Does anyone have suggestions on really unbelievable fiction books they've read. I'm in the middle of a phenomenal read....it's close to 1000 pages and it's about to end and I'm already getting nostalgic. Would love to get suggestions as to what I should start next. A book I read just before this one was "Cutting for Stone" and thought it was amazing. I also enjoy historical fiction books based in Europe and dealing with royalty and such. Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!
I would recommend "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy.It's set in late nineteenth century aristocratic Russia so you might like that.It is considered a classic of world literature and is a big book that you can really lose yourself in.
ooo that sounds really good fairlight...i also wanna try Le Mis...i kinda got reminded about them because of the oscars this year
Sounds like you might enjoy A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman as much as I do. It is not really fiction but a history book in narrative form. It gives you lots of insight in the 14th century and a lot of it seems unbelievable too :biggrin:
If you're into historical fiction, check out The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saxon_Stories
As for fantasy fiction I would recommend Robin Hobb and Katherine Kerr the most. They both have several trilogies that are connected to each other so be careful you really start with the first trilogy Kerr's series really go on and on, I think there are more than 12 books but I regard it as the top of the genre together with Hobb, George Martin, Tolkien, etc. so I heavily recommend them. You can easily pause between trilogies to read something else though, they have pretty solid endings. edit: to be clear, of Robin Hobb this is the first series: The Farseer trilogy and of Katherine Kerr these: Deverry, followed by the Westland cycle.
when i'm stuck for something to read, i generally find that i'm not dissapointed if i randomly choose anything on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sf_masterworks i particularly reccomend the dispossessed by ursula le guin, i know its not the sort of thing you were askin after, but if you fancy branching out, thats a consistently good load of books. bernard cornwell writes great historical ficiton, tbh, in school, history seemed to start with 1066 skip to the tudors, skip to ww1, so bernard cornwell taught me a lot about the interim stuff lol, i was particularly fond of the grail trilogy.
I definately recommend Michael Moorcock from that list! I'm very selective in SF though. Especially when it is not a series and the (futuristic) setting is not explained well I can't get into some of the happenings. Moorcock's fantasy has inspired whole Hawkwind albums which I also totally love. The eternal champion, a character that turns up in different incarnations, settings and time periods, Tanelorn, the dancers on the edge of time etc. etc. I freaking love his stories! So symbolic and psychedelic at times in a total other way as the 'classic' good vs. evil fantasy of Tolkien, Terry Goodkind, Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan (Wheel of time). Heavily recommended :cheers2:
I stagnated halfway through that one but yes it was not bad at all. I especially digged the parts with the guy who seemed to get stuck in reliving the falklands war and some other digital settings people get themselves in. What bored me was the slow build up and the parts in 'real life'. I'm afraid I couldn't be bothered by the bushman and his problems neither. I've read other books of Tad Williams as well and it always is a bit of a struggle. Some aspects I hate and others I like. I guess he generally drags in too much boring stuff (for me personally) and doesn't do enough with the intriguing stuff.
It was? Intruiging on itself I only watched the movie by the way but I've been told the book focuses more on the social themes and slightly less on the action. But I'm not sure how much the OP is looking for SF. He should verify I only mentioned Moorcock myself because he has more surreal/psychedelic and also more fantasy directed fiction rather than pure science fiction. Which he also wrote of course. I'm more into the 'unbelievable historical fiction' subgenre myself.
In my opinion, the only think the movie and the book really had in common was a title. lol The book is light years better than the movie. Coincidentally, I have heard a rumor that they are making another Starship Troopers movie that will follow the book more closely.
i've never read his stuff, but i'll be sure to get it on on that reccomendation in general i'm fairly selective, i like my SF to be more in the utopian/dystopian mold than the space opera sort of stuff (that said, i loved the foundation series, and alastair reynolds stuff, but not so much a fan of Iain M. Banks) but i generally don't like the cut and dried good/evil binary, a ibt of moral complexity/ambiguity's always nice. but i decided to be a little random in my selection in order to get some variety. just finished "darkness at noon" by arthur Koestler, which i'd reccomend to anyone who likes 1984, as it was a major influence on Orwell (along with "we" by yvgeny zamyatin) but it is a novel of ideas, so lots of arguing but not much action or characterisation. speaking of historical fiction (slightly more in line with OP's request), i'm currently reading (and coming to the end of) Hawksmoor by the historian/biographer Peter Ackroyd (it's fiction, although heavily researched, and written with great attention to the writing style of its setting). which is a fictionalised story about the architect nicholas hawksmoor, who built several churches around london (and is widely rumoured to have been obsessed with the occult and pagan sun worship and blood sacrifice, and is therefore always at the forefront of any london-based conspiracy theories) its playing in a similar world as Alan Moore's "from hell", and is no doubt based on many of the same sources. its not a traditional historical novel, in that it takes place in both the 17th century and 1980's, and has a postmodern style which fucks around with time. next i was gonna get Dan Simmon's Hyperion (SF retelling of the canterbury tales, is how a friend sold it to me "i'm fucking in" was my response) on, but i'll swap it for some Moorcock, if i can find a good audio recording (my reading material at the moment is limited to stuff i can get on audiobooks though, cos i have so much reading for uni that i don't have the time to read for pleasure, so i listen to them on my bike.)
i've heard that, supposedly it was instrumental in the outlawing of conscription, since one of the major arguments of the book is that a society for which the citizens will not volunteer to fight deserves to lose its wars. i can't imagine that it would make a good film unless it seriously departed from the plot, since my main memories of the text are long arguments about the ethics of military service and description of the complexities of a military career. interesting, but not all that cinematic, except for a few brief moments of actual combat. i understand a film of Ender's game is going to come out this year, that's been long overdue, and very relevant now, but i imagine it will have had its teeth removed in order to increase its audience.
I just got John Varley's new book, Slow Apocalypse. Varley has been a SciFi writer since the 50's. Tom Clancy said he was the best writer in America. One of his books was made into a movie, Millennium, staring Cheryl Ladd and Chris Christofferson back in the 80's. Varley's new one is about a scientist that develops a slow acting virus that that feeds on petroleum and turns it into a solid, and destroys all petroleum products so that the world has to find a new form of energy. I actually had a dream about that very thing, back in the late 70's. Spooky.
