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My Book Recommendations
I'm always glad to have some feedback! If you've got comments, suggestions
or questions, send me an EMail or use
my guestbook.
A good source for books on the Web is
Amazon.com. If you don't mind using your credit card over the
net, and if you care for a great selection, this is the place to visit.
Older texts may already be available as freely distributable e-texts. To
find out more about the Project
Gutenberg and the philosophy behind the publication of e-texts, check
out the History and Philosophy
of Project Gutenberg.
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- Richard P. Feynman - Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman
Reminiscences of the life of a fascinating person. Exciting and very
humorous; a solid recommendation. - Groucho Marx - Groucho and Me
I stumbled over this in a bookshop some way off Oxford Street while
trying not to get lost in London. Groucho recounts his life in a typical
Groucho manner: he talks about life as a poor kid in a big city, of his
time on the Vaudeville circuit, and of the rise and fall of the Marx
Brothers, not forgetting his time on "You bet your Life".
Interspersed in the narration are random thoughts and observations on the
peculiarities of modern life.
Information on Groucho and the Marx Brothers:
- Frank Zappa (with P. Occhiogrosso) - The Real Frank Zappa Book
The world of today and yesterday, seen with the eyes of Frank Zappa.
This is not a dusty vitae, but also gives some insight on Frank's personal
views of the world. If you're interested in FZ, you'll like this one.
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- Tom Sharpe - Indecent Exposure
Sharpe's biting parody of life in a sleepy southafrican backwater
doesn't miss a single cliche to build a babylonian tower of catastrophes
which he expertly brings down on his poor protagonists. Definitely no the
right material for sensitive people. - James Thurber - The Thurber Carnival
My first exposure to Thurber was through "Fables for Our
Time": my english teacher at school considered "The Very Proper
Gander" or "Little Red Riding Hood" the ideal material to make
her lessons a bit more attractive to us numbskulls. Thurber's humor is very
reserved and dry, and sometimes even a bit sentimental. In my opinion he's
the man Kishon learned eveything from. "The Thurber Carnival"
servers well to give an overview of his work over the years, and it
definitely whets your appetite for more. If you want to give it a try, I
recommend "The Secret Life of James Thurber" or "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty".
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- Rudyard Kipling - Stalky & Company, Kim
Yes, I know, "Stalky & Company" is a school story meant
for younger people, but nevertheless this one worms its way back again in my
reading stack every other year or so. I guess the basic appeal is that these
are stories of comeuppance, where otherwise powerless schoolboys take crafty
revenge on everybody who's opposing them.
Kim is the real classic - forget about the movie, and read the book
instead, if just for Kipling's descriptions of India during the colonial
times. - Herman Melville - Moby Dick
"Call me Ishmael" - that opening has made it into literary
history. This is another case where you should forget about the pathetic apptempt to
frame this masterpiece on celluloid. The text has a rather gothic quality
to it - when you make your way through the (for me anyways) complicated
sentences, you can perceive them like the arches in a church, rising high,
pure and beautiful. - Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Can't say for sure why I prefer this to the hilarious "Tom
Sawyer" - it's maybe the more adolescent outlook on life.
Much of work of Mark Twain is available in e-text format. The
Mark Twain Homepage at
Mining Co contains an extensive list of available material.
You can also read his classic essay on The
Awful German Language in my humor archive. - Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
I mean, you've got to know this. This is pure genius. If for nothing
else, read it for the quotes. My personal favourite is "I can resist
everything but temptation".
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William Denton offers
A Glossary of Hardboiled
Slang that defines common slang terms used in hardboiled fiction.
The Mysterious
Homepage is a good starting point to find information about mysteries
and crime fiction and their othors on the Web.
- Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye
This is the hardest and yet most sentimental story about Marlowe, the
disillusioned and cynic private eye. - James Ellroy - The Black Dahlia
This book marked the breakthrough for Ellroy and his loose quartet of
semi-fictional stories about the LAPD around WW2. Ellroy's cops are mean
and bad, and in their methods they don't differ much from the scum they
are hunting. His books are definitely not for the faint of heart. All in
ll, he's a most worthy successor to the throne Hammett and Chandler
vacated.
Beatrice has two interviews
with Ellroy online: The
Guy Behind the Mad Dog, dating from 1995, and
Viewing
Dark Places In a Cold Hard Light, done 1996. - Dashiell Hammett - The Big Knockover and Other Stories
A milestone in the history of crime fiction: Hammett invents the
figure of the private eye and founds the "hardboiled" genre that
later on spawned the Film Noir. - Ellis Peters - A Morbid Taste for Bones
A monk as a male Miss Marple in the Middle Ages. Cadfael is some sort
of Sherlock Holmes with a robe. Sho'nuff, this is plain trivial, but just as
Agatha Christie, it makes good reading if you don't want to tackle serious
stuff.
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- Alan Silitoe - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Short stories depicting the life of the british lower class. - Nevil Shute - On the Beach
Another title from my english class reading list: Only the Australians
seem to have survived the nuclear wolrd war, while the rest of the earth
has been rendered uninhabitable. Soon it becomes clear to the surviors that
they are only living on borrowed time and that they can't avoid their fate.
Horrifying, fascinating, sad. - Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall
A recommendation from Jutta, my girlfriend, who studies English and
Economics - and I must support it. Waugh's slightly bizarre rendition of
the english society is amusing and interesting.
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The
Speculative Fiction Links List is a link farm with lots of references
on Science Fiction, Fantasy und Horror Authord. You might want to check
this out for links I haven't found myself (yet).
- Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games, Consider Phlebas, Excession
The "Culture"-Universe is the fascinating backdrop for some
of Banks' novels. It's a tough place, abound with treason and intrigue. The
premise is that at some point in the far future, mankind and its intelligent
machines, the "minds" evolve to a pangalactic and multi-species
presence, the Culture. - Harlan Ellison
- Alone Against Tomorrow
The anthology which founded Ellison's fame as "Angry Youg Man of
SF" in the seventies. Personally I am horrified to see "I Have No
Mouth, and I Must Scream" made into yet another unexciting computer
game. - Philip Jose Farmer - To Your Scattered Bodies Go
The "Riverworld" is a large artificial planet whose surface
is just one long river valley, and all the death are resurrected along the
shoreline. This opens immense opportunities for the story - what would
happen if Hitler would chance upon Jesus? This is basically a space opera,
but nevertheless interesting and exciting. -
Robert A. Heinlein - The Number of the Beast
One of his later books, where Heinlein took a fancy to retcon his whole
works into a large universe. Fascinating for Heinlein buffs, but probably
quite frustrating for people without that background. - Terry Pratchett - Discworld
Pratchett's Discworld is crazy fantasy world where virtually everything
is possible. Unlike other humorous writes like Craig Shaw Gardener or
Robert Asprin, Pratchett manages to stay convincing, surprising and
interesting all the time.
Since he's got a strong appeal for computer geeks like us, he has his
dedicated fan newsgroup on usenet.
Since he drops by personally from time to time, this is a great place to
hang out and talk about it all. - Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
If somebody would ask me for reading recommendations in the Cyberpunk
genre, then this book would be right at the top of the list. While
Stephenson wasn't the first to explore this genre, "Snow Crash" is
definitely the most convincing of the "adventure in VR" lot. Check out the
review linked in above, it can tell you much more than I with my limited
vocabulary :-)
WIRED has a
great story by Stephenson in their back issues section - check out
Spew. - Jack Vance - The Alastor Series
Vance is a brilliant narrator who captures our imagination with his
description of well thought-out alien worlds and habits. Who cares if
there's usually just a plain space opera behind it - after all, aren't
there masterworks of sculpture made from simple clay, too?
If you are interested in Vance, you should check out the forthcoming
Jack Vance Integral Edition.
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- George R. R. Martin - A Game of Thrones
Usually, I try to steer clear of epic multi-volume fantasy novels, but nevertheless
I bought "A Game of Thrones" when I saw it on the shelf of a local bookstore -
after all, I had fond memories of George R. R. Martin's "Tuf Voyaging", which was
one of the first SF/F books that I read in english. The fact that I didn't realize that it
was Book 1 of the series "A Song of Ice and Fire" did probably help, too.
"A Game of Thrones" is set on a world that experiences a sort of ice age, where
long warm periods are followed by equally long "winters" of fierce cold. The main
focus is on the Realm of the Seven Kingdoms that resides on a large isle that spans from
sub-tropical to arctic climate. Their northern border is fortified with a huge wall of ice
and guarded by the Night Watch from raiders and unearthly beings that are called the
Others. As the story starts, the Seven Kingdoms have just experienced one of the longest
warm periods in memory. But instead of preparing for the next winter, there is intrigue
abound that culminates in a fierce struggle for the throne.
The story is narrated in turn from the viewpoints of the various main characters. For
me, the frequent shifts worked well, as they allowed Martin to weave an intricate plot
that keeps the reader interested. His characters are believable - none of the good
guys is without fault, and none of the bad ones is evil personified. Of course there
are also some mystic elements that make "A Game of Thrones" more than an epos
of medieval powermongering - but luckily, the book's not swords and sorcery all the way.
All, in all, it's four stars out of five for "A Game of Thrones".
Links: Imprint,
- David Weber - On Basilisk Station
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" goes the popular adage and from this
point of view, C.S. Forester should feel masively flattered were he still alive, because David Weber's
Honor Harrington is a worthy successor in the true tradition of the heroic captain.
Of course there are lots of differences between Hornblower and Harringtin, the least being that
Weber's epic is a space oper and that his captain is indeed a woman. Yet the core of the classic saga
has remained the same: Here, too, a single hero fights for law and order against an all-powerful,
sinister enemy - the People's Republic of Haven.
The story starts with Harringtons appointment to her first hyper-capable command, a light cruiser.
Having read herself in, her commands takes part in a fleet exercise, where Harrington becomes a pawn in
a conflict of her superior officers, which ends in Harrington being sent to a reote outpost. This is
where the typical Sea Hero/Space Opera plot kicks in, where Harrington fights against all odds, earning
the respect of her crew and her superiors - space battle included.
Like Forester (and Alexander Kent after him) have demonstrated, there still a lot of leeway in the
basic book formula - and Weber knows how to use it. His first Harrington book is an easy read and yet
the tension will keep you going right up to the end. It certainly persuaded me to spring the cash for
all of the other books in this series.
If all this has gotten you interested, scoot over to the Baen Books web site and check the Free Library section, where you can read parts of the
first two Harrington books online for free.
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- Hugo Winners reviewed by Steve Parker
- A steadily growing list of reviews of all Hugo Award
winners.
- Private Joker's Homepage
- Infos about Gustav Hasford, whose novel "The Short-Timers" served as a basis for
Kubrick's Vietnam epic "Full Metal Jacket". This site contains e-texts of Hasford's novels
and other writings.
- William Denton's Book List
From 1995 to 2000, William listed the blurbs and cover texts of all books he had bought.
- Book
Recommendations of Real Folks
This page lets you submit your own book lists and comments. All
recommendations are on file, so you can find out what other people
like to read. - The Science Fiction Resource Guide
A great portal for finding information about SF&F on the 'net.
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