OT: Books

Thanks for the Joe Abercrombie tip, loved ASOIAF series, well the first 3 books anyway. I'll give these a try. Have you read any of the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson, good read and unlike GRRM I think he'll finish the series.
No this is my first foray into the genre beyond GoT and LOTR.
 
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Pretty much anything Lee Child writes especially the Jack Reacher books. If you saw the film version of Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise was a very pu$$ified version of Reacher. If you haven't seen the movie, DON'T. The books are great though.
 
Obviously wanted to post this in the Off-Topic forums but it isn't sports or covid related. Anyways...


Trying to get back in to reading. Anybody has some good books/novels to start on?
Fiction: Brave New World

Sports: The Boys In The Boat (also Cane Mutiny by Bruce Feldman, quick read with some nice anecdotes from the glory days)

Autobiography: Billy Martin - Baseball's Flawed Genius
 
I mostly do Audiobooks these days, since I stare at text and numbers for so much of the day as it is.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Over a dozen in the series, and the audio books narrated by James Marsters are also fantastic.

World War Z is a fantastic book, and the full cast audio performance is one of the best works of media I've ever consumed.

For non-fiction: 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann are both interesting and enlightening. I also really enjoyed Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber.
 
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If you like nonfiction, pretty much anything by Dava Sobel. Especially Longitude, which is a very well written book about the man who invented the first chronometer for sea navigation.

Moonwalking with Einstein is a cool book about memory told through the lens of the author training up to participate in a memory competition (which I did not know existed until I read the book).

For fiction, Kurt Vonnegut is my all-time favorite. Slaughterhouse Five, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle... can't miss. It's a bit crude for some but Women by Bukowski always makes me chuckle. Along those lines Ask the Dust by Fante is a great novel.
 
I mostly do Audiobooks these days, since I stare at text and numbers for so much of the day as it is.

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Over a dozen in the series, and the audio books narrated by James Marsters are also fantastic.

World War Z is a fantastic book, and the full cast audio performance is one of the best works of media I've ever consumed.

For non-fiction: 1491 and 1493 by Charles Mann are both interesting and enlightening. I also really enjoyed Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber.
Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne

codex alera series by Jim Butcher

mercy thompson series by Patricia Briggs
 
Anything written by Michael Crichton.
The Dan Brown books are more interesting than Tom Hanks made them appear on screen.

I really enjoyed Bosch on Amazon Prime. I might pick up a Michael Connelly book the next time I have to fly. I heard they were quite good.
 
Thanks for the Joe Abercrombie tip, loved ASOIAF series, well the first 3 books anyway. I'll give these a try. Have you read any of the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson, good read and unlike GRRM I think he'll finish the series.
I've read all 4 books of the stormlight archive series so far and they are all bad ***. A lot better than Game of thrones. Even more so since Sanderson writes a new book every 2 years. Its supposed to be a 10 book series.

You should also check out his series called Mistborn if you haven't already
 
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This will be a long post, just grabbed a few books that I have read the last few years and enjoyed.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The Power of The Dog trilogy by Don Winslow is great, especially if you like drug/crime fiction(a lot is actually based on true events).

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, amazing thriller. I'm a fan of all her other books, but this one is her masterpiece.

Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum, amazing espionage thrillers, if you watched the movies you are familiar with the pace, but the plot of the books are different so you can appreciate both works.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. ****, The Martian by Andy Weir and Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang, 3 of my favorites sci-fi books.

Educated by Tara Westover, I generally stay away from bios, but this one grabbed me, although there were a few moments that made me skeptical about the reality of the events.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, packed with musical recs and overall a solid entertaining read.
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, amazing book. Also, really liked The Road by McCarthy.
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson,Hard boiled, western "about a small town law man with a serious dark side".
 
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This will be a long post, just grabbed a few books that I have read the last few years and enjoyed.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The Power of The Dog trilogy by Don Winslow is great, especially if you like drug/crime fiction(a lot is actually based on true events).

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, amazing thriller. I'm a fan of all her other books, but this one is her masterpiece.

Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum, amazing espionage thrillers, if you watched the movies you are familiar with the pace, but the plot of the books are different so you can appreciate both works.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. ****, The Martian by Andy Weir and Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang, 3 of my favorites sci-fi books.

Educated by Tara Westover, I generally stay away from bios, but this one grabbed me, although there were a few moments that made me skeptical about the reality of the events.
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, packed with musical recs and overall a solid entertaining read.
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, amazing book. Also, really liked The Road by McCarthy.
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson,Hard boiled, western "about a small town law man with a serious dark side".
Loved the Bourne series, read those years ago.
 
Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne

codex alera series by Jim Butcher

mercy thompson series by Patricia Briggs
Iron Druid is pretty good, but Dresden executes a similar concept better.

Codex Alera's peak may be brief in the context of multi-novel series, but it's among my favorite avalanches in fiction. More than makes up for the slow start and somewhat retread finish, and it's a pretty incredible work when you consider he only wrote it on a dare (to write a book where the protagonist is the one without powers/magic/etc...).

I will check out the Mercy Thompson series, as I'm not familiar with it.

Continuing this train:

Fiction (series):

Gentleman ******** by Scott Lynch

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steve Erikson

1632 by Eric Flint

Non-Fiction (books):

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
 
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Jack Carr's books. And they are being made into a series on Amazon Prime (with Chris Pratt and the director of training day)

I need to read those books, but I’m very excited for that show.

Pratt is a beast.
 
Iron Druid is pretty good, but Dresden executes a similar concept better.

Codex Alera's peak may be brief in the context of multi-novel series, but it's among my favorite avalanches in fiction. More than makes up for the slow start and somewhat retread finish, and it's a pretty incredible work when you consider he only wrote it on a dare (to write a book where the protagonist is the one without powers/magic/etc...).

I will check out the Mercy Thompson series, as I'm not familiar with it.

Continuing this train:

Fiction (series):

Gentleman ******** by Scott Lynch

Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steve Erikson

1632 by Eric Flint

Non-Fiction (books):

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Similar, but different. And obviously more spread out as there are a lot more Dresden books than Iron Druid books. I do so enjoy me some Oberon. If you do like the Mercy Thompson books, there is a spin off in the Alpha and Omega series...it more intertwines some of the story lines.

Gentleman ******** was excellent...Honestly I read fast if I enjoy something...and I have to like some of the characters...for a while I did like the Sandman Slim series. But that is a lot more mean spirited.
 
If you like Narcos on Netflix you would enjoy Don Winslow's trilogy

The Power of the Dog
The Cartel
The Border
I LOVED the Cartel, didn't even know there was a trilogy. I'll be buying those other two for sure.

Edit: not sure how the **** I didn't.knownthis was a trilogy since I only read the middle book
 
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