Books to read before you die.

[ark_ader]

OK I might have dragged up a thread like this before, but lets see what you have read recently, fiction or fact.

I'll start off with my last three then troll my personal library for some more suggestions:

Battlefield Earth
Invaders Plan
Talisman & The Black House

[Generic Eric]

Canticle for Lebowitz.
Roadside Picnic.

[Le Chuck]

Talisman & The Black House

Fantastic books.

Stranger in a Strange Land is in my top three all time favs

[dkersten]

Is this recommendations others should read before they die?

Difficult for me, I don't really have a favorite of anything.

Off the top of my head, here are some standouts for me:
Lucifer's Hammer  (post apocalyptic fiction)
Sword of Shannara (Fantasy)
Battlefield Earth (sci fi)
Swan Song (horror/post-apoc fiction)
Necronomicon (straight fiction with historical fiction)

I am more into series and authors, so:
Hubbard's Mission Earth (at least up to book 8, he died after that and the rest were ghost written or at least edited after he was gone)
Goodkind's Sword of Truth series
Jordan's Wheel of Time series (also died before last 3 were out, but left behind most of the outline and notes, partial manuscript)
Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean (other stuff was good too, but those two trilogies rocked)
Brooks' Shannara, word and void series
Wood's Stone Barrington, Orchid, and Will Lee series
Baldacci's Camel Club series (and everything else he writes)
Sanford's Prey series
W.E.B. Griffin's various series, except anything done past about 2005.. he went senile and each series he added to got goofy.

I gotta stop because I could go on and on..

Oh.. and of course:
The Freezer   

[yotsuya]

Of the top of my head...

1984 by George Orwell
All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Christine by Stephen King
The Godfather by Mario Puzo

[yamatetsu]

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

pretty much everyhting that Robert Rankin does

[Drnick]

Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
Elric series -  Michael Morcock
Odd Thomas Series - Dean Koontz
Dragonlance Series - Margaret Weis & Tracey Hickman

 

[Hoopz]

Lots of good ones here but I'll definitely secondthird Yot's pick of the Godfather.  The first two movies do it justice but it's great on its own.

[BorgDog]

Lots of good reads.  While I really like a lot of authors not yet mentioned, Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, GRRM, the series I'll add is

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson (really 10 big ass books)

[wp34]

I'll second the Dark Tower.  Even the infuriating parts are great.

Does Battlefield Earth hold up?  I read it a couple times in high school and have been meaning to revisit it.  Some of the books I read in high school (Piers Anthony for example) haven't held up for me as an adult.

[Nephasth]

The Bible.

[eds1275]

There's  a book call Last of the Independents, by Sam Wiebe. It's been on the market since last august or so, and it's a detective story. Lots of nice references to Vancouver BC. Really enjoyed it.

[yotsuya]

As you can tell from my posts, my tastes run towards traditional literature (I did teach English for 9 years after all), so I appreciate all the SF and Fantasy suggestions.

[Jimbo]

My favourite series has to be the Saga of the Exiles by Julian May.

[Vigo]

As you can tell from my posts, my tastes run towards traditional literature (I did teach English for 9 years after all), so I appreciate all the SF and Fantasy suggestions.

I am a big fan of traditional literature as well. 1984 is on my list as well. Also a fan of stuff like A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, Dracula, Treasure Island, Lord or the Rings, etc.

[markc74]

Lots of the rings
any discworld book but Mort stands out
Jonathon Livingstone's Seagull

Loved American psycho but that is hard to read in parts....

[Nephasth]

The Fabric of Reality - If you like non-fiction.

[HaRuMaN]

A Clockwork Orange
Brave New World
Dune - all of em...

[Generic Eric]

Flatland/Sphereland.

The Rough Guide to the Universe by John Scalzi

Brief History of Time.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

A walk in the woods.

Also, Old Man's War.

I don't read as much as I should, with the internet and all, I end up doing a different kind of reading.

[opt2not]

My reading tastes have been mostly older sci-fi novels, though I just finished the last book to the Hunger Games 'cause I cannot wait to see the second part of the last movie.
But I just started the first book of The Foundation series by Issac Asimov, one of the most culture influential sci-fi novelist of all time. I'm only going to read the first 3 books, and not bother with the books he wrote in the 80's onward.

After that I'm going hit up Neuromancer by William Gibson for some cyberpunk goodness.

[Louis Tully]

.

[opt2not]

Oh, I also forgot that I wanna read more of the Ender's series. I already plowed through Ender's Game, Speaker of the Dead (really enjoyed this one), and half-way through Xenoxide before getting sidetracked on The Hunger Games series...  But there is Children of the Mind, and some of the other spin-off stories, as well as the prequel books I'd like to get into. Definitely a series I wanna read through before I croak. 

[Vigo]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke was pretty rockin' from what I can recall. It's been a loooooong time.

It is required reading if you are a David Bowie fan.

[danny_galaga]

I keep meaning to read the Bible, but it is so bat ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- boring! I also have the book of Mormon and the Quran to read...

[Slippyblade]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Thud (My favorite Pratchett book)
Hobbit <- Come on, how can this NOT be on the list?

[Mary_Baker]

I have a whole list of books I wish to read before I die! And it's going to be never-ending, since I keep adding to it every now and then. Here are some names which top that list:
1. Cold Comfort Farm (by Stella Gibbons): A comic novel published in 1932. It parodies the romanticized, sometimes doom-laden accounts of rural life popular at the time.
2. The Stranger (by Albert Camus): Published in 1942. A Frenchman kills an Arab friend in Algiers and accepts 'the gentle indifference of the world'.
3. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (by Anne Tyler): A 1982 novel set in Baltimore, Maryland. The story follows the lives of three siblings - Cody, Ezra and Jenny. It explores their experiences and recollections of growing up with their mother, Pearl, after the family is deserted by their father, Beck.
4. Gulliver's Travels (by Jonathan Swift): A satire on travellers' tall tales.
5. The Catcher in the Rye (by JD Salinger): A 1951 controversial novel which tells the story of an adolescent anti-hero who is expelled from a phony prep school and goes through a difficult phase.
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (by Mark Twain): A colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi river; a scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.
7. A Dance to the Music of Time (by Anthony Powell): A twelve book saga popular for its more celebrated character who wears 'the wrong kind of overcoat'.
8. A Passage to India (by E.M. Forster): Set against the backdrop of the British raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920's, the story revolves around four characters - Dr Aziz, Mr Cyril Fielding, Mrs Moore and Miss Adela Quested.

[TopJimmyCooks]

I just read battlefield earth and found there were a lot of clunkers in there.  The old "water vapor kills the aliens" over 900 pages.  It also has an extremely heavy dose of the 50's 60's Rah Americas (western civilization) gag found in lots of Sci - Fi of that era.  You know, along the lines of "leadership needed to heavy up the arsenal - we found some rusty bars of pig iron stacked in a cavern, we put a team of our best guys on it, they worked 20 hours a day for 2 months and came up with some great machine guns.  and ammo." 

Heinlein did this over and over again early on. 

[AzureKnight]

I read a lot of crappy sci-fi/sword and sorcery stuff....suggestions from me would be a few listed already

1)  Eddings: Belgariad and Mallorian
2)  Tolkien: Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
3)  Weiss and Hickman: Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends
4)  Orson Scott Card: Enders series

I'll add that list:
1)  Simon Green:  Blue Moon and Deathstalker series.  These books are pulp fiction at their finest IMO.  Action, adventure, story, over the top everything all blended with a humorous laugh at many sci-fi and fantasy tropes.

2)  Raymond Feist:  Magician series.  There are a lot of these books now, some are better than others but the first 4 Magician books and the Serpentwar Saga were reads I really enjoyed.

[Hoopz]

James Clavell's Shogun, Noble House, and Tai-Pan are great. 

[Diet_Pepsi]

I second "A Brief History of Time".

Also, I highly recommend "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia" -- an excellent intro to a piece of history that hasn't gotten much press.

[Generic Eric]

There sure is a lot of fiction here for "needing to read before you die" books.

[AzureKnight]

There sure is a lot of fiction here for "needing to read before you die" books.

What do you mean fiction?  I have it on the best authority that most of these events take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away!

[pbj]

Love the judgement considering our common interest is fantasy land children's games.....


 

[dkersten]

There sure is a lot of fiction here for "needing to read before you die" books.

I get enough reality each day, when it comes to things that I enjoy most in life, they usually involve an escape of some kind.  How would reading a good book be any different than, say, visiting some tropical paradise?  While you are there, you are exposed to the fictional side of it, the fantasy that everyone wants to experience.  The reality is the place is hot and humid and has bugs and probably a bad economy, but you don't see any of that, and you don't go so you can get involved in the native people's lives or to do what you can to improve that place.  You go for an escape from reality, just like you do when you read a book.  The difference is, the book is probably a better experience in the end because it doesn't have any of the reality that can interrupt the fantasy.

Any fantasy you have on your "bucket list" will probably never live up to what you can experience in your own mind. 

Plus, the last thing I want to do before I die is read a book about math or something equally boring.