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Suggest me a good book to read

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Ape Gone Insane
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I totally missed out on the film thread. For some reason I thought today was the deadline and I took too long to pick three films :emo:

Anyway:

How I Live Now (Meg Rosoff) - Young adult fiction
Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) - Fiction
My Cousin Rachel (Daphne DuMaurier) - Fiction
Notes on a Scandal (Zoe Heller) - Fiction
Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) - Fiction - maybe classic?
The Mortal Engines Quartet (Philip Reeve) - Young adult fiction/Fantasy
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D Salinger) - Classic fiction
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith) - Fiction
Brooklyn (Colm Toibin) - Fiction
The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon) - Fiction
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie) - Detective/Spy
The Perks of Being a Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky (general)
The Memory Keeper's Daughter- Kim Edwards (general)
Women in Love- D H Lawrence (classics)
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte (classics)
Emma- Jane Austen (classics)
It- Stephen King (horror)
Duma Key- Stephen King (horror)
The Magic Cottage- James Herbert (horror)
Goodnight Mr Tom- Michelle Magoria (war)
The Woods- Harlan Coben (thriller)
Reply 22
How has no one mentioned Hemingway yet? :erm:

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway) - Classics
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) - Classics
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey) - Classics? Otherwise fiction.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson) - uh, classic? or fiction?
Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis) - Graphic Novel
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller) - Graphic Novel
Insomnia - Stephen King (Horror)
Well, these aren't on the list, so:

The Great Gatsby (Classics) - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fiesta, Sun Also Rises (Travel) - Ernest Hemingway
The Leopard (Historical Fiction) - Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa
Silk (Romance) - Alessandro Baricco
Invisible Cities (General Fiction) - Italo Calvino
The Prince (Philosophy/Politics) - Niccolò Machiavelli
:facepalm2:
Original post by Ape Gone Insane

Original post by Ape Gone Insane
?

:holmes:


This was more a comment on the books that have so far been recommended and the mis-categorising by those submitting than you as the person who is putting them up. However, there are some missing and/or incorrectly labelled genres.

On the whole, I think these threads are pretty silly since everyone has such different tastes on literature. Perhaps allowing people just one or two nominations would have ensured that the quality of the list is maintained to a high level. Some of those that have been suggested are terrible, from both a personal and a literary perspective.
Reply 27
Wtf? Where's Harry Potter?!

Thank you for this though :biggrin:
Reply 28
They aren't on the list but I have to reccomend 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy and 'The Book Thief' by Marcus Zuzac :smile:
Original post by Ape Gone Insane

Original post by Ape Gone Insane
Ah, hm what genres?

Well, I'm confused by your "Young Adult" 'genre'. Is this supposed to be stuff aimed at Young Adults? If so then you're missing what I would call "Coming of Age" fiction. You also don't have "Contemporary Fiction" to run alongside "Classics" and "General Fiction" (since general fiction seems to contain mostly older stuff that is not far from classic status). You're also missing a "Post-Colonial" section, or at least one for writers from other parts of the world that write in English (since their topics are not always post-colonial), especially when their work is set in their country of origin. I'd also have thought Dystopian fiction was a sub-category of Fantasy, and War fiction should be a sub-category of Historical Fiction, for ease of classifications (since many in Historical should be in War). Also, Spy-Suspense isn't really a genre of its own, it should be with Crime/Thriller (not to mention that Crime and Punishment would be categorised by its Classic status before anything else).
(edited 13 years ago)
Perhaps "Authors from around the world"? idk. And I'd keep the Young Adult one since it's a particular age group you're catering for but maybe have Coming of Age as a sub-category of Contemporary Fiction. I cba to read the list to point out mistakes though.
Reply 31
Original post by Ape Gone Insane
Summoning experts to help fill out the Science Fiction and High Fantasy genre sections of the list. :teeth:

If you guys have the time :smile: :

a) Check if the book is on the list (CTRL-F) .
b) Use the formatting: Title or series (Author) - Genre


Mistborn: The Final Empire // Mistborn Trilogy (Brandon Sanderson) - High Fantasy
Elantris (Brandon Sanderson) - High Fantasy
Circle of Magic Series (Tamora Pierce) - High Fantasy
Warbreaker (Brandon Sanderson) - High Fantasy
The Way of Kings // The Stormlight Archives (Brandon Sanderson) - High Fantasy
The Wind Singer // The Wind on Fire Trilogy (William Nicholson) - High Fantasy

Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke) - Science Fiction
The Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey) - Science Fiction
Xeelee Sequence (Stephen Baxter) - Science Fiction
Galactic Center Saga (Gregory Benford) - Science Fiction
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) - Science Fiction
Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson) - Hard Science Fiction
Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Science Fiction
Hex Trilogy (Rhiannon Lassitter) - (Early Teens) Science Fiction

How's that to be getting along with?
Kane and Abel- Jefferey Archer- sort of historical fiction
The northern lights series- phillip pullman- fantasy
Noughts and crosses- malorie blackman
Great expectations- Charles dickens
Mortal Engines series- Phillip reeve
The hobbit- JRR Tolkein
Reply 33
The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell) - non-fiction > mythology
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Sir James Frazer) - non-ficition > mythology/religion
The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) - fiction > adventure/classic
Such a shame that this list is only for fiction :frown: A lot of my favourite books are travel literature, history, mythology, anthropology etc., which can't be included :frown:

I'll only mention fiction which I don't think have been mentioned already;

- The Harp in the South (Ruth Park) - General
- The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas) - Classic/ Adventure
- McSorley's Wonderful Saloon (Joseph Mitchell) - General
Original post by Ape Gone Insane
Yeah, sorry about that. :frown:

It had Non-Fiction originally but the list and OP would have become too convoluted as it grew bigger so I omitted them entirely.


Are you going to be adding the fiction I mentioned to the list?
The Harry Potter series. :yes:
Original post by Ape Gone Insane
Already added.


Yay, thanks! Though I don't reckon very many people will have heard of two of them... out of print I think, though I'm sure they'll be on Amazon and Abebooks. I think they're brilliant though :biggrin:
(edited 13 years ago)
The Chronicles of Narnia. :yes:
Original post by Ape Gone Insane

Ha, that's what I am hoping this will turn into. A collection of good (or books that were enjoyed) that people may not have heard of. :smile:


Oh, I was thinking of starting a thread asking people to name the best books they've read that they think are quite obscure but deserve to be better known - but with non fiction as well. I imagined people recommending books that they found in secondhand bookshops that are now probably out of print, for example, or just gems undiscovered by the majority, etc. There's loads of books I'd recommend that I don't think the majority have heard of.

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