Best Fiction Book You've Ever Read
- Thread starter nvanprooyen
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+0.75 on The Stand. I've read the standard version twice and the extended version once. I can't give it a full +1 because like most King novels, then ending blows.
My favourite novel of all time is Shogun by James Clavell. It's period fiction set in Japan. Over 1000 pages, written as an epic, and way to easy to lose track of time while reading it. I think it was written in the '60s.
My favourite recently written novel is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.
My favourite novel of all time is Shogun by James Clavell. It's period fiction set in Japan. Over 1000 pages, written as an epic, and way to easy to lose track of time while reading it. I think it was written in the '60s.
My favourite recently written novel is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill.
I just finished reading The Stand, after having seen the made-for-tv miniseries adaptation many years ago. REALLY good book, ending is a lot better READ than seen, that's for sure.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Demian by Herman Hesse (and, for that matter, most novels in the bildungsroman theme (like Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, etc.)
Master & Commander by Patrick O'Brien
The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby & Moby Dick
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
I was an English major in college... which has served me not at all until this moment. But after shoveling down Dostoyevsky and Proust, Conrad and Joyce, I can say that I unequivocally dislike fiction- with these few exceptions. I really enjoy literary nonfiction ala James McPhee, Norman Maclean, and even Sebastian Junger.
That said I still read nonfiction at probably a 50:1 ratio to fiction. The last book I finished was Founders at Work by Paul Graham's wife.
Demian by Herman Hesse (and, for that matter, most novels in the bildungsroman theme (like Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, etc.)
Master & Commander by Patrick O'Brien
The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby & Moby Dick
Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield
I was an English major in college... which has served me not at all until this moment. But after shoveling down Dostoyevsky and Proust, Conrad and Joyce, I can say that I unequivocally dislike fiction- with these few exceptions. I really enjoy literary nonfiction ala James McPhee, Norman Maclean, and even Sebastian Junger.
That said I still read nonfiction at probably a 50:1 ratio to fiction. The last book I finished was Founders at Work by Paul Graham's wife.
I'm seeing a lot of converging opinions on here, and some of mine are included:
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
Rendevouz with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
Contact - Carl Sagan
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
The Xanth Series - Piers Anthony
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
dunno... I read way more nonfiction than fiction.
Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke
Rendevouz with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
Contact - Carl Sagan
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Ishmael - Daniel Quinn
The Xanth Series - Piers Anthony
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
dunno... I read way more nonfiction than fiction.
Really? really?
I read it twice and fuck, is that a pointless book.
Re-read it because I thought I missed something because people are going crazy over it...
I don't get it.
::emp::
I was a creative writing major and I read nothing but fiction for essentially my entire life, until the past 4 years or so. Nonfiction/business books bore me to fucking tears. I've lived in boxy apartments since I was 19 reading fiction and writing in chapbooks and shit. In fact, every day I consider giving up the monies chase and becoming a lit professor.
If you're reading it for plot or narrative it's a terrible book. But as an enquiry into the value of work and understanding ala Shopclass as Soulcraft (a recent nonfiction book), I enjoyed it because the juxtaposition between the narrator's experience of the ride (zen-like, taking whatever comes as it comes) vs Sutherland's (constantly wondering if something is going to break, anxiety around not understanding what exactly is at play, inability to really be in the moment on his ride) reminds me, personally, of the person I want to be and the person I often am.
You may be the only person on this forum who'd be interested to know I used to live in Richard Brautigan's old apartment. Not the place he killed himself, mind you, but it never left the back of my mind that he had.
Seriously, I understand where you are coming from. I really enjoy the process of writing, not so much the application of literary analyses to dead men's works. If I could trade lives, I'd take Sebastian Junger's in a heart beat.
Finished this last night:
Computer Science + Post-Apoc + Clancy Thriller + World of Warcraft = Daemon
Not a very realistic book... but really touches on some of the problems of a 20th century government in a 21st century world.
Plus it is just damn fun to read.
Computer Science + Post-Apoc + Clancy Thriller + World of Warcraft = Daemon
Not a very realistic book... but really touches on some of the problems of a 20th century government in a 21st century world.
Plus it is just damn fun to read.
Yet another vote for Ender's Game and Starship Troopers.
Snowcrash is good, but HeadCrash by Bruce Bethke is way more fun. It does a great job mocking the whole cyberpunk genre.
Snowcrash is good, but HeadCrash by Bruce Bethke is way more fun. It does a great job mocking the whole cyberpunk genre.
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I read primarily for information, but one of the few fiction books I've read in the past couple of years is this one, and it's my favorite so far.
