quite good... Yah it got stale the last season, but I liked it well enough. What helped the series was the end movie that pulled together the loose strings.

Firefly was good and all, but to measure by one season, hell Farscape was better 😉

Andromedia, oh comeon, what a cheezy production. Worse anim and effects. Most of it looked like a model held on a piece of string. They were grasping at straws by the second season. How the hell they got 5 years outta a wornout storyline is beyond me.

Enterprise was my favorite of all time. Things broke, or didnt' work, and they had to use shuttlecrafts and docking bays to get in/out.. It was the most realist of the bunch, and so refreshing after the 3 sttng types before it.

Firefly wasn't good, it was engaging and entertaining. It had character few shows ever find in a full run.

This topic is supposed to be about books - not TV shows ya bastids!

Everything I wrote about has book(s) written for them also. They are all cheezy, fluffy, and read like soap operas, but books still the same 😉

Sarge wrote:


This topic is supposed to be about books - not TV shows ya bastids!

If we didn't hi-jack threads, they usually die of loneliness.. Sometimes the ones that spawn other conversation are the best ones 😉

Do not think of it has hi-jacking, think of it as a conversation in a coffee shop. 😉