Favorite Books

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

I wanted to post these on the "Books that turned you into a reader" thread but I figured a new thread would be better. Post books that you own that you really like. I took out a few books from my library and you can tell how much I like them by how beat up they are.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

This book didn't turn me into a reader since I was already a reader before reading the book.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I don't have them with me right now, but... The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King (I own it in Spanish, English and audiobook format), Mazes & Monsters by Ronna Jaffe, Runaway, Wild Bird and Flipped by Wendelin van Draanen...

 

[PaleFolklore]

This man is a goddamn genius.

(Pic attached)

 

[LiberoVulpes]

My all time favorite:

 

[DunkeyKong]

Mine would be Fatal Chaos series, I have to thank my uncles for giving me these kinds of comics

 

[Noon]

It’s been forever I’ll have to reread them cause my brain could only retain like 0.2% of each one lol

 

[diapered]

This book didn't turn me into a reader since I was already a reader before reading the book.

What makes you like Grapes of Wrath more than Cannery Row? Anything Steinbeck is great, but I don't think I even finished Grapes of Wrath, yet I would probably rank Cannery Row as one of my favorites of all time.

 

[99nereids]

Whipping Girl (Julia Serano)

Left pic is the second edition that i read, right is the newest one (3rd)
It discusses feminism & gender through the perspective of a trans women who is also a biologist. Julia Serano is a really good author and i love this book, she's able to pick apart many conservative talking points hurled at trans women in a very eloquent way, and i recommend it to anyone interested in these topics as its a fantastic academic text. It's rare to find books about trans people & their experiences that are written by trans people so this is a nice read.

Gideon The Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

First book in the Locked Tomb trilogy, this book is set in a post-apocalyptic world run by necromancers, and centers around the story of Gideon, a lesbian who studies the blade and likes the occasional nudie mag. She's sent to a large, mostly desolate castle with the monarch that rules over her, a spiteful & dubious necromancer named Harrowhark.
This book is so good. This is the first work by this author and it gave me the inspiration to get into writing. Tamsyn's able to really immerse the reader in the world she's created in a natural way that doesn't put a pause to the unfolding plot. and the writing is so fuckign funny at times, this is the first book that made me laugh out loud reading it.

 

[MegaHiro91]

I very rarely read, I just don't have time for it with all my other hobbies, though I wanna make more time for it. That said, a couple years I finished Myst: The Book of Atrus, which I gobbled up because it's a prequel to one of my favorite games of all time, and last year, because I love the movie, I decided I owed it to myself to read the The Secret Garden.

To those who don't know, it's about spoiled young orphan girl who is taken in by her distant uncle, and initially wants nothing to do with anyone in his mansion, but quickly warming up to the kindhearted chambermaid becomes the key for her to slowly open up to everyone else. Going from spoiled and slightly unlikable, to unspoiled and super likable.
Since there is nothing to do inside the prestigeus house she ventures out into the gardens where she also meets the kind gartener and hears a rumor about a secret garden that hasn't been opening for 10 years. Curiousity sets in, and she makes it her mission to find it and restore it, since she has a fondness for nature and gardening in general.

What I love about the book, is how Burnett manages to describe the world Mary Lennox inhabits from a child's perspective, which makes the wonders of nature seem even more fantastical. I am normally one who wants action i.e I want the story to get a move on, but with the Secret Garden I don't mind the slow pace at all because the meticulous description of nature and wildlife IS the story.

I especially love how she describes that being used to everyone around her doing everything for her back in India, Mary is described as weak and pale. But then, as she peruses the gardens, fighting the harsh autumn winds and getting some much needed fresh air, she starts gaining strength and color in her cheecks, which in turn helps her mood as well.
I love the description of her meeting with the animal charmer Dickon, whom she finds so interesting that she wonders if he's a fairy whom she is afraid will vanish if she looks away. And my favorite passage has got to be where the two are alone in the gardens and she summons the courage to ask if he likes her. Not romantically, but seeing how up till this point she has never had any close friends and therefore never really cared if others cared about her, it's a big leap in her character development to check in on whether this peculiar boy likes her or not.

For anyone interested but maybe don't have the time to read the book, I recommend the 1975 BBC series which can be watched on YouTube.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

I very rarely read, I just don't have time for it with all my other hobbies, though I wanna make more time for it. That said, a couple years I finished Myst: The Book of Atrus, which I gobbled up because it's a prequel to one of my favorite games of all time, and last year, because I love the movie, I decided I owed it to myself to read the The Secret Garden.

To those who don't know, it's about spoiled young orphan girl who is taken in by her distant uncle, and initially wants nothing to do with anyone in his mansion, but quickly warming up to the kindhearted chambermaid becomes the key for her to slowly open up to everyone else. Going from spoiled and slightly unlikable, to unspoiled and super likable.
Since there is nothing to do inside the prestigeus house she ventures out into the gardens where she also meets the kind gartener and hears a rumor about a secret garden that hasn't been opening for 10 years. Curiousity sets in, and she makes it her mission to find it and restore it, since she has a fondness for nature and gardening in general.

What I love about the book, is how Burnett manages to describe the world Mary Lennox inhabits from a child's perspective, which makes the wonders of nature seem even more fantastical. I am normally one who wants action i.e I want the story to get a move on, but with the Secret Garden I don't mind the slow pace at all because the meticulous description of nature and wildlife IS the story.

I especially love how she describes that being used to everyone around her doing everything for her back in India, Mary is described as weak and pale. But then, as she peruses the gardens, fighting the harsh autumn winds and getting some much needed fresh air, she starts gaining strength and color in her cheecks, which in turn helps her mood as well.
I love the description of her meeting with the animal charmer Dickon, whom she finds so interesting that she wonders if he's a fairy whom she is afraid will vanish if she looks away. And my favorite passage has got to be where the two are alone in the gardens and she summons the courage to ask if he likes her. Not romantically, but seeing how up till this point she has never had any close friends and therefore never really cared if others cared about her, it's a big leap in her character development to check in on whether this peculiar boy likes her or not.

For anyone interested but maybe don't have the time to read the book, I recommend the 1975 BBC series which can be watched on YouTube.

View attachment 24174

I think I saw a movie adaptation of this a long time ago.

 

[Octopus]

I can't get any photos of them right now, but I'll list off the ones I particularly like/own physically;
-a complete H.P Lovecraft omnibus, includes all his stories published under his name (so excludes all his ghostwritten work) and his extensive letters and correspondence. It also looks very nice, has a really nice (fake) silver embossed style cover of Cthulhu's face.
-Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero, about the making of The Room. Was a great read honestly, and had more in it than just the insanity of Tommy Wiseau and was more personal than I was expecting.
-Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favourite books of all time easily.
-a biography/art book of Alex Ross, shows off all his amazing paintings and some of his really early work that I think hadn't been seen until the book if I recall.
-a few video game art books, got a bunch of street fighter and MGS ones.
-various philosophy books, the usual Nietzsche and Kant mainly.
-quite a few old Marvel comics 'how-to-draw' books back when I was drawing, I'm not sure how many I have left actually I may have gotten rid of almost all of them; I'll have to check. I also had an equal amount of various shitty 2000s how-to-draw manga books that I've definitely gotten rid of.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, when I get the chance to I'll try and get pictures and see what else I have kicking around, used to be a big reader so I have a decent stockpile.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

I can't get any photos of them right now, but I'll list off the ones I particularly like/own physically;
-a complete H.P Lovecraft omnibus, includes all his stories published under his name (so excludes all his ghostwritten work) and his extensive letters and correspondence. It also looks very nice, has a really nice (fake) silver embossed style cover of Cthulhu's face.
-Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero, about the making of The Room. Was a great read honestly, and had more in it than just the insanity of Tommy Wiseau and was more personal than I was expecting.
-Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favourite books of all time easily.
-a biography/art book of Alex Ross, shows off all his amazing paintings and some of his really early work that I think hadn't been seen until the book if I recall.
-a few video game art books, got a bunch of street fighter and MGS ones.
-various philosophy books, the usual Nietzsche and Kant mainly.
-quite a few old Marvel comics 'how-to-draw' books back when I was drawing, I'm not sure how many I have left actually I may have gotten rid of almost all of them; I'll have to check. I also had an equal amount of various shitty 2000s how-to-draw manga books that I've definitely gotten rid of.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, when I get the chance to I'll try and get pictures and see what else I have kicking around, used to be a big reader so I have a decent stockpile.

I've never been much into horror, so I haven't read HP Lovecraft. My older sister really liked Stephen King and I read some of his stuff (not fully). I liked more of his non-horror stuff like The Stand than his straight horror novels, although there was a collection of horror short stories that stuck with me. My sister gifted me Pet Cemetery, since we used to watch Stephen King movies together at an incredibly inappropriate age for me. Still need to get to it.

Funny that you mention Slaughterhouse Five. I got a copy of it recently, since its one of those books that gets mixed in with the satirical/philosophical/existentialist books I love to read. Since my favorite Canadian mollusk thinks highly of it, I'll have to move it up my list.

- Kingdom Come is one of my favorite graphic novels. A good friend of mine let me read his copy and the story and artwork has stuck with me. Alex Ross is the pinnacle of artistry, comic book, or otherwise. He's an incredible talent and I'm at awe at every one of his works.

- Love reading about philosophy. Unfortunately, I didn't keep my undergrad philosophy books, I can only find depressing existentialist novels.

 

[Octopus]

I've never been much into horror, so I haven't read HP Lovecraft

That's fair, and he's definitely a hard read on top of that. A lot of archaic language, really dense passages and overly wordy (but amazing) descriptive sentences; his longest single sentence in a story was something like 12 lines of text or something crazy like that, I can't remember exactly the length but it was in The Whisperer in Darkness which is probably in my top 3 of favourites. He's horror by definition of course, but I think someone who's not into horror can still get into him as it's more about the writing itself than the genre, at least to me.

Funny that you mention Slaughterhouse Five. I got a copy of it recently, since its one of those books that gets mixed in with the satirical/philosophical/existentialist books I love to read. Since my favorite Canadian mollusk thinks highly of it, I'll have to move it up my list.

If that's your jam, it's easily one of the greatest in the genre man. Poignant and surreal all at once.

Love reading about philosophy.

I had a phase around high school where I got into philosophy and poetry, I was a meme. I was into really only existentialism but I also read a little Buddhism and stuff like that; really liked the Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron (can't get the proper accent text on his name there), I think I actually own an actual copy of that too.

Kingdom Come is one of my favorite graphic novels. A good friend of mine let me read his copy and the story and artwork has stuck with me. Alex Ross is the pinnacle of artistry, comic book, or otherwise. He's an incredible talent and I'm at awe at every one of his works.

I haven't read Kingdom Come yet but it's on my list, and Alex Ross is an absolute legend. I really like his smaller one-off stories he did with various writers, they're all in the book I have.

 

[ATenderLad]

Picking favorites is....probably not that hard, actually, it's just a -Me- problem. Here's some of the more recent ones I can think of though.

There's The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, a cornerstone of hardboiled detective books. It's more pulp than mystery, the various threads don't come together like an Agatha Christie novel. That said, Chandler turns a phrase like nobody's business, and between him and Dashiell Hammett you have the origin of a lot of the slang and style of speech in film noir movies of post-war Hollywood.

There's some articles by a cephalopod that got me thinking to re-read my only real foray into D&D-adjacent fiction, Dragonlance. A boy on the bus gave me the book, he'd read it and didn't care much for it, and figured I would appreciate it. (He was right!) It's apparently a combination of three novels, though the cover had already been all but torn off when I got it.

Okay it must be this one, Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I found a copy sold on Ebay and the spine matches my mutilated book. (The pages are all still in good shape, thankfully.) Anyways, I didn't read much fantasy growing up - neither of my parents were into it - so this was a bit of a revelation for me. I'll admit, as an adult it's a lot easier to see the derivative bits - Tolkien especially - but the characters are a delight, with the red wizard Raistlin Majere being a real standout.

 

[LiberoVulpes]

For horror, i prefer anthologies, i have a Lovecraft Anthology, and A Gothic Horror Anthology, both pretty good.

Philosophy, i have read far too much, Greeks, Romans, French, German, Russian, Hispanic, Chinese, etc. etc. I'd say Heidegger (Being and Time) and Aurelius (Meditations) would be the ones i like most.

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

Picking favorites is....probably not that hard, actually, it's just a -Me- problem. Here's some of the more recent ones I can think of though.

View attachment 24254There's The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, a cornerstone of hardboiled detective books. It's more pulp than mystery, the various threads don't come together like an Agatha Christie novel. That said, Chandler turns a phrase like nobody's business, and between him and Dashiell Hammett you have the origin of a lot of the slang and style of speech in film noir movies of post-war Hollywood.

There's some articles by a cephalopod that got me thinking to re-read my only real foray into D&D-adjacent fiction, Dragonlance. A boy on the bus gave me the book, he'd read it and didn't care much for it, and figured I would appreciate it. (He was right!) It's apparently a combination of three novels, though the cover had already been all but torn off when I got it.

View attachment 24250Okay it must be this one, Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I found a copy sold on Ebay and the spine matches my mutilated book. (The pages are all still in good shape, thankfully.) Anyways, I didn't read much fantasy growing up - neither of my parents were into it - so this was a bit of a revelation for me. I'll admit, as an adult it's a lot easier to see the derivative bits - Tolkien especially - but the characters are a delight, with the red wizard Raistlin Majere being a real standout.

Noir is not a genre I have read much of, but I enjoy it in film or video game form. Another genre to explore for me.


Unfortunately, Dragonlance was before the time I got into D&D (1995 or so), but the new hotshot D&D writer was R.A. Salvatore. Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenor Battlehammer, Catti-Brie and Regis are my crew. I loved the Icewind Dale series. I loved how it delved into subject matter that was a bit out of the norm for fantasy such as overt racism/discrimination. Don't have it anymore, though.

I also read the Hobbit as a kid and it was pretty good, but I tried to read the Similiarion (I asked for Lord of the Rings in my local bookstore in the 90s and that is what they could find) and I don't recommend it.

 

[Octopus]

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I've dabbled in the classic pulp noir, I really should read more. I hear Chandler's name thrown around a lot so I will probably start there, and maybe even with that book; I've been meaning to get into regular audible listening again since I have like 16 credits stockpiled at this point.

Dragonlance

Hell yeah. Never read any of the novels, but the modules also done by the Hickman's are classics. I think it started as a 1st ed AD&D setting, and it may have been ported to second AD&D; I do know that there was a lot of Dragonlance stuff in 3.5 though.

 

[ATenderLad]

@Strategist I feel so awkward not having read R.A. Salvatore at all, I've gotten so much adjacent crap from Baldur's Gate and various older games that it seems like a no-brainer.

@Octopus I can see how the setting would make for a fun adventure module, Dragonlance basically starts with a diverse party meeting up at a tavern and setting out on a quest. You have different classes, races, skill sets, and everyone gets to contribute in some way with what their good at. There was also a comic book that I had the first six issues of...shit, actually that's all I have to say about it, I can't remember where they are and it's been too long since I read them.

@Uhhhthebothofyou Pulp noir is pretty fun! Chandler in particular has such amazing descriptions of people, with his detective Phillip Marlowe really seeing to the melancholy heart of the people around him. (He's arguably a little too sad, a knight out-of-time, obsessed with a chivalry the then-modern world would never abide.)

 

[Strategist's iconStrategist]

@Strategist I feel so awkward not having read R.A. Salvatore at all, I've gotten so much adjacent crap from Baldur's Gate and various older games that it seems like a no-brainer.

The Drizzt cameos in Baldur's Gate games are kind of weak fanservice. I guess Baldur's Gate 2 captures some of the Drow culture dynamic since you get to visit the Underdark. But the game that captures the Salvatore vibe the best is the SSI PC game called Menzoberranzan, because it is partially based on one of his novels "The Legacy" (which I haven't read, maybe I should correct that). That one recounts Drizzt's whole backstory growing up in the Underdark and the cruel nature of the Drow culture.

The Icewind Dale games (the lesser famous cousins of the Baldur's Gate series) also cover some adjactent material to R.A.'s novels, such as the barbarian cultures of the north of the sword coast and the ten towns area.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

What makes you like Grapes of Wrath more than Cannery Row? Anything Steinbeck is great, but I don't think I even finished Grapes of Wrath, yet I would probably rank Cannery Row as one of my favorites of all time.
View attachment 24169

I never read that one of John Steinbeck's (Cannery Row) so I can't answer.

 

[MegaHiro91]

I think I saw a movie adaptation of this a long time ago.

Likely the '93 version starring Kate Maberly. That's the one most are familar with.

It has been adapted numerous times though. There's the black and white one from 1949. The 75 version I recommended. The 87 version which was told as a flashback and had a slightly more cynical take on Mary. The 93 version which is the one most from my generation remember. 94, the animated one. 2017 the steampunk one. And most recently 2020, the one made by the Harry Potter director.

 

[diapered]

I never read that one of John Steinbeck's (Cannery Row) so I can't answer.

Oh, well if Grapes of Wrath is one of your favorites I would really recommend it then, I think most would consider the prose to be Steinbeck's best. Grapes of Wrath is certainly a more ambitious work, but I think cannary row is more engaging. Also, MUCH shorter :P

 

[gundamnut14]

ASOIAF was probably the thing that got me into reading when I was younger. Would have to add Kafka's The Trial and Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate as must-read books.

 

[Octopus]

Here's some promised photos of my little actual book collection, not counting my TTRPG stuff (I have a lot) and comic books.




More stuff I found while looking, here's my copies of the first four books of Series of Unfortunate Events, love them (ignore the gaviscon looming over them);


Dave Mustaine's autobiography, frontman of Megadeth;


And a piece of gold I discovered which unlocked a brain blast of memory of me reading it, and shows my national pride (I actually have very little, but we have a lot of cool UFO sightings for some reason);


Everyone's favourite mid 2000s absurdist satire that went over the heads of many who thought it was real;


The Halo books were fucking amazing, I had the whole series but I ended up giving away all but the first one, which is I think the best of the whole Eric Nylund stuff;


Sadly I couldn't find that Alex Ross book, I hope its just somewhere else in the house and I didn't lend it to someone and forget about it.

Oh, bonus round of a looseleaf binder of guitar tabs I printed off of websites when I was like 13.

Post automatically merged: Feb 11, 2025

I'll do another bonus round of my TTRPG shelf, why not.

Behold, the nerd library. There's like 4 copies of the 5th edition DnD book here because that's just what happens, for some reason;


And a picture of the nerd library's terrible guardian as a freebie;