Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
Don't read this if you are looking for something that will quickly grip you, and get you interested in reading again. No, read this if you are looking for something that is just brilliantly gut wrenching, beautiful, and an amazing story. It is the best book I know of.
On that note, Small Gods by Terry Pratchet if you want something more fun and less... hard to read.
I don't know what your thoughts on Non-fiction are, but anything by Malcolm Gladwell is just a great read.
EDIT: I could have sworn that was you... oh well.
edited 31st Jan '12 1:12:30 PM by Jimmmyman10
Go play Kentucky Route Zero. Now.I have read Mr. Pratchett's works before, but not "Small Gods" specifically. I'm passingly familiar with Les Mis(thank you Nostalgia Chick!), but havent' read it, either. On the list they go!
I'm not opposed to non-fiction at all. I'll look up Malcolm Gladwell as well.
Thank you for the leads, but alas, I work the night shift and it's nearly noon. I'm off to bed, but I shall begin hunting out titles soon!
I'm not familiar with "spanish river blvd", is it part of Omaha?
Edit:
Google points me to a library near Spanish River Blvd in Boca Rotan, FL.
Living in Omaha, NE for the past several years, I can honestly say 'no, I've never been there'. ^_^
edited 31st Jan '12 9:51:26 AM by ArcanGenth
Something by Kurt Vonnegut, maybe Slaughterhouse Five or Cat's Cradle, would always be good. The Help is also excellent as something that's light and easy to read but with serious themes.
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence DarrowTill We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. I've heard that Lewis considered it his best novel and I'm inclined to agree.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. If you can, get Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky's translation. It's a real doorstopper of a novel and it takes its sweet time for the plot to really get moving, but once it does it's a real roller coaster of paranoia, cat-and-mouse games, and genuinely interesting philosophy.
The collected fictions of Jorge Luis Borges.
Seconding Vonnegut, specifically Slaughterhouse-Five.
Gravitys Rainbow if you wanna be challenged.
no one will notice that I changed thisAnything by Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files, urban fantasy/detective series, and Codex Alera, High Fantasy in a world where Everyone Is a Super minus the protagonist), and of course anyhting by Sir Terry Pratchett. Also, try The King Killer Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss.
Likes many underrated webcomicsFlora Segunda. Definitely a series that needs more love, because it's incredibly unique, especially in its world-building, the writing is awesome, and it's one of those series that just overflows with character. It's set in a fantasy-counterpart version of California. It also involves Eldritch Abominations, sexual awakenings, time travel, punk music, and the chapter titles are all quite amusing.
Also, how about some nonfiction suggestions? One book I quite like is Candyfreak, by Steve Almond. It's about a guy who goes on a trip through the united states to visit small candy companies, talks about their histories, and the general perils of being a small candy company in an industry dominated by big guns like Hershey. It's fascinating and mouth-watering.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaOoh, I'll go add Homage To Catalonia and The Power And The Glory to the list.
EDIT: My bad, I misunderstood the OP. I thought we were supposed to add our suggestions to your Backlog directly.
...
Anyway, Homage To Catalonia by George Orwell and The Power And The Glory by Graham Greene are two of my favourite English-language books.
edited 31st Jan '12 3:14:42 PM by MidnightRambler
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...Have you ever read anything by Tolkien? If not, The Hobbit (although it is a bit short), The Silmarillion (which is just awesome), or of course The Lord of the Rings (which however is too long for some people's tastes). I've also recently read Years Of Rice And Salt and recommend it.
Anything by Tolkien and Lovecraft. For Tolkien start with The Hobbit. It's the easiest and most fun of his books to read based on the style of prose. From there you can move into The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The one is epic prose. The other reads quite like a religious text such as The Bible.
With Lovecraft I'm not sure where to point you. I suppose I would say that The Call of Cthulhu or any of the Dreamquests would be a good starting point. Celephais is my favorite of the Dreamquests. There's also At the Mountains of Madness.
I'm also very, very fond of epic poems. Start with Beowulf. It's shorter than many of the other well known epics, the Indian ones in particular. It's a very fun read as well depending on what translation you get. The Odyssey is another good one to start with.
Read Lewis Carrol. The Alice books and Sylvie and Bruno in particular.
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan ChahI'm gonna suggest The Wheel Of Time. A well-written epic guaranteed to keep you busy for quite some time. They're usually kinda thick and slightly unwieldy books, but when you get the e-reader, that won't be a problem.
Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!Alrighty, list updated.
I've read most of Tolkien, my folks started me on his work early. As for Wheel of Time, I enjoyed it for a while(I was even an active-ish member of the Wotmania site before it died), but I lost interest around Winter's Heart. Just got bored with it after 8-9 books, I guess.
Currently reading - Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Progress: Page 75 of 429
Started this one at work last night.
(Due to busy-type home stuff, breaks and lunch at work is the only time I can really read regularly.)
I have seen Miyazaki's anime adaption of it and I think that's colouring my perception a bit. The book just seems kind of... sparse, so far. The fact that Miyazaki was able to coax out and represent such a bright, vivid, real world from Jones' passages leaves me in a bit of a state of awe.
Some of the scenes in the movie are lifted straight from the book(the cooking eggs over Calcifer scene), while much is changed for narrative convenience or just created entirely from scratch(Howl rescuing Sophie from the soldiers hitting on her in the beginning).
It's a fun little fluff book, though.
edited 1st Feb '12 5:55:40 AM by ArcanGenth
I'm gonna recommend American Psycho if you want excellent satire and the Cryptonomicon for just general awesomeness. I second HP Lovecraft and Sir Terry Pratchett and Gravitys Rainbow too. Gravitys Rainbow is a potential slog if you don't click with it - but hilarious and completely engaging if you do 'get' it!
edited 1st Feb '12 3:12:05 PM by Hilhog0
Danger's over, Banana Breakfast is saved. FC: 0576 - 4632 - 1517Fablehaven by Brandon Mull,great themes,gets Darker and Edgier but not without Character Development. Especially great if you like Deadpan Snarker s and dragons.
Also the novelization of Revenge Of The Sith by Matt Stover,which really explains the movie better,has great prose,and really makes for a brilliant Tear Jerker.
Your list is already pretty diverse, so I'll just throw this one on there for even more variety. It's pretty short, straight-forward and strangely fable-like. And it introduces you to one of the great novelists of the 19th century.
edited 1st Feb '12 4:55:15 PM by 0Emmanuel
Love truth, but pardon error. - VoltaireIt's worth noting that Howl's Moving Castle (the book) is meant to be a very different thing from the movie. The movie is a straightforward fairy tale, but the original book is a parody of fairy tales, and is more of a Decon-Recon Switch dealie than the movie.
"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~MadrugadaSince 0 Emmanuel mentioned George Eliot, I'll throw in Middlemarch. It's very long, but the characterisation and prose are a joy to the brain.
Howls Moving Castle was one of my favourite books when I was a kid (though it's not the most heavy-weight novel in existence), and wasn't very impressed with the film adaptation. It looks great and sucks you in, true, but the changes to the plot didn't make a whole lot of sense (a bunch of unmotivated Heel Face Turns), the war that was barely mentioned in the book was blown out of proportion to provide an anti-war message, and I have a feeling that Miyazaki didn't know what to do with the Western fairytale tropes the novel parodied and just chucked them out.
I found the setting pretty vivid in the book, too.
edited 2nd Feb '12 1:24:37 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

I'm getting an e-reader soon and I want suggestions on books. I typically like fantasy and fluffy sci-fi, but my goal is to start reading regularly again, so any and all genres are permitted!
Any and all suggestions will go into "Arcan's Big Backlog of Books", and when I finish one title, I'll move on to another. The "ABBoB" will be located in my user profile: here.
I may discuss any book I'm currently reading in this thread. I'll try to spoiler tag when I think it necessary.
To suggest a book, just use this template and I'll add it to my list:
BOOK SUGGESTION: "Agatha H and the Airship City" by Phil & Kaja Foglio.
That's it. That should be enough for me to find it.
I look forward to reading with you all!
edited 31st Jan '12 9:00:08 AM by ArcanGenth