Your Favourite Novels?

The Emperor's Lounge
#21

Wheel of time is my ALL TIME FAVORITE

Brandon Sanderson wrote the last novel after the original author died which is how I found mistborn/stormlight (both are excellent)

I would rarely recommend Wheel Of Time as it’s SO LONG as so epic, but let me put it in perspective for everyone how much I loved the Wheel Of Time.

I used to read about 20-30 novels a year, this was while I was in high school and college, I was a voracious reader. I finished the entire Wheel Of Time series in about 12 months of on/off reading, which is 15,000 pages across all the books… that’s the equivalent of 50 regular novels at 300 pages per novel.

How good was the wheel of time?

So good that I’ve completely quit reading after finishing the series.

That was it. Finito. End-o-Ultimatum-o. Avada Kedavra to my literary journey. The final stop. End of the line. Dead.

I read Mistborn because I was craving more of the same, and it was good. I later picked up Stormlight archives & Kingkiller chronicles to try and satisfy my WoT craving a bit more too, and that was good. I read a couple of books here and there because it’s not like I don’t enjoy reading. I love it.

But after the Wheel Of Time, nothing could compare, and I never did find a book that brought the same totality that WoT did.

Regarding this… here’s my suggestion.

Read the first two books. Not just the first. Commit to #1 and #2.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but, the first two books are what I would consider a “Complete” story in and of themselves. If you only read those two books, you’d have a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, and you could walk away from the series knowing that you went from introduction, to rising action, to climax, to post-climax & resolution.

Then there’s an invitation to continue on to the series from there and treat the entire first 2 books as one massive introduction and first inklings of a rising action sequence.

How good are the first two books? At the end-climax of the second book, the final fight scene, I actually found tears in my eyes, from shock of how powerfully vivid the imagery in my mind was when reading, I could actually SEE what was happening, yet I self-identify as aphantasic. It was epic.

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#22

For a really fun read, I would recommend “The Rosie PRoject” as either a standalone for the first book, or the entire series. All three are excellent. All three are hilarious. All three are short and super easy to read. Bill Gates says The Rosie Project is his favorite book.

It’s about a guy who has autism but is extremely high functioning. It starts with his spreadsheet to find the perfect woman to marry, basically he’s using autistic/ocd tendencies to optimize the wife-selection process. Hilarious twists and turns.

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#23

A lot of people like Siddhartha but my favorite book by herman hess is Narcissus and Goldmund. Another all time favorite, actually.

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#24

My favorites are the ones that I remember, lol.

I’ve only ever read fiction, and mostly when I was younger.

I don’t really read anymore, but:

(All my personal opinion)

  1. Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling (early childhood)

I’ve read the whole series, maybe twice. Looking back, to me it’s boring and overrated as fuck. Drawn out. For children, and I would never read the series again.

  1. The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini (early childhood)

I’ve read the whole series, maybe 3 times. Cringey as hell, and for children. Terribly written. I would never read the series again.

  1. Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan (early teens)

I’ve never finished this one. I think I read the first 6 books and that’s it. Not sure. I would never read it again. Kind of hazy to my memory, but I know for sure that it was cringey and a waste of my time.

  1. Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (young adult)

I’ve read this one once, all the books. I think this one was decent and fun. The least boring. Lmao. I wouldn’t read it again, not because it was terrible but because I’m just not there internally.

  1. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (early teens)

I had all 3 books and I tried to read the first one. Absolutely terrible and would never read again. I was unable to understand anything. His way of writing was strange to me.

That’s all I remember about novels, lol. Those 5 are my favorite series.

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#25

Thinking about the novels that I couldn’t put down in the past, these were the first to come to mind…

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Persig
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Dark Elf Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore

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#26

Some German Classics I need to add.

ETA Hoffman - The Sandman (1817)
A shortstory about alchemy, love between a man and a robot and a villain robbing children’s eyes to feed them to his children living on the moon

Goethe - Faust
Best description of the German essence

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#27

The Outsiders.

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#28

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1984 by George Orwell

Neruomancer by William Gibson

Ubik by Philip K Dick

Big Fish Daniel Wallace

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Cloud Atlas by Mitchell

The Vampire Chronicles By Anne Ricr

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#29

Brave New World and 1984 are required reading for anyone with a brain. I was never able to get myself to read past the first two chapter of Neuromancer.

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#30

Let’s go OG. In my mind the all time master, the GOAT: Charles Dickens
Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
Oliver Twist
David Copperfield

I also like J.D. Salinger and John Irving,

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#31

Mine is The Glassbead Game.

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#32

I used to read a lot more in the past.

My most recent favorite author was Haruki Murakami. His “The Rat” trilogy was one of my great reading experiences.

I feel that this period of Sub Club subliminal use has really been a kind of Mental Reset. Things have been updated, reorganized, deleted, and so on.

Right now, I’m in a space that is a bit fresh. Just exploring different things. Haven’t lost my memory or anything, and I have read and loved many of the books mentioned above. More that maybe my relationship to them is changing.

Funnily enough, my son is now reading The Wheel of Time. Listening to it actually. I was laughing because he’s reading The Two Towers by Tolkein in book form, and listening to The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan in audiobook form, to relax before sleep.

Dune was another otherworldly experience for me. I read it in 7th grade. and then re-read it in college. and the second time was even better than the first.

The novel I’m reading right now is Gone Girl by Gillian Finch.

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#33

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey - Chuck Palahniuk
Pulp - Charles Bukowski
Amerika - Franz Kafka
Cocka Hola Company - Matias Faldbakken
Extension du domaine de la lutte - Michel Houellebecq
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

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#34

Absolutely. Perhaps evolution would instill their core principles into our neo-brains :upside_down_face:

I had difficult times with necromancer in the first couple of runs. But it was worth it in the end. Something about that world was difficult for me to imagine in my head

#35

Arthur Schopenhauer-Aphorismen zur Lebensweistheit (i don’t know english name) when i read this 2 years ago it made a big impression on me, it is one of the books I was most impressed by.
and dan brown’s the da vinci code I read this book the summer I was going to go to 8th grade and I liked this book very much at that time

ursula le guin- the dispossessed

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#36

Some of mine have been listed here, but I‘ll add some more:

  • Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill
  • Arturo Pérez-Reverte, El Club Dumas (in English, I believe, published as The Club Dumas, and turned into a movie by Roman Polanski as The Ninth Gate which is very good but doesn‘t quite equal the book)
  • Beowulf, transl. Seamus Heaney (yes, that specific translation and not any other - Heaney tries to tell it as a fireside story rather than hit a high and mighty tone)
  • Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book & Neil Gaiman, Stardust (Stardust is very much written as an old-style fairy tale, only not quite, and has always reminded me of John Donne‘s poetry - „Go and catch a falling star, get with child a mandrake root, tell me where all past years are, and who cleft the devil‘s foot‘ - I still think that almost has to have been an inspiration. Very much worth reading if you like classical fairy tales, and it manages to be very unusual.)
  • Umberto Eco, Il Nome della Rosa (engl. The Name of the Rose)
  • Giovanni Guareschi, Don Camillo (No idea what the English publications are - it‘s more a collection of stories that tie into each other, in various volumes, rather than a novella. If you look for the author you‘ll find them.)
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