Nooks, and give me books to read

I just got a Nook, and am in the middle of a crazy book-downloading spree. But I need ideas. Recommend good books to me, especially science fiction or fantasy. For reference, some of the books in those genres I have already read and loved:

Douglas Adams
Neal Stephenson's Anathem
Everything good by Weis/Hickman (DragonLance, Death Gate Cycle)
Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy


Some other stuff I've already read at least some of (so you don't need to recommend them):

George R. R. Martin
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time
David Eddings
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth
Stephen King
Piers Anthony
Orson Scott Card
Terry Pratchett's Discworld
Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant

I haven't even read a book on my Nook yet, and I already love it.

The Bible.

I already have a Bible. Silly me for forgetting that one.

It's not science fiction or fantasy but Bret Easton Ellis is great quality.

The Runelords is a pretty good series, though I haven't read the more recent books and can't attest to their quality, the first couple are fairly well written. Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is becoming one of the staple books in the fantasy genre and has received pretty fantastic praise from basically everyone who is anyone in the science fiction/fantasy genre.

The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks is by no means amazing, but it is still decently written and has a couple worthwhile twists and turns to it. Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it. Along the same lines, Kingmaker, Kingbreaker by Karen Miller is a decent read, but still not entirely groundbreaking to the genre itself.

The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch is worth it, simply for the way he writes and develops the characters. It's written fairly light-hearted at times, but can get a little dark in others, and the characters themselves are wonderful.

Chronicles of the Necromancer is a book I've been wanting to read for a little bit, but haven't gotten around to it. I'm not sure if it will be amazing or not, but from the little I managed to read it seems good enough to hold my interests.

Along with Wheel of Time perhaps given Brandon Sanderson's novels any time? I haven't read any of his books personally, but they are on my ever-increasing list of things to read eventually.

That should be enough for now?

I'll second the recommendation for Lynch, although I've only read the first book in the series so far. Rothfuss was also pretty good but he needs to finish the damn sequels already. It's been what, three years? And they were supposed to be a book each year. Granted he seems to be polishing them up to respond to the few criticisms people had of the original book, and apparently he had a loss in the family that resulted in the loss of a lot of his time, but that doesn't explain the entire delay.

You might also like Ursula K. LeGuin and John Twelve Hawks; I wrote a mini-review of the latter's first book (which I'm halfway through) here.

I also liked Steven Erikson's first book but got interrupted halfway through the second one due to school a few years ago and haven't picked the series back up since. I plan to restart it after I finish off some of the other books I'm in the middle of.

And he's not really sci-fi (although he is influenced by it) but I always tell people to read Thomas Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow is too much to start out with (although it's generally regarded as his best) so I'd say go for one of the shorter books; The Crying of Lot 49 or Inherent Vice, or maybe Vineland. Vineland has ninjas. You can't go wrong with ninjas.

The second book has a release date now (March 1st, 2011) but I agree that the wait was excruciatingly painful. I'm just finishing up my fourth read of Name of the Wind because I want it to be reasonably fresh in my mind. I'll probably read it again sometime between now and March though.

Scott Lynch is worse, since the third book doesn't have a release date yet and I haven't heard anything other than Lynch bitching about Blizzard's RealID thing for their games.

For some reason I thought the third Lynch book had a release date last time I looked it up at work. Maybe that was another case of B&N making things up again though.

Bunny: I <3 you and I pretty much trust your taste in books implicitly at this point, so I'll give some of those a try (eventually).

Aaron: Hawks and Pychon look interesting, so I will add at least those to the list (and look into the others). And there's no worry about a book being "too much" to start out with; I made it through Anathem as my first venture into Neal Stephenson, and that is massive.

With Gravity's Rainbow it's not just the length of the novel that's intimidating, but the depth of the esoterica into which Pynchon delves. From my one experience with Stephenson thus far (Cryptonomicon) he does the same, but to a lesser extent. The often hallucinatory nature of some of the prose in Gravity's Rainbow doesn't help, either; Pynchon himself has said that he no longer fully understands all of the passages in the book and is uncertain whether he ever did.

But if you don't think you'll be put off, feel free to go ahead. I had to give it three goes before I could get through it (although the second time was aborted mostly due to school). Once I did I was extremely glad I took the plunge though. Most people who've read the whole book have generally said that if you make it through the first hundred pages, you're through the toughest part of the book, and I tend to agree.

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Originally Posted by The Man

For some reason I thought the third Lynch book had a release date last time I looked it up at work. Maybe that was another case of B&N making things up again though.

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Likely. B&N is absolutely horrible with release dates and most of the time makes them up. I went to Lynch's website, LJ and the wiki entry for the series and neither of them mentioned anything about the third book, so I'm going to take that more than B&N.

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Bunny: I <3 you and I pretty much trust your taste in books implicitly at this point, so I'll give some of those a try (eventually).

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Woo!

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Originally Posted by Bunny

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Originally Posted by The Man

For some reason I thought the third Lynch book had a release date last time I looked it up at work. Maybe that was another case of B&N making things up again though.

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Likely. B&N is absolutely horrible with release dates and most of the time makes them up. I went to Lynch's website, LJ and the wiki entry for the series and neither of them mentioned anything about the third book, so I'm going to take that more than B&N.

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Yeah they've also had several release dates for Dance listed which were obviously bogus. Sucks, since several of them already passed several years ago.

I'm not sure you'd like my favorites, but I'll toss them out anyway.

Anything by Raymond E. Feist, The Riftwar Saga especially. Good smurfin' books.

The Keepers of the Hidden Ways by Joel Rosenberg. If you like those check out The Guardians of the Flame. Both of the series are kind of an acquired taste. Really interesting storylines. GotF kind of takes a different course in book six.

The Obsidian Chronicles by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Freya got me into this series. I've only just started the first book but it's really good so far.

Not a whole lot of variety on my bookshelf but this is the stuff I'd most recommend.

I third, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It is an amazing read.

Agreed about the Night Angel series by Weeks. While not the most amazing thing to hit the pages, still very entertaining and totally was what I needed in my assassin phase I went through a while back.

The Chronicles of a Necromancer by Gail Z. Martin is pretty decent. I am currently finishing up the fourth and technically final book in the series, Dark Lady's Chosen. I really enjoyed the first book, The Summoner, but the focus on characters really switches as the series progresses. While each book always includes the stories of the main cast of characters, there is a subtle shift in focus that slowly occurs. So part of the reason I haven't finished the fourth book as fast is due to that and just being busy. Still a good book. Does its own twist on vampire lore as well, long before vampires were the new thing. Dark Lady's Chosen is the last in the Chronicles of a Necromancer series, but Martin will continue the story in a new series (and a new publisher) in March 2011. The Sworn will be the first book of The Fallen Kings Cycle and is set 6 months after the events of Dark Lady's Chosen. All-in-all, I recommend at least reading The Summoner and going from there. I really enjoyed it.

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik rewrites history with dragons in it and is set during the Napoleonic wars. A solid read, especially if you like dragons that talk. I haven't finished the series yet though.

The Obsidian King trilogy by James Mallory and Mercedes Lackey is something that might be worth your attention. Lackey is a rather prolific writer, even if she has a tendency to have Gary Stus and Mary Sues populate her novels. I love the twist she has on magic in it! :D

I have other series I would recommend but I dunno if you'd like them.

Oh and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke might be up your alley.

You could complete the Dragonlance collection. They have a torrent with all of them on Demonoid.

Here's the ebook manager you're gonna want to at least edit your metadata: calibre - E-book management

Excellent sci-fi which you may like if you're a fan of Stephenson can be found in Charles Stross. His first book, Singularity Sky, is fun but a bit unpolished - later stuff gets much better, and I thought Iron Sunrise which I just finished a couple of days ago was pretty stellar.

I cannot recommend Iain M. Banks strongly enough (same person as Iain Banks, but the M. is included on his sci-fi stuff). I couldn't get into Feersum Endjinn but I absolutely love, love, love The Culture novels, it contains two of my favorite books ever (Excession and Use of Weapons) and they're all pretty great. I wouldn't start with the first book though, Consider Phlebas is a real bastard to get into without knowing the universe; The Player of Games is generally regarded as the best one to start with.

Of course, you could look to a lot of older authors here as well. I'm currently reading The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard, and it's gripping stuff. Pohl wrote good works, I'm especially a fan of The Coming of the Quantum Cats. Obviously there's the Big Three - Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, and you can really choose damn near anything by any of them and you'll strike gold. (I would especially recommend Rendesvous with Rama by Clarke, it's one of the best instances of really creating a sense of 'alienness' I've ever come across.) I would also stick Brian Aldiss into a list of the great masters of science fiction, especially in light of his insufficiently well-known and well-regarded Helliconia books.

Oh, and if you can get Before the Golden Age, edited by Asimov, do so. It's a collection of early sci-fi short stories; some are okay, a few are good, and one or two are real finds (I'm thinking of Charles R. Tanner's Tumithak stories here specifically).

I'll second Aaron's suggestion of Le Guin. I'm a big fan of her Earthsea novels. Also consider Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which I've not yet got around to reading but have heard great things about.

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Originally Posted by ShlupQuack

You could complete the Dragonlance collection. They have a torrent with all of them on Demonoid.

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I am ashamed that you did not think I had already found and downloaded that. Though I've already read most of the good ones.

Thanks for the additional suggestions, everyone. I'm hoping to get started on some of these later this week.

EDIT: I'll have to look into some of those sci-fi books, Huxley. I've liked some of what I've bothered to read (though Stephenson is hardly typical sci-fi, I have read bits of Heinlein and Asimov), but I just haven't yet bothered to delve much deeper into the genre.

Has the Nook gotten better with the slew of firmware updates since its release? When I was working at Barnes and Noble, we had numerous people coming in each day complaining about some malfunction or another, but I haven't kept up with the machine since I left for my current job.

As far as suggestions go, I recently read The Gunslinger, the first in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Was certainly interesting and might be worth a try. I was planning on reading more, but then my roommate dumped The Wheel of Time on me and I haven't read much else since.

I just remembered a science fiction author that was mentioned to me several years back: Alastair Reynolds. I haven't read any of his books myself, but when I looked a few of them up for myself they seemed like they could be interesting enough. The feedback on them was certainly positive.

If anyone has read them, give me some feedback possibly? I might look into them further myself.

Sidenote: Raistlin, what sites are you using to get these? PM me links if you could >_>

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Has the Nook gotten better with the slew of firmware updates since its release? When I was working at Barnes and Noble, we had numerous people coming in each day complaining about some malfunction or another, but I haven't kept up with the machine since I left for my current job.

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Yeah. Version 1.3 added a bunch of new features (a web browser, for one) and as of version 1.4 everything seems pretty solid.

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Originally Posted by Guardian XIII

The Obsidian Chronicles by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Freya got me into this series. I've only just started the first book but it's really good so far.

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Yeah that. Read that.

I can vouch for the Mars trilogy; I got about halfway through the first book two years ago and it's superb, but I got interrupted reading it because, you guessed it, of school. I lent it out to a friend for the time being and thus far he has seconded my initial impression.

I really do need to read Iain M. Banks. And more Le Guin - the only thing of hers I've read thus far has been The Dispossessed. I need to read the entire Hainish cycle and all of the Earthsea novels.

I downloaded Name of the Wind first and started reading it. It's pretty good so far, but a little slow to get going; I'm perhaps 120 pages into it and it's felt like most exposition, though not boring exposition. The writing quality is really good.

More notable to report, I've read on my Nook for a couple of hours now, and it's been very comfortable. Well worth it.

There isn't really all that much action in The Name of the Wind, but the superb writing quality and characterization more than make up for it in my opinion. Apparently part of the reason he's revising the later books in the series is to add somewhat more action.

If you'll allow me a case recommendation, this is the style I have and I very much enjoy propping my Nook like a picture frame when I need my hands free.

Amazon.com: JAVOedge Tweed Flip Style Case for the Barnes & Noble Nook: Electronics

I found a really nice ampersand Nook case and that makes me want to buy a Nook now. I really have my priorities in order, don't I?

Uh, I'd recommend Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. Part dystopic, part of an insight into end of the world religions, part fantastical. I absolutely adore this book. I think you'd like it. If you like it, read Oryx and Crake.

That reminds me, I still need to get a case for my nook.

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Originally Posted by ShlupQuack

If you'll allow me a case recommendation, this is the style I have and I very much enjoy propping my Nook like a picture frame when I need my hands free.

Amazon.com: JAVOedge Tweed Flip Style Case for the Barnes & Noble Nook: Electronics

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The reviews are all 100% positive, so I went ahead and bought it. It looks very nice.

I am very happy with the apparent quality of the recommendations so far.

I got the purple cherry blossom one. Manny, get the cork one. Then we'll be triple cool.

I'm about halfway through Stephenie Meyer's The Host and have decided I like it. That's sci-fi, right??

I am not reading Stephenie Meyer.

I understand the feeling but all indications suggest that The Hose is actually a fairly good book.

Except that it was written by Stephenie Meyer.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g1..._c0ca_6386.jpg

I have been more and more engrossed in Rothfuss. The writing is definitely excellent and his character and plot development very realistic, almost reminiscent of Abercrombie's First Law series. Usually very subtle or small amounts of humor, which I appreciate, and left me completely unprepared for the Elodin chapter. I can usually smell anticlimax from a mile away, but that caught me completely off-guard and was hilarious. Elodin instantly became my favorite.

I also noted the similarity between "Elodin" and "Elohim" (ancient Hebrew word for god, something like "divine powers").

I have to give credit where credit is due: the host is actually a fairly well written book. I can hardly believe stephanie meyer wrote it.

I hear the Black Company books are rather good, and have been meaning to read one. They're a science fiction and fantasy mix from what I gather, and all the books are both part of a series and standalone stories.

Not sure what the first book was called or who wrote them though. :P

Glen Cook and they are decent.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Though extremely smurfed, this is actually a really, really funny book.

Poppy Z. Brite is wicked awesome if homosexuality doesn't bother you.

The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns was a really good one, too.

It seems like whenever I go to list things that I like, my brain goes dead. That's all I got for you at the moment.

I got my Nook case in, and it looks really great. I'll be quite comfortable lugging my Nook around everywhere with it.

I finished Rothfuss, and I think my next step will be Scott Lynch. But I also have an urge to reread Anathem for the first time. Oh well, one of those two.