Make lists of books here. The only rules (there are not rules) is that the list has to have five books. It would be nice if you said why the books were on the list. Here's my list of books that have been important to me. This doesn't necessarily mean they are good books (although some of them are). These are books that did something to me. 1. Red Planet by Robert Heinlein. The first of his juveniles and definitely kind of problematic. But it's a well-constructed fun story and it's important to me be cause it's the first SF book I can remember reading. 2. The Church by Hans Küng Hans is the guy in my avatar, although I added the rainbow specs. I find his theology absolutely fascinating and actually useful. This book is his meditation on the Second Vatican Council and gives almost an alternate history of what could have been. A theology I can live with. 3. The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin This is probably my favorite book and I re-read it at least once a year. "To be whole is to be part. True journey is return." If you take nothing from this list, go read The Dispossessed 4. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck Recommended by my grandparents--I had cool grandparents. The story of poor people in Monterrey California. Exquisite character studies and funny as hell. Taught me to love Steinbeck's style. 5. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman Maybe kind of an oddball pick. What I love about the Sandman is that the worldbuilding feels effortless. No maps, no appendices, just story. And it feels like the whole effort was so a few exquisite stories could be told. "The Sound of Her Wings," "Three Septembers and a January," and "Facade" are just little jewels.
Cool thread! Here's some books that have stuck with me over the years: The Devil and Tom Walker and Other Short Stories by Washington Irving I read this at a very young age and it was basically my first introduction to a story set in traditional fairytale format that didnt have a happy ending or moral to go along with it. It was a story of greed, abuse, revenge, and pettiness and little me absolutely LOVED it. Finally a story that was so very human, nothing was black and white or cut and dry. it was just a dude trying to live his life wealthily by screwing everyone else and ended up getting screwed himself in the end by old scratch no matter how many precautions he took. The Hollow Needle by Maurice Leblanc The third book in a series following the excapades of one arsène lupin, gentleman thief. Not necessarily my favorite of the series but was my first, and if you've ever thought to yourself "hm, i like sherlock holmes but what if he was a french master criminal instead of a detective?" Then the hollow needle and all the others in the series are definitely for you. Its kinda difficult to find in english though -_- i had to listen to a fanmade audiobook version when i first came across it. Might be available in text on project gutenberg, thats where i found the audio version. The Mystery of the Screaming Clock by Robert Arthur jr Part of a series of juvenile detective stories featuring three young boys and also alfred hitchcock was there sometimes to give them mysteries, the mystery of the screaming clock was a huge favorite of mine as a youngling. Most of The Three Investigators books were awesome to me and a lot easier to parse than your nancy drews and hardy boys for some reason. The screaming clock one was my favorite though because the image of a digital clock that suddenly starts screaming in a womans voice progressively higher and louder until it was unbearably loud was terrifying to me at the time. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson I had a copy of this that had cool pirate and ship facts every ten pages or so, and it was the Coolest. Also the overall plot of a kid going on an adventure with his brand new father figure, and then said father figure turning out to be a murderous, manipulative son of a gun that he had to overcome to survive was super relatable to me as a kid in a similar situation. I cant remember the name of the last book but it was super cool It was about like household science stuff, like bacteria and how soundwaves work and why your house shifts at night and things like that, and was a big part of me getting into science as a concept
I loved the Three Invesigators. I wanted a clubhouse made out of a motorhome hidden in a junkyard so bad!
"Anathem" by Neal Stephenson While it's certainly not uncommon for science fiction heroes to be some form of academic, I rarely see it portrayed in a way that I recognize from my own life, the combination of boundless curiosity and accidental myopia and the awkwardness when talking to non-academics that stems not from rudeness or inattention but from differing conventions. Also, in complete contrast to Rig's description of Sandman, while there is a lot of worldbuilding in the main text, there are also footnotes and inserts, as if the author hasn't quite realized that he isn't writing a paper for a journal. And it fits, because it would be in character for the narrator to not have written anything that isn't a research or expository paper. "Clockwork Rocket" by Greg Egan Even more so than Anathem, the Orthogonal series is a demonstration of real world-building audacity. The world that it is set in is like nothing I've seen before and probably won't ever see again, because while many sci-fi authors are willing to break the rules of known physics to make their stories work, Egan changes the rules of physics for the Orthogonal series, and then learns along with us what his world is like. Probably not for those who aren't willing to listen to a physicist gush about her area of study but it's a fun ride if you are, and I do like how the tiny but significant change that Egan made to the world's physics is much more than just a plot device. "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter Something about truth, beauty, symmetry, recursion, reference, pattern, allusion, something about what it means to mean something. Hofstadter does his best to think about thoughts and how to communicate said thoughts about thoughts about thoughts about... I think most of my interest in recursion (and hence about 85% of my sense of humor) probably stems from reading this book when I was young. Some of the later stuff about AI is a little dated, considering this was written almost 40 years ago, but the ideas are still thought-provoking, and the dialogues (well, multi-logues) are both humorous and illustrative. "Through Wolf's Eyes" by Jane Lindskold I like this particular take on the feral-child possibly-heir-to-the-throne fantasy. Firekeeper is raised by wolves and acts like a wolf and never really acclimates to human society, and this is painted as both a benefit and a cost of her personality. And indeed, it is explicitly portrayed as somewhere between a personality trait and a decision on her part, rather than something that would be genuinely impossible for her. The whole series has an underlying question of identity, of how much is choice and how much is innate and how much is imposed on you. And I think I like the decision that Firekeeper eventually comes to. "Sweet Bro and Helpful Jeff" by Andrew Hussie Look, that's what it says on the "spinne" of the book, so when I'm looking at the book on my shelf, that's what I see.
Here's five randomly chosen books that I remember being important to me when I was a kid. I'm fairly sure none of them are actually good books but I've not re-read them recently so who knows. Synopses are from memory so don't trust them "Agaton Sax and The Diamond Thieves" by Niels Olof Franzén This is one in a series of books about a swedish (?) detective working for Scotland yard. The villains all had ridiculous alliterative names and sometimes there were explosions. Me and my best friend found this book in our very small school library and decided that this series was the best book on the planet. We'd go to the public library and get the library to order the books out of storage for us even though we were both really shy. We even made a club with exactly two members and an extensive handbook outlining how to outwit all our made up villains. "Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Antique Doll" by Kathryn Kenny The Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden series were the books from the school library that all of my friends loved (Trixie Belden was better and I remember reading this book distinctly which is why I wrote this one down) I think in Trixie and Honey go to this old house and the doll is being creepy as though it's haunted. Obviously it's all a ploy to get them to abandon the house and ... profit somehow? One of the girls at school had her own copies of the first few Trixie Belden books so unsurprisingly a lot of time was spent convincing her to lend out her nice books even though we'd all already read the old copies. I also remember it being a big deal when we were told that 'Kathryn Kennedy' was a pseudonym "The Giggler Treatment" by Roddy Doyle Basically I thought this book was the funniest thing on the planet. All I can remember is that there are small purple creatures who put dog poo right where mean adults will step on it. "Il Piccolo Troll" by Tor Åge Bringsværd This is an Italian book (weirdly translated from something nordic) that I made my dad read and translate to me a million times since I don't actually know any significant Italian. They eventually bought it for me translated into English but I still prefer the Italian book better. It's about a little troll who wants to go out into the sun to play with his animal friends but everybody knows that when trolls go out into the sun they turn to stone. "Encyclopedia Brown's Book of Strange But True Crimes" by Donald J Sobol and Rose Sobol As the title suggests, this is a book of true crimes which are weird. My favourite ones were the ones were the robbers were grossly incompetent and forgot to cut eyeholes in their pillowcases etc. This is also the book that lead me to finding the Dr Haldjian books by the same author which I always enjoyed attempting and failing at the puzzles
Following suit, these books have been important to me, and give me warm fuzzies in general 1. The Onion Girl by Charles deLint 2. Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson 3. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami 4. Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama 5. The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
Joe Kaufman's Big Book About the Human Body (Joe Kaufman) - Probably the book that started my love of biology. I loved the drawings of cells, the discussions of medical advances, and a basic introduction to heredity which made me interested in genetics. I made my parents read it to me all the time (and read it by myself when I was older). Even now, particular organ systems are associated with specific colors because they were represented by ballerinas with differently-colored leotards. Through the Looking-Glass (Lewis Carroll) - The better of the Alice books, read to me often as a kid. Definitely a comfort-book, but one that has stuck with me and informed how I think about some things. The annotated edition is excellent. The Emperor of All Maladies (Siddhartha Mukherjee) - Still one of the best "pop" books on science/medicine that I've ever read. Every time I read it, I'm reminded of why I love biology and science in the first place, and why it's worthwhile to pursue it. It's easy to lose sight of when you're an anxious, depressed grad student whose health sucks and who often feels totally inadequate. (The Gene is good too, and it's kind of a toss-up between the two, but EoAM is the first one I read, so it gets the place.) The Gunslinger (and sequels) (Steven King) - Books that helped get me through my first major depressive episode, as well as a number of other not-so-great times (including my most recent hospital stay). The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell) - A recent book, but it kind of renewed my hope for interesting and different fantasy books.
Books that made me feel things politically, with overviews from Goodreads: Walking To Greenham: How the Peace Camp Began and the Cold War Ended - Ann Pettitt (Only 3 books have ever made me cry, and this is one of them. It's also one of the main reasons why I joined the CND) 'Coming together with a small group of friends, Ann Pettitt started a movement that changed the face of Cold War Britain. Her remarkable memoir tells the real story behind one of the 20th century's most iconic expressions of grass roots political will. She exposes the surprising roots of the march on Greenham Common, how the Peace Camp left the marchers behind, and how those first marchers took their cause direct to the Kremlin. It is an intriguing and challenging look at what shaped a generation of women's lives and made them strong enough to fight for what they truly believed in.' Bad Science - Ben Goldacre (The section about Zakie Achmat made me so angry I had to put the book down and walk away for a bit. I have sections copied out and saved for any anti-vaxxer arguments that I end up in) 'Full of spleen, this is a hilarious, invigorating and informative journey through the world of Bad Science. When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an 'Aqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water, turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. 'Like some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: 'before my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the Bad Science column in the Guardian. His book is about all the 'bad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own 'bad science' moments from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word 'visibly' in cosmetics ads. ' The Taqwacores - Michael Muhammad Knight (Reading this - and then researching the growing taqwacore music scene - during the islamophobic surge post-9/11 was an eye opener) 'The Taqwacores vividly depicts day-to-day life in a Muslim punk house in Buffalo, New York. Characters include Rabeya, a burqa-clad riot girl; Umar, a straightedge Sunni; Muzammil Sadiq, who struggles against orthodox Islamic homophobia; and Jehangir Tabari, a drunken Sufi saint who dreams of putting on a Muslim Punk show in Buffalo. Both entertaining and serious, The Taqwacores tackles sex, drugs, and yes, rock n' roll, through the prism of observant (yet all-too-human) muslim mohicans and straight edgers.' The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (Read this as a baby feminist. Went on to write my dissertation on it many years later) 'Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...' 1984 - George Orwell (My mum gave me this to read when I was 13 and I was floored by it) 'The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of "negative utopia" -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel's hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.'
five books important to me / that i absolutely love. summaries from goodreads/amazon. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson one of my fave sci-fi books, ever. i reread this every few years and i still love it. features Corporate America™ and virtual reality taken to logical extremes. In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett gaiman and pratchett's great collaboration. i will love aziraphale (bookworm angel) and crowley (smartass demon) forever. According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . . The Thief Lord - Cornelia Funke this was my favorite book as a kid. i still want to visit venice someday because of this book. Two orphaned brothers, Prosper and Bo, have run away to Venice, where crumbling canals and misty alleyways shelter a secret community of street urchins. Leader of this motley crew of lost children is a clever, charming boy with a dark history of his own: He calls himself the Thief Lord. Propser and Bo relish their new "family" and life of petty crime. But their cruel aunt and a bumbling detective are on their trail. And posing an even greater threat to the boys' freedom is something from a forgotten past: a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself. Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell as someone deeply involved in fandom, a fanfic writer, and a person with anxiety, this book speaks to me a lot. Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan, but for Cath, being a fan is her life--and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving. Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to. Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words . . . And she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone. For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu i was tempted to not include this because i only read it fairly recently, but. it's an absolutely incredible sci-fi masterpiece (the first in a trilogy) and it made me cry. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
Most of these except the first are books that I read in middle and high school that left a big impact on me The Fifth Season - NK Jemisin Like. Goddamn. This book and the sequel, the Obelisk Gate, fucked me up royally just this past month, and I'm still not over it. It opens with someone literally ripping a continent in two and starting a massive volcanic winter (a Fifth Season) that will most likely last long enough to well and truly end all life on the world, and then proceeds to break your heart in three different POVs as you learn more about the world and the orogenes who could probably stabilize the tectonic shifts that have led to so much strife over the millennia...if they weren't discriminated against and stamped out at every turn Spoiler: major spoilers Also, the moon is missing Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve One of the first series that I remember hurting me good and deep, but I read it so piecemeal as the books came out over the years that I'm really overdue to read it properly. The moving traction cities consuming each other on the ravaged earth as the setting, and the personal and politics that grind the protagonists down...it's been ages, but the series' ending still sticks in my heart like a shard of metal, aching So You Want To Be A Wizard - Diane Duane The Lotus Esprit, a white hole blowing his quanta, reading the Book of the Night with Moon in Central Park to stop the Lone Power from skewing the universe - there's so much nostalgia wrapped up for me in the first few books of this series that I can't stand the fact that the library closest to me got rid of the series since I was last in town. I don't care if it came out in '82, it's an excellent book/series with fascinating magical rules and growth and planet/dimension hopping, and I can't let it go Harry Potter - JK Rowling Do I even need to say anything? (Actually, I could go on for ages about how original flavor Harry Potter has been eclipsed by the epic length fanfic Sacrifices Arc as far as quality and world building and hurt and love in my heart goes, but this isn't a fanfic thread :P) Un Lun Dun - China Mieville This is the book that made me love China Mieville (only for younger me to be crushed when I realized it was his only book apart from Embassytown that I liked, and even Embassytown dragged on and on). The Chosen One and her 'sidekick' friend travel to the alternate Un Lun Dun to beat the bad guy and save both worlds...only for the Chosen One to get beaten soundly in her first fight with the smog, and wind up staying at home with smog-induced asthma while the nominal sidekick decides to go back of her own volition, fulfill the prophecy (albeit by skipping some extra quests along the way to get straight to the important bits), and save everyone. Everything about the weird, wacky setting is perfect, and the kind of-twist of having the sidekick take over the hero's quest line and use her own skills and wits to do it is the kind of meta satire shit that I adore
Books I re-read once a year at least. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (I have read a lot of books. I studied English Literature at university, worked in a bookshop for several years, work in an archive now, and was part of a YA review team for a well-known publisher. I read The Secret History when I was 17 and haven't found a better work of literature [other than the next book on my list] despite how well I've loved others. I have a large tattoo partially dedicated to this book. Francis' house haunts my dreams.) Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil. A sample of The Secret History: 'They too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home.' The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (The only book that has challenged The Secret History for the title of 'My Most Loved Book'. The large tattoo referenced above is also dedicated to this book.) It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art. As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. A sample of The Goldfinch: 'But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.' Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel (I never thought I'd be a fan of historical fiction. Much less historical fiction based in the Tudor era. But this book [and its sequel, 'Bring Up The Bodies'] is so beautifully written that I have to re-read it regularly just to remind myself that it wasn't a dream, and that people can write this well. Whenever I'm in a tough situation, I try to channel Mantel's Cromwell.) England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? A sample of Wolf Hall: 'And beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marshes of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and boggarts who live in the hedges and hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug in to unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future.' Emotionally Weird - Kate Atkinson (This one creates a sublime bubble that I can inhabit whilst reading it. Everything else falls away. Touches of the surreal, superbly written flashbacks, and an incredibly relatable narrator. Everything written by Atkinson is incredible, but to me this is the crowning jewel.) On a weather-beaten island off the coast of Scotland, Effie and her mother, Nora, take refuge in the large, mouldering house of their ancestors and tell each other stories. Nora, at first, recounts nothing that Effie really wants to hear--like who her real father was. Effie tells various versions of her life at college, where in fact she lives in a lethargic relationship with Bob, a student who never goes to lectures, seldom gets out of bed, and to whom Klingons are as real as Spaniards and Germans. But as mother and daughter spin their tales, strange things are happening around them. Is Effie being followed? Is someone killing the old people? And where is the mysterious yellow dog? In a brilliant comic narrative which explores the nonsensical power of language and meaning, Kate Atkinson has created another magical masterpiece. A sample of Emotionally Weird: 'Nor, says Nora, do we want commonplace tales of hausfrau Angst, of the woman heroically making over her life with a handsome new lover, a beautiful child, a happy ending. Instead, we shall have murder and mayhem, plots and sub-plots, a mad woman in the attic, purloined diamonds, lost birthrights, heroic dogs, a soupçon of sex, a suspicion of philosophy.' Microserfs - Douglas Coupland (Another one that sucks you in to the world it creates. Full of nerds and burgeoning technology.) Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs," they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underneath closed doors) and fearfully scan the company email to see what the great Bill might be thinking and whether he is going to "flame" one of them. Seizing the chance to be innovators instead of cogs in the Microsoft machine, this intrepid bunch strike out on their own to form a high-tech start-up company named Oop! in Silicon Valley. Living together in a sort of digital flophouse --"Our House of Wayward Mobility" -- they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world. Funny, illuminating and ultimately touching, Microserfs is the story of one generation's very strange and claustrophobic coming of age. A sample of Microserfs: 'Abe said something interesting. He said that because everyone's so poor these days, the '90s will be a decade with no architectural legacy or style- everyone's too poor to put up new buildings. He said that code is the architecture of the '90s.'
