What is the best book you've ever read?

[myDeaconmyhand]

My wife loves Conroy. I was assigned Prince of Tides as summer reading in high school and did not enjoy it, but that could have been because it was assigned summer reading. Maybe I should give him another chance.

Preference for Conroy depends upon your enjoyment of overly flowery and lyrical description of tideland South Carolina, Catholic guilt, mental illness, and abusive fathers.

 

[ImTheCaptain]

On Seveneves

Spoiler: SPOILER

I loved it up until the final act. I got taken way out of the story to go so far into the future. Felt like it should have been a separate book! It was completely disconnected from the central narrative.

Spoiler: spoiler

yeah, im surprised there hasnt' been a follow up. The part about the Pingers especially. I was like "c'mon we get sequel IPs for everything, you're killing me here"

 

[birdman]

Did you read the whole series or just the first book?

Whole series in high school. First book last year and started on the second but it just didn’t keep my attention. I thinks it’s because there has been a lot of great and inventive sci-fi in the last couple decades and the Ramas series just doesn’t stand out for me anymore.

 

[Frosty]

Some awesome books listed here!

I’ve added a few to my list of holds at the library.

A few of my favorites, I’ll add to the list as I remember others:

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski

I was really surprised by In Cold Blood. I had read about the murders previously and since they're pretty tame compared to modern true crime I figured most of its accolades were based on essentially defining a genre. The prose, pacing, and ability to keep you enthralled despite knowing who did it basically the whole time is remarkable.

Infinite Jest also makes my list. I'm an unapologetic IJ fanboy.

Really want to read House of Leaves. It sounds like DFW wrote a horror novel on a #relevant shroom trip.

 

[Frosty]

The Plague - Camus (clear favorite for me)

Julian - Vidal

Confederacy of Dunces - Toole

The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro

Infinite Jest - DFW

The Power and the Glory - Greene

 

[LilburnDeac]

My wife loves Conroy. I was assigned Prince of Tides as summer reading in high school and did not enjoy it, but that could have been because it was assigned summer reading. Maybe I should give him another chance.

Prince of Tides is not my favorite of his. I would put Lords of Discipline as his best, followed by Great Santini, Prince of Tides, Water is Wide. His later books- Beach Music and South of Broad- aren’t at the level of the others.

My Losing Season and Death of Santini are in their own category since they are nonfiction. Both are great

 

[ConnorEl]

Les Misérables

 

[timthedeac]

Most fun I’ve ever had reading a book was reading the Mr Gum series of books to the kids before bed.

 

[mako1331]

I’m teaching Metamorphosis right now and it always reminds me how amazing Kafka is. Crazy how much my kids always live that too. That and Of Mice and Men are always their favorites

 

[IamThunderbolt]

Faves:

Fantasy - NK Jesmin’s Broken Earth Trilogy
SciFi - Project Hail Mary - Weir
Romantics - Count of Monte Cristo
American Cannon - For Whom the Bell Tolls
World - Exit West - Mohsen Hamid
Black Literature -Parable of the Sower
YA - Concrete Rose - Angie Thomas
Russian - Bros. Karamazov
Children- time quintet by L’Engle
Memoir - the ungrateful refugee - Dina Nayeri OR Beautiful country - Qian Julie Wang

 

[IamThunderbolt]

I got into some "hard sci-fi" earlier this year and read Artemis and Project Hail Mary, both by Andy Wier (who wrote the Martian), and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, and I thought all three were great. I tried another one by Stephenson called Termination Shock but I just couldn't get into it and gave it up. Crichton was great at these kinds of books as well . Anyone have any similar authors or novels they've liked? And I'm thinking about more current authors rather than Asimov or Arthur C. Clark.

Artemis fell flat to me compared to the Martian/PHM.

 

[DeacdeTejas]

Some awesome books listed here!

I’ve added a few to my list of holds at the library.

A few of my favorites, I’ll add to the list as I remember others:

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski

I’m really glad you have Nabokov on here. I’m a sucker for Russian lit, especially some of the golden age stuff from Dostoyevsky/Tolstoy through Nabokov

I’m with Juice on Redwall being my childhood series.

Lord of the Rings was my first epic sort of read and Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye were my favorite as a teen

Count of Monte Cristo was my entrance into some of the “classics”. I read and Catcher every few years for a while

Middlemarch, Infinite Jest and Gilead are probably the best I have read in my adulthood.

 

[TownieDeac]

Started a Pat Conroy audiobook last night (Beach Music). Definitely an excellent writer, writes moving prose at times.

 

[DeacdeTejas]

Faves:

Fantasy - NK Jesmin’s Broken Earth Trilogy
SciFi - Project Hail Mary - Weir
Romantics - Count of Monte Cristo
American Cannon - For Whom the Bell Tolls
World - Exit West - Mohsen Hamid
Black Literature -Parable of the Sower
YA - Concrete Rose - Angie Thomas
Russian - Bros. Karamazov
Children- time quintet by L’Engle
Memoir - the ungrateful refugee - Dina Nayeri OR Beautiful country - Qian Julie Wang

You and I have very similar taste

 

[wfudkn]

Artemis fell flat to me compared to the Martian/PHM.

That's fair. It was definitely way behind PHM for me as well. I never read the Martian and I'm a little hesitant to do so now since I've seen the movie a handful of times. Is it different enough from the movie to make it still worth reading?

 

[BlackjackMc]

The Greater Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. Fourteen science fiction novels loosely connected spanning over 100,000 years. Eight were completed when I started reading in 1974. The final book was published in 1993. I started with "Foundation" and was hooked.

 

[Demonwolverine]

The Sound and the Fury was my first favorite book -- because I read it at Wake with an amazing professor (whose name I currently cant remember), so I will stick with that

Crime and Punishment will always hold a spot in my top 10 because of the professor I read it with for my German/Slavic lit course.

For all of you Dune/Foundation/3 Body Problem people, The Expanse is my favorite sci-fi series of all time. I always pitch it as The Wire in space. Every book is at least good, and 7 of the 9 are great.

 

[Demonwolverine]

That's fair. It was definitely way behind PHM for me as well. I never read the Martian and I'm a little hesitant to do so now since I've seen the movie a handful of times. Is it different enough from the movie to make it still worth reading?

Probably not unless you love chemistry and botany. The Martian is very science forward. I enjoyed Project Hail Mary more than The Martian and definitely more than Artemis. There is also a compilation of Andy Weir short stories on Audible called The Egg and Other Stories that I thoroughly enjoyed. They're kinda like 10 minute Twilight Zone style stories that I assume he wrote while transitioning from computer programming to writer.

 

[Kory]

Don't know how I forgot Among the Thugs

 

[redwing42]

The Greater Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. Fourteen science fiction novels loosely connected spanning over 100,000 years. Eight were completed when I started reading in 1974. The final book was published in 1993. I started with "Foundation" and was hooked.

I've only read the original trilogy, but I very much enjoyed them. Is it worth getting into the expanded series?