IGX

Saw a few mentioned in the other thread. Ultimate sign of a good book?

I've read Dune a couple of times. Starship Troopers. At least one if the Master and Commander series, can't remember exact title. Also Immediate Action by Andy Mcnab, which reads like great fiction.

The Harry Bosch series by Michael Connolly. (Meh for the Lincoln Lawyer ones.)
The Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke, if you can take the darkness.
The Jimmy Paz series by Gruber, as mentioned in the other thread.
The earlier Spenser series by Robert Parker. At some point, the Spenser series turns Meh, but the first 5+ books are great.
The Elvis Cole books by Robert Crais that have Pike in them or feature Pike without Cole. Skip the first one or two of the Elvis Cole series, IMO. Crais was just getting his feet under himself in the early couple novels.

I haven't heard of a single book you've mentioned, which is cool. Something new!

Robert E Howard-- read and reread the Conan paperbacks until they fell apart.
Edgar Rice Burroughs-- John Carter of Mars and the earlier Tarzan books
Flannery O'Connor-- Good Man is Hard to Find and Wise Blood
Jim Thompson-- Pop. 1280 and Grifters
Kipling-- Kim
Hillary Clinton-- It Takes a Village
Jack London-- Call of the Wild and White Fang
William Saroyan-- My Name is Aram
Graham Greene-- Power and Glory and Our Man in Havana
Mikhail Bulgakov-- Heart of a Dog
Ivan Turganev-- Fathers and Sons

James lee burke is great, but his recent stuff has become (a) familiar and (b) too implausible.

john lecarre's tinker, tailor series. all the smiley books are great.

ken kesey, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. tried to reread sometimes a great nottion but couldn't get through it.

i'll reread a hemingway from time to time, just because.

robertson davies deptford triogy. a dose of jung from canada

i now find i'm now more interested in plot that artful rumination. stuff i liked and admired some years ago i can't get through now. i grow shallower by the day.

Turdacious wrote:Flannery O'Connor-- Good Man is Hard to Find and Wise Blood

good man is hard to find has great stories. same with the stories in everything that rises must converge.

o'connor's novel's (including wise blood) are unreadable. i've read them several times. i keep thinking i'll figure out what the hoopla is about. all i've done is waste my time.

her letters are exceptional.

I've read Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" and "Soldier of the Mist" series multiple times; though I've only read the "Book of the Long Sun " series once and never read the "Book of the Short Sun Series."

Though nobody asked, non-fiction:

"Peter the Great: His Life and World," "Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War," and "Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea" by Robert Massie have given me plenty in each reexamination.

Another favorite is Alan LeMay's The Searchers. Much darker and better than the movie.

beefheart wrote:I've read Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" and "Soldier of the Mist" series multiple times; though I've only read the "Book of the Long Sun " series once and never read the "Book of the Short Sun Series."

Nice. Read New Sun twice. You read any R A Lafferty?

dead man walking wrote:

Turdacious wrote:Flannery O'Connor-- Good Man is Hard to Find and Wise Blood

good man is hard to find has great stories. same with the stories in everything that rises must converge.

o'connor's novel's (including wise blood) are unreadable. i've read them several times. i keep thinking i'll figure out what the hoopla is about. all i've done is waste my time.

her letters are exceptional.

I'm a big fan of her letters too.

Iliad- Homer
Aeneid- Virgil
Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Othello- Shakespeare
Past Master, fourth mansions, 900 Grandmothers- R A Lafferty
Prob 80% of Clark Ashton Smith
Master and Margarita- Bulgakov
Blood Meridian- McCarthy

richard russo, nobody's fool is a must read.

empire falls is good.

Some good ideas up in here.

"Heart of Darkness" and Hemingway short stories are the only fiction re-reads I can think of outside of classics I read in school and later read as an adult. I wouldn't mind rereading "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men" again, but there's 3-4 on this thread alone I need to check out, let alone the mile long list I already have.

I've regularly re-read Mick Farren's sci fi novels. Necrom, and the DNA Cowboys books in particular.

His masterwork in my opinion is Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, which really deserves to be taught in 20th century American literature courses. I'm overdue to read it again.

Goodnight moon

Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe Series (Especially the first 5 or so books).
John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meaney
Rudyard Kipling - (short story, not a novel)The Drums of the Fore and Aft
Robert E. Howard - All Conan, Solomon Kane, and Kull stories.
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
Stephen King - The Stand, It, and the 4 original Bachman Books (Roadwork, Rage, The Long Walk, the Running Man). The Bachman books were some of his best work. Dark, angry, and not supernatural.

Leiber, Cornwell and Lonesome Dove are very nice.

The Bible

buckethead wrote:Goodnight moon

365 x 3

tonkadtx wrote:Cormac McCarthy - The Road.

Stronger man than I...oi. That book ruined an entire vacation for me.

Patrick O'Brian's whole Aubrey/Maturin series, but esp books 2,3 and 5. Those I've re-read more than the others.

John M Ford's Star Trek novel The Final Reflection. Also The Dragon Waiting.

Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, and This Immortal. Also Doorways In The Sand, but it's been a long time.

Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

Every few years or so I dip back into the Heinlein Juveniles. Esp Tunnel In The Sky and Starman Jones and Time For The Stars.

Many of the Louis L'Amour westerns.

Nonfiction:

Should You Leave? by Peter Kramer, and also his Moments of Engagement. Not so much his other books.

Sources of Power by Gary Klein.

Much of James McPherson: excerpts from Battle Cry, and many of his collections of essays. Or maybe I just return to these to look stuff up, rather than really "re-read" them?

The Mask of Command by John Keegan.

Starship Troopers
Dune
Lonesome Dove
Black Company
Wild Cards 1-4
Necroscope 1-3
Too many Terry Pratchett Discworld books to list
Good Omens Pratchett/Gaiman
Neverwhere

Oh yeah, I've re-read the Game of Thrones books. If another one ever comes out, I probably will do it again.

Holland Oates wrote:Starship Troopers
Dune
Lonesome Dove
Black Company
Wild Cards 1-4
Necroscope 1-3
Too many Terry Pratchett Discworld books to list
Good Omens Pratchett/Gaiman
Neverwhere

Only read the Black Company series once but it is the shit. Especially book one.

JimZipCode wrote:Oh yeah, I've re-read the Game of Thrones books. If another one ever comes out, I probably will do it again.

Hahahabbabababab