I'll add a few more for you. If you like your thrillers, have a go at Stephen Hunter. He's an American film critic by trade but started writing, received great acclaim and basically hasn't stopped. His Bob Lee Swagger series which starts with Point Of Impact is superb (even though the movie Shooter, they based on it was toilet). If you like historical content with a large dollop of humour, try the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser. The protagonist is so extraordinarily self-centred that he is often the bad guy, Regardless, you can't help but love him. If you fancy something totally different then read the best books I've read for as long as I can remember - the Hyperion and Endymion sagas by Dan Simmons. They are elegant, thought provoking, staggeringly imaginative and will leave you in bits after one of the most gut-wrenching conclusions to a series.
I guess my five would be: The Beach by Alex Garland The Rats by James Herbert The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson Arc Light by Eric L Harry Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
Well done Goloac. I forgot about that Girl With .... series. Three great books; i really enjoyed them all. Anyone like Robert Harris? Fatherland is a fantastic story, and I've read a few more of his too that were good, Pompeii, Engima (**** film, good book), Archangel, The Ghost.... all really good reads.
If there's anyone who loves HG Wells science fiction, and wish there had been a Wells written sequel to The Time Machine, in order to see what happened to the Time Traveller, well you can. Many might already know this, but for those who don't, go straight to Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships. Written a fair few years back now, it was an officially commissioned and approved sequel, which was written in an HG Wells style, quite successfully, I think. Some people like it, some loathe it, because although Wells' writing was at the fast gallop of the late Victorian period, Baxter gradually slows the speed down to a modern serious novel canter. Nonetheless, by the time you realise this, you'll be hooked, in my opinion.
I knew, out of everyone on here, you'd be probably the most likely to have read that! Me too, I absolutely loved it and I think H.G. would have too. I read SF, classic and modern, like a demon as a boy and have never stopped since. For me it's Wells and Dick as the two that inspired the most. My favourite Wells is, The first men in the moon, I love the old film of this too, but recently a very interesting version was made starring Mark Gattis (League of gentlemen), who is brilliant as Cavor, especially the zuzzoing! My favourite Dick is, The man in the high castle, which due to it's story will probably never be made into a film in the US. So of his books, the best film version has to be Blade runner (Do androids dream of electric sheep?), A Scanner darkly is jolly good too.
I enjoyed Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household but then I have always been a sucker for Boys Own literature. It must have been being brought up on a diet of Lion. Tiger and Hotspur as well as the Eagle.
I really enjoyed them, and it was interesting to get a more complete picture of King's underlying mythology that links many of his other books. Talisman and Blackhouse are also good. The Stand is still my favourite King book though. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks was superb and knocked the spots off the disjointed and incomplete TV version On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers is a great adventure with magic and mayhem mixed in (the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean was very loosely based on the book, in that they used the title and one or 2 characters) The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stphen Donaldson is a great series of books, and as they are all part of the same story, I can't really say which is best. The impressionist by Hari Kunzru is fantastic, and gives a very different picture of India under the British, and is very subversive. A big boy did it and ran away by Chris Brookmyre is probably near my top 5 just because you don't see many Scottish terrorists and it is laugh out loud funny at times
You know what..? I sort of wondered why you'd have thought that. But I suppose old Gort over on the left there might have been the giveaway.
The avatar of an SF connoisseur. I have relatively few SF films, compared to my books, but I'm sure most fans would put TDTESS in their top ten.
Being a confirmed Kindle reader, I tend to get into the whole of a particular writer's output and have to read the lot in one go. I saw the first in the Song of Ice and Fire series in the Kindle best seller charts and didn't stop reading until the end of Dance with Dragons. Superb books, and brilliantly adapted to TV, mainly because George R. R. Martin is one of the producers and they can't stray too far from the book. It goes without saying that I loved Lord of the Rings as a teenager, and I have re-read it most years since then. I thought the films were mostly OK, apart from the obvious abominations as listed above. Perhaps one day they'll make a 26 part TV series of LOTR which won't cut out Tom Bombadil or the Scouring of the Shire? I also love random things like the Sharpe books by Bernard Cornwell, the Millenium trilogy by Steig Larsson, the Harry Hole books by John Nesbo, the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child, the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series by Tad Williams, most of Thomas Hardy, most of Jane Austen, and pretty much anything else!
If my house was burning down and I had to save just one CD, one DVD and one book it would be: Madame Butterfly, Last of the Mohicans and Catch 22 but only after I had made sure the very lovely Mrs Godders was safe.
if they released an audio tape of 50 shades of grey read by this guy, I would definitely buy it. [video=youtube;5K1RcKJVbHA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K1RcKJVbHA[/video]
