Books

[pdbnb]

Self-explanatory - what are everyone's favourite/least favourite books/authors?

My 5/5 books:

Os Maias (classic Portuguese book, everyone who has finished high school has read it for Portuguese class. I liked it so much I read it again for leisure.)
My Sweet Orange Tree (Brazilian classic)
Sand Captains (another Brazilian classic)
Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Pride and Prejudice
The Corner (nonfiction doorstop by the creators of The Wire that's worth every damn page. Great miniseries adaptation, as well.)
Down and Out In Paris and London
A Clockwork Orange (I was seldom as disappointed as when my sister did not make it past page 2 of this book)
AC/DC: Maximum Rock'n'Roll (holy shit, what an awesome career bio!)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (not really a 5/5 any more, but as a kid, it was definitely one of my favourite books, and it's still a 5/5 for its age range)
About a Boy
First two A Song of Ice and Fire

Lord of the Flies USED to be on there too, but I re-read it a few years ago, and actually found it quite dull.

The ones that ALMOST make it, AKA 4.5/5:

Sense and Sensibility
Alex Ferguson: Managing My Life
It
The Green Mile (fantastic film, too)
Hardball: A Season in the Projects (more awesome non-fiction, a lot better than the film)
The Short-Timers AKA Full Metal Jacket: The Book
Gorillas in the Mist (the film was great, too)
Reflections of Eden: My Life With the Orangutans of Borneo (AKA Gorillas in the Mist: Orangutan Version)
Fight Club (every bit as good as the film, and the twist is even better in the book as it is set up and foreshadowed in the first-person prose throughout. I knew this, because Tyler knew this.)
Nirvana and the Seattle Sound
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Life of Pi
High Fidelity
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (can you tell I love this series?!)
All three Khaled Hosseini books I've read, though The Kite Runner comes the closest.

My favourite authors (the ones I try to read as much as possible by):

Jane Austen
Roald Dahl
Stephen King
Khaled Hosseini
Robert Asprin
Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos
Jorge Amado
Stieg Larsson
J. K. Rowling
Hunter S. Thompson (I liked Vegas LEAST out of everything I've read by him, oddly enough)

And finally, my most hated/worst books I've ever read:

CATCHER IN THE GODDAMN RYE, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!
The Book With No Name and its sequels (the author's first language is clearly not English and it's riddled with typos, clearly a vanity project - fortunately, a little-know one)
Pinocchio (a study on why and how uneven/bad pacing can ruin a story)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (wherein somebody appears to be at two opposite ends of the autism spectrum at the same time - RESEARCH!)
Beatrice and Virgil (WHY, Yann?! YOU WROTE LIFE OF PI!!)
The Last Battle (final Narnia book)
Duncton Stone (more yawn than RAGE, but I DID waste three weeks of my life (that was, like, the equivalent of three-four large books' I didn't read) plodding through 700 pages, when I knew by page 70 I didn't like it. It definitely changed my stance on DNFing a book.)
BLOODY FUCKING HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, SERIOUSLY JOAN, I STUCK WITH YOU FOR OVER A DECADE FOR *THAT*?!

Aaaanyway, what is everyone's list?

[Jerry David]

Currently reading:
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/cobblearn ... 18r8mt.pdf (you're welcome)

and "Skin" by Roald Dahl on my kindle.

Just finished Simon Rich's New Teeth

I do prefer collected short stories to full novels these days as they are easier to digest between all the other shit I have to get done.

Favourite novel of all time though is Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, others include the Discworld novels by Pratchett, HHGTTG series by Douglas Adams. Anything with a bit of humor in it is perfect for me (Flowers for Algernon is NOT humor, as a disclaimer! LOL.)

[pdbnb]

Scott, I urge you to try Robert Asprin if you haven't yet. He's along the same lines as Pratchett and Robert Rankin - vaguely supernatural, vaguely fantasy-medieval (and/or sci-fi) stuff with plenty of humour thrown in.

[Jerry David]

Cheers mate.

[pdbnb]

Start with his Myth series (Discworld-style fantasy-medieval universe) as it is better than the hard sci-fi stuff (Phule's series).

[MasterSisters]

Can I talk about manga? They're books! And I'd have a LOT to talk about, lmao.

But as far as "normal" books, I think my favourite is The HitchHicker's Guide to the Galaxy. My style of humor being similar to it helped a lot. I don't think I ever laughed as much as I did reading a book.
I also really like His Dark Materials and Stephen King's Different Seasons short collection.

I have a bunch of Stephen King books to read.

[Jerry David]

I also really like His Dark Materials and Stephen King's Different Seasons short collection.

I've got this on my kindle to read.