Your favorite author and/or book?

[Mr. Lothario]

    In the spirit of Brain's spelunking of the board members' psyches, what's your favorite book or books, and who is your favorite author or authors?

    For sheer reading pleasure, I've got to go with Mark Twain, Terry Pratchett, or Douglas Adams.

    For great science fiction, Harlan Ellison or James P. Hogan (or about a dozen others, but those two are at the top of my list).

    My favorite book is more or less a dead heat between Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Stephen Levy's Hackers, and Twain's Letters From Heaven.

[*NADS Capt. Anarchy]

hmm...

Mark Twain and Douglas Adams are great, i also enjoy Dave Barry's pieces he writes for the papers.

Stranger in a Strange land was really weird, but good. Frank Herbert (Dune) and Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game) are my favs, prolly.

[Brain]

the author part is easy, crichton

the hardpart is picking which book i like best. i likefor me it is a tie between jurassic park(SOOOO much better than the movie) and sphere(again, the movie pales in comparison) also kudos for the illiad and the oddesy for making it into consideration
i have yet to read timeline, the LOTR series
ot the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and wan't to read the harry potter series up to the current book(yea, i'm literature deprived, i know
best non fiction book i have read is the elegant universe
by brian greene(it's on  superstring theory, and a suprizingly facinating read, and NO mathmatical equations in the entire text)

[Mr. Lothario]

? ? Eep. I totally forgot about Card. His less- and non-Mormon stuff is great, such as the Ender series and Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (SUCH a great book), but it's just plain annoying when he gets all LDS, such as in The Folk of the Fringe. You're right, though. He's up there on my list, too. : )

    Chrichton is a good one. I very much enjoyed Jurassic Park, and enjoyed even more being outraged at how badly the movie mangled it.

    Definitely read the Harry Potter series. They are marketed as kids' books, but that doesn't stop the universe Ms. Rowling created from being extremely enjoyable and entertaining. I'm looking forward to the latest book.

    Regarding cosmological theory, an interesting book for a rebellious alternative viewpoint is Eric Lerner's The Big Bang Never Happened. He presents rather plausible attacks on the Big Bang cosmology, and rather plausible alternatives. Quite interesting and thought-inducing, actually. : )

[theN00b]

All Quiet on the Western Front is my favorite.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

"beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future" - friedrich nietzsche

think you are a cynic.  you are not even an amature compared to nietzsche.

[*NADS Lo$eMoney]

Catch 22, my favorite author though is Issac Asimov

[Bondo]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (and the rest of the series) by J.K. Rowling.

I also read a lot of Lillian Jackson Braun (actually read everything by her), James Patterson, a few other series here and there.  I also like Arabian Nights, just wish I could find a version that has every story in it rather than having to read about 4-5 of them to get the full arsenal.

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

All Quiet on the Western Front is my favorite.

Bah, Hemingway.

Well, for pleasure reading, it would be a toss up between Crichton, Grisham, and Clancy.

Books would also be a toss up:

Crichton: Sphere, Jurassic Park,
Grisham: The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Testament
Clancy: Executive Orders, Hunt for Red October, Red Storm Rising (guess where he got the name of his company from, *hint* *hint*)

[Precious_Roy]

But Assassin!  All Quiet on the Western front (good choice cossack) is by Remarque!  You're probaby thinking "For whom the bell tolls" or "A farewell to arms."

Plus Hemingway wasn't that bad.  If none of his other work was, "The Sun Also Rises" was fucking genius.

My favorite authors are Vonnegut (Slaughter-house-five, Cat's Cradle) and Nabokov (Lolita, Pale Fire)

My favorite books is Catch-22.

And buccaneer, Neitzche was not a cynic.  He was a fool.  He thought that those who needed religon were weak.  He favored the hero.  I think he is weak.  Any man who needs a hero is as weak as the man who needs religon.  The strong man is completely and totally self-sufficent.  To honor a hero one needs emotion.  Emotion is the downfall of a man striving for more.  Now Camus, Sarte, Beckett, (and many of the other existentialists Neitzche and Kierkagaard's writings spawned)  they were cynics.

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

But Assassin! ?All Quiet on the Western front (good choice cossack) is by Remarque! ?You're probaby thinking "For whom the bell tolls" or "A farewell to arms."

Roger that, i was indeed thinking of "a farewell to arms"...first time i have been made to look like a semi-tard in a long time. damn you roy!

Also, I was not knocking on Hemingway...I just dont find his books pleasurable enough for leisure reading. I am looking for a fast paced plot (even though Executive Orders is over 1350 pages of plot).

[WeaSelFlinK]

My favorite author has always been Stephen King. Author of books like 'Dolores Claiborne', 'It', 'The Tommyknockers', 'The Shining', ... You can't help admiring King's narrative skills and his versatility as a storyteller.

In story after story, the long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling will take you to places you've never been before. On a roller-coaster through the macabre and monstrous, via cutting-edge explorations of good and evil - and on the heartfelt piece on Little League baseball. You'll lose a good deal of sleep.

Another book I read awhile ago was Charlotte Bront?'s 'Jane Eyre'. This book is ranked as one of the greatest and most perennially popular works of English fiction.
There is kindness and warmth in this epic love story, which is set against the magnificent backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.

I've read Victor Hugo's 'Notre-Dame de Paris', Bram Stoker's 'The Count of Dracula', Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'... These are all just a few, but they're my favorites.

[*DAMN Silent Killer]

I Think my most favorite author is Richard Marckino

and his whole rouge warrior series

it owns

[Mr. Lothario]

    Assassin, I've never read Clancy's Executive Orders. I'll have to pick it up. I've read six or seven of his tomes, and didn't enjoy any save three: Red Storm Rising (ye gods, what a book), The Hunt for Red October, and Rainbow Six. Although I read R6 after becoming addicted to RS, so my judgement may have been clouded. : )
    Clancy seemed to me to have one story which he tells in an unvarying narrative monotone which for the most part simply plods along through the plot in a boring fashion. An author who's stuck telling all his stories in the same way does not produce works which are pleasurable to me.  It's why I don't read Piers Anthony anymore. Or Vonnegut. Or Bradbury. Or Stephen Donaldson (possibly the worst offender of the bunch).

    As for the rest of you, I'm making notes on the classics I need to catch up on. : ) Keep them coming.

[*DAMN Silent Killer]

Richard Marchinko could own tom clancy

Read Marchinkos books they own

[Mr. Lothario]

    I heard from a trusted source that Marchinko's a poseur, but I'll read some of his stuff eventually, I'm sure. I read some of everyone's stuff eventually.

[†FiRE Infection]

Good books where I enjoyed the story....Hang Tough Paul Mather, Tom Sawyer, Of Mice and Men, Soccer Shock,

[Mr. Lothario]

    Tom Sawyer is great. Have you ever read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court? Good stuff, great satire. Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven is really good, too, as is anything from Letters From Heaven.

[Supernatural Pie]

I loved Clancy's Rainbow Six. Excellent story, and disproves anyone who says R6 had no plot.  


                                                                  ?

[PsYcO aSsAsSiN]

bah, people have been saying RS has no plot, not R6.