Your favorate (most inspiring?) literary work.

[N D Hill]

There seem to be a lot of "your favorate" type threads going around so why not add one more. Only this one requires that you have to actually read books you big bunch of slackers.

What was your favorate novel or short story and why?

For me, I'd have to say Frank Herbert's Dune.

Dune just struck me as a very aligorical book. It had so many undeniable observations on relegion and politics. Honestly, after i read this, Star Wars seemed like a second rate re-hashing. Dune was written in the sixties, before Star Wars too. Dune has more balls though.

[Lono]

Hunter S Thompson's "The Proud Highway"..

the most inspiring collection of letters you will ever read.
jam packed with just the right amount of gory imagery and internal dialogue to properly document the human struggle.

-Lono

[Behemoth]

George Orwell's 1984

*shudder*

[Fipse]

Robert A. Wilsons "Illuminatus!"-trilogy.

Besides that it is a readable drug, it helped me asking behind things and starting to read stuff beyond Fantasy and SF - I found out that phantasy is way beyond my usual ways. Because of this books I learned to know some of my actual alltime favourites e.g. Hesses "Steppenwolf" and "Narziss & Goldmund" or James Joyce´s "Dubliners" and many things more.

Oh, yeah and "Lord of the rings" - I spent with 15 a whole month worth of my pocketmoney to get the trilogy after starting the first book of it from a library. With LOTR I began earnestly to read fantasy (and value any other of this motifs on it).

Fipse

Hail Discordia ... or Io Pan, Io Pan Pan!

[strych9ine]

Fipse, one of my all-time favorites is Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (and Schrodinger's Cat) are fantastic as well. Damn good taste in books, if I do say so myself...

The writer that inspires me most, though, is Chuck Palahniuk (author of fight club). His books Invisible Mosters and Survivor are real mindfucks...

[Blind]

George R. R. Martin - A Song Of Ice And Fire (http://www.georgerrmartin.com/)

Three books so far, and he's working on the fourth. This guy writes characters so incredibly convincing, it's as if multiple people are writing the book...or someone with multiple personalities? :cool:

Martin has replaced Tolkien as my favorite author. And that is not something I state lightly. If you have ever had any interest in the fantasy/gothic genre in any way, you owe it to yourself to read this series. They are that good.

[Mort]

sun tzu `s art of war
has inspired me alot

[gekitsu]

honetsly, too many to list them all.

the art of war is great, as is the book of foive rings and the hagakure. but that isn't really literary work but more philosophy and zeitgeist. in terms of novels and stories, i would name these (among lots of others)

the hobbit, lord of the rings and silmarillion by tolkien
alien by a. d. foster (the movie is wet shit against the book)
the discworld books by terry pratchett
the first book of larry niven's ringworld cycle (the latter ones don't catch up to the firt, imho)
1984 certainly is a good book, although i find it a bit flat.
chaga by ian mc donald
shakespeare's midsummernight's dream and macbeth
blame! by tsutomu nihei
ghost in the shell by masamune shirow
and lots more...
mainly sci-fi and/or fantasy work, since i find more overall creativity in them. the sense and pleasure one can get out of drily written description of a random human tragedy is far out of my reach, so i have quite a bit of hatred towards classic "high literature". my special enemy, though, is brecht. i simply don't understand what is so great about bad-written flat and uncreative socialist propaganda. if brecht is art, joseph goebbels (hitler's propaganda minister) would be the father of all artists because he wrote propaganda on a technical level far beyond brecht. but that is just me...
:)

[Pencil Soldier]

the discworld books by terry pratchett amen to that! :rock:

That and anything by Orson Scott Card. Anything at all. Even his non-fiction. :D

[cucaracha]

Originally posted by Fipse
Robert A. Wilsons "Illuminatus!"-trilogy.

good choice.

already mentioned: the Discworld books by T. Pratchett.

H.P. Lovecraft/Call of Ctuhlhu
Dr. Slump (omg.. best comics ever)

cu

[adien]

I think one of my favorite books would have to be:

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

although i'm not really much of a fan of any of his other books.

i have some other favorite authors, but i can never seem to remember them. :P

umm... Vacuum Diagrams is another favorite book, but I can't remember the author's name. :P

I also like George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, although sometimes it's a little slow moving.

i don't read novels much these days. mostly technical manuals (I work in tech support) and books on improving my drawing.

[darkcult]

http://www.fantasticfictionimages.co.uk/images/n1/n5330.jpg

[Behemoth]

Originally posted by gekitsu
alien by a. d. foster (the movie is wet shit against the book)Thank you! people really don't believe me when I say that - it's so freakin' paranoid :eek:
1984 certainly is a good book, although i find it a bit flat.Each to their own. I loved it...Hmm...well...not sure love is the right verb but I was certainly moved by it :D

[Behemoth]

I did enjoy Dune as well - The original was great, Dune Messiah was tolerable and Children of Dune was dire...

Almost as bad as the film :yuck:

[seb]

the fountainhead by ayn rand

metamorphosis by franz kafka

as i lay dying by william faulkner

[Jason Manley]

narcissus and goldmund Herman Hesse

demian Herman Hesse ( a great one to start with for hesse)

siddharthy...herman hesse


and finally when you are completely addicted...the glass bead game also by herman hesse.


hes brilliant...my fave by far.



j

[Fipse]

Seems Hesse is quite "in" with the artists ;). I personally think "Narziss & Goldmund" is great as a work for all artists.

Fipse

[jester]

Hey, I almost missed this thread!

My top twenty books (so difficult to leave others out):

* The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
* Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Tad Williams
* Otherland, Tad Williams
* The Once and Future King, T.H. White
* The Discworld Novels, Terry Pratchett, Esp. Mort and Three Wytches
* The Great Tragedies, William Shakespeare
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
* Dubliners, James Joyce
* Treaure Island, R.L. Stevenson
* Espedair Street, Iain Banks
* Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
* Beowulf
* Gormenghast, Mervyn Peak
* The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
* The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin
* Dino Park, Michael Crichton
* Ghost House, Isabel Allende
* The Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
* Chronicles of Prydain, Lloyd Alexander
* It, Stephen King


Jester

[Runcible]

Couple of my favorites are:

The Princess and the Goblin
by George MacDonald

The Dunwich Horror
by H.P. Lovecraft

Pretty much any of Arthur C. Clarke's or Ray Bradbury's stuff can be a real kick to the imagination!

[J.Peckham]

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. everyone needs to read this book when they are a kid.

[Blind]

Originally posted by J.Peckham
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND. everyone needs to read this book when they are a kid.

Ah yes! My favorite Robert Heinlein book! Excellent book.

[gekitsu]

i bought a boxed set by sir arthur conyn doyle, featuring all the novels and short stories about sherlock holmes, since i love the movies with basil rathbone.
so far, it looks like a very good read, very entertaining and funny in the right places.
it was cheap, too :) (bantam-classics edition, like 12 eur)

interesting to see that so many of you anglophones read hesse or other german writers.
i wonder how much of their actual writing comes through the translation... the translations of lord of the rings and discworld all are horrible compared to the originals.

[jmascho]

The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Fountainhead - Rand
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

[N D Hill]

Alien by A. D. Foster? Isn't that just an adaptation? I can't picture alien being as good without the visual element. Maybe it's worth a peek though.

Also, I really liked the dune sequels. I've read all of them and the new prequel trilogy (which sucked ass) which was written by Herbert's son. The original Dune was better but the sequels were supposed to be something completly different. It actual consists of two trilogies. Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were about Paul Atriedes and his family's dynasty while God Emporer of Dune, Herretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune, were about the wars and aftermath resulting in from the fall of the Atriedes. The stories on their own are very unconventional as science fiction and I'd be more inclined to classify them as escapist-fantasy as it takes place in it's own independent universe. They consits more of political and relegious scandal and intrigue than spaceships and lasers.

Some other books I liked were Shogun and Gai-Jin by James Clavell. They were historically based novels that took place in fuedel Japan. Lots of samurai, ninja, warring nobels, and seppiku. I would definitely recomend them, especially Shogun.

[mcotie]

Anything by Robert E. Howard. But mostly The Hour of the Dragon and a close second is The Pheonix on the Sword. It really is hard for me to decide which is my favorite.
Plus most of his stuff is out of print and has been for a long time, but I've been scoping out used book stores and picking up the old prints of these with the Frazetta covers.

Plus if you read the Kull story, "By This Axe, I Rule", the fight on the stairs of the old ruins is downright, frickin awesome!!


His books just make me want to draw, man.


mitch

[jester]

the translations of lord of the rings and discworld all are horrible compared to the originals.

gekitsu, you are absolutely right on the Discworld novels but I find that the (older) translation of the Lord of the Rings (Klett Cotta edition from the 19??s no idea, 1970s, 1980s?) is just congenial! But I heard that Klett Cotta had it re-translated and "modernised" recently, probably that's the edition you know.

Jester

[Fipse]

I personally think the german translation (afaik it dates back to the 60´s) of the LOTR is literally better than the english original. Clett-Kotta is using the new translation just for the paperback-edition (that they supposedly printed in 100.000nds with the start of the movies) and due to protests of the readership are using the old translation for the hardcover-edition. But Gekitsu is completely right about the Terry Pratchett translations.

Fipse
(who of course is a big Discworld-Fan, esp. "Small Gods")

[Lost]

I take it comics dont count as no one has posted any...

My tastes change every month when it comes to books.
Mainstays are H.P.Lovecraft, Edger Allen Poe, and Robert Asprin.

However, the past 2 months of my life have been consumed by the short stories of Ambrose Bierce. Good stuff.

[gekitsu]

lost: i mentioned bmame! by nihei and ghost in the shell among my favirites. nobody objected til nw, so i guess comics are allowed.

fipse & jester: i read both translations of lord of the rings and have to agree about that: the newer is too modernized. sam calling frodo "chef" is simply out of place. also, i like it when "high fantasy" books have a more old-fashioned style of language. the new translation is just so streamlined, so much is lost through that...
eh, i didn't start reading lotr when the movies came out. in fact, i long wasn't sure if i should really watch the movies because they simply can't come close to the books. they did a good job, okay, but still, no comparison to the books.
the discworld translator does a good job, but he produces just a translation. discworld may be among the most difficult to translate books and measuredby that, the translations are quite good.
still, you have to think everything you read in english to get all the fun.

exo: the first three alien novels were written before the films, the forth one was made after the film, and isn't written by adf, too.
i'm not really sure about the quality of aliens and alien 3 but the first one sure is worth a peek.

[jester]

gekitsu, I read The Lord of the Rings usually every second year or so since I was 16... I think my count is up to 14 or 15 times by now (in the first years I read it once a year...) - but this didn't stop me from longing for the movie since I ever heard about Peter Jackson directing it. In fact, funny coincidence, about the time when he started the project (1997) me and my friend made a wish-list of actors for a Lord of the Rings production just for fun and posted it on my website... it is regularly offline by now but can be found here (http://www.jester.de/ringe.html) in case you are interested :D

Jester

[N D Hill]

Originally posted by Lost
I take it comics dont count as no one has posted any...

That deserves it's own sepperate thread. I know I can think of a few great ones.

[oglzogl]

It is hard to think of a favorite book. Throughout my life I have gone through phases. Always been a fan of fantasy.. Like jester, I have read the LofR more times than I can remember since my early teens. Throughout my twenties I read mostly anthropological and historical writings. It wasn't until I was 29 or so that I was introduced to sci-fi.. and I have been reading that almost exclusively since (about three years). It was Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" series that made me a fan.


I'd probably pick Tolkiens' Silmarillion as my favorite stand alone book.

I'd pick Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" stories as my favorite series (even though it is really just a collection some of his short stories from the pulp era)

And I'd probably have to say H P Lovecraft has become my favorite author.. but he has only earned that spot recently. (Been reading a lot of Colin Wilson lately.. he is close to overshadowing Lovecraft). It's funny, about eight years ago I remember trying to read Lovecraft and I hated it. Funny how our tastes change.

[Lost]

i mentioned bmame! by nihei and ghost in the shell among my favirites. nobody objected til nw, so i guess comics are allowed.

DOH! Sorry. Must have missed that one.
In that case let me give a shout out to Bendis and Straczynski for bringing me back to Spider-Man fandom.



:rock:

[gekitsu]

jester, i don't catch up to your count of reading but i did read it quite some times, too.
i would not like to pay all the actors you wished for the movie :eek:

john goodman is a good choice for sure, as is jack nicholson. :)
i disagree about the elves, though. :) i disagreed with their choice, too.
and i am absolutely unable to think of any actor that would fit aragorn truly. maybe the young sean connery or the young max schell, but they are not an option :)
voiggo mortensen just lacked edge and "natural majesty".

i wasn't very happy about the whole film project because i knew they are unable to fill the scale of the story. this simply is impossible in the film medium.

[jester]

gekitsu, you don't like Viggo??? Man, he's absolutely gorgeous! I must admit that I was very sceptical when I heard that he was going to be Aragorn, but IMO he did a great and sensible job. Of course a film project of a much loved book like this one can never cater anyones' tastes, and there are some issues I don't like, too (eg, leaving out the Tom Bombadil part, tough I know why, or the way the ents came out) but what really impresses me again and again is how much Peter Jackson tried to follow the book (in film language) and how much every single person working for this film was dedicating themself to make it a really great thing. I think this ambitious project is already a major success!

But - suprise, surprise - I can accept it when people just say that it's so different from their own imagination they have problems watching it.

Jester

[jrr]

well, wow, you guys sure read alot of books!
i like reading alot of russian existentialists stuff. my favorite is from an email from my best friend yan. in which he wrote this.
"the girl who won't give you the time of day, unless it's half past get lost!"

wow, deep. and very inspiring.

[Ant4d]

Yay! very interesting thread to read.
I have much longer "books to read" list now.
thanks for sharing mates!


These guys are my fav. I have read most of their books:

H.Hesse
P.Coelho
E.M.Remarque

Also:
G.G.Marquez
J.Cortazar

from SF: the one and only - "Sheri S. Tepper : Grass"
and of course Tolkien.

Cheers
Anton

[Blind]

Originally posted by jester
gekitsu, you don't like Viggo???

Damn, I thought Viggo did a great job. In fact, I think they casted 90% of that cast almost perfectly! No offense Jester, but I took a look at your wish list, and I'm really glad you didn't get any of your wishes! It reads like the cast if they ever do some made for television version with A-List celebrities. I mean, Brad Pitt?! Hehe... to each his/her own, though :cool:

I could have done without John Rhys Davies, though.

[jester]

Blind, the list was the result of a late breakfast on a Saturday morning and just fun - so we put in all the well known names :D ; as for John Rhys-Davies... I think it's really difficult to find a good actor for a dwarf, and the way his role was interpreted wasn't like I imagined Gimli either. Anyway, I think he did as best as he could.

Jester

[gekitsu]

yeah, that is like the stragest thing in the world... everyone complained about dwarfs and elves and everyonel liked viggo.

with me, it's just the opposite:
well, the elves were uncreative and often badly cast (did elrond look like the wise man he is? also, i don't remember galadriel as being described like a model but of ethereal beauty. legolas worked but he was just that - an elf that looked like everyone draws elves. they all lacked grace) but overall, the impression was clearly elven.
the dwarfs were golden, imho! not your default stubby, tiny, bearded, stupid folk with either blunderbusses or HUGE notched axes but they looked believably like an old folk of nordic culture.

and viggo just did not look as impressive as aragorn should. viggo would make a good companion for a hero but for being a hero himself, he lacks (in acting, no idea about him privately) something.

we should open a new thread for lotr discussion :)

[Lost]

The one thing I hated was Gimli.
He was a hollywood version of Gimli.
From what I remember of the books (and this was awhile ago)
Gimli was a bad-ass, pure and simple.

In the movie he was basically a bumbling side-kick. Sure he kicked ass when needed, but so did the freakin hobbits.

[Nimrod]

ok, back to books.

I just skimmed the thread, and in case no one has mentioned him, i'll throw out William Gibson.

Count Zero and All Tomorrow's Parties are my personal faves.

The new book the Da Vinci Code is quite good, especially for artists types. 2 parts deus ex, 1 part indiana jones, and 1 part art history survey course.

[Wizard of KOZ]

I have to say my two all time favorite books are:

The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende ( the movies are complete dog shit compared to the book)

And the Princess Bride by William Goldman (the movie is actually on par with the book IMO, but then again the movie version is my all time fav movie).