Recommended reading

[Lei]

Been reading a lot, and thought we should make a list of recommended books since we don't have one here yet! (le gaspe!)

I guess I should start..

Whisperings of magic, There will be wolves - Karleen Bradford
The Ropemaker, Tears of the Salamandar - Peter Dickinson
Feed - MT Anderson
Circle of Magic quartet, Trickster's Choice, Trickster's Queen, and just about anything by - Tamora Pierce
His Dark Materials Trilogy - Philip Pullman
Artemis Fowl Series, The Wishlist - Eoin Colfer
Two Princesses of Bamarre - Gail Carson Levine
Sunstorm - Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter
The Wind on Fire Trilogy - William Nicholson
White Oleander - Janet Fitch
Clever Lazy - Joan Bodger
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Great Tree of Avalon - T.A. Barron
Sunlight and Shadow - Cameron Dokey

 and I think that's all the books I've read this summer. I'll edit if I remember more ^_^

[Xepher]

I'm confused, "His Dark Materials" is by Phillip Pullman. Is "The Wishlist" a new book by some other author in the same universe?

[Lei]

Oops, I confused authors... lemme fix that.

 my bad

[Xepher]

Right, well, I'm gonna start at the top of my bookshelf and go down. It's a lot, so I'll group stuff.



Michael Flynn: Firestar series (4)
Hard, epic, near-future sci-fi. Actually starts in the mid '90s and shows how a few simple changes could've had us exploring other worlds by 2020

Nancy Kress: Probability Moon series (3)
The first major science fiction series I've seen that manages to give equal importance and attention to quantum mathematics and sociology. Yet it's still highly enjoyable and accessable reading.

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash and The Diamond Age
Great satireacal science fiction. A mostly anarchist future america, where the mafia delivers pizza, and just commuting to work requires an armored car and three passports. Filled to the brim with social and technical speculation, and delievers some really great moral points as well. Very good reading.

David Brin: The Uplift Series (6 books)
Excellant (soft) space opera. Epic stories spanning galaxies and lots of fun and fanciful ideas. Genetically engineered dolphins and chimpanzes have been "Uplifted" to sapience. Furries, in a sense.

Alaistair Reynolds: Revelation Space series (3)
Really good, epic hard space-opera. Unlike Uplift, doesn't posit 'magic' alien tech, and has hard science solutions from humanity instead. "Hyperpigs" fill the furry slot in this one.

Lisanne Norman: Sholan Alliance series (7 and growing)
More epic space opera, even "softer" than Uplift... more like a fantasy story, but in the guise of science fiction. Magic, sword fights, gods, demons, dreams... but all set in a future with space ships and aliens. Also, the Sholans are "furries." Bipedial, sapient cats anyway. This is a series I really enjoy a lot, and I'd point it out to anyone who wants to know what my idea of a furry is.

S. Andrew Swann: Moreau series (4)
Hard-boiled, science fiction, detective noir... with furries. This time we're talking genetically engineered hybrid soliders, and the author handles the questions around that the way a lot of "robot-gains-citizenship" stories do. It's a rather dark, and mostly serious vision of a future with an overcrowded earth, where racism now focuses on the leftovers from the great genetic arms race.

Phillip Pullman: His Dark Materials (3)
Best Fantasy Ever. I've called it "Harry Potter done right." It's theoretically a young-adult fantasy story, but it's much more serious, and actions actually have consequences. There is no Deus Ex Machina (or dumbledore ex machina) to save the day. The sad parts are truely sad, the creepy parts are really frightening, and the ending left me thinking about little else for the next week. Oh, and it's got furries as well... a talking polar bear, and the various shape-shifting daemon-familars.

Robert T. Bakker: Raptor Red
Bakker is a world famous palentologist, and the guy who the Dr. Grant character from Jurrasic Park was based on. Amazingly, he's also an excellant writer. Raptor Red follows the story of a female Utah Raptor though a few years of her life. While that may sound like a dull nature documentary, I assure you, anyone who's interested in dinosaurs at all will find it a very enjoyable and amusing story. I'm not joking when I think Bakker made a better and more enjoyable character out of a raptor than most authors can do with people. While there's no "disneyfication" with talking dinos or anything, the character show great emotion, joy, sadness, anger, etc... There's actually a plot to be followed, and by the end, you find yourself really feeling for Red. This is science-fiction in it's truely hypenated form. Not fiction where science is an adjective. Yet I'd still consdier it "furry."

Neil Gaiman: American Gods
Dark, yet funny. What if gods are generated by belief? In ancient times you'd get a god of fire, or one of rain. In modern-day america though, the gods have names like "Media" (you have her alter in your home already) and "Tech" (you're at his alter now.) And what if the old gods didn't feel like being pushed aside any more? Also contains the best "Quoth The Raven" saying ever! (And yes, I'll argue the raven is a furry.)

Terry Pratchet: Discworld series (1.2 Hojillion)
If you haven't read discworld, there's something terribly wrong with you. The most fun you can have while reading. Includes furries as well. A talking dog, an intelligent cat, and an entire army of sentient rats. I highly recomend "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" for a first go. It's one of the "children's books" in discworld, but doesn't assume you've read previous stories as much, so it's easier to just jump into. It's basically a weird combination of Puss in Boots and The Pied Piper as only Pratchet can tell it. The cat can talk, and the rats can to. (One should never live near the trash heap from a magical university.) The part that makes it really good is the philophical questions it makes about what it means to be sentient. The cat, for instance, now has to ask any mouse he catches if it can talk before he's willing to eat it. And the rats... One of the young rats becomes afraid of the dark. "Whoever heard of a rat that was afraid of the dark?" But... well I don't want to give it away. Suffice to say that he touches on some of the very key points about what it means to be human.

Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchet: Good Omens
The funniest apocalypse ever. It is for fantasy what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was for sci-fi. It's got all the humor of Discworld, and all the philosophical questions of American Gods. And still it's just the story of a boy and his dog... Except he's the anti-christ and the dog it's a hellhound. I was laughing out loud just reading the "Dramatis Personae." "Crowly (An angel who did not so much Fall as saunter vaguely downwards)" and "Dog (Satanical Hellhound and cat-worrier.)" (And furry.)

And, best for last...
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy (5 books.)
I can hardly think what to say here. If you haven't read it, I can't explain it. If you have, then no explanation is neccessary. I'm not exagerating when I say this book changed by life. From the advice on the cover (Don't Panic!) to The Answer (42) read this somehow gave me a new way of looking at life, and I have enjoyed it much more ever since. It was originally a radio drama, then all these books. Recently the made a movie out of it, and you find references to it everywhere. A few weeks ago at work I was given a password for the main router/gateway for major overhaul we were hired to do. The password was "hhg2tg." Just last week I got a fortune cookie that merely said "Don't Panic!" (in large, friendly letters, of course.) I guess what I'm saying is that "Cult Classic" just doesn't do it justice. Once you read it, and understand all the in-jokes, you'll start seeing references to it all over the place. Not reading it would be a grevious waste.


Now, in the interest of brevity, I've left out a lot of good books. Dune, Illumanti, Xanth, LotR, Harry Potter, Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, etc... There's so much stuff out there, it's wonderful. God Bless Science Fiction! :-)


Also, a quick note. Save the Sholan Alliance and Moreau series, none of the other books are really furry books. I just like to point out that there's a lot of great, mainstream fiction out there with furries in it. More than most people realize. I mean, Harry Potter has several dozen. From animagi, to werewolves, to centaurs, to talking spiders... and I've only finished the first 3 books. Too many people have this wrong image of furries that's been perpetuated by all the talentless freaks and "furverts" you see online (or on MTV.) Though I realize I might be preaching to the choir here. Everyone on these forums seems pretty intelligent and open minded, so I apologize for the subtle crusading. :-)

[otrstf]

Have been reading up a storm this summer. Hundreds of titles, most of which I've already forgotten.  Here are a few that stuck:

Wen Spencer- Tinker.  Unique fantasy novel, one of a kind.  Pittsburg is scooped up and delivered to an alternate universe by a matter transmitter gone wrong; and returns to Earth once a month.  Great characters, the heroine is a genius teen girl who owns and operates a junkyard.  has elves, magis, etc.

Louis Bujold's Miles Vorksigan SF series.  about 8 books, ostensibly  military SF; really a victorian costume drama.  Very funny (I think)

There were more, but my mind went blank.  (Pretty sure I reread all Foster's "Flinx" SF novels, too

[SilentFyre]

Wow I thought no one else in this world had read Raptor Red. I seriously loved that book and want to reread it now. Also, I agree with your thoughts on "His Dark Materials." It was truly an awesome series and kicks Harry Potter right off the shelf.

I am stripped for time so I wont list my favorites until later. I just felt I needed to add some input.

[Lei]

Harry Potter.. The bane of my existence XD It doesn't help that there are entire shelves dedicated to the new book in stores >_>

anywho, I wrote up descriptions of my books. the post is huge though so I posted it in my livejournal

http://www.livejournal.com/users/lei_xang/42837.html

[thefemnazi]

Mmmm, I love Xepher's list.  And working at a bookstore has it's advantages....the discount for one.  But to add to the list, and I hope I'm adding instead of being redundant.....the new series out by that really young guy....the first book is called Eragon and the second just came out this week and is called Eldest.  Those are very good, especially in how they treat magic.

[Ashley_Rose]

Wow. Raptor Red. I also thought no one but Adam and I read that. That is so COOL.

And I'm working my way through Good Omens. My god that book is b-e-a-uuuutiful.

[Lei]

thefemnazi- oog I've been looking at thouse... waiting for them to show up at my library >_> looking into jobs at bookstores too

[SilentFyre]

Mmmm, I love Xepher's list.  And working at a bookstore has it's advantages....the discount for one.  But to add to the list, and I hope I'm adding instead of being redundant.....the new series out by that really young guy....the first book is called Eragon and the second just came out this week and is called Eldest.  Those are very good, especially in how they treat magic.

I loved the first book when I read it. I read it right when it came out. Now I have no money to buy the latest, but when I do... oh I shall read that book with no interruptions.

[thefemnazi]

Yeah, I got to read the first few pages of Eldest in one of our promo bits....but now our bookstore is out of copies and we have to wait for more to show up.  Grr.

[otterath]

Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials
Christopher Paolini - Eragon, Eldest
M I McAllister - Urchin of the Riding Stars
Brian Jacques - Every Redwall book lol

[dragyn]

My personal reccomendation to everyone:  Read what interests you.

[dragyn]

Then spread out.   It can't hurt and you might actually learn something.

(sorry for the doubling, there)