What is your favorite fiction book?

- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

- The Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian

- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

- Watchmen by various

- Star Trek: Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane

- The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

- Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

- Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean

- The Cthulhu Casebooks - Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea-Devils by James Lovegrove

- Contact by Carl Sagan

- 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Top 11? :-)

Some of my favorites, in no particular order:

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Dune by Frank Herbert

Permutation City by Greg Egan

Blindsight by Peter Watts

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Story of your Life and Others and Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Chiang in particular is an excellent writer who explores interesting concepts using speculative fiction. A lot of his stories stuck with me, like the one about lookism. Egan also writes excellent stories with very well thought-out and consistent worlds, though the character writing and plotlines is not that strong.

I'm glad everyone else is also not picking just 1 book :p

The Hitchhiker's Guide series is undeniably first for me. Aside from the hilarity and great writing it's also very nostalgic for me. One Christmas my dad gave me the Hitchhiker's collection, Going Postal, and Catch 22, all great books.

Permutation City by Greg Egan. Found out about it from an HN comment. If you're interested in scifi about AI and brain simulation, this is it.

Also looking at my bookshelf I've got to throw in Multiversity by Grant Morrison (and 8 great artists). It's a graphic novel but it's just so darn good. If you're not a comic-book superhero fan, it might not be too great. If you are, it's a great meta story and really rewards analyzing it for symbolism. Grant Morrison really knows how to treat comics as their own unique medium. Each chapter is supposed to be the #1 issue to a new comic series (in different canon universes drawn by different artists), except a DC multi-verse event tangles all their stories together.

Ted Chiang - Story of Your Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life

Some, but not all of her Sci-Fi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Cherryh

Mostly anything from the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance%E2%80%93Union_univers...

with the exception of the 'Mri Wars / Faded Sun Trilogy', 'Merovingen Nights', Morgaine Cycle, Foreigner Universe, and none of her Fantasy.

Much from Kim Stanley Robinson, no matter if early or recently. Most memorable though, 'The Years of Rice and Salt'.

Probably almost anything (Post-)Cyberpunkish from anyone. Steam- or Dieselpunk? Err no, thx.

Some stuff from Stephen Baxter and Gregory Benford.

Rameez Naam's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nexus_Trilogy

All of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Suarez_(author)

Much of Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson.

Oryx and Crake and following from Margaret Atwood.

Anything from Iain Banks. 'The Color of Distance' from Amy Thompson.

Peter F. Hamiltons 'Greg Mandel Trilogy' and 'The Night's Dawn Trilogy', his later stuff didn't engage me that much.

The Blade Runner sequels from K.W. Jeter.

Some Philip K. Dick, there is too much of it!1!!

Gateway and following from Frederik Pohl.

Some of Poul Anderson, John Varley, Jerry Pournelle, Vernor Vinge (Deepness in the Sky, etc)

And so much more...

Two of Iain Banks' works; one with his middle initial, and one without:

- Use of Weapons

"I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway" - the man laughed - "people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And," the man said with a smile, "it's a good way of meeting people. So where are you from, anyway?"

- The Crow Road

"It was the day my grandmother exploded"

Some books that I have really liked:

- Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss(waiting on the third book....)

- Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (also waiting on the rest of the series...)

- The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu - the first book was ok but I really liked the second - The Dark Forest

- Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

- House In the Cerulean Sea

- How to Stop Time by Matt Haig

Others that I like: The Rosie Project, The Books of Babel, A long way to a small Angry Planet, Wool/Shift/Dust, Lockstep, All the Light We Cannot See, Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, Earth Abides, Project Hail Mary, The Martian

Also, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/

In no particular order, except that #1 is #1.

1. Adventures of Huckelberry Finn

2. Little, Big

3. Winter's Tale

4. Titus Groan

5. Gormenghast

6. Titus Alone

7. Dune

8. The manuscript found in saragossa

9. The Three Musketeers

10. A Scanner Darkly

11. The Man in the High Castle

12. Do Androids dream of Electronic Sheep

13. Ubik

14. Valis, basically almost every book by Phil Dick.

15. Life on the Mississippi.

16. The Garden of Forking Paths

17. Dhalgren

18. The Gods of Pegāna, basically all the fantasy work of Dunsany.

19. The Lathe of Heaven. Anything by LeGuin.

20. Their Eyes Were Watching God

21. The Master and Margarita

22. The Gulag Archipelago

Anything by Cordwainer Smith[0]. He more or less invented psychological warfare, so his science fiction is quite interesting. It revolves around the "Instrumentality of Mankind"[1]. He created a completely consistent universe, and it is probably some of the best science fiction to ever be written.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentality_of_Mankind

It’s hard to pick a favourite but I figure a decent rule of thumb would be to list books I’ve read at least twice:

- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

- The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

- The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien

- Watchmen by Alan Moore

- From Hell by Alan Moore

- V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series by Alan Moore

- Dune by Frank Herbert

- Immortality by Milan Kundera

- first 3 books in the The Dark Tower series by Stephen King

- The Dark Half by Stephen King

- The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman

- Coalescent by Stephen Baxter

- 1984 by George Orwell

- Animal Farm by George Orwell

- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

More science fiction than just fiction:

* Spider series by W. Michael Gear

* Forbidden Borders series by W. Michael Gear

* The Change series (aka Emberverse) by S.M. Stirling (first 6)

* The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey

* Dream Park by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes

* In The Country of the Blind by Michael Flynn

* Me by Thomas T. Thomas

* A State of Disobedience by Tom Kratman

* Merchant Princess series by Charles Stross

* Daughter of the Empire series by Raymond E. Fiest and Janny Wurts

* Ecolitan series by L.E. Modesitt Jr

* Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson

* The Game is Life series by Terry Schott

* The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jum Butcher

#1-4 are: Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, The Cyberiad, by Stanisław Lem, and The Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges, and Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. In no particular order.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Cov...

Some people love it, some hate it.

Also by the same author, The Gap Cycle:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gap_Cycle

- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. - Anathem by Neal Stephenson

The Master and Margarita

Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun"

It's a masterpiece. Not just of sci-fi/fantasy but of literature. I have to be careful: if I pick it up and start reading I tend to sink into it and read until the end. In a sense, it's a bog-standard sword-&-sorcery novel, but you don't notice it. I shudder still at the memory of the analeptic alzabo...

- - - -

Dune, of course. I reread it every year or two, just for pleasure. (Don't get me started on that latest movie attempt. Not a complete failure, but very disappointing. At least it gets people to buy the book.)

- - - -

Beyond those two specific books I have favorite writers, Larry Niven and Vernor Vinge are probably my favorite authors (in case it's not clear when it comes to fiction I only read sci-fi and some fantasy. I don't see the point of non-sci-fi fiction. Just read history, eh?)

Anything by Liu Cixin - Three Body Problem and the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy specifically

Dune, book 1. You can take away so much from this book. The Bene Gesserit's "Litany Against Fear" and its application makes the book worth reading, and that's just the tip of the iceberg! My favorite part of the book but involves reunion. friendship and loyalty. The audiobook version of Dune, book 1, is also excellent. It includes dramatic acting and ambient music.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman dramatic audiobook (part I) is so good. I feel so lucky that while looking up the link to the book that I just discovered Part II was published in 9/2021. Highly recommend: https://www.amazon.com/The-Sandman/dp/B086WQ7J62

Some very good ones have been mentioned that I won't repeat. Here's my recommendation:

Confessions, by Jaume Cabré

I'll just quote a Goodreads review [1] I agree with:

> I've never read anything quite like this, such is its artistry and guile. Like a thief in the night it sneaks then all of a sudden it falls upon you like an avalanche. Truly it is a once in a decade novel, and why it is not world famous is a mystery to me.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4010685836?book_show_a...

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan, "The Dragonslayers" by Bruce Coville (https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-dragonslayers-kids-fiction-b...), "Scaramouche" by Rafael Sabatini

Mockingbird, by Walter Tevis, about the first man to learn to read, centuries after humanity delegated even intellectual labor to robots; and the last robot overseer, suicidally bored with his assignment. Tevis also wrote The Man Who Fell To Earth – and, somewhat surprisingly, The Queen's Gambit and The Hustler.

The Shipkiller, by Justin Scott – dated but a great revenge adventure.

And of current releases I really enjoyed Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August[1] by Claire North is the first book that jumps to mind when asked this question.

The Bobiverse series[2] by Dennis E. Taylor is a great fun read or audiobook (I've done both!).

The Xandri Corelel[3] series by Kaia Sønderby. I read both books and immediately started looking around to see if there were more.

I Am Not a Serial Killer[4] by Dan Wells was an enjoyable surprise.

The Martian and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

Of older vintage that I find I've revisited over the years are:

The Chrysalids[5] by John Wyndham.

The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire which comprise The Tripod Trilogy[6] by John Christopher.

And the oft mentioned Dune by Frank Herbert is a book a reread every few years. Love the first book, don't care for the rest that much.

Favourite authors in general would have to include the following: Robert Sawyer, Timothy Zahn (when he's not writing Star Wars stuff), Michael Connelly, and Harlan Coben. Always enjoyable reads.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18295861-the-first-fifte...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/series/199207-xandri-corelel

[4] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7617119-i-am-not-a-seria...

[5] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/826845.The_Chrysalids

[6] https://www.goodreads.com/series/40878-the-tripods

So many good books to recommend. Here's a selection

- Diaspora by Greg Egan

- Pushing Ice by Alastair Raynolds

- Watership Down by Richard Adams

- The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

- The Price of Nothing by R. Scott Baker

- Blindsight by Peter Watts

In no particular order: - The siege of Krishnapur by J G Farrell - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - The Radetsky March, by Joseph Roth - The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy - Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel - 1984, by George Orwell - Never Mind, by Edward St Aubyn

Cannery Row, Tortilla Flats - Steinbeck Smillas sense of Snow-Hoeg Currently reading The Expanse series and it's great.

Anything by Douglas Adams, but especially his Dirk Gently books. If I have to pick one, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

I love The Culture Novels by Iain M Banks.

The first in the series is Consider Phlebas but I enjoy all of them.

They are cheesy in spots but the quality of the universe that Banks builds over 9 books makes up for it.

Sort of like a novel version of Star Trek. I wish I could read them again for the first time.

Chronologically starting with children's:

Swallows and Amazon series. Stranger in a Strange Land, The Man In The Maze, Tau Zero, Asimovs Foundation series. All Jane Austen's work: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northhanger Abbey.

Ken Grimwood - Replay

It’s a fun story where the main character gets to relive part of his life. Even though I can’t replay in my own life, the story still gave me a lot to think about and helps me live happily (and prevent too much existential dread from creeping in).

No idea how much I'd like it if I'd read it today, but 'Jitterbug perfume' by Tom Robbins is probably the one that I liked most (or strongest), of all the books that were favourites at different times in my life.

I can't pick a favourite so I'll just list some books I love that might not be as well known as some others here.

* Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon

* Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak

* The Gap (series), by Stephen Donaldson

* The Golden Apples of the Sun, by Ray Bradbury

* Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson

A few favourites, in no particular order: - Iain M. Bank's Culture series, particularly Player of Games - Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End - Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward

“Destination: Void” and it’s sequel “The Jesus Incident” (I didn’t read the two other books of the serie) by Frank Herbert.

“We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Insane to think this book has been written in 1920.

Top one is basically impossible, but I can do an unordered top ten:

- Catch-22

- Dune

- The Dispossessed

- Illuminatus!

- Kafka on the Shore

- Use of Weapons

- Blood Meridian

- The Book of the New Sun

- A Deepness in the Sky

- From the New World

Some recent-ish ones, because many of my classic ones have been mentioned:

Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco.

Here by Richard McGuire

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Nine Princes in Amber - Roger Zelazny The Mediterranean Caper - Clive Cussler Term Limits - Vince Flynn My Side of the Mountain - Jean George

Pandora’s star by Peter Hamilton

Trilogy of the Void by Peter Hamilton

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

This Book is Full of Spiders::: Seriously Dude, Don't Touch It by David Wong

Currently reading Excession by Iain M. Banks and I'm having a blast. I really like Use of Weapons and I think Dune is great.

The River Why by David James Duncan. A coming of age, meaning of life book with fishing as the central metaphor.

The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

A Song of Ice and Fire, George R.R. Martin

The Mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson

Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons

The Collector, John Fowles

"Tiger, Tiger" (or "The Stars My Destination" in the USA) by Alfred Bester.

The Postman by David Brin

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Anything by Dalton Fury (RIP)

One Second After by William Forstchen

Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham

Albert Camus, the stranger

Earnest hemmingway, the old man and the sea

Have read many times, I like short books!

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Huh... tough call. If you use "number of times read" as a metric that approximates how much I enjoy a particular book, then my favorite is almost certainly one of:

- Neuromancer by William Gibson

- The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

- False Memory by Dean Koontz

I think a good case could be made for a handful of others also. Specifically:

- Nineteen Eighty Four by Orwell

- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

- Foundation by Asimov

- The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien

are all strong contenders as well.

Hard to pick a favourite so I’ll recommend the latest, which I thought was fabulous: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It has also been turned into a limited miniseries that I am excited to watch. I enjoyed it so much I’ve just started another of her books, The Glass Hotel.

Messiah, by Boris Starling

Red Storm Rising, by Tom Clancy

First Among Equals, by Jeffrey Archer

Pretty much anything by Neal Stephenson but especially:

The Baroque Cycle trilogy

Anathem

The Phantom Tollbooth

The Princess Bride (even better than the movie)

"Come, Thou Tortoise", by Jessica Grant.

Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie

The Odyssey by Homer

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Blindsight by Peter Watts

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

So far:

The Malazan Book of the Fallen

Shadows of the Apt

Murderbot

Imperial Radch

Youjo Senki

The Quincunx

A Fire Upon the Deep

An Instance of the Fingerpost

Shogun

Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained - Peter Hamilton

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Altas Shrugged & The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

1984 - George Orwell

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - Dennis Taylor

Culture Series (especially Surface Detail & Use of Weapons) - Ian M Banks

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Neuromancer

- The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) - Jose Saramago

- The War of the End of the World (1981) - Mario Vargas Llosa

Favourites among the books I’ve read lately.

Other than that, there are plenty to enjoy some serious fiction from authors such as:

- Homer (watching Troy is way too far from the book)

- Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain is top pick among his works

- Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities I think is one of the finest pieces of literature

- Albert Camus - pick any of his works, but the shortest is considered to be the finest - The Stranger (~ 80-100 pages)

- Herman Melville - Moby Dick was a wonderful journey I enjoyed thoroughly

- Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace is a book that will raise the bar for fiction, I couldn’t start a new one for a month after finishing it, tried but I was still living in the book. I remember taking a vacation at work to finish the book, couldn’t put it down. Was working as a Java dev at The Ministry of Internal Affairs, must have been 20 or 21 yrs old.

- Dostoevsky - bot reading any of the big five is a missed opportunity: The Demons (one of the finest political fiction work), Brothers Karamazov (Will drain you from emotions), Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Notes from Underground

- Oh, Cervantes - Don Quixote was the book took me 2 years and some more life experience when it started to tick in my mind the depth, importance of the book, perhaps it was 24 or 25.

- And so on, it will be useless to list them all, and many will slip from my mind :)

One important realization an decision I made at the age 18 was that I had to ask around, listen to people who know world literature inside out and follow their suggestions. The reason? At first I wanted to read everything, but pretty quickly that started to sound like a dumb idea which ignored reality and life longevity. Next decision was to read finest of the written works. And the strategy worked.

Books or authors I didn’t enjoy much?

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude - finished it this month and the story felt like the one I’ve already experienced before, emotions I’ve had. If I had read it 8-10 years ago, I would have been dazzled l, but at the age of 29, not much.

- Kafka - The Tower was an awful translation, I felt that, which isn’t authors fault. The next book went smoothly but nothing groundbreaking.

- Ishiguro - mediocre

- Turgenev - mediocre, again

- Calvino - despite my love and respect towards a very good friend, his suggestion didn’t work for me, the book felt like - the author knows too well what’s he’s writing and that’s not a good thing. At first author writes and then he reads it as a reader just to find out what he has written. Calvino and many many more know what they’re writing and hence the mediocrity. - etc.

My next friend will be Ulysses, dragged it a bit too long and finally 2022 is a good year to read it.

Software engineering takes awful a lot of time and energy that it leaves a narrow path to reading something other than technical books and documentation, but the path exists and with discipline we can still enjoy finest pieces of philosophy and literature.

P.S. Many of the printed products are marketed and sold as “books”, but book is a title ought to be earned.

Dune

World War Z

Roadside picnic

the god of small things