Nathan Bransford - The Forums

These books are I read every day:-
The Magic
The Reluctant Detective
The Mine
Rahul
Ashoka
How To Unblock Everything On The Internet
When Loss Is Gain
Birds Of The Indian Subcontinent

^^O.O Are you me? That's, like, almost my exact. same. list.

From page two:

Falls Apart wrote:Wow, almost missed this. That'll teach me to spend a weekend hiding in an internet-less room. My favorite books . . . *whips out 20 ft long list*

1. A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin. Seriously. Can't. Read. Enough. *goes on an hour long rant about their awesomeness, gets shot by a mob of annoyed people, recovers miraculously*
2. Gone series, Michael Grant
3. The PIllars of the Earth, Ken Follett. Not so much the sequel.
4. Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling
5. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.
6. Under the Dome, Stephen King
7. Othello, Shakespeare
8. King Lear, also by Shakespeare
9. Taking Back God, Leora Tanenbaum
10. How Not to Write a Novel by . . . who wrote that again?

Yeah, the last two aren't novels, but I love them, so . . . yeah. I absolutely adore these books.

And in the same order. Using the same wording. Hmmm...

^^Yeah, it is rather odd...

Ooooh, tough. But I'll go with books that had a huge influence on me:

1. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
2. "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
3. "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach
4. "Skeleton Crew" by Stephen King (my first in the horror genre, and the one that got me hooked on King)
5. "The Elfstones of Shannara" by Terry Brookes
6. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
7. "A Spell for Chameleon" by Piers Anthony
8. Dante's "Infero"
9. "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien
10. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

and a bonus book, "Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre" by H.P. Lovecraft

And yeah, I read most of these for the first time when I was younger. So maybe how old we are when we read them does have an influence?

I can't order them, so they are my top ten in no particular order:

The Hobbit by Tolkein. It is what got me into writing fantasy novels.

The HP series Also great fantasy. I love the big world J.K. Rowling builds

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson (I'll read this over and over and never get bored.)

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The characterizations are amazing. I have a love/ hate relationship with Heathcliff, although he is one of my favourite characters. I detested Linton. Absolutely could not stand him. No writer has ever made me hate a villain more than Emily Bronte

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I actually cried at one point in this because Bronte creates such a realistic character who is so easily relatable (you know, excluding the whole mad wife in the attic thing.)

Heidi by Johanna Spyri. A childhood favourite that will always have a special place in my heart.

The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix, particulary the first two books

Here lies Arthur by Phillip Reeve. An original spin on the well known story of King Arthur. Fully deserved to win the elusive Carneige Medal.

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. Should be a classic.

7. Anne McCaffrey's Pern Series. Again, I only read one of the books, have been trying to get hold of the others to read. Sci-Fi usually isn't my cuppa tea, but this woman's books are magnificent!

Chantelle.S. - Anne McCaffrey is one of my all-time favorite authors. I credit her for my love of reading. The book you read, is it from the PERN series? Because (IMO) it's her best.

After all the books I've read this past year, there are a few changes to my list.

this is not in any order:

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
A Song of Fire and Ice by George R R Martin
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Harry Potter Series by Jk Rowling
Angelique and the King by Anne Golon
Leviathan Series by Scott Westerfeld
the Book thief by Markus Zusak
Hamlet by Shakespeare (forgot how much I liked it)
The Iliad by Homer
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

On my fringe:

the three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
1984 by George Orwell
the Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey
the Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

Cookie made some changes, can I, too?

I SO need to add the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. Absolutely some of my new favorites.

Dune by Frank Herbert
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Underworld by Don Delillo
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

And here's two I absolutely loathed - Beloved by Toni Morrison and the Lie by Chad Kultgen.

i usually can't make it past 4 without exploding into chaos, but my top 4 are (in no particular order)

Stephen King's The Stand
Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear
Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
Monica Hughes' Invitation to the Game

Love all 4 of those books for very different reasons. Even wrote a blog post about them at the end of january

Falen wrote:i usually can't make it past 4 without exploding into chaos, but my top 4 are (in no particular order)

Stephen King's The Stand
Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear
Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
Monica Hughes' Invitation to the Game

Love all 4 of those books for very different reasons. Even wrote a blog post about them at the end of january

I had forgotten about The Mists of Avalon. That really was a good book. I read that about 17 or 18 years ago, and I still think about it sometimes. Thanks for the reminder!

No problem! I love that book. Defintely due for another read of it