81–90 of 163 posts
The series gets sillier and sillier as it goes on. I haven't re-read it lately, but I still have the copy.
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull Never entirely sure why I love it so much. First read it as a child when I hated apparently similar books - stories that seem written to speak to an adult’s idea of a sweet and innocent childhood - but it would always transport me… somewhere… I could never really describe. Still can’t, but still love it decades later
Have Space Suit Will Travel (Heinlein) Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (one story in the book "Different Seasons" by Stephen King) Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck) The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury) Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky) Frankenstein (Shelley) Brave New World (Huxley) Farenheit 451 (Heinlein) Never Cry Wolf (Mowatt) A Whale for the Killing (Mowatt) The Machine Stops (Fors…
Ender's Game and especially Ender's Shadow. I hesitate to recommend OSC at all due to his Problematic™ personal politics, especially as a member of the maligned group, but they had a big impact on the way I see The System in which we all live. Spoiler-free: based on a shared societal belief in a looming existential crisis, a group of young adults attend a military school whose curriculum revolves around a war game wi…
I remember being very disappointed reading Speaker for the Dead, in that it's a total change of pace from the more "hero's journey" structure for Ender's Game, but now looking back, I really appreciate how it expanded the themes and brought a more nuanced flavour to the whole series. And yes... I try to separate the art from the artist too when it comes to OSC.
Ender's Game is definitely a classic.
Dune. So many thought-provoking quotes throughout the books, especially the first one. This one pops up in my head often, many years after having first read the book: "Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?" Also Starship Troopers. Reading it made me somewhat regret not joi…
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My goodness, did you write those by using your memory?
Those were just the ones I remember reading as a kid/teenager. There are others that I read later in life which I'd also recommend such as the Foundation series by Asimov, Moby Dick, Dune, Life of Pi, works by Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Terry Pratchett, Stanislaw Lem, Pierre Boulle, etc.
We also had an excellent electronic dictionary with a few interesting games and a thorough etymology.
Living in the country, we were often in the car for extended periods and had catalogues of books on tape, mostly of the classics. Otherwise, we lived about half a mile, walking distance, from the town library and would go up on weekends.
On the computer, after CD-ROM drives became affordable, I particularly enjoyed interactive multimedia like Microsoft's Encarta, all of Knowledge Adventure titles, Explorapedia, and DK's "The Way Things Work". After Macromedia Shockwave, tons of eclectic titles about any given subject were being published, and we had discs ranging from the Civil War to Music Americana to I Love Lucy.
Remember, libraries can be anything. Don't limit yourself!
Its a brazilian book from 30's about a typical family from the time. There's nothing special about the book. I lived at the country side and all I had to spend my time was this book and a couple of others. I'm quite sure I have read it countless times already. It is "personally" important to me.