First two to cross my mind that I can't believe everybody won't enjoy.
A confederacy of Dunces. Funniest book I've ever read.
Name of the Rose. Great read.

With so much scifi in your list, I'm surprised I didn't see Dune by Frank Herbert. If you want to delve beyond sci-fi, Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson has a unique voice and is intensely readable.

Not to nit-pick, but not capitalizing your I's has not been experimental for a long time. And the exeriment was a failure.

ah yeah, that's the peril of writing an article straight into MT instead of in notepad first...
i have actually read the first four or five Dune books, i just don't own them so i forgot to include them.

For intelligent, well-written sci-fi I would highly recommended both Utopia by Lincoln Child and To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (or, in fact, anything by Willis).

I'll second the rec for "Confederacy of Dunces." Very funny story and great characters. Set in 1960's New Orleans.

You like SF, so I'd strongly recommend Larry Niven's "Ringworld." It's a classic for a good reason! Big-idea SF with some memorable characters on a very strange world.

I've found I like Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe's Rifles" novels. Story of an common-born infantry man who rises through the aristocratic ranks during the Napoleonic Wars (1801-1805). Set in Europe, lots of well-done period detail, but the main story is always the adventures of Richard Sharpe. Plenty of fighting, intrigue, drama, spies, war, etc. Great, rousing adventure tales.

Shogun, by James Clavell. I know, I know - sounds like boring historical fiction, sort of the fictional equivalent of broccoli, but I bet you one "told ya so" that once you read the first couple chapters, there's no way you'll read anything else until you finish it.

the first Rabbit book by Updike - if you like it, read the rest; Henderson the Rain King by Bellow; Invisible Man by Ellison, and Memoirs of an Invisible Man by Saint

i am noting these all.
May be awhile before i get through them all, but i go through phases where i read alot for a coupla weeks or so.
Anyways, keep 'em coming folks. Doesn't have to be sci-fi, just any fiction.

Try
Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Well, since i see 1984 on the list there, i'm gonna have to go ahead and recommend Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read that straight after Orwell's opus, and found it to be quite the companion piece. (it ain't related in any way, though, except for the whole future society utopia / dyystopia thingy)

You gotta read Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, the author of fight club. It's brilliant, is what.

And for something a bit more fun, i gotta say High Fidelity by Nick Hornby is one of my favourite books. if you ever compiled a compilation tape for to impress someone, the sense of identification will be overpowering.

Three titles to broaden your horizons fiction-wise:

"Solomon Gursky Was Here" - Mordecai Richler
"The Crow Road" - Iain Banks
"Fall On Your Knees" - Anne-Marie MacDonald

[snorts] "Canadians"

Is [snort] a new editing tag? Actually what the three books have in common is their Hibernian roots, as Grounds-keeper Willy would know, you blouse-wearing poodle walker!

well, I knew the first one was Canadian

Well, two of the authors are Canadian, but remember, you have to phrase your reply in the form of a question.

Have you tried the Dark Tower series by Stephen King? I just finished book 5 and I can't wait to start the next one.

Shark's summer starters ("cool" books)

Also add:

The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold (the only accurate book ever written about time travel!)
Zodiac - Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Masks of the Illuminati - R.A. Wilson
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
Maldoror - Comte de Lautremont (just kidding!)

1) "I recalled, too, the night in the middle of The Thousand and One Nights when Queen Scheherezade, through a magical mistake on the part of her copyist, started to tell the story of The Thousand and One Nights, with the risk of again arriving at the night upon which she will relate it, and thus on to infinity." -- Ficciones by Borges

2) "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world." -- Heart of Darkness by Conrad

3) No quotations will be supplied. I hope you're over 21. -- American Psycho by Ellis

4) "Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist." -- The Song of Kali by Simmons

5) "I spent so many days tormenting myself: would Napoleon have gone to confess, or not?" -- Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

6) "He wanted to dive to his rescue; but the philosopher Pangloss prevented him by proving that the bay of Lisbon had been formed expressly for this Anabaptist to drown in." -- Candide by Voltaire

Sci-Fi:

The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle
Gateway by Pohl
2001: A Space Odyssey by Clarke
Childhood's End by Clarke
By all means Dune by Herbert
Dragon's Egg by Forward
Ender's Game by Card

And there's plenty more where that came from.

Shark, your comment about "the only accurate book ever written about time travel!" is intriguing. Can you give a brief description of this book?

Ok, step away from the Dune books for a little while. You don't want to be a virgin forever, do you? I would recommend starting with two of the greatest works ever - and you can pick up both at any used book store for about a buck a piece and read each in a night

Animal Farm - George Orwell
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrrol

for some fantasy... Candide by Voltaire

ok... now, that being done you can go back to Dune... and still carry on a conversation outside of a Magic gathering too!

Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flats, and Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, might as well throw in Of Mice and Men, too.

Soldier of the Great War, by Mark Halprin, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

For Sci-Fi, read the Deathstalker series by Simon R. Green, by the time you finish those, the final book should be out in paperback, this is a true space opera with only a little filler.

The General series by David Drake and S.M. Stirling is also fantastic.

oh yeah, i have actually read Alice In Wonderland, along with Through The Looking Glass and one or two of his other stories/poems that are in some old Lewis Carroll anthology called something like Through The Looking Glass And Other Stories. But i should read those both again...

Duane,

The concepts in this book inspired a few aspects of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- wherein they keep meeting themselves at differnent points/time zones along the way. (But don't let that discourage you.)

Anyway...

From Amazon: (since I gotta hurry off to a gig appointment)

"This classic work of science fiction is widely considered to be the ultimate time-travel novel. When Daniel Eakins inherits a time machine, he soon realizes that he has enormous power to shape the course of history. He can foil terrorists, prevent assassinations, or just make some fast money at the racetrack. And if he doesn't like the results of the change, he can simply go back in time and talk himself out of making it! But Dan soon finds that there are limits to his powers and forces beyond his control."

=== end of excerpt ===

BTW: Grab this book fast! It's been in and out of print over the years, and it might disappear into the ether before ya know it. It's a fun read, so ignore the moron reviews on Amazon and just order the darn thing.

(Eric thanks you in advance.)

PS: Some great recommendations from all, btw!

The Conrad titles reminded me:

Gotta throw in a few more faves that you should read once before you die:

White Fang - Jack London
The Call of the Wild - London
The Sea Wolf - London
To Build a Fire - London (short story)

**And the greatest satirical sci-fi novel you've never heard of...

War With The Newts - Karel Capek


**And the greatest adventure novel you you've never heard of by the greatest writer you never heard of...

Sinai Tapestry - Edward Whittemore


** you can thank me later

all very interesting and helpful - I actually prefer Conrad's The Secret Sharer (from which Mullholand Drive borrowed extensively intentionally or not) to The Heart of Darkness, though both are exceptional

Yay!!

Ok, Dew recommends:

The Plague by Albert Camus
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Harry Po'tter (any and all) by JK Rowlings (obvious I know)
Initmacy by Hanif Kureishi
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Disclaimer: If by chance you read Albert Camus make sure its not when you are in a depressed mood, he could send you over the edge...

Herman Hesse Siddharta, Demian, Steppenwolf, The Glass Bead Game
Ken Kesey Sometimes a Great Notion (hard to read, but thick)
William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (pretty hard to read, but thick)
Shusaku Endo Deep River
Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses
Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (AKA Epitaph for a Small Winner)
Franz Kafka The Trial
Knut Hamsen Hunger
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment

Sci Fi and Fantasy:
Dan Simmons Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (if you like cute French crap)
Stephen R. Donaldson The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (and the Second chronicles, as well (six books in all))

I added a few of the books to the end of the post for easy click and buy access. Yes, that's a hint. Take it.

good work Justene, thanks

Dirtgrain, welllll... aren't you the uber-intellectual?!

Hey, you should visit the "Catch-22" post and check out the 'discussion' with Bob A. Booey. (Where is he anyway? He'll have a blast with this one!)

re: The Little Prince - I could NEVER get the appeal of that book.

asides:
Thank gawd this isn't the "Top 100 books" or we would be killing each other and competing with the "guitarist" folks for bandwidth.

Read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's recent bio; man, what a boring stinker. Not bad in parts, but definitely a let-down.

SFC Ski -- or anybody else -- read the fantastic "Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford? Wow. Sorta blew up all the old myths about the Marines. John Wayne must be spinning in his foxhole. A great read, tho.

More, folks!

Dirt, forgot to mention: like Faulkner, I too write much better when I'm drunk -- but I don't have the stamina or the stomach to be 'great' or prolific.

sigh.

Dew,

Camus' "Exile & The Kingdom" is his best, imo, but I was raised on the guy.

(Haven't attempted suicide yet, but the day is young!)

Kobo Abe, The Box Man

Practically anything by John Irving. Especially 'A prayer for Owen Meaney'. Alfred Bester's 'The stars my destination'. Michener's 'Alaska' is good. Great post. I'm going to look some of these suggestions up myself. thanks, Ant

Duane, you cannot seriously be recommending Robert Forward! I like hard science as much as the next person, but that guy is possibly the worst writer I've ever read. His prose, characterization and dialogue make E.E. "Doc" Smith look like Saul Bellow. I mean, Dragon's Egg and Flight of the Dragonfly were flat out painful to read.

And count me as a skeptic of Dune. It reads like he just threw some interesting ideas into a large book with flat characters and clumsy sentences, then made enough money to milk a career out of them. Was there a point in there anywhere? Maybe I missed it.

Mote In God's Eye and Gateway for sure. I'd even go so far as to say that the first sequel to Gateway is even better: Beyond the Blue Event Horizon. Of course, Pohl's collaborations with C.M. Kornbluth are very cool, if you can find them.

I prefer Asimov over Clarke, he knew more about science and had a better sense of humor. The Foundation series is discussed here.

Gregory Benford's Timescape was among the best "hard" science fiction books I've read, although I found the ending weak.

My top SF recommendation would have to be Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

Well, JR, I agree somewhat that Forward is not a great wordsmith. I appreciated Dragon's Egg for its scope and audacity. There's a certain grandeur about it. The science is not just plausible, but brilliantly conceived. But then, I'm a science geek. I agree entirely, however, that Flight of the Dragonfly is a stinker. Also, I wasn't that impressd with Pohl's Beyond the Blue Event Horizon.

I second the nominations for The Stranger and The Call of the Wild.

Also, back to the sci-fi category, although it's good to get some exposure outside of that genre, consider Rendezvous with Rama by Clarke.

Thanks, Shark. I'll check it out. By the way, although this is supposed to be about books, I cant resist recommending an interesting time travel movie to you by the name of Donnie Darko. I know it sounds unlikely, but check out the reviews. A very good cast, and an excellent production. I guarantee that you will want to watch it more than once, because you will say at the end, "What the ...?" and want to understand the many, many time travel paradoxes that are introduced. One of my favorites.

I just finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude the other day and it was excellent. I was hooked from the opening page....

I did read Jarhead recently. I enjoyed it. I was not really surprised by anything that Swofford wrote, describing the military experience, especially a wartime one, is bittersweet at best.

Shark, so you're getting back at me for calling you a postmodernist? My favorite quote on intellectuals is from the John Cusak movie, The Sure Thing. He is playing football with some friends, and the character played by Daphne Zuniga walks by. Cusak's character checks her out. His friends tell him that she is out of his league, and he says, "So, I'm intellectual n' stuff."

Down with academia!
Down with the canon!
Down with intellectual masturbatory rigmarole that is post-graduate "critical" analysis.
Down with phony, pithy theoretical constructs designed to allow lettered men to distinguish themselves from the masses and to look down their noses.
Down with faux intellectualism.
Oh shit, here comes a dialogue from Good Will Hunting:

Chuckie: Are we gonna have a problem?
Clark: No, no...there's no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the Southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could most aptly be characterized as agrarian, pre-capitalist --
Will: Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished readin' some Marxian historian -- Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'til next month when you get to James Lemon, and then you're gonna be talkin' about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year -- you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social --
Will: Wood drastically -- Wood 'drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth.' You got that from Vickers, 'Work in Essex County,' page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you...is that your thing? You come into a bar. You read some obscure passage and then pretend...you pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some girls and embarrass my friend? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don't do that. And two: You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a f----n' education you coulda' got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.
Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree. And you'll be serving my kids fries at a drive-through on our way to a skiing trip.
Will: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, but at least I won't be unoriginal.

"Your baobabs--they look a little like cabbages." [I said this to a lady once, and she smacked me]. . . .

"The men where you live," said the little prince, "raise five thousand roses in the same garden--and they do not find in it what they are looking for."

"They do not find it," I replied.

"And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water."

"Yes, that is true," I said.

And the little prince added:

"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart . . ." [cute French crap cliche, but like a Buddha koan]. . . .

"The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen. . ."

"All men have the stars," he answered, "but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--". . . .

Here, then, is a great mystery. For you who also love the little prince, and for me, nothing in the universe can be the same if somewhere, we do not know where, a sheep that we never saw has--yes or no?--eaten a rose . . .

Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes . . .

And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!

"In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night . . . You--only you--will have stars that can laugh!"

[and]. . . .

"I shall look as if I were suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. It is like that. Do not come to see that. It is not worth the trouble . . ."

[and]. . . .

"You understand . . . it is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy."

I said nothing.

"But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells . . ."

A couple of people have mentioned Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so let me plug another of his novels that still sticks with me a decade after I last read it: "Love in the Time of Cholera." It's magic realism, and set in a kind of fevered South America, but it's a love story, too, kind of about the rewards of patience.

Allow me to also third-rec "Mote in God's Eye." Great first contact stuff with asymetrical aliens who breed too fast.

Last, it's not a novel (though she wrote a few, like "Wise Blood"), but the collected short stories of Flannery O'Connor are well worth your time. She had a great eye for relationships and people, and she writes descriptively of life in the mid-20th century rural South.

I heartily second the person who endorsed Connie Willis -- try "Doomsday Book".

Anything by Margaret Atwood.

MacDonald Harris is a wonderful writer -- unfortunately, I think his entire body of work is out of print, so you'll have to rely on your local library or a used book store.

I really enjoy Norman Mailer most of the time -- try "The Executioner's Song", which is a fictional treatment of a true story.

Phillip Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy for sure.

In a Connie Willis related groove is her pastiche of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men and a Boat" (which is available in the public domain) and her time travel book "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (which revisits the time travellers at Oxford).

I'm in a hurry so, for now, I will just ditto Jim Carruthers' endorsement of Connie Willis. Make that all of C.W. And, send her emails asking her to write more books. Drop some to Octavia Butler, too. And, China Mieville.

just to add, on the subejct of time travel movies, yeah Donnie Darko is amazing.
If you watch it, you may then want to go to the official site and work your way to the bit where you get to download a copy of The Philosophy Of Time Travel, a book invented for the film that has some useful stuff in for understanding what exactly went on in the film...

Hey I know comedy is subjective, but i will go to my grave singing the praises of any of the "Barrytown Trilogy" books by Roddy Doyle: The Committments, The Van, and The Snapper.

These are the kind of books where you read, put the book down and laugh out load with tears running down your face--while strangers (on a train?) stare at you as if you are nuts.

jaysus--fookin brilliant.

pretzelboy

"Elvis wasn't a fookin' Cajun!"

What makes Roddy Doyle's Barrytown trilogy even better are the bleak and brutal book and teevee series he has done since then, "The Woman Who Walked Into Doors" and "The Family" which are the realistic flip-side to his comedic books.

I've been to a couple of his readings, and he is a really entertaining story-teller, and a really nice guy.

Raymond Chandler! READ:"The Big Sleep" &
"Farewell My Lovely". Also his brilliant
essay on the art of hard boiled fiction
entitled: "The Simple Art Of Murder".

Also read: "The Killer Inside Me" by Jim
Thompson (one of the more disturbing of
his books),"Will" by G.Gordon Liddy* &
"Black Friday" by David Goodis.It's one
of the best heist gone awry stories that
I've ever read.

*Can't say that agree with too much of
G.Gordons worldview but,it is a highly
fascinating read.

ooh and Damon Runyan, not novels but amazing stories with a language of his own in which we might see some of the Duke: "'Shut up,' he explained."

I hate to see this thread die.

I think this one will wax and wane indefinitely, and I'd like to add Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities

Phillip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and also A Scanner Darkly and also The Simulacra. I haven't read this last one, but check out the blurb:

"Set in the middle of the 21st century, this novel depicts an America where the President is an android, the government is a fraud and the entire population is maladjusted. It is clear that Philip K. Dick was more of a visionary than even he thought."

I was going to recommend Raymond Chandler, but someone beat me to it.

Slomon Kane by Robert E. Howard was just released in large format, illustrated by Greg Gianni, great stuff!

by Blade Runner in my list i mean Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, it is the original but they re-named it to make it more recognizable. I know there is also a later book based on the film's plot, probably by K W Jeter who did the two sequels to it (Replicant Night and The Edge Of Human, both of which i forgot to include in my list of books i own)

Oops, I overlooked that. Philip K. Dicks' short stories are good, as well. Fred Saberhagen is a top-notch sci-fi and fantasy writer.

Yeah, social X-rays and steam control. I loved Bonfire of the Vanities, a book with absolutely no educational value, but one of the best times I've ever had reading. I also just remembered how I enjoyed The Great Santini by Pat Conroy. That one also got made into a movie, starring Robert Duvall, which wasn't great, but better than the movie version of Bonfire, which was a travesty. Big, thick books, but very quick and absorbing reading.

Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet, amazing
Also the Andy McNab fiction ones, if you like actiony kinda stuff, the first one is remote control.