Favorite Books You Like to Recommend to People And What Make Them Favorites

[BAYLOR]

Which books do you like to recommend to people and why do you like to recommend them as much as you do? And what makes think others would enjoy the books you recommend and like them as much as you do?

What in you opinion makes these books of your stand out?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Oooh, let me think.

Someone just starting on sci fi/fantasy, I'd want to go for something accessible and give a flavour of the genre. For sci fi I'd go for Chris Beckett's Dark Eden because it's just beautifully written and easy to get into the characters. For fantasy, Gaiman's Ocean At the End of the Lane, because it's short and wonderful, and Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series because it's fairly mainstream.

Anyone who likes a nice romance in their books, I'd reccommend the Time Traveler's Wife and a trailer full of tissues - it's written well, the characters are fully fleshed, it's a wonderful journey.

Anyone who wants to see why I love space opera I'd recommend Vorkosigan but only if they already tolerate the genre.

For the book I can never forget, I'd hand Captain Corelli's Mandolin to them and defy them not to find one of the stories to their taste.

And a few others - To kill a mockingbird, Wuthering Heights and The Great gatsby, and Gine with the Wind - just because they're all original, and life-enriching if you love them.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill - it captivated me in my teens and still do. From a writerly point of view it is a masterclass in doing everything we are not supposed but somehow still writing a powerful book. The characters should be 2D but somehow they are not. It begins with engaging, intriguing infodump full of backstory, and there are legions of -ly adverbs sometimes upto 10 a page. I don't care I love it and have read it 100s of times, each time it is just as engaging as the first.

The new one might well be War Horse by Michael Morpurgo.

 

[Mouse]

I always recommend books which have made me laugh. I don't really see the point in recommending something like, for example, A Song of Ice and Fire because it's something most people would've (should've) heard of if they're interested in fantasy anyway, and I'm not really interested in recommending something which is just a load of blood and death.

So, lately I've been recommending Glitterland to anybody who'll listen because it's hilarious, and for fantasy fans I always recommend Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (along with The Ocean at the End of the Lane lately) because that also made me laugh out loud.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Star Rover by Jack London . I wish more people knew about this wonderful book. It's about man named Darrel Standing, a strait jacketed death row inmate who discovers he can astral project himself into his past lives at will. Epic stuff.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The Space Merchants by Frederick Pohl

Very prophetic about what our society has become.

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Raises the issue of who owns knowledge. Why don't we have a National Recommended Reading List? How badly do how many kids need school? How many could learn a lot on their own if they were just told the right books. But now it is a matter of the right software.

I wish someone had told me about this in high school:

The Tyranny of Words (1938) by Stuart Chase
http://www.anxietyculture.com/tyranny.htm
http://archive.org/details/tyrannyofwords00chas

psik

 

[Brian G Turner]

I love Colleen McCollough's Masters of Rome series - not least because I love reading about Ancient Rome in the first place.

The story is full of rich detail, and the fact she has done a lot of serious historical research into the period shows. Sometimes readers may find it a little too rich at times - but if you can get past that, you discover the best part of the books: the characters.

Simply put, she has created live, believable characters from the historical record. Even better, none are archetypes or cliches, but complex and surprising. Her characterisation of Sulla and Pompey are especially memorable for their extremes - truly there is no equivalent to Sulla in fiction. Although Caesar features in all of the books, his character feels unduly forced to become perfect, with excuses provided for foibles he was known for.

And that's what's so great about her series - the combination of historical detail and magnificant characters bring the entire period of 80 years covered to life like nothing else I've read.

However, I concede that I started these for my love of Roman history, and the first book I found a little thick and rich and skipped some of it - thinking some sections were not too important, only discover later she was setting foundations for what would happen later.

Truly, I consider Masters of Rome the greatest fantasy series out there. While some might object that historical fiction is different to fantasy, you have to appreciate the lengths a good writer must go to in order to make a period feel alive - because you cannot make dead people live from words in a text book without applying a lot of fantasy.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I have got to get around to reading that Masters of Rome series -- I love Stephen Saylor's Roma sub Rosa series, and I liked another Rome series I read last year but can't recall the author at the moment. It should be right up my alley!

The books that I force upon people regularly are Richard Bach's Illusions, Connie Willis' Bellwether, David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries, and Douglas Adams. There are some others that I push, depending on the person.

 

[Vince W]

It depends whose asking. If they're science fiction fans already I always recommend Dune (my favourite book), but also books like Foundation, Gateway, Neuromancer, and now Ready Player One. These books cover a range of themes and topics.

If they're new to science fiction I would recommend Heinlein juveniles like Space Cadet and Starman Jones, or Asimov's Lucky Starr books. These are simple books and are easily accessible to most readers.

 

[Michael Colton]

It is very dependent upon the person asking. If I have a feeling they would enjoy the themes and associated subgenre, I will recommend Neuromancer. But for people I do not know as well, I rarely suggest it. Similarly with Anne Rice - I need to have a pretty decent impression of the person's tastes in order to recommend her. For more general recommendations to people I know little about, it is usually Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is not often I meet someone who is unable to appreciate his humor.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. I agree with MC, Neuromancer.
Foundation as well. Wow, Salem's Lot is a great read. And I would recommend DC's Kingdom Come graphic novel/comic books, or the Planetary comic books to anyone interested in learning about comics...they really can be powerful works of art. And of course, there are many more I could recommend!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is not often I meet someone who is unable to appreciate his humor.

I need to move to where you are. Much as I like to recommend Adams, it's not often I meet someone who IS able to appreciate his humor. That's one reason I hang out here. With the sane people.

 

[Michael Colton]

I need to move to where you are. Much as I like to recommend Adams, it's not often I meet someone who IS able to appreciate his humor. That's one reason I hang out here. With the sane people.

Moving to where I am would be a terrible proposition. Moving to where I am from, on the other hand, would be lovely. Where I currently live I do not recommend anything to anyone because nobody reads.

 

[J-Sun]

The books that I force upon people regularly are Richard Bach's Illusions

A lot of cool books have been mentioned on this thread but that's one I don't see recommended often. I read the much more famous JLS first and it was neat but, though I don't have a copy at the moment, I read Illusions a zillion times long ago. "You are quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?" - "I quote truth wherever I find it." The vampire parable illustrating the Platinum rule, so to speak. And da plane! Cool book. Very powerful towards the end, too. I read a later Bach or two and lost my fascination with Bach but I still think highly of that book.

As far as the topic and I go, I tend to try to be reader-specific and try to "hit the spot" though I sometimes will recommend books that might be on the edge and stretch boundaries, But I don't try to "convert" folks to things that I think they would be closed to.

So I'm not sure there are "go to" books that I recommend a lot. I do know that, if you can stand hard SF at all, I recommend Greg Egan's Diaspora a lot because it's just really dense and vivid and imaginative but rigorous and just pushes all my hard SF buttons. Yet it's also fairly stylish - not in a way that would put off many hard SF fans, but might appeal to many who aren't. But if you're just purely allergic to hard SF then run screaming. He's very uncompromising. About the only Egan novel I know of that a non-hard-SF fan might enjoy is Teranesia. That is hard SF but done in a way that I think would be palatable to others - Egan doesn't generally skimp on characters or naturalist descriptions or the soft sciences even in the hardest stuff, but Teranesia is much more of that than the other.

And, wherever I can, I recommend whatever Asimov is most applicable because I'm just a nut.

And the most applicable stuff from Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore and others who are unjustly neglected or, say, Norman Spinrad who is underrated. And I always recommend short fiction at any opportunity because I love it and it's such a small component of things these days. Like Egan's Axiomatic, and Asimov's The Bicentennial Man and The Best of's of Kuttner and Moore, and Spinrad's The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde.

 

[BAYLOR]

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane the Mystic Swordsman series . The main character Kane is immortal and Antihero. This is by far one of the best dark Fantasy series ive ever read. There are 5 books in all. Ive recommend this series to lost of people.

1. Bloodstone
2. Darkness Weaves
3. Dark Crusade
4. Death Angels Shadow
5. NightWinds

 

[TheDustyZebra]

A lot of cool books have been mentioned on this thread but that's one I don't see recommended often. I read the much more famous JLS first and it was neat but, though I don't have a copy at the moment, I read Illusions a zillion times long ago. "You are quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?" - "I quote truth wherever I find it." The vampire parable illustrating the Platinum rule, so to speak. And da plane! Cool book. Very powerful towards the end, too. I read a later Bach or two and lost my fascination with Bach but I still think highly of that book.

It's one that I always buy at yard sales so I'll have spare copies to give away.

I forgot Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, too, but I am slightly ashamed to keep recommending it to people when I have never actually made it to the second half of the book myself. But the first half is great. Well, until it bogs down in the middle.

 

[Bick]

I don't recommended many books tbh. I don't think I've ever pressed a SFF book on anyone since school (outside of these boards), and that was 30 years ago. No one I know reads SF, and I kinda feel like, if you are not into it I'm probably not going to get you reading it, and I'm fine with that. I do recommend non-genre or non-fiction books now and then. In recent years, I've pushed these books:
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
Jared Diamond - Collapse
also works by Balzac, Magnus Mills and A.B. Guthrie Jr

 

[Mangara]

I would recommend John Wyndham as a good gateway to SF. His stories are concise yet full of depth and soul. Some of it is slightly of it's time, but that all adds to the charm for me!

 

[BAYLOR]

War and Peace by Tolstoy. It took me about a month to read it . A truly magnificent read. I love to recommend this one.

 

[Bick]

War and Peace by Tolstoy. It took me about a month to read it . A truly magnificent read. I love to recommend this one.

I would too, I agree with your sentiments. However, if you suggest to someone that they read War and Peace, I always wonder if they'll think you're just being a smartarse. And its too big a reading commitment to be responsibility for! What if they read the whole thing and decide they wasted a month of their life on the basis of your recommendation. No I can't do it.