• Notice regarding image hosts and attachments. See here.

Nitefly is a Book Novice, Please Help Him

Nitefly

Nitefly

Nitefly

Man of Honour
Joined
24 Sep 2005
Posts
37,999
Hello established book readers,

When I was younger, I put a considerable amount of time towards reading books, although I imagine those were mostly teen fiction more than anything else. However, my passion was killed when after enjoying the Hobbit, I attempted to read Lord of the Rings, which I loathed since I found it too meandering - it couldn't hold my attention (horses for courses - I'd rather not have a thread discussing the pro's and con's of LOTR).

Having had a good conversation with my housemates last night regarding popular books, I was hoping that the forum could give me a list of the mainstream 'must read' books that I could use to get me back into the swing of things. I'm talking about books such as The Life of Pi & Catch 22, so basically, so books that I will probably have heard of but I can't put my finger on them right at this instant.

If people can help me compile such a list, I would be most grateful. Also if people could recommend books out of this list, it might help me make a decision as to where to start. Many thanks :)
 
I'm not much of a book reader myself, but I've read the Harry Potter books, I really got into them :) Found myself chuckling whilst reading them
 
Personally I'm a fan of classic sci-fi.

Space Odyssey quadrilogy by Arthur C Clarke
Dune by Frank Herbert
Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

If you fancy something a bit more philosophical, Sophie's World by Jostein Gardner is a good read.

EDIT: Add to that the Philip Pullman Dark Materials series having had my memory jogged by the next poster.
 
Last edited:
Here's 100 to get you started. Taken from the BBC Big Read site. And, no, I've not read all of them! :p


1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
 
Personal opinion bound, if you enjoy English literature, I'd recommend staying away from Harry Potter and Twilight.

One of the best books I've ever read is Shogun by my favorite author, James Clavell. Its so incredibly thorough and written in a manner that keeps you engrossed in the events and teases you with brief moments of relief until by the end of it all, you're exhausted as you feel you've been on the journey yourself.

His other books in the asian saga are also very good, and they reference one another through characters and events. Highly recommended!

Also Bram Stoker's Dracula is a very good read too. Most people haven't actually read the book and if you're into horror, you dont want to miss this classic! :)
 
Michael Marshall Smith -Only Forward (My favourite book of all time, by a long long way)
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Alice Walker – The Color Purple
Mark Twain - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Samuel Richardson - Clarissa
Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
Richard Matheson - I am Legend
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Robert Rankin - The Brentford Triolgy
Terry Pratchett - The Colour of Magic (or take your pick really there are many, but why not start with the first
smile.gif
)
 
Last edited:
1984 by George Orwell is one of the best books ever written for my money so if you've never read that then you probably should. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is along similar lines and came before, there's an argument as to which is the better novel but I prefer 1984.

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read and the rest of the series is pretty good too.

August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a powerful piece of literature. Also from Russian authors I'd recommend The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Personally I'd leave out Catch 22 and Catcher In The Rye (J.D. Salinger) as neither did anything much for me, I've read them so can claim that much but won't be hurrying to re-read them.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is a quite fantastic book as mentioned in the list that _dogma_ posted above, I'd also suggest White Fang by Jack London.

The Jungle Book and Kim, both by Rudyard Kipling are well worth a read.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (various titles and compilations so pick one that has a few stories you like the sound of) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is also good, the story of Sir Arthur is almost as interesting as his characters if memory serves. He also wrote historical novels which are somewhat less famous than his detective creation - Sir Nigel is one I've read and was enthralled.

I could go on but that ought to do as a starting point.

//edit If This Is A Man by Primo Levi - I read it as part of the OcUK book club and it's an exceptional book based on his experiences in a concentration camp.
 
Last edited:
By Phillip K. Dick: Ubik, We Can Remember it For You Wholesale, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
By Dan Brown: Angels & Demons, Da Vinci Code, Deception Point, The Lost Symbol.
 
Capn' $qu!ff said:
Star Wars X-Wing Series
Click to expand...

Love those books, I re-read them every two years or thereabouts.
They're by no means great works of literature but if you like Star Wars they're hugely entertaining. Also check out the Heir to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn, they have one of the best main villains ever written in my view
 
As always I shall recommend the great Terry Pratchett for his Discworld series and Phillip Pullman for his "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Both are quite light reading but absolutely brilliant.
 
William Heffernan - The Corsican

A brilliant book which really gives the Godfather a run for its money in my opinion.
 
khimbar said:
My nick on here and most other forums I'm on comes from those books.

:D

Might read them again now you've mentioned them.
Click to expand...

Nice to see I'm not the only one who steals names from Star Wars books for nicknames online (even though mine is an intentional mis-spelling).
Another book worth checking out is Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry which is another favourite of mine. It's set in between Empire and Jedi and is cleverly interwoven into the details of the two films.
 
I got a bit of a shock with that BBC top 100 when I realised I had read at least half of them!

I'm surprised 'A day in the life of Ivan Ivanovich' isn't in there.

I'd counter Semi-Pro's comment on Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) and Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) - I enjoyed them both. Catch 22 did go on a bit but the farcical nature of it appealed to my sense of humour. I love Catcher in the Rye because it's essential a post-modern novel written long before there was such a thing.

If you're after something a bit more light-hearted and fantasy-related (think The Hobbit but more action and easier to read) then I can highly recommend anything by David Gemmel.

Also (and this will be a sore spot for some die-hard LOTR fans) I also really like Terry Brooks. His stories more or less consist of the LOTR plot but re-written without all of the songs/poetry and elvish. :p

If you didn't enjoy the tangents etc that Tolkien goes on in LOTR then I would strongly advise you never try to read Moby Dick. The actual story is about 100 pages long and the other 500+ pages are random tangents!

If you like action novels then check out Robert Ludlum (He wrote the Jason Bourne series made famous by the films with Matt Damon).

If you like spy novels (or just well-written characters and locations) then there is no one quite as good as Le Carré. There is a caveat with Le Carré though. His more recent stuff like The Constant Gardener made for an excellent film but a boring book.
Stick with his earlier cold-war stuff and you won't go wrong.

I've got to get back to work now but if I think of any more later I'll report back.

Panzer
 
semi-pro waster said:
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game is one of the best sci-fi novels I've ever read and the rest of the series is pretty good too.
Click to expand...

I read this based on recommendations here and I agree, it's a fantastic book.

I am Legend was a recent read, also really enjoyed that and is much better than the film.
 
The Harry Potter heptology (:p) is fantastic in my opinion, and extremely easy to read. I've also had a great time reading Stephen King and would recommend Dolores Claiborne, Skeleton Crew (short stories and includes 'The Mist') and It as long as you read it during the day. :p

If you're into non-fiction as well, then the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is an absolutely fantastic read, regardless of your stance on faith. Confessions of a Medium is quite interesting, but fairly challenging all the same (just because it was written in the late 1800s). It's basically a book about a medium confessing his fraudulent techniques and is extremely interesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom