The Official "Books Worth Reading" Thread

Zenbane

I used to be an avid reader, but over time I've found it difficult to commit to the literature being released. I figure I just must be missing out on the good stuff. Use this thread to recommend the "best of the best" that you've encountered.

I've read all but the last "Game of Thrones" (Ice and Fire) books. However, my favorite series of all time is Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Before that, I read a ton of fantasy and horror books, but none worth really recommending. Probably my favorite Stephen King book is Needful Things.

Any other readers out there?

Techy111

Yup huge reader here. Ok for me =

Catch 22 a must read 
All of Tolkiens books, way better than the movies.
Any book by Richard Herman 
Dirk Pitt adventures by Clive Cussler
Any Vietnam book on helicopter or fast jet pilots of forward air controllers. Can't read enough of those.
And any true life aviation books, my passion, even more so than VR

snowdog

Every single Terry Pratchett book.

Everything that Isaac Asimov has written.

Everything that Stephen Donaldson has ever written.

Everything that J R R Tolkien has ever written.

Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series.

Out of all of those the Wheel Of Time books are my favourites I think. Along with the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant I like any book where the protagonist has a REAL screw loose lol

The best thing about the Thomas Covenant books is that as you read them you start to realise that Covenant displays all of your own worst traits, you in effect ARE Thomas Covenant...Which is more than a little disturbing lololol

KlodsBrik

The series: War against the Cthoor - David Gerrold .... Thats scifi on a whole other level ....

Everything H.P Lovecraft.

snowdog

And the Second Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant has my all time favourite quote in it, which you can see in my signature 

nalex66

I’m currently reading Bob Woodward’s Trump book, which is amazing and astounding. 

As far as non-fiction goes, I’ve recently gone through a Ken Follett phase. His Century trilogy (Fall of Giants, Winter of the World, Edge of Eternity) follows several American, British, Russian, and German families through WW1, WW2, and the Cold War. I’ve also read his Kingsbridge trilogy (Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, Column of Fire) which similarly spans several hundred years in the Middle Ages.

For science fiction, I’m partial to Arthur C. Clarke (particularly 2001, Childhood’s End, and Rendezvous With Rama), and I also love a book called A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, about a future civilization after a global nuclear war. 

I used to to read a lot of Stephen King, but mostly his older stuff (‘80s), and a few years ago I went through his Dark Tower series. I also loved Robert E. Howard’s Conan novels when I was younger. 

I’m also obliged to recommend Dracula, because Bram Stoker is my great great great uncle. 

snowdog

@nalex66 is a Wampire CONFIRMED 

I wish @vannagirl was a Wampire, then we could spend eternity together

Assuming that she'd give me a nibble of course!

kojack

My two favourite authors:

Hugh Cook - His Chronicles Of An Age Of Darkness (10 novels) is amazing. Starting out with typical medieval wizards and warriors joining forces on a quest (his first book was literally called "The Wizards and the Warriors"), as you get further in things change. One fascinating thing is that most of the books take place at the same time or overlap events, but from different characters points of view. Things start getting a bit meta too. Huge books, quite offensive but so awesome.

Alan Dean Foster - Over 100 novels, all great. Some are in his Humanx setting (a future where humans and thranx (giant praying mantises) have formed a joint society), others are stand alone. He's probably best known for his Spellsinger series and Pip & Flinx series. I think my favourite is To The Vanishing Point, a novel about a family road trip across Nevada that changes to a horror story after the threads of reality become entangled.

Techy111

   i had to look twice at the word following "Huge" I thought you was a porn reader LMAO 

RedRizla

I struggle to read books, by the time I get to the third page I've forget who's who in book LoL. When I do manage to read them them I like to read people's life stories, like Andy McNab's, Bravo Two Zero etc..

Zenbane

RedRizla said:

I struggle to read books, by the time I get to the third page I've forget who's who in book LoL.

This happens to me more often lately, which is actually one of the main reasons I started this thread! I used to love books, and paid attention to every detail. But now I think I just need something truly compelling to hold my attention.

Some great recommendations so far!

JeremyC85

Zenbane said:

I used to be an avid reader, but over time I've found it difficult to commit to the literature being released. I figure I just must be missing out on the good stuff. Use this thread to recommend the "best of the best" that you've encountered.

I've read all but the last "Game of Thrones" (Ice and Fire) books. However, my favorite series of all time is Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Before that, I read a ton of fantasy and horror books, but none worth really recommending. Probably my favorite Stephen King book is Needful Things.

Any other readers out there?

As a guy that has read all of the Sword of Truth (13-14 books?) and all the Game of Thrones and also LOVES fantasy / horror...

I can not recommend enough the Prince of Thorns series (3 books with an additional 3 book side-series that is ALMOST as good)

as far as the previous sugestions... I agree with almost everything snowdog said, and nalex66 hit it on the head with "A Canticle for Leibowitz" - this is a top 10 book for me 

SkScotchegg

Books???/ Books?????!!!!!!

I can't read!!! This is so unfair. 

EDIT: I've only ever read one book my entire life, and that was American Psycho! I enjoyed it! lol

Morgrum

Glenn Cooks - Black Company is a dark fantasy series about mercs trying to survive in a war between wizards.

Kojack I agree Alen dean Foster has some great novels.
I still have splinter of a minds eye which he wrote to be Star Wars episode five until the change to empire.
It reads more like fan fiction now.

Digikid1

I read a lot of books...but mostly older ones from my childhood.  Gordon Korman Books are still fantastic especially The "Bruno and Boots" series.  I read a lot of scifi books from Alan Dean Foster ( only his Star Trek books ) and the Halo series ( from the excellent Halo video games series )  I also read Star Trek Books from other authors as well.  If you love Star Trek books you should REALLY check out the "Starfleet Corps of Engineers" series.  Truly excellent.

I also proofread books from friends such as Steven Lake ( You really should check out his Earthfleet series ).

And then there is my massive Archie Digest Collection....all up to 2008.....

bigmike20vt

The Gap Cycle  (a quintology of books)

The mote in gods eye

1984

Do androids dream of electric sheep (blade runner was based off this book)

Dune

I gotta admit i do not have time to read as a pure past time any more unless on holiday, so i cheated.. the above are audio books i picked up and listend to whilst playing elite dangerous

snowdog

I'm also a big horror fan too so should have added The Rats Trilogy and The Fog to that list too. I'm surprised they haven't made films of his Rats books tbh.

Chazmeister

I'm more of a Sci-fi bod myself, so anything by:

The top two here, Hamilton and Asher, are in my opinion the best sci-fi authors around at the moment, they're at the top of their game and there's none better than these two right now.
Peter F Hamilton (big chunky daunting looking books, but real page turners with no boring bits)
Neal Asher (he just keeps getting better and better. action packed sci-fi on a grand scale)
Charles Stross
Alastair Reynolds
Ian M Banks
Richard Morgan
Paul McAuley
Greg Bear
Gregory Benford (hard sci-fi)
Larry Niven 
Scott Lynch (The Gentleman Bastard series)
Karl Schroeder (Virga series)
Ben Aaronovitch (Just started the Rivers of London books, very good so far)
China Miéville (for Perdido Street Station and The Scar. haven't got around to reading the Iron Council yet, any good? quite liked Railsea too.)

and a whole load more besides.

kojack

Techy111 said:

   i had to look twice at the word following "Huge" I thought you was a porn reader LMAO 

God damn it, should have been Hugh Cook.

Did a mod edit my post? I'm sure I didn't write that.

Sadly the books didn't sell well, so his plans to make a 60 volume epic ended after the 10th book. Don't worry, the story isn't incomplete.

He died from cancer 10 years ago.

The books have cool things like the villian in one book is the heroe of another book and you get to see their side of the story

.

Morgrum said:

Kojack I agree Allen deen Foster has some great novels.
I still have splinter of a minds eye which he wrote to be Star Wars episode five until the change to empire.
It reads more like fan fiction now.

He ghost wrote the novelisation of Star Wars, it was credited as written by George Lucas.

He also wrote novelisations of tons of scifi movies. All the Alien ones, a bunch of Star Trek, etc.

He's got around 134 novels at the moment.

I really liked the Dancing Gods series by Jack L Chalker. It was a spoof of many fantasy tropes. It's set in a world where all of the laws of reality were written in a library of rule books by wizards. Why do medicines taste bad? Because some time in the past a wizard wrote that as a rule in one of the books, forcing it to apply to the world forever. A rule can't be removed once written. It's a great series.

His Gods Inc series is great too. It's about two private eyes that get involved with parallel realities.

Soul Rider started off fascinating, but by book 2 it had turned into body transform fetish porn so I never finished the series.

If you want amazing artwork and a fascinating storyline (although the artwork is the primary focus), get Simon Stalenhag's Tales From The Loop, Things From The Flood and Electric State. SO GOOD.

http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

sford52

For historical fiction I'm reading Bernard Cornwells's "The Saxon Stories" dealing with England in the late 10th century (970-990). Danes, Norse, Irish, Scotch and Saxons. Pagans and Christians. Sailin and fightin. Something like 10 books in the series. Just a few "main" characters and the hero is in all of them.

For Sci Fi, I can't say enough good things about the "Three-Body Problem" series trilogy by Cixin Liu. It's got some pretty hard science, but there's some great imagry. Cryin for VR. It isn't light reading, but there are ideas leaking out from every corner.

With Pratchett, any of the Night Watch books. Love Sam Vimes and the whole crew.

Finally, was lucky enough to get an audio of the "Cabin Pressure" series with Benedict Cumberbatch before he was Benedict Cumberbatch. These are 1/2 hour radio audios. Very funny.

Stryker1000

All of tom Clancy`s early stuff..i think his later stuff is a bit meh. Top recommendation ATM is John Scalzi`s Old mans war. really gripping read and very original. also anything by Raymond feist.

Plus the usual stuff like playboy .razzle fiesta and  the other stuff.

but in between all of the early Viz stuff when I don't need to think

Techy111

@Kojack nobody messed with your post mate I was just saying I had to look twice ,;)

Luciferous

I created this post a while back, I found some great recommendations from forum members.

https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/29656/vr-books

Or the summary (editing it a bit to distill it down to just the ones I think really worth reading as that is the post title. Credit to the recommendations are in my previous post.)

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - (highly recommend) Fantastic Book. No need for introductions.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson's - (highly recommend) Great unique novel. A no holds barred brutal Cyber Punk future with large servings of action, VR, mystery and Katanas. Unusual writing style but you'll get used to it.(read twice)

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan (highly recommend) - Cyber Punk Noir / The Maltese Falcon style Book - fast paced and Action packed. VR in it but not main story. Real cool book.

Broken Angels - Richard Morgan Change of style for this book 2 - more of a tomb raider kind of feel. Still good and worth a read.

William Gibson sprawl trilogy
------------------------------------------
If you like cyberpunk few beat Gibson' imagined worlds. Not many books I read twice but Gibson's are pretty deep and atmospheric and I seem to need to read them twice to get the full benefit)

1. Neuromancer - (highly recommend)  (read three times, probably my favorite sci-fi book ever)
A washed-up computer hacker is hired by a mysterious employer for one last job against a powerful AI. 
2. Count Zero - Good but more like epilogue for the first one but who can't get enough of the Gibson universe
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive - Another good one better than Count Zero. More Atmospheric Cyber Punk.

Another Gibson
The Peripheral - (Recommend)  In a distant future technology has been discovered to communicate with the past. Every time they connect it creates a different alternate universe. Rich people can hire a server and play god with their own instance. (Gibson on form again)

Ascend Online Series (three books plus an offshoot to story): If you like good light adventure stories (Ready Player One kind of style) all based on a Skyrim type RPG VR game (Sword art online technology). 
'Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that's so sorely lacking in his real life. ...'

Permutation City from Greg Egan - - (highly recommend if you like deep thought provoking books) The concept of this book is mind blowing. A real universe is born from the virtual auto-verse.

Bobiverse Series - (highly recommend) A man is copied into a computer and sent into space as one of man's last hopes. These are epic books.

'Masters of Doom'
The story of John Romero and John Carmack's rise to infamy.
Not normally my kind of book but I really recommend this as it charts the rise from unknown teenagers to their eventual split and onwards until up to 2004.

For me it was incredibly interesting as I never knew the back history of the games that help define my childhood (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake). Especially as I had no idea how much I owed these guys and their team for bringing virtual worlds to my life.

John Carmack joining Oculus was like a jigsaw piece clicking into place. Another bonus is Wil Wheaton is narrating it on Audible. That guy can make stamp collecting sound interesting.

The Girl with all the gifts
Post apocalyptic Zombie romp, what more could you ask. Rated quite highly on audible and rightfully so. They made a film out of it which was dire. Only watch after you have read the book, so you can curse film industry for another pathetic attempt at drastically changing a books story line to give everybody a happy, fuzzy, warm feeling inside.

The Name of the Wind - (highly recommend) or also know as The king killer chronicles first two books in the series by Patrick Rothfuss

Like a darker version of Harry Potter, couldn't stop listening to it. Slow start but it warms up very very nicely. Plus the other good thing is you really get your monies worth, I think both both books each were 40 hours plus. It takes him 6 years to write each one which shows the attention to detail he puts in them. I think the last one is due in the next 2 years.

Great story telling and the narrator is first class Rupert Degas (who also has won awards for narration) 

cybereality

Daemon by Daniel Suarez was amazing (the sequel was good too, but not as ground-breaking as the original). Don't want to give away too much of the plot, but you should definitely check this. I listened to the audiobook, and the narration was good. May go back and read the two on Kindle, it's been years since I first listened.

Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan. Classic cyberpunk, VR related, worth checking out.

Vurt by Jeff Noon. This is a weird one, really weird, but an engaging read.

Under the Amoral Bridge by Gary A. Ballard, also VR related cyberpunk. 3 part series.

Luciferous

Tried to get Daemon and Freedom TM on Audible UK but they only have it in German for some weird reason. I keep checking every time though. 

SimonSays28

I go on spurts of reading lots, and then not reading at all for good amounts of time.

Obviously Stephen King is my favourite author - and I also love Dean Koontz and Clive Barker who fall somewhere close to King in terms of genre.

I also love adventure novels - Clive Cussler, and James Rollins are always good reads. 

I love crime novels too - John Grisham being a constant favourite, but others like Patricia Cornwell or Michael Connelly being good as well.

As far as fantasy goes - my personal favourite author is David Eddings.

I'm also a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Tom Robbins, William S. Burroughs, etc. etc.

There is also a book called Cabbagetown by Hugh Garner - it is a fantastic read, it is about Toronto during the depression era - it has stuck with me since I was a kid and read it.

I just read Robbie Robertson's Testimony which was great - although I thought the first half was stronger, he seemed to pull a few punches when it came time to talk about The Band at their peak, I am sure there are some more interesting stories he could have told. It reads like a novel more than a biography.

Luciferous

*edit put my other book recommendation in my recommendation post above.

If you have a busy life I can recommend Audible for listening to books. So much easier to listen to books whilst driving, walking the dog, making love to the wife, washing the dishes, making love to somebody elses wife. Helps fill in the boring gaps in life.

snowdog

kojack said:

Techy111 said:

   i had to look twice at the word following "Huge" I thought you was a porn reader LMAO 

God damn it, should have been Hugh Cook.

Did a mod edit my post? I'm sure I didn't write that.

Sadly the books didn't sell well, so his plans to make a 60 volume epic ended after the 10th book. Don't worry, the story isn't incomplete.

He died from cancer 10 years ago.

The books have cool things like the villian in one book is the heroe of another book and you get to see their side of the story

.

Morgrum said:

Kojack I agree Allen deen Foster has some great novels.
I still have splinter of a minds eye which he wrote to be Star Wars episode five until the change to empire.
It reads more like fan fiction now.

He ghost wrote the novelisation of Star Wars, it was credited as written by George Lucas.

He also wrote novelisations of tons of scifi movies. All the Alien ones, a bunch of Star Trek, etc.

He's got around 134 novels at the moment.

I really liked the Dancing Gods series by Jack L Chalker. It was a spoof of many fantasy tropes. It's set in a world where all of the laws of reality were written in a library of rule books by wizards. Why do medicines taste bad? Because some time in the past a wizard wrote that as a rule in one of the books, forcing it to apply to the world forever. A rule can't be removed once written. It's a great series.

His Gods Inc series is great too. It's about two private eyes that get involved with parallel realities.

Soul Rider started off fascinating, but by book 2 it had turned into body transform fetish porn so I never finished the series.

If you want amazing artwork and a fascinating storyline (although the artwork is the primary focus), get Simon Stalenhag's Tales From The Loop, Things From The Flood and Electric State. SO GOOD.

http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

Stephen Donaldson did a similar thing with his Gap novels. Every story ever written has a villain, a victim and a hero and throughout the 5 books those roles were switched around. Not as good as his Covenant novels but they are excellent.