Post your favorite book with a small description so I find one to read next.

I have no favourite book, its harder to pick than favourite film/album/game or movie; but I do come back to these ones over and over.

The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch, Actor at the end of his career retreats from the world to find a past long forgotten. Quiet completive philosophical novel.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon, Young rebelious woman uncovers what may or may not be a hoax conspiracy while tending to a will. Satirical take on conspiracy novels.

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino, Marco Polo and Kublai Khan converse, via letter on the cities Polo has visited. The book is a study of the imagination and the imaginable as well as an experiment with the form of a novel

Fury - Salman Rushdie, A crazed doll maker abandons his family to move to new york where he lives, loves, hates and maybe kills a lot. At once a love letter to a new bride and a hate letter to pop culture

Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo, Strage disturbing tale of a man finding his father, A book that invented a genre and has never been bettered in that genre.

Solaris - Stanisław Lem, An attempt to understand a alien life form their experiments provoke a strange reaction. Nothing made from this novel has anything near the impact of the book itself.

The Torture Garden - Octave Mirbeau, Several characters and stories used to probe the very depths of humanity. This is raw unadulterated anger pored onto the page and a damning indictment of mankind.

An Artist of a Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro, A retired artist attempts to take stock of his life and turns up some self truths he had been avoiding. Superbly written subtle psychological study of human nature.

I'd suggest reading the classics too. Notably Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Anna Karenina, The Idiot, The Trial and so on.

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Not sure I have a favourite book either. What genre are you looking for Dekar?
I like to read science fiction and fantasy, or science fantasy :)

Currently I'm reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series and I have to say it's a good mix of western, fantasy and post apocalypse, with a bit of sci-fi on top ^^

The series start out with a lone gunslinger tracking down the man in black through a decaying classic western world in his ultimate quest to find the dark tower.

First book in the series is "the Gunslinger" and it might be a bit weird.. and it might be because it's several smaller books next to each other and you notice the focus of the story shifts a bit in each and makes the red thread hard too see. But if you make it past the first book the second and third are better.
I'm about to finish the third and get started on the fourth and I really like them :)

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"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

Nothing beats the class 1984, George Orwell or Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. They are both dystopian plays on the direction society was heading in their times of writing. It is of the genre that science/speculative fiction developed.

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Breasts

I also really like The Dark Tower series, but I don't think the majority of people do. So maybe not the safest bet if you're actually going to buy it.
Maybe get the first one from the library and see if you like it (it's not very long compared to the later books in the series), then maybe read the rest.

Also, The Hobbit and anything H.P. Lovecraft.
I ordered a nice edition of The Hobbit and a very nice edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon not too long ago.
The Hobbit is some rather light material, so it's good for a quick, relaxing read.

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'Belgium, a country with many homos also have a pedophile party as far as i know.' - Violetblood

The Discworld novels are excellent

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Indeed, Terry Pratchett! My favorite books are the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. And if you like books for young people I can recommend Cornelia Funke.

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Heart of Darkness

As for Stephen King and fantasy, The Dark Tower & The Eyes of the Dragon are both intensely meh. Get Night Shift and Everything's Eventual (collection of novels), It, Cujo, Misery or Pet Sematary.

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slurper

Terry Goodkind's Sword of truth series is great there are like 15 books Atm and there all great. The first book is "Wizards First Rule"

and take it from me- i hardly read books but i love these books- give the first one a go and you'll be set for a few months.

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Particle-physics gives me a Hadron!

I don't like short stories and no fan of horror either, mixing them seems like a bad idea to me :( Sorry m3n :P

Darkly Dreaming Dexter and it's sequels are some good thriller/crime/drama books. It follows the mind of a serial killer and his killings and also how he struggles to conceal his dark side to his friends and family and also his colleagues in a Miami forensics team where he works as a blood-splatter analyst.

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"There is a simple, logical explanation... and there is nothing under the bed.”

I should make clear I'm a literary snob, while I quite like both Pratchett and King both are past their best though The Dark Tower series is actually a high water mark, the Bachman books by king are also rather good Pratchetts last great book was written in 2002 (Night Watch) and Thief of Time maybe his best.

My actual recommendation is read anything anyone gives you or recommends some of it will be awful some will be what you are looking but there's value in reading everything, everything that is except the Da Vinci Code

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I sadly read through this, since it's quite addicting in a "what will happen next" kind of way but in my humble opinion this is one of the biggest exploitative pieces of shit I've read in a while. Addicting != great.
The whole series rests on sex, violence and making the reader feel good through identifying with an amazingly hot loser who progressively becomes more and more powerful to end up as the ruler of a huge empire, husband to the most beautiful woman in the world and the greatest fighter and wizard to have ever lived.

*facepalm*

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

There are like 38 books in the discworld series. He can just read the ones up to the year 2000 if you would like

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Not to mention its some of the worst written bile in the fantasy genre which has a slew of really badly written dross to choose from.
I didn't say all the ones up to that point were all that good either.

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Although I agree, in a series of 38 books it is hard to make all of them good. The good outweigh the bad by quite a bit.

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a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a bird in a pig

Death of a salesman (Joking, don't waste your time and brain cells reading thy book)
Lord of the flies and Animal Farm.

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do graphic novels count?

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Not in cruelty. Not in wrath. The Reaper came today; an Angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away.

Read and loved 1984. Brave New World I heard of before and it has good chances to become my next book if I don't look up more infos about some of the other books.

Does anybody else know other good dystopian books?

Im already proud owner of a Necronomicon myself!

Anyone here with Poe experience?

Interesting.


Besides these "darker" themes I also like fantasy and scifi. I also read several classic german novels and want to read Dantes Inferno at some point in the future, but I heard the original has nice rhymes or something that is hard to translate perfectly, so that needs some research first.
Basically everything goes as long as its not super boring like the life of a farmer in the 18th century. *goes checking if thats the time of Simplicius Simplicissimus - no*

I've read Poe extensively (almost every single one of his short-stories and his only novel). The language (like with most 19th century gothic novelists) can seem overly elaborate, but you get used to it after a while and, as an adept non-native english speaker, you can learn a lot from it.
Everyone knows his poem 'The Raven' (if you don't you should really read it) and that's what introduced me to him. But there is more to Poe than just that poem, although it is the prime example for his skills to set a mood. I don't have an omnibus of his with me at the moment, but if you do pick up his collected works give me a shout or post again so I can recommend a few. Some of his stories are okay, but not as amazing as others you might miss.

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'Belgium, a country with many homos also have a pedophile party as far as i know.' - Violetblood

I mostly read fantasy sci-fi and horrors. Terry Pratchett I love, I almost have all the Disc World series. My favourite is Reaper Man and The Fifth Elephant. Oh and Night Watch is pretty good too. I've also recently read The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon, bit of a hard read because there are so many charachters that come back later on in the books that you've already forgotten about.

Needful Things by Stephen King is a good book if you like your horrors and Pet Semetry is a great one to read too, just don't watch the film! I had a bit of a fright when reading Pet Semetry, I was all alone working in a Surf Shop; it was winter so not a soul about, I was just reading about the bit where the cat comes back (I wont say too much incase I spoil it) and I felt these eyes on me, I looked up and screamed because there was a bloody cat sat on the floor staring at me. Scared the shit out of me!

If you want some light reading, I really enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia and anything by Roald Dahl

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

oh, btw. Dante didn't just write Inferno, it's actually just 1/3 of his work La Divina Commedia describing hell, purgatory and heaven.
It's always best if you have some background info about the culture and politics of 14th century Italy and know a bit of ancient Roman culture before reading.
But even if you don't, it'll be a rather interesting read. If you want to find a good translation (in any language btw, English versions won't be better than e.g. German ones.) make sure the rhyme goes like this: aba bcb cdc etc. That way you get good idea about how the original sounded.

It's something that's kinda interesting to read, but that's mostly because it was such an important and groundbreaking text in its time.
Now it's lost that importance and is only relevant and interesting as a historical work.
It's up to you

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'Belgium, a country with many homos also have a pedophile party as far as i know.' - Violetblood

I am currently reading a book, which is just a collection of short stories by a famous English author: Rudyard Kipling. I recommend it! It's very good. The stories themselves are more for children I believe, seeing as they are stories about how things came to be (ie. how the rhino got its skin, how the elephant got its trunk, etc.) But the way Kipling presents his stories, and the way he writes is very impressive in my opinion.

I can't believe no one has recommended this: Harry Potter Series. One of my favorite series of all times I'm a bit of a nerd, but thats ok. They're damn good books.

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Not in cruelty. Not in wrath. The Reaper came today; an Angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away.

Because everyone read it already, lol.

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All roads may lead to Rome, but all Wikipedia pages eventually get you to the Third Reich. - m3n

That's what I assumed, but there's no hurt in recommending it anyways

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Not in cruelty. Not in wrath. The Reaper came today; an Angel visited this gray path, and took the cube away.

good man!

im too drunk to post a list but i do love bret easton ellis

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

I'd like to buy you a drink, based on this post alone.

as requested - 'The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet', by Reif Larsen. destined to be a cult classic

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ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: true genius
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: doesn't make sense
ュ~ちゃんgamer.jp Pinky: till you're senseless

Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell

Brave New World is written a little less straight-forward than 1984 and is a little more challenging, but brilliantly written. My favourite passage had to have been one early in the book with 3 transpiring events that were flashed between, with the rate quickening, raising some genuine tension in a really calm scenario. You'll know what I'm talking about when you read it if you choose to. It only really flowed on my 2nd read, hoever, but that might be because I was a little bit expectant of something really similar to 1984. Either way, a good read at any rate that you will love if you loved 1984.

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Breasts

Let me take a guess here, you all know a brave new world cuz it was obligatory reading material in school and you got it handed to you in that blackbird pocket bundle? It was an epic book which was a pioneer for that time, but other then that, far better stuff has been written imo.
I mostly read fantasy books. Currently reading from Robin Hobb, love the books a lot Read some from Stephen King, always epic. Roald Dahl is one of a kind as well. Read a lot of literature when in school, also a lot of dutch literature which make your eyes bleed!
I loved a prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving in school, got me 5 of the 40 reading points I had to read
Read lord of the rings 5 times as well, awesome book
Nowadays, I mostly read fantasy books in my vacation and I need to read for uni, which makes me a bit sick of reading. So, I get to reading when I'm on vacation

Comic books ftw btw

http://forum.specialattack.net/viewtopi ... hilit=owen

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M.A.S.K. , is the mighty power that can save the day