Book recommendations

Anything by David Gemmell is without a doubt awesome and I would know because I've read all his books. Personally I think the "Jon Shannow" books are the most amazing books I've ever read.

The Saga of Darren Shan. By Darren Shan. By far.

I heard that a movie came out in America a short time ago. Was it any good?

And Evil Genius got me hooked straight away. I just started reading it *looks at watch* half an hour ago. The Space Demons series is good as well.

I've read Evil Genius. Kind of ... not happy-fun, but still very interesting.

I keep hearing of this Darren Shan series. I'll have to check it out.

Nancy Farmer's books The Sea of Trolls and The Land of the Silver Apples are great. Set around 800 AD, these books are all about the mythology of the British Isles around that time, the conflicts between the old ways and the new, with plenty of adventure and humor and great writing in general.

I read this book once.
Um.
I can't remember it.

...
...
But I think Lovely Bones is overrated, the storyline just kinda goes on and on with little plot. Great concept, and I can see why everyone enjoys it.

Oh yeah, anything by Harlan Coben, he's a great crime writer, but you really should just read one of his books. They're great and all, but they're almost identical in the plotline, he even uses the same analogies.

Dammit. I can never remember books, even ones that I enjoyed. I have this amazing reccomendation but I can't even think of the plot.
Meh. Later.

Just finished Evil Genius and I'd suggest it to anybody. But I have two criticisms:

1. The pacing. Some parts seem to drag on forever, while some parts don't seem elaborated enough.

2. It's unrealisstic. I mean, how are you able to catch a taxi in Australia? And the chances of them being able to speak English is even smaller, and even more so being white. And yet he takes it wherever he goes.

What made me laugh though was-

He just yanked open a door and threw himself into the back seat.
"Miss!" the cab driver was saying. "Miss, I'm on my lunch break - "
"Blacktown!" Cadel gasped, wildly picking a distant suburb out of his head. He knew, from his long study of the Sydney Raii Network he could catch a train to Lithgow, and from Lithgow a bus to the country - Bathurst, perhaps...

I live in that tiny suburb of Blacktown. And I've never seen a taxi there. And yes, that was crossdressing.

Now, onto the sequel.

Chronicles of Amber. Yessss. Awesome fantasy, right there. Various philosophical issues as well.

"The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Díaz

amazing book there. Read it as my outside book for an advanced lit course.

Is this bump really necessary?

Anyway, I have no idea why it took me so long, but I just finished Genius Squad and it's... nothing special. The book seemed to last too long at times, but picked up at the end.

The Road

Some people already said some of these but oh well...

Catcher in the Rye (My favorite book and something everyone should have read)
1984 (It was ok and people like to use it in essays)
The Great Gatsby (Amazingly good book)
Crime and Punishment (Essential_
Lolita (Funny, scary and amazingly well unified prose; a must read)
Catch-22 (Funniest book you'll ever read)
The Road (Sweet book)
The Illiad + The Odyssey(Don't read only one you twit. I read both and Achilles and Odysseus are so fundamental to western thought of heroes that you'll have characters for your next 30 papers.)
The Tale of Genji (Don't read it unless you like love stories)
Xenophon's Anabasis (Awesome story about some Greeks doing shit in Persia)
Moby Dick (American lit classic)
The Aeneid (A classic of western thought and possibly one of the most influential poems in all of western culture right after the Illiad + The Odyssey. Depends heavily on Homeric epics so Read I + O first to get the true gist of Virgil's heavy allusions and supple changes in the themes of the Odyssey)

Those are the one's I think everyone should have read so far in their lives. I'm an active reader so I've read quite a lot more that I could suggest, but these are enough for most of the average readers.

Ah. One of those readers. >_> You and your classics!

Mm, out of those I've only read 1984, Catch-22, and The Great Gatsby. Really enjoyed Catch-22 and mean to read it again, once I can get it back from my roommate. I've wanted to try Cormac McCarthy's stuff, but his raeg-inducing disregard for grammar makes me want to throw a book after a page. The good Lord invented quotation marks for a reason, blast it! ... Maybe a good book on tape would suit me better.

Oh u. McCarthy's style is awesome. It's like Jose Saramago's Blindness. =3 You and your grammarz.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Someone FINALLY agrees with me that McCarthy's style is shit! I had to
read The Road and No Country For Old Men in school, and I [radio edit]ing
hated The Road. I have less contempt for No Country For Old Men, but
only slightly.

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I'm reading The Day of The Jackal. You should read it, it's awesome.

Jackal! Jackal! It's a jackal! Jackal? Jackal!

Bah. Then you probably wouldn't like Blindess either. But hell that's a good book. Well, I've only read it in Spanish, but still.