Updated 2012.02.25
These are some of my favorite books.
Fiction
| The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky |
"You weren't quite joking, that is true. This idea is not yet resolved in your heart and torments it. But a martyr, too, sometimes likes to toy with his despair, also from despair, as it were. For the time you, too, are toying, out of despair, with your magazine articles and drawing-room discussions, without believing in your dialectics and smirking at them with your heart aching inside you...The question is not resolved in you, and there lies your great grief, for it urgently demands resolution..."
Crime and Punishment is also excellent.
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| The Call of Cthulhu and other Weird Stories H. P. Lovecraft |
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
Any good collection of his stories will do. My favorite Lovecraft stories are probably The Outsider and The Color out of Space.
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| A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller, Jr. |
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“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”
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| Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut |
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
I don't know whether I like this book better or The Sirens of Titan. I'd recommend both. And Slaughterhouse-Five, too, while I'm at it.
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| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl |
"Oh, my sainted aunt! Don't mention that disgusting stuff in front of me! Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!"
Also, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. You can't really go wrong with any of his books.
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| The Chosen Chaim Potok |
"A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives the span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here."
This is my favorite Potok book, but The Promise and My Name Is Asher Lev are also very good.
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| A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Mark Twain |
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"Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine."
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| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick |
So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair…So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything.
He also has many excellent short stories and other good novels. Another favorite of mine is The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
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| Dune Frank Herbert |
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
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| Ender's Game Orson Scott Card |
"It was what I was born for, isn't it? If I don't go, why am I alive?"
I like many other books by Card as well, such as the rest of the Ender's Game series, the Alvin Maker series, and Pastwatch.
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| Fevre Dream George R. R. Martin |
"They're sinners, and they got to ride that boat forever, that black boat with the red carpets and the empty mirrors, all up and down the river, never touching port, no sir."
I also recommend his short stories Sandkings and House of the Worm.
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| The Fountainhead Ayn Rand |
"Mr. Roark, we're alone here. Why don't you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us."
"But I don't think of you."
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| Frankenstein Mary Shelley |
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"The fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even the enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone."
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| Gardens of the Moon Steven Erikson |
“Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?”
The Imass shrugged before replying. “I think of futility, Adjunct.”
“Do all Imass think about futility?”
“No. Few think at all.”
“Why is that?”
The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. “Because Adjunct, it is futile.”
First book in the twelve-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I've read half of them as of this writing, and my favorites so far have been Deadhouse Gates (#2) and Memories of Ice (#3).
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| The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams |
"I'd far rather be happy than right any day."
"And are you?"
"No. And that's where it all falls down, of course."
This is the first book of a five-volume trilogy. The whole series is very good.
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| A Light in the Attic Shel Silverstein |
I'd rather play tennis than go to the dentist.
I'd rather play soccer than go to the doctor.
I'd rather play Hurk than go to work.
Hurk? Hurk? What's Hurk? I don't know, but it must be better than work.
Where the Sidewalk Ends is more of the same (which is a good thing). The Giving Tree has also been a favorite of mine from a very young age.
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| The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss |
Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.
I found the sequel (A Wise Man's Fear) disappointing. But I guess it had a lot to live up to.
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| The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster |
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No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.
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| Red Dwarf Grant Naylor |
Behind him he heard the bolts overshoot a turn, and their low humming throb dimmed in volume. He'd bought himself a couple of seconds; seconds he badly needed. He pulled out a mirror and checked his hair. It was still perfect.
Based on the television show (and by the same writers), but better than the show.
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| The Shadow of the Torturer Gene Wolfe |
"There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden."
First in the four-volume Book of the New Sun science fiction series. These books are pretty unusual and not for everyone, but are full of creativity, vivid imagery, and thought-provoking ideas. A fifth book, Urth of the New Sun, is also interesting but I found it to be kind of an unnecessary sequel.
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| Watership Down Richard Adams |
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“My Chief Rabbit has told me to defend this run and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here.”
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More:
Brandon Sanderson
C. S. Lewis
Dr. Seuss
Douglas Thayer
Edgar Allen Poe
Fred Saberhagen
Glen Cook
J. G. Ballard
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Robert Jordan
William Goldman
William Sleator
Comics
Bizarro by Dan Piraro
Bloom County by Berke Breathed
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay
The Far Side by Gary Larson
Frank by Jim Woodring
Mouse Guard by David Petersen
The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (especially World's End and A Season of Mists)
Slow Wave by Jesse Reklaw
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
Nonfiction
List forthcoming--eventually.
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