Planet Skaro's Recommended Reads

[SiHart]

Hi!

What are the books that you'd recommend others to read? What are the books that are important to you, imporatnt enough that you're despearte for other people tp read them so that you can talk about them with someone else?

I'm interested to hear what other people would recommend! Recommend them here and don't forget to tell us all why you'd recommend them!

Si xx

[Paul Clement]

Right, here goes a few...

Fantasy

The Belgariad by David Eddings It's not the greatest writing you'll ever come across, but David has always been good at creating characters you want to read about and root for. There are five books in the Belgariad series, and none of them stand out as being better or worse than the others. It tends to be a good starting point for someone who is keen to start reading fantasy novels and is 'soft' enough to be a story you could read to your kids before they go to sleep.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan Alongside George R R Martin, Robert Jordan is probably the best fantasy writer around at the moment. Unlike David Eddings, RJ writes fantasy stories that are gritty and very very detailed. He is one of those authors who seem to have hundreds of ideas bubbling along at the same time, and he manages to pull it off. What this means is that he probably has more plot strands running concurrently that your usual writer would. A few of his novels in the Wheel of Time range have seemed a little bit like padding, Path of the Daggers especially, but his last novel seems to have picked up the pace again. A good thing really as there is only meant to be one book left to go.

General Fiction

Turning Thirty by Mike Gayle I was actually sitting in the waiting room of my local hospital waiting for a physiotherapy appointment when I first came across this book. I was looking at the books that the League of Friends were selling and the blurb to this one interested me immensely. The book revolves around a character called Matt Beckford. As his thirtieth birthday approaches, he starts to take stock of his life and decides that what he wants most of all is to go home and find the people he had once hung around with whilst in his early teens. The humour of the book works best because it deals with things we can either easily imagine or have had to do, such as moving back in with your parents temporarily. What Mike Gayle oes best of all though is to leave you wanting to know more once the book has been finished. You feel like you are getting a glimpse of a small part in the characters lives and they are written for so well, that you want to find out what happens to them next. He has also written another great book called 'My Legendary Gilfriend'.

Classic Fiction

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith I'm using the term classic as in Penguin Popular Classic, some are great, others make you want to have you teeth pulled out by rusty pliers sans anaesthetic. This isn't one of the latter. The book follows the life of the 'nobody', a lower middle-class nineteenth century gentleman named Charles Pooter. The book deals with the mundane and ordinary and offers up a viewpoint into the world of a slightly dull figures life. It is at times both funny and poignant, and always remains interesting.

[Andrew Curnow]

Good assessment of the Belgariad, Paul - Zel's read all Eddings' books avidly, several times over, and did get me to read the Belgariad once years ago. It's not really my cup of tea, but I did still feel 'held' enough to want to finish the five-book series to see how it ends. Certainly, if I had to re-read either this or LOTR, I'd go for the Belgariad!

One of my all-time favourite books is "The Count of Monte Cristo" - I can't lay claim to it being the greatest literature in the world, but it is more than just a sword-fighting romp (the recent Guy Pearce film was an appalling mish-mash of ideas and names, with very little similarity to the original story, and totally lacking the book's themes). It's genuinely a wide-ranging epic, and the theme of revenge/betrayal is explored tremendously well.

[Paul Clement]

I'd generally recommend reading some of the Penguin Poplar Classics, at 1 per book, they are very cheap and there are some great titles available.

A couple I would suggest reading on top of 'Diary of a Nobody' would be Stephen Crane's 'Red Badge of Courage' and James Fenimore Cooper's 'Last of the Mohicans'.

[Paul Monk]

Here's my first recommendation.

The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart.

This book will change your life. Well maybe not but it will get you thinking. And playing the dice probably.
And its a crackingly bonkers story too and keeps you suitably gripped throughout. Each chapter makes you wonder just how much more mad it can get.

[Jeff]

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

I'm currently completing my read-through of the entire series with Knife of Dreams. True, RJ says the next book is the last, but he also says he has no limit on how many pages it will be. It could end up being 2000 pages! Plus he plans on having two more books in the universe after the series takes place, plus two more prequel novels to follow New Spring. I just hope he lives long enough and in good enough health write them...

[Paul Clement]

I just hope he lives long enough and in good enough health write them...

His treatment didn't have the results he'd hoped for last time I checked his website.

[Jeff]

I'm actually a member at Dragonmount and check up on his blog there every day. I even posted a link to our site there yesterday and the Doctor Who thread in one of the forums.

While the original treatment didn't go as well as he hoped, he is taking a cancer treatment as a test patient to see how it affects amyloidosis, and I believe he's had some pretty positive results with that. So fingers crossed.

[Alex]

Here's two for now...

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
It's one of those books which is absolutely packed with ideas, and most of them are just briefly explored before it leaps forward in to another crazy, but strangely believable, and almost always enchanting, place. Gaiman's prose has never been better, and it's just a joyful read, one you'll find yourself rushing through to find out what happens in the end.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
If Dickens and Austen had somehow been spliced together in one of those transportation machines in The Fly, with a bit of Neil Gaiman too, and then decided to write a fantasy novel, this would be it! I think it's one of the best novels ever written full stop, it's absolutely enormous but, like Stardust, filled with so many ideas that lesser writers would stretch out and make just one novel from. The character's feel incredibly real, it's smart, funny and I just found it absolutely adorable. It took Clarke ten years to write, I just hope her next book will arrive sooner as I can't wait to read it!