Favourite book/author

OK, for those of you who can read, what's your favourite book and/or author. I'm always on the lookout for a good read so let's have it.

1. Favourite book: Well now that I've started it, I can't really say I've got an absolute favourite. Some of the best books I've read are:

The Bridge, Walking on Glass, Feersum Enjinn, Complicity, Crow Road, Player of Games, Excession - Iain Banks
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Filth - Irvine Welsh
The Map that Changed the World - Simon Winchester (non-fiction)
Dinosaur Hunters - Deborah Cadbury (non-fiction)

There's many more but they're the ones that come to mind.

2. Favourite Author: undoutably Iain Banks, with or without the M. He writes non-genre fiction as Iain Banks and Sci Fi as Iain M Banks. Sometimes there's a cross over, with bits from the Sci Fi books popping up in the non-genre books. Some of his books are very dark, The Wasp Factory for example.

Chook man, thats like asking someone whats your favourite girl you've perved on: Ie they are all good at the time, some being better that others.

anything by Robert Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Harry Harrison, Terry Pratchett, Martin Gilbert, spike milligan, Far Side, Viz comics, Rip off press comics and countless others.

My most read book has been the Hitchikers Guide series and Spike Milligans war memiors.

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comics

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They're called 'graphic novels' now, Zed ;)

I think that two of the better authors floating about at the moment are Robin Hobb and Terry goodkind. Both have written some absolute stunners but a couple of less enjoyable ones as well. Both have a dark element running through them.

For a laugh read any of the "ronan" books by James Bibby, to give you an idea try a black Conan. He used to write comedy for Lenny Henry and the books are hilarious. Every time I see a baby bouncer I think of the evil character in the novel and what he does in the first scene of the first book.

For Australian I like Martin Middleton, enjoyed his first set of novels, and the novel "Assassin", but like many he got caught in the more novels on the same world trap. His newer ones are set in another scene and have been interesting, but with the kids and woodwork my reading has dropped dramaticaly.

The technical work stuff is really what I read mostly. I will not bore people with that but some articles really make you sit up and think how far we have come and how amazing some of the things we are able to do. To give an example in Adelaide there is a childrens hospital for kids with defects in how their body destroys certain chemicals. They usually die at the latest in their teens, however somebody has worked out that you can feed them the enzyme they are missing and the improvement is dramatic. At a conference last year they showed a video of this little girl, pretreatment she could not walk 10m in 12 min, after 3 months of therapy they had to stop her from running for the 12min just so the test was valid.

I've just finished reading 'The Seven Ordeals of Count Calliastro', Prof Iain McCalnan (I think).
Brilliant book on this poor sod who was a member of the Freemasons and how the Catholic Church destroyed him for not following their faith.
A truly great biography if you like that sort of thing.
Apart from that, Wilbur Smith, Ian Fleming (yes, a Bond fan from wayback, saw my first one when I was 15), Philip Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).
Numerous others but depends upon the mood at the time.

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My most read book has been the Hitchikers Guide series and Spike Milligans war memiors.

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I'm with ZED on this one,

I'm more of a Sci-Fi person, The dune series. a lot of Ben Bova and a lot of "one of's" by various authors.

Sci-Fi for me too. Himzol's got it right, Ben Bova is a great author. Probably my favourite. I like the early Heinlein, Asimov, Phillip Jose Farmer, Robert Silverberg etc. Douglas Addams is a fav. Also, I really like Kurt Vonegut for a non-SF.

with a book collection of over 2000 its a bit of a big ask....

the ones I go back to on a regular basis

anything by nevil shute, dick francis, d.e. stevenson ( known as mistress of the light novel but her characterisation is excellent ) gets reread about once a year.

crow road i really like but one of mr banks' books is now in the public library at munich because I thought it was total tripe so donated it to their english language section :D

david foster's "dog rock".

the book that recently came out on the lighthouse stevensons is excellent.

if you've got kids then get out Arthur Ransom's swallows and amazon's series and read them aloud ( you have to get past the fact that one character is called titty but if you're reading it aloud you can always call her Beryl or something ).

Melways by Mel Way.

Al :confused:

The Dark Half by Stephen King was one of the first books I read that had me enthrawled from the very first page. I'm not much of a reader, but anything with Stephen King I can't pass.

Animalia for the kiddy winks.... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...X0DER&st=books

Noddy, until it was banned.

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Originally Posted by jackiew

with a book collection of over 2000 its a bit of a big ask....

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You must have a great job to be able to afford enough colouring pencils to do all those!

(sigh!)

P :D

Where do I start!

One of the first things I made when I took up woodworking again after a very long interval was a bookcase. I haven't counted my collection recently but - like Jackie's - it's well over a couple of thousand.

Some favourites (in no particular order other than that they will occur to me at apparent random):

P G Wodehouse (favourite quote: "She had a laugh like a squadron of cavalry crossing a tin bridge"); Evelyn Waugh; Douglas Addams; Patrick O'Brian; Isaac Asimov; William Shakespeare; John Keats; Derek Hansen; Dick Francis; Philip Roth; John Updike; Mark Twain; Sue Grafton; Umberto Eco; J P Donleavy; Spike Milligan; Ian Fleming (still like the James Bond stories).

Enid Blyton - I read vast quantities of her books when I was a kid. I used to read the Noddy stories out loud to my kids at bedtime when they were tiddlers. I had a different voice for each character. When he was about five my son saw a TV version of Noddy for the first time and was very unimpressed. He said that Big Ears and Mr Plod had the wrong voices.

My wife reckons I'll read anything. She may be right. I can still quote the French copy on the back label of the old HP Sauce bottle: "Cette sauce de haute qualité est une mélange des fruits orientaux, d'épices et de vinaigre de malte". Bit of a worry, that.

Col

I am a fantasy and science fiction fan but haven't read much lately. It's impossible to pick a single favourite.

Books: Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks; Magician by Raymond E Feist; Ringworld books by Larry Niven, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Authors: Iain M Banks, Raymond E Feist, Larry Niven, Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchet.

Fine Wood Working

Pretty well anything, except anything by JRR Tolkein. Especially like anything by Douglas Addams. All time favourite is "Such is Life" by Joseph Furphy - written 100 years ago but most of the characters are still living down the NSW riverina.

I can't read.

Patrick Robinson; Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, Seawolf etc

Bryce Courtney; all of them, but read Smokey Joe's Cafe 3 times.
Gerald Seymour; Holding the Zero, Traitors Kiss
Judy Nunn; Best one was Territory
Jolife's Outback
Garfield
The Drinking Man's Survival Guide by Nicholas Read
Gone Troppo by Nino Culotta (John O'Grady), have to read it every couple of years:D
My Wicked Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn
Grants Guide to Fishes
A Vision Splendid the complete works of BP
The adventures of the Muddle Headed Wombat by Ruth Park:D

Silent,

If you like Iain Banks in his Complicity/Crow Road mould I'd be surprised if Christopher Brookmyre wasn't up your street too. I've liked all of his so far, especially the Jack Parlabane ones. John McCabe is also good for a daft romp with Banks-like over-tones. Try "Paper" if you see it somewhere.

Apart from Iain Banks (though not with the M) I like Ian Rankin for a good whodunnit and Andrew Grieg for something more meaty. His reworking of John Buchan's "John Macnab" ("The Return of John Macnab") was great, though not as dark as "When They Lay Bare". Irvine Welsh is always worth a read except when he gets too up himself in his short stories. Have you read "Porno" (the sequel to "Trainspotting") yet? Absolute laugh!

Being fairly new to these shores I'm still finding my way round the local authors. Just found Shane Maloney, love John Birmingham, open to suggestions from those with more local knowledge than me.

Cheers,
John

In no particular order and for no particular reason - ( I used to be a big SF fan but over the last 10 years or so have moved onto other pastures - so prior to this list pencil in Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, Diceman, Foundation, LOTR ya da ya da .....)

Cloudstreet : Tim Winton
Grapes of Wrath : John Steinbeck
Unbeliever series : Stephen Donaldson
Corellis Mandolin : Whats his name
Rustle in the Grass : Whats his name
The Fatal Shore : Robert Hughes
Going the Tonk : Warick Todd
Patio : Jamie Durie :rolleyes:

Any renovation, gardening, woodworking book, magazine, show ever written...

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Originally Posted by vsquizz

Patrick Robinson; Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, Seawolf etc

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Good Books.

+ John Grisham novels...although each story can be similar

Very eclectic tastes

Mainly Sf/Fantasy. Include Asimov;Heinlein;Arthur C Clarke;Poul Anderson;Ann Maccaffery,the Dune books;Tolkein;Steven Donaldson; David Eddings;the Hitch Hiker books;Wilson Tucker; etc, etc.

To make it worse, my daughter is a voracious reader, with a similar bent, and as fast as I sell her on my favourites, she is hooking me on new ones.

General fiction: Steinbeck; Ayn Rand; Shute; Alistair MaClean; Seb Faulkes; Jody Picoult; Bryce Courtenay; Geoffrey Jenkins; Wilbur Smith; Hammond Innes; and on and on

Non Fiction : Woodworking and woodturning (DUH) :D

Alastair

Robert G Barrett.

Go team Norton! :D

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/robertgbarrett/

It seems almost a cliche now, but my favourite book of all time is Lord of the Rings. The movie gave me a real dilema as on the one hand it was a brilliant rendition of the book but on the other hand I knew it would ean me having to convince people that it really has always been my facourite book since I struggled to read it as a 13 yr old. Before the movie I probably read it every 5 years.

Favourite authors: Iain Banks, Pratchett, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Nick Hornby

Good books: Last Orders by Graham Swift, With Nails by Richard E Grant

I like to read old classics to see why they are so well thought of: I read the Phillip Marlow books by Raymond Chandler and they were very good if you like crime and stories of post-depression America. To Kill a Mocking Bird rates very high on my all time list.

I'm also a big fan of popular science: A brief history of time started it for me, others are Longitude, the Code Book, Fermat's Last Theorem

Simon

Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, James Michener, Wallace Stegner
About once a year, I read Nevil Shute. So far, I have read
BEYOND THE BLACK STUMP
PASTORAL
BREAKING WAVE
TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOL ROOM (my favorite)
A TOWN LIKE ALICE
I am currently reading THE FAR COUNTRY
I enjoy narratives, travel ( TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT & THE QUIET AMERICAN both by Graham Greene ) mysteries & true adventure ( Sir Richard Burton's accounts of his travels in the middle & far east & Brazil )
Just about anything on woodworking & shopbuilt jigs and methods.

Good reading to ya
Spence

Anything dark or horror based.
Clive Barker, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Grahme Masterton, Richard Matheson, and on and on and on.
The best of the lot is King - his work can be patchy but that's because he is so prolific and at his best, he's the master.

Crime also, lots of crime.

And the stuff that used to be calle 'ripping yarns' but which has no vanished under the weight of political correctness and this stupid desire that things be 'real' (yeah, like fantasy is real). I've nearly every one of J E Macdonnell's yarns about the Aussie Navy.

Richard

The best writer of this age is Salman Rushdie.(Midnights Children, The Satanic Verses, et al) I also like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.(One hundred years of solitude, love in the time of cholera)
Norman Mailer and some older stuff, Kafka, Beckett.

Fantasy such as JRR Tolkein with lord of the rings, silmarillion & hobbit, Raymond E Feists Magician series, and the Dragonlance series as well.

History books, particularly military/aviation.

Tom Clancy isnt bad either although his latest stuff is a bit out there...

But Tolkien is 'the' favourite at the moment :)

It depends on my state of mind, I've been reading a lot of my kids books lately (wonder what that says about my state of mind) . I borrowed a book called northern lights by philip pullman off my daughter recently and couldn't put it down till I had finished it and the other two books in the series.

mostly though I like humor the blacker the better anything that holds up a mirror to humanity and lets my laugh myself silly at it. names that spring to mind are Ben Elton, Spike Milligan, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A Wilson and William S Burrows.

books that have really impressed me

shrodingers cat trilogy Robert A Wilson
the adventures of huckleberry finn
Hard Times Charles Dickens
last chance to see douglas adams
Yertle the Turtle Dr Zuess

Can't stand bryce courtney

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Originally Posted by julianx

William S Burrows.

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I would never have picked Burrows for someone who would die by any means other than drugs. Came as a shock to learn that he'd done a Hemingway at 60 or so.

Lot of Sci Fi fans here. Got over that stage of my life at about 14 I guess. Don't read much fiction these days. Most of my reading is Photoshop and etc Manuals. Photography type books this list. Don't read much that doesn't have some application for what I am doing.

There must be some good woodworking books out there that people have. I am still struggling with questions like, "what is a shooting board?" "why are Lie Neilsen planes so expensive?" "how do I get the money for a table saw?"

Stevo