Favorite novels

[thegayhare]

So what are your favorite books?
and whats your favorite passage from one of them?

Mine are the discworld novels as well as the BasLag novels of China Mieville (perdedo street station, The scar, And Iron council)

I particularly love the variaty of things in Mieville's novels.  There is so much there and most of it isn't explained.  someithng is reffered to with no explination, you hear about this or that and in there world it's taken that they know what is being talked about.  It just helps make the world feel real.  We don't under stand about the Tesh war, or the mallarial kingdom, and there are so many differnt races that are mentioned in passing. 

There is a passage form Iron council I like particularly.

In New Crobuzon being gay (Or a invert as they call them) is illegal.  It's called Gross Depravity and can result in a prison sentence or even remaking in the punishment factories (which justices will malform a person, adding animal or human body parts to them or even steam powered machines)

Iron council is unique because one of the main chars is gay and inlove with anouther of the main chars.  and the story follows there relationship and how Judeh uses the younger Cutter's feelings for him.

but the passage in the book that strikes me happens towards the end.   There is a cival war in new crobuzon between the Parliament and Collective.  The collective controls 3 neighborhoods in the city one of them is Howl's Barrow.  It's the artists quarter and they are the least equiped to withstand the siege.  They had the passion and the fighting spirit, but they had little in the way of magics, and industry that could be pressed into the fight.  One of there most famous unit they feilded was called "The Pretty Brigade"  Made up of the dolly boys, manwhores and inverts who had lived in the barrow.  My favorite passage involves Curdin, A remade, telling of the final battle for Howl's Barrow.   

"It was something," Curdin said, "They lasted two days longer then they should have done.  The militia came down over Barrow Bridge,  and there was all the barricadistes, and out of nowhere come the Pretty Brigade.  And they was magnificent."  He shouted this suddenly and blinked. In the quiet after the word they heard bombs, at thebattle front. 

"A liability? They were lions. They came in formation, firing, in there dresses," He laughed with a moment's genuine pleasure. "They kept up the attack, they lobbed there grenades.  Run forward skirts flapping, all lipstick and blackpowder, sending militia to hell.  Hadn't eaten anything but stale bread and rat meat for days, and they fought like gladiators in Shankell.  It took the motorguns to cut them down"

[Ryudo Lee]

I have three current favorite series of books.

Ender's Game / Ender's Shadow series' by Orson Scott Card
Of course, that's pretty much a staple for anyone who does anything within the sci-fi genre.

Appretice Adept by Piers Anthony
This was an incredible series which spanned 7 books.  Piers Anthony is best known for the Xanth series, but this one took me by surprise as it mixes elements of both sci-fi and fantasy, and does it well.  It's the story about a man, who is a popular horse racer, on an industrial world who finds a way into a magical world, in which he learns that he is actually a powerful mage, called an Adept.  The series begins with the book "Split Infinity".

Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony
Yet another outstanding series which explores the lives of people who become physical incarnations of mythical and religious icons, such as Death, Fate, Time, Nature, War, and even Satan.  It was an incredible series of books and also has a very unique view on catholicism.  It begins with the book "On A Pale Horse".

[Cogidubnus]

Favorite book?

Les Meserables has been good so far. The discworld novels have also been very good. The Secret History by Donna Tartt was also excellent, and is in my all-time favorites.

I probably could not choose an absolute favorite.

[bill]

Winesburg, Ohio is pretty much an awesome book IMO. Couldn't pick a favorite passage, or even a favorite story, but it's one of the most emotionally affecting books I've read.

[Pagan]

His Dark Materials from Philp Pullman

The Wheel of Time from Robert Jordan (rip).

I don't really have any favorite quotes though.

[superluser]

You know I have to say Thomas Pynchon.

Any author who claims that Kilroy was actually a bandpass filter or that the V-2 rockets were guided by an Allied enlistedman's libido has got to be awesome.

[Llewelyn]

David Weber's Honor Harrington series(which has become more of a universe than just a series lately, with 2 different sub-series set in it and the occasional anthology with stories form other authors) - It's Sci-Fi meets Horatio Hornblower, and apart from needed technology to make interstellar war possible(I.e. gravitic drives and hyperspace) he plays nice with Newton.  Ships actually have to work with inertia(though the gravity-based drive they use allows acceleration at hundreds of Gs without turning the crew to paste... as long as the compensator holds), combat is relativistic, and the fanciest power source is fusion reactors, though fission reactors start to show back up after certain events in the third book.  The main character in the mainline series(Honor herself) starts off as a newly-assigned captain to a light cruiser that's been essentially crippled by an admiral's pet tech project, and she has to somehow make it work.  After the first success, the other ships in the wargames they were testing it in, it turns into a dismal failure as it was easily countered, so she and her ship gets "exiled" to a duty station considered a dumping ground, and it goes from there.

One of my favorite quotes(and not gonna tell the book, so it doesn't spoil as much ):

"Oops"
    - Shannon Foraker, after covertly sending a sequence of instructions which causes 24 of StateSec's 8-megatonne warships to self-destruct with all hands (about 150,000 crew).

And one that sums up Honor's character:

"My duty is not affected by what others may or may not do to discharge their own."  - Honor Harrington, 'On Basilisk Station'

David Weber's Oath of Swords series is also pretty good, about a fantasy world and a reluctant paladin who is recruited -almost- against his will.  Only 3 books in this one(compared to the above's 10+), and hasn't had any new stories in a while

A good quote for this one that explains what I mean by almost:

"Do you worship your father, Bahzell?" The hradani gawked at him for a moment, then snorted derisively at the very thought, and Tomanâk smiled again. "Of course you don't, but you do follow him. You share his beliefs and values and act accordingly. Well, I ask no more of you than that."
"Aye, with you telling me what to be thinking and doing!"
"No, with your own heart and mind telling you what to think and do. Puppets are useless, Bahzell, and if I simply commanded and you simply obeyed, then a puppet would be all you were. I am the god and patron of warriors, Bahzell Bahnakson. Loyalty, yes, as you would give any captain—that much I ask of you. But not unthinking worship. Not the surrender of your will to mine. Subservience is what the Dark Gods crave, for warriors who never question will do terrible things and claim they were 'only following orders.' If I stripped your will from you, you would become no more than a slave.

Weber also wrote a short series which has recently been collected into one omnibus called Empire from the Ashes, where the main character discovers humans didn't exactly originate form earth(and not in any Scientology way), but were the mutinous crew of a ship from an older galactic empire, and he gets drafted into becoming the new captain of the ancient ship to end the mutiny.  Needless to say from the title, that's not all that happens.

Mercedes Lackey's Elves on the Road and Bedlam Bard groups of novels are also among my favorites.  They're mostly set in modern day, with Sidhe and modern magic still around, just not usable by most or known about by the masses, and the Sidhe like it that way.  The first group I mentioned tends to focus on a bunch of the elves who participate in a racing organization(with vehicles made from non-ferrous alloys for obvious reasons) and a couple human mages as well who associate with them.  The second is about a bard who is awakened by his magic by another group of elves, and has to come to terms wiht his musical/magical power and past, and find his future.  They're set in the same universe though. and characters have popped up in both, like Tannim, one of the racer mages and FX, a kitsune in the oriental trickster fox spirit sense.

A couple choice quotes:

"Forget the Force. Trust in the gauge spread." -- Dottie, 'Born to Run'

"Could you manage subtlety, do you suppose?"
"No." -- Tannim and Chinthliss, 'Chrome Circle'

I also second both the Piers Anthony series mentioned earlier, very good reads.  He also wrote another series I liked, the Virtual Mode series, which involves using a "chip" to make a parallel universe that cuts across a series of universes like a plane through other planes, anchored by 5 different endpoint holders, who are the only ones who can travel along it, and each one is searching for something.  Each book loses one endpoint and gains a new one, sending the story in different directions.  I think it had 5 books as I recall, I only own the first one so far.

I also have to give mention to the Lensman series by EE Doc Smith.  Classic pulp  from the 40s and 50s, but he was one of the early writers that helped lay the stage, and it makes a great read.  Sometimes I wish we really did have Lensmen now, and anyone who reads the second half of the first book(Triplanetary) and has been watching American politics at all would understand why.

The Sworddancer books by Jennifer Roberson are also great.  It's a 7 book series about a barbarian-ish sworddancer from the southern desert who is hired by a northern swordsinger to find her bother who had been sold into slavery.  Of course, it doesn't end there, and Sandtiger and Delilah end up traveling the entire continent and even over the sea, facing their pasts and finding their future.  There is a bit of magic, but no wizards and fireballs as such, mostly just magic in certain weapons.  Mostly.  It's also mostly told from Sandtiger's perspective, but both make great characters.

[Alondro]

Harry Potter roxx0rz my boxx0rz!

There, somebody said it, now we can move on.

[Sunblink]

The Harry Potter series is great, but I love the Silverwing series by Kenneth Oppel, and the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Lovely books. Amy Tan's writing really influenced my own in some respects, but really, in order to gain inspiration I normally just need a jump-off point, after which I end up going nuts. Having an overactive imagination does have its benefits.

I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

~Keaton the Black Jackal
EDIT: Dear lord, I forgot to add Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. WTF is wrong with me? It was another inspirational source for one of my more sociopathic characters.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

She's a book burner! Burn her! Burn her!

[Cogidubnus]

I want to read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

She's a book burner! Burn her! Burn her!

Wait, isn't it usually the other way around?

At least, in that novel...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Well... she's lighter than a duck, right?


Oh, wait. Wrong thread...

[Fresnor]

Favorite book?  *glances at his mini library* That is actually hard for me to decide.  Pretty much anything written by Terry Brook, Anne McCaffery, and Mercedes Lackey though are at least near the top.

[Tapewolf]

I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I've just finished reading Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks.  The protagonist, Lady Sharrow, actually reminds me of Keaton's character in a way, a somewhat ruthless woman who is twisted into a fighter by misfortune.
The story is set in a far world known as Golter, a few years before the decamillenium.  The Huhnz Church has decreed that the Messiah cannot be born unless Sharrow, the last of her bloodline has been sacrificed, or the Church has returned to it, the last Lazy Gun, a fabulous weapon from an earlier high-tech age.  (Gabriel would probably like this too, as a central theme is the cyclic civilisation - 'Antiquities' refers, not to old junk, but prized artifacts that their civilisation has forgotten how to construct, which can sometimes be more intelligent than their owners.)

My absolute favourite part of the novel is near the end when Sharrow discovers what the Crownstar - the most precious jewel in the system, long believed lost - actually is.  But sadly that would spoil a lot of things and it doesn't quite have the impact unless you've read the rest of it first.  So instead, I present an abridged description of the Lazy Guns:



You looked through the sight, zoomed in until the target you had selected just filled your vision, and then you pressed the trigger.  The Lazy Gun did the rest instantaneously.
But you had no idea whatsoever exactly what was going to happen next.

If you had aimed at a person, a spear might suddenly materialise and pierce them through their chest, or some snake's spit-fang might graze their neck, or a ship's anchor appear falling above them, crushing them, or two enormous switch-electrodes would briefly appear on either side of the hapless target and vapourise him or her.
If you had aimed at something slightly larger, like a house or a tank, then it might implode, explode, collapse in a pile of dust, be struck by a section of tidal wave or a lava flow, be turned inside out or just disappear entirely, with or without a bang.


The braver physicists - those who didn't try to deny the existence of Lazy Guns altogether - ventured that the weapons somehow accessed different dimensions; they monitored other continua and dipped into one to pluck out their chosen method of destruction and transfer it to this universe, where it carried out its destructive task then promptly disappeared, only its effects remaining.  Or they created what they desired to create from the ground-state of quantum fluctuations that invested the fabric of space.   Or that they were time machines.
Any one of these possibilities was so mind-boggling in its implication and ramifications - provided that one could understand or ever harness the technology involved - that the fact a Lazy Gun was light yet massy and weighed exactly three times as much turned upside-down as it did the right way up, was almost trivial by comparison.

Unfortunately - for the cause of scientific advancement - when a Lazy Gun felt it was being interfered with it destroyed itself; what appeared to be a matter/antimatter reaction took place, turning the parts of the gun not actually annihilated into plasma and causing a blast of the sort normally associated with a medium-yield fission device.

One - its lenses staring down a pair of electron microscopes - had created a series of nano-bang matricial holes in the World Court's Anifrast Institute of Technology before whatever bizarre event had occurred that led to the Institute and all it contained (except for the twenty-three gently-radiating holes) and a precise circle of land approximately thirteen hundred metres in diameter disappearing to be replaced by an attractive, perfectly hemispherical salt-water lake stocked with a variety of polar-oceanic plankton, fish and mammals.

[Alondro]

That gun sounds like an amusing little toy.

It must operate by manipulation of string resonance, opening micro-wormholes between the 11 dimensions...

That's what my fortune cookie said, anyway.   

[LionHeart]

Sounds something like an Improbability Generator...

[Tapewolf]

Sounds something like an Improbability Generator...

It's actually quite a dark book, but some of it is extremely funny.

[Sunblink]

I'm not sure I have an absolute favourite, but I've just finished reading Against a Dark Background by Iain M Banks.  The protagonist, Lady Sharrow, actually reminds me of Keaton's character in a way, a somewhat ruthless woman who is twisted into a fighter by misfortune.

Hehe, now I have to read that book.

At least, before my Monty Python-esque trial for book-burning witchcraft ends and I'm burned at the stake. I should probably be burned for stealing books as well, since I nicked a copy of Fahrenheit 451 from the school pseudo-library and am currently reading it. Everybody steals from that anyway.

~Keaton the Black Jackal

[rabid_fox]

I hate reading. Reading's GAY.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Yeah, Oxford isn't much better...

[bill]

Reading is not gay, it simply prefers to spend time with fellow hobbies.

[Brunhidden]

for anyone with a scifi craving i reccomend some heavy books by a man named larry niven

Lucifer's hammer- the end of the world happens about halfway through, or rather, the end of civilization. its incredible the level of detail given to the sequence of events that would occur if just one thing sets it all off. its set in the early 80s, so it may seem a little dated

ringworld- the halo games took the idea coined in this book, later reffered to as a 'niven ring'. it illustrates a distant future where humans coexist with aliens superior to man, but have suddenly discovered there may be something even more powerful, with the ability to move entire solar systems. the extra twist has a lot to do with human evolution, playing god, and what it means to be a puppet to luck.

The patchwork girl- a murder mystery set on the moon, and deals with the heavy subject of dismantling criminals for their organs. just as powerful and thrilling as 'normal' murder mystery greats.

a gift from earth- by far one of the creepiest scifi stories ive ever read, also deals with organ banks, but as a form of rulership. the setting is a planet far from earth, whose only contact is regular drop offs of new technology from earth. the planet itself is largely uninhabitable except one plateau the size of California. the crew that flew the ship to colonize the planet declared themselves rulers of the colonists they took there, and have taken apart any who disagree to extend their own life. in addition to science this book also features much about politics and psychology.

[Tapewolf]

a gift from earth- by far one of the creepiest scifi stories ive ever read, also deals with organ banks, but as a form of rulership.

Yes.  How I forgot this one while trying to compose a list of favourites, I do not know.  It is absolutely awesome.

Here's a clip which I quoted earlier in a discussion about invisibility.  One of the fascinating threads of the story is when one of the characters realises that people don't always see him.



[Lydia, Hood, Laney, Kane and Keller are holed up in an empty house planning their next move.  Lydia is in the kitchen, the others are in the sitting room.]

Nobody was looking at him.
Laney was staring into the artificial fire; Hood was looking at Laney; Harry Kane was in his Thinker position.  None of them were really seeing anything, at least not anything there in the room.  Each wore an abstracted look.
  "One problem," Harry Kane said dreamily.  "How the blazes are we going to free the rest of us, when only four of us escaped?"  He glanced around at his inattentive audience, then went back to contemplating his navel from the inside.
  Matt felt the hair stir on his head.  Harry Kane had looked right at him, but he certainly hadn't seen Matt Keller.  And there was something very peculiar about his eyes.
  Like a man in a wax museum, Matt bent to look into Harry Kane's eyes.
Harry jumped as if he'd been shot.  "Where the blazes did you come from?"  He stared as if Matt had dropped from the ceiling.  Then he said, "Umm... Oh!  You did it."
  There wasn't a doubt of it.  Matt nodded.  "You all suddenly lost interest in me."

--A Gift From Earth, Larry Niven.  Chapter 8 - Polly's Eyes



On another note, I'll do an overview of 'Fire Upon The Deep' sometime because that is also one of my favourites.

[Omega]

Anything from Lovecraft is pure gold. But I believe it goes without saying, really.

Isaac Asimov has many great ideas, but he's not much of a story teller.

What I'd recommend to anyone is Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Sci-fi horror, with quite believable description of the future. Very well written and very good plot. The sequels are also quite good.

[Angel]

I love too many books to truly play favorites, but in my thinking, a book can be classified as "favorite" if you've read it so many times, you can flip to any section in the book and never need to glance at the beginning.

The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman) comes to mind first. Thomas Harris's novels, particularly Silence of the Lambs, are all favorites of mine. A few others include Beowulf (you tell me the author), Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk), My Sister's Keeper (Jodi Picoult), Song of Solomon (Toni Morrison), Othello, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream  (Shakespeare) and Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut).

My reading-currently list is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, and Peter Pan by Sir J.M. Barrie. Not in that order, though. I book-jump when I'm reading several things.

This somewhat-abridged passage is from the start of Chapter 9 of Silence of the Lambs. Those who know the movie will recognize it. It takes place just after Clarice had gone into a storage garage looking for the answer to a riddle Dr. Hannibal Lecter gave her about the Buffalo Bill case. She found it, alright – a head in a jar. She has been rained on, depicted as a cameraman-threatening rookie on live TV, and scared half to death...and yet she still goes to talk with Lecter.

The odors of the violent ward seemed more intense in the semidarkness. A TV set playing without sound in the corridor threw Starling's shadow on the bars of Dr. Lecter's cage.
   She could not see into the dark behind the bars, but she didn't ask the orderly to turn up the lights from his station. The whole ward would light at once and she knew the Baltimore County police had had the lights full on for hours while they shouted questions at Lecter. He had refused to speak, but responded by folding for them an origami chicken that pecked when the tail was manipulated up and down. The senior officer, furious, had crushed the chicken in the lobby ashtray as he gestured for Starling to go in.
   "Dr. Lecter?" ...
   Starling knew Lecter was watching her from the darkness. Two minutes passed. Her legs and back ached from her struggle with the garage door, and her clothes were damp. She sat on her coat on the floor, well back from the bars, her feet tucked under her, and lifted her wet, bedraggled hair over her collar to get it off her neck.
   Behind her on the TV screen, an evangelist waved his arms.
   "Dr. Lecter, we both know what this is. They think you'll talk to me."
   Silence. Down the hall, someone whistled "Over the Sea to Skye."
   After five minutes, she said, "It was strange going in there. Sometime I'd like to talk to you about it."
   Starling jumped when the food carrier rolled out of Lecter's cell. There was a clean, folded towel in the tray. She hadn't heard him move.
   She looked at it and, with a sense of falling, took it and toweled her hair. "Thanks," she said.

[GabrielsThoughts]

Arthur C. Clarke died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

[blood butterfly]

i am a rather avid fan of Mercedes Lackey.
stories of magic that have characters with problems we see today, but without the obvious comparisons and horribly pitiful puns.

and i wanna hug a gryphon before i die 

[Brunhidden]

The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (William Goldman) comes to mind first.

ya know, ive looked for that one and never found it

however i HAVE found and read 'the last unicorn' by peter s beagle, its a lot darker and far more gritty then the movie, and an excellent read

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

ya know, ive looked for that one and never found it

Really? I have a couple copies of it. Want me to see about posting one across?

[thegayhare]

I just finished Terry pratchetts Thud and Neil Giman's American gods.  Both goof books

thud had a great story, and some realy funny scenes. 

And American Gods was a truely interesting read I'll admit the new and old gods were interesting to see.

Currently I'm a little over 100s page into Max Brooks' World War Z,

It's an amazing read.  the story of a war from start to finish told from interviews with survivours all over the world.

so far I think Sharon's story is the most compelling.  Sharon is a suvivior housed in a center for Feral children.  folks who were kids when the walking plague broke out.  who some how had survived when no one else had, children found wandering in the ruins.

Although the battle of yonkers, and the manhattan riots were interesting for other reasons.