What are your favorite books?

[Phoenix]

I thought it would be interesting to hear what people around here like to read.

I'm hoping this thread will grow in popularity, becuase I'm always interested in a good book and I like to buy and store different books so I always have a real variety on hand to read. And I thought this would be a constructive way to find something new. Not to mention, I thought it would serve the rest of the community here in the same way. So feel free to share what you think is a great read!

Doesn't matter what genre or subject matter... could be a novel, something historical, cultural, instructional, or technical, for instance, with photos and artwork or without, well known books or not, new or old, whatever, just anything under the sun that you thought was really good.

What would all of you recommend?

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I'll start with just a few suggestions (novels in this case) that I know to be good:

- The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown (I think everyone knows about this)
- Timeline, by Michael Crichton
- Paranoia, by Joseph Finder
- The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And one that I thought looked good and bought, but haven't read yet:

- The Eight, by Katherine Neville

[Nurhisham Hussein]

I haven't read much lately, and a lot of what I have read is quite frankly escapist junk, but I have no qualms about recommending this:

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, by Robert K. Massie

This is one of the finest pieces of history writing I have ever read - it brings to life the drama, personalities and circumstances of its subject in a way I've rarely seen in any field of study.

Absolutely recommended for any serious student of military or naval history - there's a few gems in here that I've never seen elsewhere, like the strained relations between Room 40 (the cryptographic branch of the Admiralty) and certain duty officers, which led to crucial information on High Seas Fleet movements right after Jutland never getting to Jellicoe, thus allowing the Germans to escape. 2 thumbs up!

[Stik]

Anything by John Grisham or Anne Rice if I'm in escapist mode, which I usually am! :lol:

Robert A. Heinlein's ' Stranger in a Strange Land ' was a particular favorite, and taught me to 'grok' in a different sense.

My all time escapist favorite is Tolkien's Lord of the Ring trilogy. A sidenote to this, in commeration to Jason Dunn's birthday yesterday, is that " Sauron was finally destroyed on March 25th, 3018 T.A., when Frodo stood in the Sammath Naur. Frodo put the Ring on, and would have replaced Sauron as Dark Lord. However, Gollum bit his finger off, and the ring and finger fell into the Cracks of Doom. Sauron fell, and Mordor was destroyed. "

http://www.btinternet.com/~meduseld/sauron.shtml

Good old Gollum, just gotta love that bedeviled character. :mrgreen: