And now for something Totally off topic :)

[chewy027]

Any Star Wars book
lots of military history/tactics books ex "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu (if that's how you spell his name)
"Left Behind" series (apocalyptic soap opera with religous twist)
any sports magazine

[mottlee]

Hmmm David Drake....Good
? Stine.............Good
R Hienlin...........VGOOD

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mottlee@gte.net
"Kill em all let God sort em out"

[nerfman]

I dig a lot of military sci-fi, David Weber (HH), Eric Flint (Belisarius series & 1632), SM Stirling (The General Series w/ Dave Drake).

If any of you want to try out the newest, most interesting fantasy series, check out George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. It is into the third book now and it is amazing. The world he depicts is set in a time frame reminiscent of the War of the Roses. Magic exists but is often mysteriously intangible. The characters are quite dynamic and upredictable. The plots are quite byzantine and the fortunes of all ebb and flow as the tides. More importantly, I have no clue what is going to happen next. This series doesn't follow the normal "Fantasy" good guy fulfills prophecy and destroys unlitmate evil over three to ten books pattern. I don't even know what side some characters are on. Its fresh, new, and all very exciting. Give it a try.

Oh, I like Jordan's stuff too. Later - Joe

[dmm]

Let's see ... Last few books I've read ...
(we're only talking fun books, right?)
Alice in Wonderland
The Plague Dogs (Richard Adams)
Fireball (John Christopher)
When the Tripods Came (also Christopher)
The Lord of the Rings (read out loud to son)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
A Tale of Two Cities
Pippi Longstocking
Profiles in Courage
Essays (Bacon)
Moby Dick
The Aeneid

I've found that a lot of those "horrible" books on the required reading list are actually great books, if you don't have to write a bunch of stupid papers about them, and can skip parts you find boring.

All-time favorite authors:
Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, Asimov, Herriot

[This message has been edited by dmm (edited 26 April 2001).]

[capnq]

This thread keeps reminding me that I've been playing too many games and Websurfing too much to keep up with my reading. <sigh>

The Last books I read for fun that I can remember finishing were Timothy Zahn's _Conqueror_ trilogy. The current top of the stack of unread books is the Magic: The Gathering novel _The Brother's War_ by Jeff Grubb, who was in my college Dungeons & Dragons group years ago.

BTW, the Piers Anthony series is spelled Xanth; I've read the first 19, but have never been able to finish the 20th. I know there's a 21st that I haven't even bought; there may even be more by now.

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Cap'n Q

[Droplede]

Hmmm. Last few:

The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Marquez
Battle for the Falklands, Hastings & Jenkins
Gates of Fire (historical novel about the Spartans at Thermopylae) by Steven Pressfield

But I normally read a lot more sci-fi and fantasy stuff. I like the George R. R. Martin series a lot, too. Love Orson Scott Card, especially his earlier stuff. I really like David Brin's Uplift series, even though the later few books got a bit unfocused.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Here goes:

Stephen R. Donaldson - both the Thomas Covenant series and the "Gap" series.

Frank Herbert's Dune series (I'm working through "House Atreides" now; I own all but Chapterhouse: Dune, the weakest of the series IMHO).

Older Asimov stuff (Robot, original Foundation trilogy, etc.)

A little bit of Heinlein

The entire "Known Universe" series by Niven (of course)

"The God Particle" by Lederman (quantum physics)

"Flatland"

"A History of Time" by Hawking

"The Existential Pleasures of Engineering" by Florman

Couple different series of modern vampire books (Laurel Hamilton's series and another series by another author that begins with an "H" - Hahn or something like that)

The Harry Potter series

I stopped reading McCaffery's Pern series a while back, but I'll probably pick it up again soon. I've read a couple of her Crystal Singer books recently, and read a couple of her Dinosaur Planet books a long time ago.

The "Phule" series by Robert Asprin (also read the "Myth" series by Asprin, very disappointed that he stopped writing them).

The "Exiles" series by Melanie Rawn.

And anything else that strikes my fancy.