Robert Howard asked for my 10 most memorable books. Here are the ones I remember the best:
- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, although I think Starship Troopers was my first Heinlein, and is also good (especially since it was written as juvy fiction). But Stranger is in its own class.
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The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell. Again, this book, for me at least, is in a class by itself. Children of God (sequel) was also good.
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The Four Pillars of investing, William J Bernstein. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, by Burton G. Malkiel covers the same material, and is the classic reference for this stuff, but I found Bernstein much less dry.
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So much less dry, that I also read Bernstein’s Birth of Plenty, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and really made me think about economic/political trends a bit.
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Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson. This is one of the first Sci-Fi authors that took it for granted that the reader was already familiar with computers, and general Sci-Fi concepts, which was refreshing. I’ve like a lot of his other stuff. This is just the first one that I read.
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Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins. For which, I think you need to also be listening to Maryn Cadell’s Angel Food For Thought, the whole time.
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The Many Colored Land, Julian May. I think I read the entire 10+ book series. One of the very few that I’ve done that with – Usually can’t get past book 3 or so in many series.
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The Magic of Recluse, L.E. Modesitt Jr. I really liked the philosophical ying/yang thing going on in the magic system.
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On a Pale Horse, Piers Anthony. Although A Spell for Chameleon is what got me started on Mr Anthony, and his many other series.
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Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Honerable Mention
The White Dragon, Anne McCaffrey. Even though this is the 3rd book in the series, it was the first one that I read, and this is the first series that I can remember where I read most of them.
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson. Pretty dense reading for a piece of fiction.
Dune, Frank Herbert. I think this might have been the book that really got me started on science fiction. As a kid, I found a hard copy of it lying on the sidewalk one day. I think it took a couple of years before I got around to reading it.
A Fire Upon The Deep, and Marooned in Realtime, Vernor Vinge. Two very different series. Marooned is kinda neat in that it is really a detective/mystery story in a sci-fi setting. Fire, I just liked.
The God Engines, John Scalzi. I got this recently as part of a humble (book) bundle.
And may I say, that at this point the recommendations on Good Reads is turning into a giant time suck.
