81–90 of 140 posts
Finally got around to reading 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' Blew me away. So much better than the film adaptation.
They're very different in a lot of ways, though--I might go as far as to say Blade Runner is just barely an adaptation and more a derivative. However, that'd just be me arguing semantics.
Accelerando, Iron Sunrise, and Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. Singularity stories.
House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski. Supernatural meta-fiction with half the story in the footnotes. Reminiscent of the movie Donnie Darko.
Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. Private eye gets retained by the White House to track down the other U.S. Constitution. To quote William Gibson, "Stop It. You're frightening me."
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg. Story of his teenage daughter's descent into manic psychosis.
A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. Kids' stories, so they have wall-to-wall story, unlike some of his more situational adult books.
James H. Schmitz science fiction stories. Available from the Baen Free Library of digital books.
I wouldn't say I agree with all of it, but its a great read nonetheless.
2. Mistborn trilogy (brandon sanderson): Gripping storytelling and by far one of the best fantasy books i've ever read.
3. Millennium trilogy (steig larsson): Hard to slot this book. On its face it is a thriller but the book is merely the medium through which the author lashes out against crimes toward women and corruption.In 2008, he was the second-best selling author in the world
4. American Shaolin (Matthew Polly): An exciting read but still do not know what is fact and what is fiction. .
Guns, Germs and Steel - still reading it but one of the best I 've read so far..
Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
The Art of Happiness, HH Dalai Lama
Getting Things Done (I know I'm late to the party...)
Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford (I heard about that one here, thank-you HN)
On Writing, Stephen King
Charles Stross, 'Accelerando' Stephenson, 'Anathem' (first 150 pages slow)
Classics:
Kafka's The Process and America - both stunning novels that deserve to be read as much as his most famous, The Castle.
Jan Potocki, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa - a trippy collection of tales organised in multiple nested frames.
Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Still as breathtaking as I'd remembered it from the previous reading five years ago.
Science Fiction:
Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun. Wolfe, whom I hadn't read before, turns out to be in a class of his own. It's literary SF, overwhelmingly masterful and beautiful in its prose and characters, yet it could give any hardcore SF novel a run in terms of its ideas. It demands and richly rewards a close reading. I'll be reading more Wolfe in 2010.
Ted Chiang, collected stories. Chiang writes only stories, and has written just a few of them, but nearly every one is a gem. Read Understand on the web (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm) to see if you like his style - I do.
Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky, The Peace War, Marooned in Realtime. All great novels, but start from A Fire Upon the Deep (I read that in 2008) if you haven't read Vinge before, it's the best introduction.
Greg Egan, Diaspora, Quarantine, Distress. Egan is the best hardcore SF author out there. _Diaspora_ is a fascinating take on shared simulated reality that's very different from the usual fare. Quarantine will appeal to your inner quantum mechanical geek.
Contemporary fiction:
Pynchon, V. Pynchon is the best novelist we've got. I recommend The Crying of the Lot 49 as the best Pynchon to start from; V is more difficult and much longer, but rewards the patience. I still can't get over the fact that Pynchon wrote and published this novel when he was 26.
Orhan Pamuk, The Black Book.
Annie Proulx, Fine Just The Way It Is. A new collection of stories from the best writer about rural America out there. Three are extraordinary, two so-so, the rest very good.
Non-fiction:
W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca and Vox Latina. If you want to know how ancient Greek and Latin sounded, these are the books to read.
Elizabeth Lloyd. The Case Of The Female Orgasm. An interesting study into how available evolutionary explanations of female orgasm fail in various ways. This is a book about evolutionary biology and its methodological soundness as much as it is about explaining female orgasm.
Computer-related:
Peter Seibel, Coders at Work. A fantastic collection of interview with great programmers. The one 2009 book no hacker should be without.
Squeak by Example. Does a great job of explaining Smalltalk in general and Squeak in particular.