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Favourite Books & Favourite Writers


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Hitchhiker is amazing. I finished reading it a few weeks ago and I loved it, even though I usually don't like sci-fi.

 

My other favourite books and writers:

 

Tolkien - LOTR, The Hobbit, Silmarilion

J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter series

Jeffrey Deaver - I love all his books but the best ones are with my favourite detective Lincoln Rhyme. Especially The Bone Collector is really great.

A.C.Doyle - Sherlock Holmes (surprisingly :D ). 

 

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Well since there seem to be a fair number of Hogwarts and Hitchhiker's fans assembled here (you have excellent taste, btw ;) ) and since the respective authors are probably much too modest to mention it here on the forum, let me be the one to state that Jane is in the process of writing a bold and downright funny Sherlock/Hogwarts crossover, while aely has written, among many many other stories, a brilliant Torchwood/Hitchhiker crossover (sadly, no trace of Sherlock to be found) that has the best Arthur outside of the dear departed Mr. Adams' works (blows And Another Thing straight out of the water, if you ask me) that I've ever read. I don't know if anyone here has done a Sherlock/Tolkien crossover but I admit that one's a bit awkward to pull off :).

 

eta: As for the Trekkers, Fox of course writes breathtakingly beautiful Star Trek fan fic, but I didn't remember to mention it at first since it's right here in the non-Sherlock fanfiction forum anyway.

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I realised I forgot something when compiling my list (surprising though it may be :D )

... A Series Of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. I'm not usually a fan of books aimed at younger readers (hence why I didn't really get along with Harry Potter; am I the only one here who doesn't actually like it? :D ), but a friend reccommended them to me and I picked up the first book in the series in a bookshop one day and browsed the blurb, just to see what all the fuss was about. And it sounded really interesting; I'd never come across a book that explicity tells you it's not going to have a happy ending before :) So I decided to give it a go, and then once I'd finished the first one I bought the second one straight away, and then I was hooked :) Yes, the characters and plot aren't anything special, but it's the twists and turns and the writing style that made these books really special for me. I just found them hiding in a box in my garage, after having not been read in a few years, so I might just start re-reading them all over again now :D

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Can't really say "favorite" here with absolute certainty, it changes around.

 

I read a lot of Dickens (a lot...), he's my literary comfort food.

 

Favorite romance: Jane Eyre

 

Favorite author: Austen

 

Favorite modern novels: Life of Pi, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Remains of the Day

 

Favorite fictional character: Sherlock Holmes (surprise)

 

Favorite childrens' books: Winnie the Pooh

 

Favorite comic strip: Calvin and Hobbes

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I didn't really get along with Harry Potter; am I the only one here who doesn't actually like it? :D )

 

No you're not! I detest Harry Potter, I'd sooner read Twilight than him... And that is saying a lot.

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I detest Harry Potter, I'd sooner read Twilight than him... And that is saying a lot.

 

Yay, I'm not alone! :) I wouldn't say I detest it on the whole, because I do watch the films if they're on television and I do like them more than the books, but I really don't see why people love it so much. To me, the writing is childish (and yes, I know they're aimed at children and young people, but children's books shouldn't necessarily be childish, if you know what I mean) and basic, and a lot of the story is predictable. Plus I never really liked or connected with any of the characters; Harry's a whiny, petulant little thing; Hermione's a brat and Ron, though he's probably the least offensive of the three, is pretty irksome sometimes...

 

... Sorry if I've offended any HP lovers out there; it's not my intention :) I just don't understand why there's such love for it.

 

... And I actually like Twilight, but I know where you're coming from. It's far from being the best book in the world; it has a lot of faults.

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But at least Twilight is genuine. It really reads like the pet fantasy of a teenage girl and not like something written by formula. Which is my main problem with Harry Potter.

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If you're looking for a mature Fantasy novel and haven't read "Outlander" / "Cross Stich" yet (D. Gabeldon), that's worth a try. The writing is good, the characters are fairly three-dimensional and there's a lot of interesting historical detail. There are a number of sequels but I have no idea whether they're enjoyable. A word of warning, though: You should be over 18 (at least mentally) and not too queasy about sex and gore to enjoy it.

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  • 2 months later...

First things first: thanks a lot everybody for giving me some ideas for my "books I should read"-list (although it is alraedy quite long... :huh: )

 

Favorite classic book: Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

 

Favorite german author: Stefan Zweig (and yes, I know he's from Austria ^_^ )

 

Favorite german book: Die Welt von gestern (Stefan Zweig) (english title: The World of Yesterday)

 

Favorite children book: Erich und die Detektive (Erich Kästner) (english title: Emil and the Detectives)

 

Favorite fantasy book: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

 

Favorite series (well, there are actually two...): The Thursday-Next-Series (Jasper Fforde) and the Baroque-Cycle (Neal Stephenson)

 

Favorite "Hey, I can be really sciency too"-book: The Feynman Lectures (Richard Feynman)

 

Favorite vulgarisation of science: A Short History of Nearly Everything

 

Favorite "showing off"-authors: Michel Foucault and Sigmund Freud 

 

And last but not least: THE book. You know, the one you can re-read all the time; the one you would choose to take with to an isolated island:

 

The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov)  :wub:

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Favorite fantasy book: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

 

:applause:

 

This is such an amazing book.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I like a lot of books (I write only few titles because the list is long)

-Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility,Mansfield Park,Emma,Northanger Abbey and Persuasion(I'm a Jane Austen fan)

-Sherlock Holmes series by Conan Doyle(obviously)

-The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

-Jane Eyre,Shirley,Wuthering Heights by Bronte Sisters

-Harry Potter series by Rowling

-Stardust by Neil Gaiman

-Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

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Hmmm... "Sophronia". You didn't by any chance pick that name from "Our Mutual Friend", did you? Seeing as you seem to enjoy Victorian literature...

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Some of my favourite writers and books:

 

J K Rowling (of course). I love the Harry Potter series and 'Casual Vacancy'. 'Cuckoo's Calling' was OK, nothing special imo. I don't think crime is her genre. It's not awful or anything, just nothing to get excited about.

 

Christopher Fowler: Not very well known but I really love this guys books, particularly his Bryant & May detective novels. If you like crime fiction that's a bit amusing, a bit tongue in cheek and more than a bit odd, you'll like these. The 2 main characters are fantastic and the crimes are very strange indeed (well they do work for the Peculiar Crimes Unit so it's to be expected).

 

Christopher Brookmyre

 

George Orwell

 

The Hunger Games

 

The Strain trilogy (Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan): If you like your vampires repulsive, terrifying and not in the slightest bit sparkly.

 

Val McDermid

 

Chuck Palahniuk (although his later stuff I've tried to read is a bit too hard going for me, gives me brain-ache)

 

I've never read and of the original Sherlock Holmes stories but I've just started one right now out of curiosity. I've never been drawn to them before but I think I should check them out being as I love this TV series so much. See where it all started and that :)

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I suppose my favourite book is LOTR. I have read it several times since my teens and always found it strangely comforting.

 

Jane Austen is one of my favourites, particularly "Pride and Prejudice.". (Wouldn't Benedict be a magnificent Mr Darcy?). I love her dry sense of humour. I also recommend the work of Anne Tyler, author of "The Accidental Tourist" amongst other things, because she writes like an angel.

 

There are so many wonderful writers, too many to begin to list, but I particularly like Ian McEwan's work, even though he annoys me sometimes!

 

Where crime is concerned, no-one can touch Conan Doyle, of course, but an excellent modern crime writer is Ian Rankin. He created the character of DI John Rebus, who is one of the most realistic fictional characters ever created. If you visit Edinburgh, where the stories are set, you can almost believe you will bump into him coming out of the Oxford Bar, his favourite pub.... Neither of the Rebus tv series really did justice to the books, so don't be put off if you've seen them. There is a longish series of books, beginning with"Knots and Crosses", and it is impossible to read them without coming to love the cynical, sarcastic, hard-drinking and stubborn Rebus. Strongly recommended.

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Hmmm... "Sophronia". You didn't by any chance pick that name from "Our Mutual Friend", did you? Seeing as you seem to enjoy Victorian literature...

I love Victorian literature but I didn't read "Our Mutual Friend".I chose the name because it means "wise"  :)

 

Wouldn't Benedict be a magnificent Mr Darcy?

I have always thought that Colin Firth is the quintessential Mr Darcy  but now I think Benedict Cumberbatch would be perfect.

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  • 2 months later...

Stephen King - the Master of horror! The ones I re-read the most:

 

The Shining

The Dark Half

Tommyknockers

IT

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  • 3 months later...

Apart from Sherlock Holmes, I read no other fiction.

 

I'm a reference book sort of person, anything I can learn something from.

 

Military Law

Civilian Law

Military History

Strategy

19th Century firearms

20th/21st Century firearms

Garden design

Chess

Go (game)

 

I'm termed more of a studier than a reader.

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I recently was considering obtaining a book called something like How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes, but earlier had purchased a simpler, but interesting book on how to break down data into six areas of study, called - Six Frames : For Thinking About Information. By Edward de Bono.

 

This is a quick read book, but its contents to myself was most helpful, in how to section down lots of data into workable units, therefore managing to find specific points of interest, whilst not being distracted by unconnected material.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

My favourite books are the Harry Potter books (I'm tempted to add "of course" B) ). I grew up with them, was always approximately Harry's age and keep listening to the audiobooks (German, British and American) several times a year... Second best I like "Die Stadt der träumenden Bücher" by Walter Moers (seems there is actually an English translation: "The City of dreaming books"), which is just beautifully written. And I love the whole fantasy genre (all kinds of authors, e.g. Tolkien, Kai Meyer, Trudi Canavan, Hohlbein, Richard Schwartz, ...).

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I'm guessing that those British and American audiobooks, as well as the original novels, were a big contribution to your fluency in English (and if so, they worked really well!).

 

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Thanks Carol :blush:

Harry Potter really gave a boost to my level of English because virtually of forced me to read English novels while still being at school and still learning the language; the lessons alone could never have taught me that much. Today, audiobooks and especially English TV-series help me not to lose contact with the language - which would be disastrous for me because English is a veeeery important part of my job. And at the moment, all you guys help me, too, and in such an entertaining way. Thank you for that :D

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My favourite book is either

 

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (which I have read about 20 times and sadly the ending never changes) and if you have only ever seen the movie you are missing most of the story, actually that movie annoys me, but the TV series is sublime.

 

 or Making History (by Stephen Fry which is an interesting idea, what if someone could go back and stop Hitler, would it be better?)

 

but right now I am reading The Prince and Betty by PG Wodehouse. 

 

I am slightly obsessed with Antarctic explorers and read just about everything I can lay my hands on.  

 

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