re: Movie Board Recommendations: Books (UPDATE: Post Stormlight Book 1)

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Have you ever read James Clavell Freauxzen? If not Taipan might work here, though not straight up pirate in nature. Setting is opium running Era of Hong Kong getting started. He's a superb author, guy who wrote Shogun, which I'm sure you've seen the movie/mini series if nothing else.

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Read Shogun, never dug too much int Clavell after that. It was a bit of a chore, but I did enjoy it.

I'll look into that one, good call.

It seems we have a few favorite authors in common, so on the off chance you haven't read anything by Paul Auster, I can't recommend him enough. here are a few of my favorites:

The New York Trilogy
The book of Illusions (especially enjoyable if you love film)
Leviathan
Oracle Night

The reason I mention Auster is because you listed House of leaves as one of your favorite books. The emotions you encounter while reading house of leaves are present in many of Auster's novels.


On a side note, I was stranded in a cabin, by myself, snowed in, for four or five days when I first read house of leaves. I thought I was going crazy. At one point I actually got out the tape measure.





Oh...the adventures of auggie march by Saul bellow is one of my all time favorite books by the way, so I obviously recommend it. I try to read it once a year, and just finished it.

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Ok so right now the top 5 recommendations would be:

1. The Terror - Simmons
2. Mistborn - Sanderson
3. Ready Player One - Cline
4. Star Maker - Stapledon
5. The Name of the Wind - Rothfuss

Good suggestions all around.

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If you liked Gaiman's other works (I saw that you read them), The Ocean at the End of the Lane is fantastic. Gaiman is, in my opinion, the best writer of fantastical realism/magical realism, currently in existence and is one of the best writers, period, of the last half century.

I would also highly, HIGHLY recommend anything by Michael Chabon, but particularly The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won him the Pulitzer. He is very much literary fiction, rather than genre fiction, but his stories are multi-layered, complex, and beautiful. Kavalier and Clay chronicles two jews in the comic book industry at the start of the industry's first great emergence. I would also recommend Wonder Boys, which coincidentally is a solid movie. It is the story of a creative writing professor who wrote a fantastic first novel and has been tinkering with his second for nigh on 10 years.

Also, David Benioff, another product of UC-Irvine's MFA program, is fantastic. Read City of Thieves, the story of a young boy in Russia during WWII who is imprisoned for being out past curfew and is assigned the strange task of retrieving supplies for a Russian colonel.

As far as Christopher Moore is concerned, his book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is one of the funniest, most poignant tales about growing up, friendship, and religion I can think of. I literally laughed out loud at many parts of the book and recommend it to anyone who is not staunchly Christian.

So that makes it:

Current Read: Mistborn Trilogy

Upcoming

1. Star Maker - Stapledon
2. The Name of the Wind - Rothfuss
3. Silo Sage
4. Moorcock Books
5. TBD (Probably go Unbroken or Axis of Time)

Read:
1. The Terror - Simmons
2. Ready Player One - Cline

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Historical Fiction: As a subgenre of science fiction, mostly (or maybe horror), I like something that takes the real world and flips it over. I could do steampunk or something similar.

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The Winds of War (covers 1938 through Pearl Harbor)
War and Remembrance (Pearl Harbor through VJ Day)

Both are about 40 years old and were written by Herman Wouk -- who wrote The Caine Mutiny -- and they're (IMO) on the level of War and Peace in terms of historical realism intertwined with gripping fictional character subplots. They're about an American Navy officer who crosses paths with several historical figures in his posts, as well as his family. Both sons are Navy officers, one of whom is married to an Italian Jew caught in Europe during the Holocaust.

I've read both books about four times, and I'm re-reading War and Remembrance right now. They are two of the best books I've ever read.

Post nuclear soon after bombs drop....

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
On the Beach by Nevil Shute

C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. You will not be disappointed.

I'm really interested to see what you think of Star Maker. I haven't gotten many other people's perspective on it.

Since I mined this thread for recomendations, I thought I'd throw a few things out in repayment.

- I was going to recommend some very specific Ann Rice stuff until I re-read and saw you don't care for her. For me, the parts of the early Vampire books (talking Interview and Lestat here) dealing with the protaganists human lives (ie: the non supernatural parts) stand up with some of the best fiction out there. The supernatural parts admittedly are pretty run of the mill. Likewise most of the Witches books are pretty blah. Now The Devil Memnoch is something all together different and I think its worth a read.

- Straight up literary fiction - I've always been partial to Hemingway (especially The Sun also Rises and The Old Man and the sea) and I really like Keroac's On the Road. I've tried most of the other stuff on the various "100 best books" lists and some are very good but these are the ones that I like the best. Also, someone who is mostly overlooked these days is Thomas Wolfe (not to be mistaken for Tom Wolfe ) His stuff is really very good though I haven't read it in quite some time.

- Since you like Vonnegut and Catch 22, I'd suggest the Douglas Adams Hitchiker's Guide books. (except for Mostly Harmless) if you haven't read them yet. A lighter tone than Vonnegut and Heller for sure but the humor is pretty sharp and they are great reads).

Also, as someone said above, there are some good collections of George R.R. Martin's early works - mostly short stories. Dreamsongs is very good in that the nonfiction introductions by Martin to each group of stories are worth reading even apart from the actual fiction.