The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
I don't know if it's just me, but every girl I've been involved with during the past ten years has had a copy of this book on the go at one point or another, like every woman in the UK was issued with a copy. I don't think any of them ever finished it, either.

I did read it a few years back; it's okay, nothing special.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:45, 4 replies)

An honest, un-ironic list of some of my favourite books
The sort of books that give you tingles on the back of your neck, and leave you walking round in a bittersweet haze for a few days:

The History of Rasselas - Samuel Johnson
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Nausea - Jean-Paul Satre
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Demian - Hermann Hesse
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
The Little Prince - Antoine de saint Exupery
La Bete Humaine - Emile Zola
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway

In no particular order, except Rasselas which deserves to be at the top of every list.

"Ye who would listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia."
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:43, Reply)

I'll read any book
by PK. Dick or M. Moorecock, based on their amusing names only...
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:36, 1 reply)

Don Quixote
Is brilliant (though I don't have sufficient mastery of Castillian to attempt it untranslated) but so very very long. I can't read more than a dozen pages at a time without my puny brain hurting. I would much rather have done that instead of effing Dickens at school.

I had the same problem with Crime and Punishment which I really enjoyed but took me forever to finish (and it isn't a long book!)
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:36, Reply)

Kurt Vonnegut
I know ive mentioned Iain Banks but this guy is a fucking genius. Galapagos and Breakfast of Champions always makes me laugh.
Oh and Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff, Haunted and Fight Club, all cracking reads.
(Hammy1801 may have scabies!, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:35, Reply)

"You can't judge a book by its cover”
I conducted a quick experiment to see if this statement was true or false.

HYPOTHESIS: After looking at a book cover, I will form an opinion about the book, which will then be blown away after reading said book.

METHOD: Pick a random book from the library, look at the cover, judge its content, read the book, review judgement.

TESTING: I walked into the local library and asked the librarian to choose a book for me. She handed me ‘The World According to Clarkson’. From this I made a judgement. I guessed it would be a pompous, arrogant, opinionated man, spouting off about nothing in particular.
I then read the book, and reviewed my judgement.

CONCLUSION: Having read the book, I can confirm you can judge a book by its cover.
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:33, Reply)

Around the world in eighty yawns
Recently I picked up Around The World In Eighty Days. Well, I thought, It's Jules Verne, and there have been several reasonable films, so it might be interesting.

No. No it isn't.

It's amazingly bad. Being a Victorian Gentleman, our "hero" strives to remain aloof from everything that's going on around him. It's almost as if the world below, and the adventure they're having crossing it, is not worthy of his attention - beneath him figuratively as well as literally. The only time he breaks this detachment is when he sees some lions. And shoots them for fun.

This makes the book very flat, like reading a stationery catalog. Odd. I generally enjoy Jules Verne.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:32, 2 replies)

My books travelled with me to Canada
or rather they followed me very slowly. They cost serious money to ship, as does everything, but they ARE EVERYTHING.
I nearly stabbed people who suggested I leave my books behind, what the hell is the matter with these eejits?
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:26, 6 replies)

The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde
Thoroughly entertaining fare (not so much the last one though) with plenty of literary jokes and wit.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:23, 1 reply)

Roddy Doyle
I fucking worship Roddy Doyle, you big gobshites, you feckers, you cunts.

But seriously, I do.
( Infidel , shit and wrong, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:23, 3 replies)

Must haves/reads:

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. It seems everyone who knows anything about him has a massive crush on Feynman, and this is the book to find out why. He skips lightly between stories about how his dad taught him what's important in life (knowing ABOUT things, not what things are called), stories about failing and succeeding at pulling chicks in bars, stories about taking the piss out of his colleagues at the office, and stories about how he annoyed his bosses at said office, and you need to pinch yourself and remind yourself that what he's talking about is his time as an UNDERGRADUATE (i.e. he hadn't even finished his degree yet) spent at Los Alamos designing the fucking atomic bomb, giving the equivalent of powerpoint presentations to and getting in technical arguments with Albert. Fucking. Einstein. And painting strippers. He didn't actually write the book as such - it's a transcript of a conversation with him, and you can tell.

Larry Niven: science fiction without a net in Known Space, although the Ringworld stuff I could take or leave. And the Magic Goes Away is fantasy written as hard sf. It's great.

To avoid: I was told as a primary school nerd and serial library consumer that I should read one of the best books ever written - John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress. Incorrect. It is one of the most deliberately, obtusely boring and tedious books ever written. It made me actually angry for the time I'd wasted reading it - and I was about ten. Engendering that amount of cynicism in a ten year old take a really, really bad book.

Far From The Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy. Now, don't get me wrong, I've no particular animus towards classics. I quite liked Romeo and Juliet, which we also had to study that year, although the plot is weak as it relies almost entirely on coincidence after coincidence rather than the characters' failings. But FFTMC, which we had to read for O level, was cak. And it was made worse by our English teacher bigging it up, telling us how funny the comedy scenes with the rustics were. Er... no, Mrs. Webster, "The Young Ones" is funny. "Not the Nine O Clock News" is funny. This is a bunch of people who say "oo arr" in every sentence misunderstanding simple concepts and falling over. It's not funny. It's slow, too. There is an entire chapter, pages long, in which the only thing that happens is that it rains and some flowers get washed away. No actual living humans feature in the chapter at all. It's a five page description of the behaviour of inanimate objects and fucking weather. The sole redeeming feature of this chapter is that it contains the single funniest line in the book - the chapter title, which is "The Gurgoyle: Its Doings". Me and my best mate thought that was fucking hilarious.

And worst of all was the plot. Oh god, it burns, make it stop. The entire book is about this irritating slapper who comes to town and every man falls under her spell. Specifically three guys are desperate to bang her - a good-hearted bloke, an old, boring geezer, and a bounder-and-a-cad-to-boot soldier. And over four hundred pages the hero moons over her while she coquettes around town, puts out for the bounder, breaks the heart of the older guy, and in turn gets her heart broken by the bounder, and eventually finds the love she always needed with our hero the good bloke. And that's supposed to be the happy ending. NO! The happy ending would have been
(a) good bloke hooked up with some wench who hadn't abused him for 400 pages and knows when she's onto a good thing
(b) bounder dead of syphilis, which he has time to first pass on to the "heroine"
(c) heroine forced to marry boring old geezer and discovers on the wedding night that he's into violently sadistic sex to which she is forced to submit every night until she, too, dies of syphilis.

As it was, I didn't even want the happy ending, because the good bloke didn't deserve it, the mooning bellend. I hated the book and every single character in it with the exception of the gurgoyle.

And... breath.
(SonofRojBlake, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:23, 5 replies)

Da Vinci Code... no wait, bear with me
The book itself was a steaming pile of horse manure, but it peaked my interest in the idea of The Golden Ratio - how everything in nature from the spirals of neutrons to the spirals of galaxies all follow this number.

I bought a book by Mario Livio which was extremely well written, informative without being overbearing mathematically.

This, in turn, sparked off a whole new area of interest for me which lead to me reading about infinity, chaos theory, fractals & an excellent book about the number zero and how the Greeks stubborn refusal to admit it existed held mathematics back about 2000 years..

Yes Im well aware Im a monumental geek (not helped by the fact I work as a computer animator I know), but if you spent as much time in airports and on planes as I did at that time you'd be grateful for the recommendation!
(mobi I completed the Internet on 'hard'. Twice., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:22, 6 replies)

A tale of family ties
(Synopsis at end for those who can't be bothered to wade through the tale)

I've always been a keen reader; eldest child with no siblings to play with, back then TV was 3 channels and kids TV was on from 16:00 - 17:45 and my mother didn't let me watch ITV as it was "common"; Clive Sinclair still had hair so no computing either until I was 14. So I read.

There was one book* however which 'changed my life'. Or maybe I should say "had an impact on me which was more than the sum of its parts". It was called "Moon Palace" and was the first book I had read by Paul Auster, who's a reasonably well-known American writer. This was back 20 years ago though, so he was less famous (if he even is) then than he is now (this is fairly relevant to the story).

I read the book in a single sitting, and afterwards felt changed by it in some unfathomable way. It's hard to put into words what reading that book felt like afterwards; I suppose it was similar to how you see the world after the first time you take hallucinogens - it's the same, but slightly, subtly different. That's the only way to describe it - as if a filter that I had been looking through had changed; sorry for this sounding so vague, but regardless of my inability to detail it, it was a very strong feeling that I'd never had after reading anything else (wanking material aside, but that's a different type of feeling).

"So," you might ask "what the fuck was the book about then ? Did it teach you Dimac ? Bring you into another world ? Convince you to call yourself Loretta and have done with it ?"

Well, none of those things. You can read a synopsis here if you can be arsed.

Here's the (probably not all that interesting, but still) interesting bit.

I have a younger brother and sister who are French (Dad re-married a French woman). Completely independently of me, they both read "Moon Palace" and like me, felt that unlike any other book they had ever read, it had touched them in some way.

The significance of this for me was that, as we grew up separately and didn't have a language in common, there was not all that much that made us siblings, so to speak. We saw each other around once a year, got on very well but didn't feel like relatives, if that makes sense.

So, for whatever reason, "Moon Palace" is the book that unites me and my family.

It's well worth a read.


tl;dr version: blokes reads book he really like that is liked by his siblings as well.

* Iain M Banks "Consider Phlebas" was the nearest I've ever come to the impression "Moon Palace" made on me.
(TheImmortalJenkins, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:18, 1 reply)

I don't like reading things that challenge my world view.
Instead, I prefer to read things that reaffirm my opinions and perceptions, and perhaps offer me the chance to vocalise my views in slightly different ways.

It's just so much easier that way.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:16, 11 replies)

Fantasy

I hate a lot of the fantasy books that are out there. You know the sort; a simple stable lad following his destiny with a magic sword to the dark lands to defeat some dark lord/evil one/recover a lost artifact. Tolkein's, Terry Goodkind's, Robert Jordan's series they all follow these tropes (there are so many more that are even worse). You'll be finding place names with terrible apostrophe abuse because nothing but nothing says fantasy like a liberal sprinkling of apostrophes. There's kindly wizards & dwarves with eyes like gimlets. There are hours of my life I cannot get back reading The Wheel of Time series to book 3 before I couldn't take it anymore.

However there is an alternative. The following 3 authors write solid exciting books that are more interesting.

George RR Martin
Joe Abercrombie
Scott Lynch

These authors aren't afraid to shock you, kill off a few major characters. There books aren't filled with that wishy-washy fantasy speech people talk normally.

Characters aren't good or evil they are like real people a bit of both. Some are absolute cunts especially in Abercrombies books.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:15, 5 replies)

Robinson Crusoe.
I know it's supposed to be terribly important and the birth of the modern novel and all that ... but it's fucking dreadful. The almost entertaining bit where he's stuck on an island and dubs Man Friday and threatened by cannibals lasts for about three pages. The rest is about him having a religious epiphany, trying to convert the fuzzy wuzzys, establishing a transatlantic trading scheme and about four thousand pages describing the difficulty of cutting a canoe out of a log using a stick. Robinson Crusoe? Robinson Fuck Off Fuck Off Fuck Off Fuck Off more like.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:10, 20 replies)

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Avoid, avoid for the love of all that is human, avoid.

I had to read this tripe as part of a colonial literature module at Uni. Drier than the Atacama, more painful than being buggered by a Belarussian secret policeman's cattle prod and about as interesting and fulfilling as a two page spread on Kerry Katona's latest battle with drugs/food/sanity/her bank manager.

On the upside I did also get to read the Maneater of Malgudi and a profusion of African and other Indian works which were infinitely better. Come to think of it reading the instructions that came with the dishwasher were better than WSS.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:07, 5 replies)

The Millenium Trilogy
I was given this trilogy last Christmas, and - in a guilty pleasure sort of way - kind of enjoyed it. Utter hokum, of course - and not very well-written hokum - but sort of fun.

A kind of literary foot-spa, if you will.

And you have to admire a writer who can fill so many pages with words using only his left hand.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:06, 6 replies)

Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Incredibly long and the author goes off on such long, inconsequential tangents that even he forgets the names of some the (admittedly minor) characters - their names change through the story. But aside from that, it's an great epic with a really, really griping plot. Fab!
( splorp ®, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:05, 2 replies)

Roald Dahl
This man was a literary genius! He gifted the world such gems as:

- The twits
- Danny the Champion of the world
- Charlie and the Chocolate factory
- James and the Giant Peach
- Fantastic Mr Fox
- The BFG

I don't think there is a person among you who hasn't read or seen something that has been written by this great author. As a child I would while away many countless hours with his imaginative and creative stories. If I have children one day I'm going to make sure they enjoy these books as much as I did. Even if that means they need to be locked away in a quiet room and beaten until they have finished every last page.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:02, 5 replies)

Stephen Baxter
Absolutely anything by him is great, I've nearly finished reading everything he has written. The first I read was 'Time' which was the most awe-inspiring book I have ever read (although arguable the sequel 'Space' is even better). His authorised sequel to H.G Wells Time Machine, called 'Time Ships' is also a particular highlight. Plus his series written with Arthur C. Clarke. He is of the hard sci-fi variety, in particular the book 'Voyage' is a heart-wrenching tale of what might have been had NASA carried on to Mars after the moon.
(negative armadillo There never was much hope..just a fool's hope., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:02, Reply)

Iain M Banks / Iain Banks
To me he is the master British storyteller. His culture series is top rate sci fi at its best, highlights include Excession, Use of weapons, The Algebraist. Transition is fantastic and The crow road always makes me cry when i read it.
If any one mentions The Bible or the Koran as the best books written then they are Kunts of the highest order, my sons Beano album is more relevant .
(Hammy1801 may have scabies!, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 16:00, 15 replies)

I'd like to tell you about
this rather obscure book that profoundly changed me all the way to my inner core...

...but let's face it, at the end of the day I read the discworld series over and over again rather than bother to find out about other stuff. Much as I imagine some of you also do.
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:56, 5 replies)

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Has anyone actually managed to finish this and truly enjoy it? It's the only book I've ever read that provoked two different strangers on public transport to approach me and ask how I was getting on with it.

The first, I was about a quarter of the way through and said, honestly, 'Well, I don't mind it, but it's a bit of a struggle'. She laughed, ominously.

The second, I was about half way though and I said 'It's OK', but only because I couldn't bring myself to admit that I'd started it 6 months earlier and couldn't remember what had happened.

I've discussed it since with people, and although I fully expect to finally be proven wrong on this within a reply or two, I have yet to find anyone who has read it and enjoyed it.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:55, 15 replies)

My problem with books
was that you always know how many pages are left throughought a book. I get angry when characters face some kind of disastrous 'peril' on page 40. Of course they aren't going to die; there are a good 140 pages left, so I would simply start to skim-read past those parts. This bugbear seemed to get worse and worse over the years, and I came to resent every single bastard character that I was reading about, hoping that they WOULD die on page 2 and get it over with. This culminated in me stopping reading fiction altogether about ten years ago, in a rather self-satisfied, smug manner.

I was arguing this point recently with a friend, who pointed out that maybe I had been reading crap books. Good books aren't necessarily based on gripping plot twists and cliffhangers. Good books sweep you away, make you think, and change tiny little parts of you, sometimes without you realising until later. Good books tell stories that aren't even included in the words on those pages. This (slightly naive) realisation has had the positive effect of helping me to rediscover the pleasure of reading fiction all over again. The list of great books is far too long (thankfully - meaning that there are thousands more to discover), but I've recently loved:

Concrete Island (JG Ballard)
The Spire (William Golding)
Legend of a Suicide (David Vann)
( Norbert Lightowler, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:52, 5 replies)

Dale Carnegies
How to stop worrying and start living.

First published in 1948. A very old book. One that my father gave to me on Christmas (only as a lend mind). Last June I had a panic attack and thought I was having a stroke (minds out of gutters people) and ended up being admitted to hospital. I had high blood pressure a very stressful job and not great health. The Doctor informed me that I had suffered a panic attack and that whilst I wasn't in the best of shape I certainly wasn't dying.

For three months after I had horrible sensations of worms crawling around in my head. This was sickening but I knew they were caused by nerves and suffered them. Over time they dwindled away but with the stress of work always came back soon after.

This book. Within minutes of reading the first few pages. "Cured" me of my worry. I, who had been one of the most laid back people you had ever met had let a job and life wrap me into a ball of nerves.

I'll leave you's with my new motto taken from the book.

Tomorrow I do not fear you, for I have lived today.
( dazbrilliantwhites has been meaning to change this..., Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:47, 2 replies)

Books are better than television.
Scientific fact.

Whatever you watch, it will never be as good as even the most basic children's book.

It's not about how you WANT to learn, it's about how you SHOULD learn.

And books is best.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:41, 17 replies)

the gormenghast trilogy
Stupid overblown irrelevant descriptions of the minutiae of the process for cleaning dirt off kitchen walls by a team of servants who have been doing it for generations or sunlight shinning in dusty rooms. Along with numerous asides that go on for pages that are nothing to do with the plot. It makes Lord of the Rings look like it was written in bullet points it's THAT waffly.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:41, 9 replies)

I think I'm prejudiced
A couple of weeks ago it came to my attention that there was a surplus secret Santa pressie. The guy it was meant for was a contractor whose final day was two days after our team lunch. He lives miles away, and we'll never see him again.

But there it was. Quite obviously a hard-backed book. I put it on my desk and left it there for a couple of days. Then...I opened it.

What would it be? What COULD it be?? The secret Santa limit was just £1.00, must have been a charity shop purchase. Still, who knows.

I opened it and found a book I so DIDN'T want to read that it was perfect - the ultimate WTF present. With a colleague, we discussed who in the team would be the best recipient of this special book. Oh yes, Jon - erudite, literate, sensitive, a family man with a young child: perfect.

When he went to the toilet, I slipped it into his rucksack (he cycles to work) on the last working day before Christmas.

A week later, I asked him if he'd received any unexpected presents?

'No, but judging from your expression, I must have missed something.'

'Take a look in your rucksack.'

And then, out it came, the least readable book in the world, perhaps:
Richard Hammond's autobiography 'On the Edge'.

Now it's Jon's job to slip it into someone else's bag.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:40, 3 replies)

Sentimental Reason
My favourite book is Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, not for the parody writing, not for the characters, but because I robbed my copy from the school library 18 years ago.
( Ulic hissing slightly, Thu 5 Jan 2012, 15:37, Reply)