Off Topic What Is Your Favourite Book And Who Is Your Favourite Author?

Actually, that looks interesting. I might give that a gander.

 

It's a VG read Set in a monastery in the desert of the South United States after a nuclear war, the story spans thousands of years as civilization gets back on its feet.

Ps won the 1961 Hugo award.

 

My kind of caper!

I never consider myself much of a sci-fi reader, but then I realise that I have read the likes of Brian Aldiss, Asimov, and Philip K Dick, as well as John Wyndham and H G Wells, and I realise that, in fact, I have read my fair share.

The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, is a cracking read, I seem to recall.

 

Still at the beginning then?

 

The Amityville horror for me was a page turner, read it in one day. Great story n spooky, all fiction of course irrespective of the ****ty film it spawned.

 

No. Book IX of XII.

It begins with the aftermath of the war in heaven, when satan and his armies are cast into hell

"As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,"

 

One of the funniest plays I've seen (and the book/script too) is Rosencrantz And Guildernstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard ... but you really need to have read Hamlet to get how good it is .....

 

"You lot were always **** and I'm fast becoming a follically challenged fruit loop ... far diddly qua qua"

- Adam talking to the Ants after the fall

 

For those who enjoyed Catch 22 as much as I have, try reading God Knows by Heller.

I wouldn't say it's as riotously funny as Catch 22, but there's plenty of laugh out loud passages in it.

 

Not read it....Aware of it and I reckon you will defo enjoy Dante's Inferno.

 

Remember reading Something Happened after Catch 22 and that it was OK but not on a par ...

 

Difficult question to answer IMHO , it's like " What's your fav song " so many types .

But for me -

Fantasy = https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mordants-N...496756627&sr=1-3&keywords=a man rides through



Sport / Autobiography = https://www.amazon.co.uk/Williams-l...&sr=1-1&keywords=frank williams autobiography


Natural world = https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingdom-Ic...56742&sr=1-1&keywords=kingdom of the ice bear




Heart Breaking ( Yes ) .= https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Pe...id=1496756784&sr=1-1&keywords=penlee lifeboat

 

God Knows is much funnier, for me. Haven't read it for a while...

Don't think anything is in par with Catch 22. How do you follow that!...

 

I liked God Knows. By turns funny, sexy and sad.

I'd recommend Good as Gold too - I think he was having an angry phase when he wrote that, but it's bloody funny too.

Joseph Heller had a similar dilemma to Norman Mailer I think, in that both put all the intensity of their war experiences into a first novel. Those novels (The Naked and The Dead in Mailer's case) were so powerful that they were pretty much impossible to follow, so the rest of their careers where overshadowed by what they did at the start.

Kurt Vonnegut went the other way. He was so traumatised by his war experiences that he couldn't even approach it in writing until the end of his writing career.

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is one of the most unique and most affecting novels I've ever read. Should be required reading for any politician considering taking a country to war. I can only assume neither Tony Blair nor GW Bush have ever read it, or they surely couldn't have gone blundering into Iraq.

 

True. It took Heller many years to write, and it caused outrage when it was first published.

I guess his cynical sarcasm was some kind of defence mechanism against the madness of it all.

'They're all trying to kill me' - Who?, who's trying to kill you? - 'All of them, that's who' - 'No, it's your imagination'

But Youssarian knew it was true because people he didn't even know shot at him every time he went up in his plane to drop bombs on them!...

 

yeah, he had a clear view of the insanity of it all I think. It takes a misfit with a gift for words to shine the light on the absurdity of human behaviour.

 

Yes, Adan throwing those children off the bridge in PotD is one of the most harrowing passages I have ever read.

PotD is up there with Ellroy, DeLillo imo. One of best books of the 00s

 

Wasn't actually Adan but he gave the nod.

You knew it was coming, very vivid image when it happened as well.

 

My favourite story is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I have always liked the idea that people can change for the better.

My favourite biography is called Go Ask Alice. It is a diary of a teenager who died of a drug over dose from the 1960s or 1970s. Read it when I was 18 or so.

I can't pick just one comedy book.
I really like the Red Dwarf books by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. They were called Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life. They did some books separately but they were not very good.
I also love the Douglas Adam books called Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul.
Clive James wrote an autobiography called Unreliable Memoirs which has a really funny part in it about the Dunny Man (some one who collects the **** from an outhouse in Australia).

I like pointless horror too.
I used to like reading Dean Koontz and Stephen king books but got bored of them but I still like the James Herbert series on Rats (Rats, Lair & Domain) and The Fog but I think that they are sentimental cos I read them when I was 13 or 14.

I I like an author called Brian Lumley (but not his fantasy sci fi stuff cos that bores me). He has written a lot of Vampire books, the best being the the Necroscope series.

Catcher in the Rye is a good read as is Animal Farm.

Down and Out in Paris and London is a really interesting book too.

I like reading Asterix and Tin Tin comics.

some great ideas on the thread

 

As is mine. "God Knows" by the same author is almost as hilarious - King David of Israel telling his own story