Fave

<i>Chasm City </i> (Alastair Reynolds), <i>Trading in Danger </i> (Elizabeth Moon) and <i>Daughter of the Empire </i> (Raymond E. Fiest and Janny Wurts). Best books ever. Altough &quot;Daghter of the Empire&quot; is a series of book it´s also the name of the first one in the trilogy and, in my opinion, the first one is the best. Edited by - Orillion.net on 8/28/2005 11:02:28 AM

damn, i know i read the best book i´ve ever read, but i´ve forgotten what it is. Bah. Oh wait. Now i remember <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>, at least, i think i do.... i´ll bet you i´ve forgotten the best book i ever read <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Stormbreaker, Scorpio (god i love that series <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>), and, i have to say this, Harry Potter and the Sorcerors Stone. Reason? There was a lot of mystery involved, and it glued me to my seat when i read it. Wondering &quot;WTF?!?!&quot; half the time, espiecally with those odd letters... <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> J.K. Rowling has a thing with keeping you hooked <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Lord of the Ring. I read the four books once every year lol. Blessed Be to all those that still dream of the flight to the stars.

3. <b>Hadassah </b><i> by Tommy Tenney </i> About a young girls look at an ancester named Esther. About trust and faith. 2. <b>First Light </b><i> by Brock &amp; Bodie Thoene </i> About the first century look at a time period from a group of comman folk. The message is deep. 1st of a 4 book set. 1. <b>The Bible </b><i> by The Lord </i> Somewhat self explaintory. <img src=smilies/icon_smile_big.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> Edited by - Finalday on 8/28/2005 12:39:12 PM

This is difficult... <i>1984 </i> by George Orwell <i>Deception Point </i> by Dan Brown <i>Quake III Arena Source Code </i> by John Carmack et. al.

idk, i´m leaning toards eragon

<i>Heart of Darkness </i> by Joseph Conrad. probably the most searing and insightful depiction of the confusion and emptiness of the human existence and the evil that can result from the noblest motives when unrestrained by any mores or social conventions, and how at all levels humans have to lie to get by, because we just can´t cope with truth; the truth of our own natures and desires is just too dark, too overwhelming. nothing I have read before or since ever spoke to me in quite the same way. then probably <i>Foucault´s Pendulum </i> by Umberto Eco - I just really enjoyed it, it was a witty and erudite novel that I though was fun and filled with historical and philosophical imagery. then possibly <i>The Night Land </i> by William Hope Hodgson, difficult book written in bizarre archaic style, but the concept and imagery was stunning. a dark Earth billions of years in the future, the Sun is a dead cinder and the stars have gone out, where whats left of humanity resides in a vast metal Pyramid, under siege by monsters and mutated beast-men, which are controlled by alien supernatural forces that destroy soul as well as body. pain in the @ss to read a lot of the time but worth it! such an unfair question though - 3 fave books. thats like in <i>Fahrenheit-451 </i> when everyone who escapes has to choose one book to memorise out of all the books that have ever existed... my choice would have to be H-o-D though; or The Holy Q´u´ran by the same author as FD´s choice, different publisher <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> other choices <i>Moby Dick </i>Hermann Melville <i>Metamorphosis </i> Franz Kafka <i>War of the Worlds </i> HG Wells <i>1984 </i> George Orwell (coming truer ever day <img src=smilies/icon_smile_sad.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> sadly) <i>La Divina Commedia </i> Dante Alighieri <i>That Hideous Strength </i> CS Lewis <i>Julian </i> Gore Vidal <i>Emperor Julian </i> Henrik Ibsen (ok its a stageplay not a novel but it reads like a novel and no-one ever performs it anyway) <i>The Martian Chronicles </i> Ray Bradbury <i>Ringworld </i> Larry Niven <i>Protector </i> also by Larry Niven <i>Hawksmoor </i> Peter Ackroyd <i>The House of Doctor Dee </i> also by Peter Ackroyd <i>Seven Pillars of Wisdom </i> TE Lawrence <i>Perfume </i> Patrick Susskind (not for the squeamish!) <i>The Wasp Factory </i> Iain Banks <i>Quo Vadis? </i> Henryk Sienkiewicz <i>Winter Quarters </i> Alfred Duggan <i>Spartacus </i> Howard Fast <i>The Robe </i> also by Henryk Sienkiewicz <i>Eagle of the Ninth </i> Rosemary Sutcliffe <i>The Drowned World </i> John Wyndham (particularly apt these days..) <i>Gravity´s Rainbow </i> Thomas Pynchon (again not for the faint-hearted) <i>Captain Corelli´s Mandolin </i> Louis de Bernieres <i>Ivanhoe </i> Sir Walter Scott <i>Gulliver´s Travels </i> Jonathon Swift <i>Call of Cthulhu </i> HP Lovecraft <i>Watership Down </i> Richard Adams <i>Pinocchio </i> Carlo Collodi <i>The English Patient </i> Michael Ondaatje (but should be read withthe others in the series or you don´t understand why the characters do a lot of the things they do. ah, there are so very very many.... there ws also a book aI read as a child about some animals that had banded together after all humans died out from plague or war, amaged to find an old boat and sailed down the Thames (or up it) and eventually ended up at Stonehenge where other animals had set up a bizarre pagan religion. I can´t remember forthe life of me what it was called or who wrote it but I´d love to read it again. it was *something* like the Voyage of the R100 - vaguely, but it wasn´t that. actually it was the Voyage of QV66, by Penelope Lively, and it´s much btter than you think. Edited by - Tawakalna (Reloaded) on 9/4/2005 8:09:27 AM

Too bad taht the earth would have been burnt to a cinder long before the sun gave out. And the stars just don´t &quot;Go out&quot;. Oh well, you can´t have perfectly sceintifically accurate books everywhere <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Patton Rise and Fall of the Third Reich 1984

it was written nearly a hundred years ago, blackhole. and the sun and stars were consumed by vast alien beings that were disastrously brought into our dimension by highly advanced but ill-advised inter-dimensional scientific experiments (a la Doom, I suppose..) it´s a novel! its about the survival of the human spirit and the will to persevere no matter how bleak the circumstances. the Pyramid is full of light and is the last refuge of Man in a world thats dark and hostile.

i was just musing...

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury The Pretty Good Jim´s Journal Treasury All of the above for the following reasons: 1. You never outgrow your favorite sunday comics. 2. Jim´s Journal is so bland it´s hilarious.

<i>The Da Vinci Code </i> - Dan Brown <i>The Mists of Avalon </i> - Marion Zimmer Bradley The Earth´s Children Series (<i>The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, The Plains of Passage and The Shelters of Stone </i>) - Jean M. Auel <i>American Psycho </i> - Bret Easton Ellis <i>The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy </i> - J.R.R. Tolkien <i>Under the Volcano </i> - Malcolm Lowry I´ve also read 2 books from author Johannes Mario Simmel which were very good, but I only know the Dutch translation titles and not the English titles (though the originals are in German btw). And I´ve read pretty much every book from John Grisham as well and also Filth and Trainspotting from Irvin Welsh. And even much more than that, but I can´t remember them all of course <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> ______________________________ Eraser Webmaster of <A href=´http://www.lancersreactor.org´ Target=_Blank>The Lancers Reactor</a> E-Mail: eraser@lancersreactor.org MSN: eraser@lancersreactor.org <img src=´http://www.lancersreactor.org/t/i/lan_butt.gif ´> Edited by - Eraser on 8/29/2005 12:42:46 AM

<i>Slaughterhouse Five </i> - Kurt Vonnegut (This book is absolutely ace, I just loved it every single bit of it, finished it in record time and I´m a notoriously slow reader) <i>War and Peace </i> - Leo Tolstoy (I´m still working on this beast, it´s been almost a year now, but when I´ve had a chance to read it between studying, exams and other books it´s always been darn good) <i>1984 </i> - George Orwell (gee, who doesn´t have this on their list?) <i>A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There </i> - Aldo Leopold (an early work on conservation, some of the language seems a bit old fashioned anthropomorphising the animals a little but this man new his environment. In particular read his essay on Land Ethics, it ought to be compulsory reading for everyone) <i>On the Road </i> - Jack Kerouac (The Beatnik bible, before they became too concerned with infighting, coffee and bad poetry they went on mad road trips across the US and into Mexico, living life as fast and as full as possible, experiencing everything they could) <i>Into the Wild </i> - John Krakauer (The true story of Chris McCandless, who chose a different way through life, essentially chose a life as a bum but lived more in his few years than many people ever do. Essentially a modern day Thoreau. Tragically lost his life after living off the land in Alaska for 113 days by eating a plant that at that point hadn´t been known to be poisonous. You´ll both love him and hate him, but despite it all the guy´s a personal hero to me)

weren´t you reading <i>Neuromancer </i> a while back, Rec? <i>Slaughterhouse V </i> - great choice! ever read <i>Sirens of Titan? </i> I think it´s great that so many people have<i>1984 </i> on their lists. especially in the current climate of fear and paranoia, maybe (just maybe) it will give enough people pause for thought about what is happening around us and to us. Wouter - <i>Da Vinci Code </i> - <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> - I read it a while back, albeit reluctantly at first. I enjoyed it, as a thriller anyway, it was good fun, quite well done, couldnt put it down in fact; but as a revelation of occult history, well let´s just say that i laughed quite a lot and at times it annoyed me. My daughter loved it and questioned me at length about the *revelations* of secret iconography hoping that I´d tell her it was true and that she´d discovered some mystic secret (rememeber I have an MA in Renaissance Art and I specialised in iconography and Neo-Platonism) and she was most upset to find that Mr Brown´s theories were to put it mildly bunk. a Woman in the Last Supper indeed! anyone who´s remotely studied Renaissance Art knows that major part of the Rinascimento ethos was to portray the classical ideal, so young men were shown as soft-featured idealised slightly effeminate youths with pale-skins and flowing locks. i can point out dozens of paintings that do exactly the same; angels are depicted like this even though they are male, even Jesus is portrayed in that way, especially by Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandaio, Verrochio and Domenico Veneziano, all of whom were well known to LdV, he studied their work thoroughly and indeed was a pupil in Verrochio´s school. great work of fiction, sadly not born out by reality. at least not how he portrays it. Opus Dei and the like exist, and im well aware that the Vatican gets involved in all sorts of skullduggery, theyve got a lot of dirty laundry to be sure. and there are occult and mystic messages and hidden knowledge in Renaissance paintings, but not what Senor Brown says. Edited by - Tawakalna (Reloaded) on 8/29/2005 3:54:20 AM

Yes I know that big pieces of Dan Brown´s Da Vinci Code has to be taken with a grain of salt (or a whole bucket <img src=smilies/icon_smile_wink.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>), but nonetheless it was quite enjoyable in the matter of suspense and storytelling. And you gotta hand it to the guy that it´s quite impressive that his book is one of the best selling books in history. I´ve also read his book Angels &amp; Demons, which was a good book as well. And I read his Digital Fortress, but that was quite a let down considering his other work. It wasn´t really bad, but nothing extraordinary either. And now Ron Howard is making a movie of The Da Vinci Code, due to be released in theaters in May 2006. More info on <A href=´http://www.thedavincicodemovie.com´ Target=_Blank> http://www.thedavincicodemovie.com</a> I´m not sure about this one, most adaptions of great books turn out to be utterly bad and cheesy. But, occasionally there are some good ones. I´m probably going to see it, just to ease my curiosity <img src=smilies/icon_smile.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle>

Yep, I read Neuromancer quite a while ago, really enjoyed it, I´ve been meaning to read more of Gibson´s stuff at some point. Someone recommended Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson to me as well. I have quite a big list of books I want to get round to at some point. Sirens of Titan and Cats Cradle are the next Vonnegut books I intend to read, but right now, I´m getting seriously back into War and Peace

@ taw: didn´t know about your expertise in Renaissance art - if you´re interested in those fascinating eras between the Middle Age and Renaissance and its explosion of new thoughts (about human society, 3D-perspective, division of labour, direct &quot;com

*reads above posts* THATS the one! The Da Vinci Code! Doh! updated list: <img src=smilies/icon_smile_tongue.gif width=15 height=15 border=0 align=middle> 1. The Da Vinci Code 2. Storm Breaker 3. Digital Fortress THEY´RE MAKING A DA VINCI CODE MOVIE!