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Gota wrote:So how do you release a book under a different name but make sure people know its actually you..

Biographies, these events where the writes read chapters from their books etc. Later versions of the book sometimes show the real name.
For S. King I knew he was Bachmann because he wrote about it in the introduction of same book.

i have walls filled with books

Just wondering, do you people actually buy books? I usually just go to the libary, much cheaper.
Sometimes it can be annoying if you want a specific book and it is lend by someone or they do not have it at all but you do not have to wait for the shipping to arrive which is a plus.

Ringworld sounds interessting from looking at wikipedia.

the ringworld series is pretty cool... aliens, ancient civilizations, adventures... over the course of the books they keep discovering more and more about the ringworld, so it keeps you interested.

in the foreword of the second novel, the author addresses all of the nerds who wrote in about the design of the ringworld about "oh physics wouldnt allow the ringworld to exist like that because of x" and includes those elements in the story (to what i think was a very positive end) so pretty much he got trolled and had to make a version 1.1, and it was good.

i purchase as many books as i can; i rarely buy from amazon unless i have a specific title in mind; but about once a month i take a trip downtown and skim through a few used book shops. i dont really care if someones snot and crumbs are all over my book, because it would be like that from the library anyways, only worse. stephen kings for 50 cents is the right price for me.

so yeah... i guess i have four mostly full head high shelves of books; one of which is loaded with books that
a) i was given as a gift and they sucked
b) things i REALLY liked when i was a kid (does anyone remember "steve jackson and ian livingstone present?" choose your own adventure but you have to roll dice like D&D? what a fail)
c) art books which you technically dont read; skim through once and keep them there to impress art chicks
d) obsolete programming and game books like "tips of the doom gurus", "cheats and codes for super nintendo" and "using ms dos 5"

OMG DAVINCE CODE, HOW COULD I EVA FORGET IT. SHIT WAS SO CASH FOR THE AUTHOR!

Anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Hesse, and sprinkle a little Hemingway.

I've mainly been reading Biology field guides and about new findings in science lately, but here I have a few novels to recommend

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles are much better than sparkling, gay looking "Twilight" vampires even if Louie in "Interview With the Vampire" always whines. Some of the title are:

"Interview With the Vampire"
"The Tale of the Body Thief"
"The Vampire Lestat"
"The Vampire Armand"
"The Queen of the Damned"
"Memnoch the Devil"

An interesting, supernatural short story that is fun to read is:
"Calling You" by Otsu-Ichi

Isabel Allende is a great author, so I recommend any of her novels.

Other interesting novels include:
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
"Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Caroll
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
"Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Caroll
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

Agreed

Catch-22 is pretty funny. It's considered a ~modern classic~ sometimes and it's very readable and it's one of my favourite books.

also art books (usually) rule sorry

i know this is sort of a nerd-sacrileg, but asimov, putting his incredible ideas and stories aside- is only a mediocre writer. He rests in the SciFi-Pantheon for doing important first steps, but not for his style of writing.

Now those of you who havent thought the same in the backyard of there minds, throw the first stone. Ouch!

Funny but i have to agree with Picasso. Getting myself into reading Asimov was always much more difficult (even though the books contained great ideas) to get into than for example reading Philip K. Dick's or Frank Herbert's works.

Gota wrote:So how do you release a book under a different name but make sure people know its actually you..

You reveal it after the fact.

* Alastair Reynolds - Revelation Space (+other books from that series)
* Robert Forward - Dragon's Egg

And out of already recommended i can re-recommend:
* Hyperion/Endymion
* 1984
* Diamond age
* Heinlein books

Didn't like Dune (particulary Children of dune are boring) or Foundation series much. But some Assimov short stories are great.

I also recommend:

* Neal Asher (Skinner etc, polity series).
* Arthur C. Clarke - Childhoods end (other novels 2001 etc. are also great but it seems to me that they mostly lack proper characters). And of course short stories are full of neat ideas.


Books I digested in past weeks include:
* Darwinia - ok
* Mika Waltari - Egyptian Sinuhet - good
* Dan Simmons - Illium - good - if you replace word "quantum" with "magic" in all text
* Dan Simmons - Olympos - meh so far, still reading.


Im hearing lots of recommendations for Sergej Lukjanenko books (Nightwatch etc). But they are still in my input queue.

Panda wrote:"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov
"Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Caroll
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

good set, First Dune book is great for anyone (I read the lot of them including about half of the "approved by the estate of the author" ones his son wrote... but I'm nuts)
I'd definitely recommend pretty much any of Asimov's short story collections... and I personally liked the entire caves of steel, empire through foundation series... I even cried at the end of Forward the Foundation... I even liked the "Approved by the estate of the author" robot city/robots in time novels... but again, I'm nuts.
Never gotten around to the Alice novels, though I have been meaning to.
The "A Wrinkle in Time" series is awesome... though admittedly I've only finished a few of them. "Many Waters" and "Arm of the Starfish" are particularly good too.

art books are all well and good... but at the same time, not normally something you can just sit down with and be entertained by for hours

i liked those anne rice books, and i liked the dan simmons books licho mentioned as well.

If you're into fantasy, grab the cleric quintet. Iirc it's nearly 2000 pages and full of awesome.

Some other goods ones are "Flight of the Intruder" and "The Intruders" by Stephen Coonts. Both of these are pretty old by now so you can prolly pick them up for a buck or two each.

@ KaiserJ

Despite it's popularity, I would argue that Ringworld isn't Niven's best. The sequel is good, but the first book really shows it's age. My personal favourite Niven book is Protector. In general, he's best in his short stories - but those are fantastic. N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind, I read until the pages were dog-eared, but really any Niven short-story book will be a very fun little read.

Either way, here's my list of must have geek books:

Watchmen - Alan Moore (one of the most intelligent comics ever made - the movie tried really hard but was marred by terrible acting and a need to be an over-the-top action film).

Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson (this, on the other hand, really is an over-the-top action story, but augmented by wonderful narration and a hilariously cynical setting).

David Brin - Startide Rising (a spaceship crewed by dolphins. What's not to like?)

Gaiman and Pratchett - Good Omens, The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - imho, this is both Gaiman and Pratchett's best novel - I hope they work together again before Alzheimer's scrapes away the rest of Pratchett's mind.

The Mote in God's Eye - Niven and Pournelle - a nice, old-fashioned space-travelling First Contact story. Pournelle keeps his nasty politics to a minimum, it's mostly his military obsession on show here. The sequel is good too.

The Forever War - by Joe Haldeman. Where Starship Troopers is Heinlein's love-letter to his military life, The Forever War is Haldeman's counter-argument about the Vietnam War. A very good book - only marred by Haldeman's apparent homophobia.

Also, obviously, Ender's Game. It's not Shakespeare - basically a depressed gamer-geek's version of Harry Potter, but it's a fun, light book. Avoid the sequels.

@ Licho

Hyperion starts out being the best series I ever read, and by the final volume is merely decent. Personally, I'd recommend sticking to the first two books. The biggest problem I have with Simmons is that he doesn't seem to plan ahead - each novel has a half-dozen retcons in them.

Since we are talking about science fiction, I wonder why no one mentioned Stanislaw Lem yet. In his short stories (Star Diaries), he writes pretty bland and without any style at all - but he manages to develop and follow through some clear and (mildly) interesting thoughts, often starting only from very simple settings.

So, I guess you could say he is the polar opposite to Douglas Adams.



My mini review of "Der Bildverlust" from Peter Handke, 2002, which I posted on a shitty German imageboard a while ago. English title "Crossing the Sierra de Gredos". But makes only sense to read in German, since it works strongly on a "language-level":

Very emotional, typical Peter Handke. While there is a story, this book is mainly about the emotional state of the female, middle aged protagonist, which gets told by an endless amount of "filler" side stories.

Actually I don't like this kind of literature, but what fascinates me is the setting of a near future, which only gets to the reader via the strange writing style typical for that time (elementary rules of grammar are often completely ignored). Introspection and self-reflection seem to be the norm of the society.

If you want to read Stanislaw Lem, I strongly suggest the more challenging novels, like Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and Eden. The Pirx the Pilot tales are occasionally good, but mainly meh, and the robot stories are clever, but not something you'll want to read more than once, imo.

Ive mostly been a junkie for Sci-Fi, espescially during highschool when i first started reading as it was forced then. Then it became a habit, then it became an addiction and eventually out of 7-8 classes i had per day i only did school stuff in one and rest i read from the school's library. Everything but my english suffered in school.

Anyway even shitty Sci-Fi is interesting, they either have at least a few good ideas or they are just a bullshit fantasy novel with laser swords instead of long swords while still keeping you entertained.

One of the latest books ive read is not Sci-Fi though, it is actually just a funny novel:

"Touch Wood -
Confessions of an accidental porn director" by anonymous.

Took a few pages to get into but was as hilarious as it's name. Book says anonymous but i haven't googled it so probably an author can be found.

Panda wrote:"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle

Ooh... forgot about this one. Most of her stuff is pretty good. She has this whole series that aren't exactly sequels, they're more like parts the universe. All the characters are related and stuff, but the books are about entirely different themes and ideas. For example, the books involving Meg (main character of AWIT) are more magical/sci-fi than others, who are more realistic. Interesting stuff.

Gertkane wrote:Anyway even shitty Sci-Fi is interesting, they either have at least a few good ideas or they are just a bullshit fantasy novel with laser swords instead of long swords while still keeping you entertained.

But Good Books are even better.