Non-Star Trek Recommended Books

[KillerGodMan]

This be the place where you recommend books that have NOTHING to do with Trek.

I recomend the lot of yuhs read The Silverwing Trilogy by Kenneth Oppel.

Recommend peoples! Recommend, recommend, recommend!

[mudshark]

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. -- the book I'm reading now for the first time, though I have no good explanation for why it took me so long to get around to doing so.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Anything by Arthur C. Clarke, really.

Asimov's good too. I read the Star Wars New Jedi Order books, and they could be worse. Better than the previous novels.

As far as non-SF goes, I enjoyed the Hornblower (C. S. Forrester) and Sharpe (Bernard Cornwell) books.

Possibly more when I'm not in the lab.

[whoiam]

The HitchHiker's Guide trilogy (books 1, 2, 3, and bits of 4 and 5) and Red Dwarf books.

Neither are *serious* Sci-Fi, but then neither was the Sharpe series...

[Michiel]

I like The Hitchhikers Guide series, Harry Potter series the Lord Of The Rings series. I'm now reading The Da Vinci Code, and I like it so far (chapter 15.)

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by mudshark

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. -- the book I'm reading now for the first time, though I have no good explanation for why it took me so long to get around to doing so.

I want to read that at some point - thing is, the list of books that I want to read that I haven't yet is pretty horrendously long, not to mention all the books that I have read (but not for a while) and wish to read again. I need clones, dammit.

For a recommendation I would say The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is my second favourite book that I've ever read - only Dune to my mind surpasses it. Anything pretty much by Iain Banks too, except that I've head his books are not that easy to get a hold of in the States (and they have slight differences from the UK versions too apparently).

[Celeste]

Originally Posted by mudshark

A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr. -- the book I'm reading now for the first time, though I have no good explanation for why it took me so long to get around to doing so.

I am reading that right now. Just got through with the first third of it. Very good. I can't wait to find out what will happen next! If you're looking for other science fiction books to read, WE and Brave new world are supposidly very good as well. I'll be reading them next. (Gotta love a class where you get to read Science Fiction books, eh?)

[Gatac]

Anything by Neal Stephenson. The man is a modern god.

Gatac

[Chancellor Valium]

Rubicon by Tom Holland.
Not a sci-fi book, but a serious look at the downfall of the SPQR. Very entertaining and well-written.

Erm, the Grand Admiral Thrawn trilogy of SW books are good....

Lungbarrow, The Sands Of Time and The Well-Mannered War are all very good DW books, which are available in e-book format on the Beeb webpage. Other good DW books are Matrix, The Face Of The Enemy, and The Tomorrow Windows.

[MaverickZer0]

The Eight by Katherine Neville. It's a thriller, a mystery revolving around the metaphor of chess.

Also, Digital Fortress by the same person who wrote The DaVinci Code (I can't remember the author's name.) It's along the same lines, only more modernized, and also delves deep into the internal workings of the US Government codebreakers.

...I read too many thrillers.

[richardson]

Well...

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

the Pern seies by Anne McCaffery

Elvenbane series by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey,

could go on and on. I have a copy of most Sci-fi books published since 1950.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by Celeste

If you're looking for other science fiction books to read, WE and Brave new world are supposidly very good as well. I'll be reading them next. (Gotta love a class where you get to read Science Fiction books, eh?)

"WE"? Brave New World is very good though - I suspect you'll enjoy it.

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Lungbarrow, The Sands Of Time and The Well-Mannered War are all very good DW books, which are available in e-book format on the Beeb webpage. Other good DW books are Matrix, The Face Of The Enemy, and The Tomorrow Windows.

I just finished Tomorrow Windows not long ago. Quite good. The one I'm reading at the moment (Anachrophobia) is by the same author I believe. I'm also idly reading The Dying Days in my spare moments.

Originally Posted by MaverickZer0

Also, Digital Fortress by the same person who wrote The DaVinci Code (I can't remember the author's name.)

Dan Brown. I don't think I like his style of writing very much. He's not a bad writer, he just can't seem to manage nuance very well, let alone strong characters.

Originally Posted by richardson

Well...
the Pern seies by Anne McCaffery

I don't like her fantasy stuff so much. She 's written some okay SF though.

[Celeste]

Originally Posted by PointyHairedJedi

"WE"? Brave New World is very good though - I suspect you'll enjoy it.

WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin:

In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincs have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier and whatever alien species are to be found there will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.

One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful I-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery, or rediscovery, of inner space...and that disease the ancients called the soul.


Sounds really good to me. A classic dystopian novel according to the back of the book. I'll let you know how it is once I finish reading it.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

I read a lot of Harry Turtledove. He's been described as the Master of Alternate History. His series include the Worldwar tetralogy (the titles all include the word Balance), various Videssos series, something called Southern Victory that's up to ten novels so far, plus a few other stand-alones or nascent trilogies (like what would have happened if the Japanese had sent a landing force along with the air raid on Dec. 7, 1941).

Caveat: while the actual alternate history is interesting, Turtledove cannot write dialogue or prose. Most of his characters spend all their time stating the obvious and then telling each other they're correct (when they're not being shot at, bombed or shelled, that is). I tend to skip vast chunks of text since there's nothing happening except wooden character lack of development.

[Chancellor Valium]

I didn't think of this before, but Terry Pratchett's books are works of pure genius...

[evay]

My parents thought Canticle was the best book ever, but I wasn't that impressed with it. It's good, but no better than anything by, say, Frederic Brown.

I recommend anything by CJ Cherryh; I'm finishing up the second Foreigner trilogy right now. Mercedes Lackey continues to branch out from Valdemar, and (other than the Bedlam's Bards and SERRAted Edge books, which are only so-so) practically everything she's written is outstanding. McCaffrey's last four or five Pern books, after they found the original ship, have been kind of tired, but the original ten or so are great.

Funny you should mention Silverwing, KGM -- someone on another board suggested I give that as a gift for a friend's daughter, which I've done.

Clarke's Rama series scared the crap out of me, they were so good. Tolkien was hard but worth it. Harry Potter is a given.

This Perfect Day by Ira Levin is another dystopian classic.

[Sa'ar Chasm]

Clarke's Rama series scared the crap out of me, they were so good.

The bits he wrote were good, at least. The collaborator was atrocious. Rama II was drek, but the two after that improved slightly, at least in my opinion.

[evay]

You're right, I should specify that Rama, the first, scared the crap out of me with its quality while 2-4 were just a decent space opera. I thought 4 was really the drek of the batch.

[Zeke]

I like a lot of sf authors, but my favourite has got to be Ray Bradbury. He was one of the first, and he's still one of the best. Go to your local used bookstore and pick up one of his short story anthologies -- you won't regret it.

Other authors I like, going for ones who haven't been mentioned so far: C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, John Wyndham, Timothy Zahn, K. A. Applegate (Animorphs is the most underestimated sf series ever), Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy (the original soap opera writer), Neil Gaiman, Beverly Cleary, Jules Verne, L. Frank Baum, Donald J. Sobol (I loved Encyclopedia Brown when I was a kid), and Shakespeare, who really IS as good as he's made out to be.

[PointyHairedJedi]

Originally Posted by Zeke

Other authors I like, going for ones who haven't been mentioned so far: C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, John Wyndham, Neil Gaiman, Jules Verne

I knew there was a reason I liked you.

Have you ever read anything by Eric Frank Russell perchance? Most of his books are out of print at the moment, but I suspect you'd enjoy him immensely.

To name some names of authors that everyone should read at least once (aside from the blindlingly obvious ones like Clarke, Asimov and Herbert):
Nevil Shute
JG Ballard (particularly his short stories)
Frederick Pohl
Iain (M) Banks
Gregory Benford
Poul Anderson
John Brunner
Lindsey Davis
James Blish
Harry Harrison
Graham Greene