Kindle books

I’m looking for scifi/fantasy book recommendations.  I want to buy a couple for my kindle, but I haven’t been paying attention to newly published books for years so I have no idea what new authors are good and which books are “must reads”.  I wandered through a book store the other day and many of the books appeared to be crappy series where the authors churned out books.  At least half of them were about vampires, I’m sure of it.

Help!  Any suggestions?

Wife said for you to get the unabridged version of “the Stand” by S. King.  available on your kindle.

I say Read “EON” by G. Bear  $6.99.  Have not read it, by the same author,“The Forge of God”.

Now get buzy   ;D

If you haven’t read King’s The Dark Tower series I highly recommend it.  That would keep you busy for a good long while.

Don’t forget the SiFI classics. Most of the H.G. Wells are free and many of the other authors. Much better than a lot of the new stuff too.

I love my kindle!

Anything by:

Neal Stephenson
William Gibson
Alastair Reynolds
Neal Asher
Charles Stross
Rudy Rucker
Jack Vance (The Demon Princes and Planet of Adventure are easy to find and great reads- but alas not kindlized yet)
Gene Wolfe (also lean in the kindle dept but the Book of The New Sun tetralogy is fantastic)

To name a few…

Tom,
My wife said here are some “free” ones. She is adept at the kindle thing and so here goes…
Astra:syncronicity…lisa eskra
to the stars…thomas stone
the making of legend…richard barrs
resurrection of liberty…michael wentz
right ascention…David derrico
The honour of the Knights…stephen sweeney
Ok…1vertical bows out…

Awesome, thanks.  I read the unabridged “The Stand” years ago, I liked it but have no desire to go through it again.  The copy I read had one whole section (about 50 pages) switched front to back - like it went from page 150 to 700 for a while, and then back.  If you skipped to the back of the book the missing pages were there.  I’ve never seen that before, if you didn’t notice it made it hard to read.

I’ve read a lot of Greg Bear too, and the Dark Tower, and Stephenson.

I’ll check out the free classics you mention tubercle, as well as your list 1vert.

Euge - I’ll do some poking around for those authors, thanks for the recommendations.  I thought I had read the New Sun, but after looking it up I am thinking of some other book.

Now I have some work to do. :slight_smile:

Another one to check out is Asimov’s Foundation series.  I’m about halfway through right now.  I’m reading the paper version though  :wink:

My lovely wife is an avid sic fi reader.  She recommends just about any book by Terry Pratchett.
She also points out that NPR put out a list of the top 100 reader recommendations this summer.  (I would copy and paste the link to it here, but I have trouble with this new touch screen device sometimes.)

edit: Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books : NPR
It’s a pretty good list.

Yeah, knocked the whole trilogy this summer.  Have also read “Prelude to Foundation”.  None of the others yet, though

On the off chance that you haven’t read them already, the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and a Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin are both fantastic.

I also recently enjoyed The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

Additionally, the Otherland series by Tad Williams is pretty amazing.

  • 1 - I couldnt’ agree more.  I’m 1/2 way through the 2nd book and they are great. 
    My wife loved “The Hunger Games” series and has gotten our friends hooked on them too but I haven’t read them yet.  No vampires that I’m aware of.

If you want to read non-fiction, I suggest reading John E. Douglas, the guy who started the profile unit for the F.B.I.
As a former LEO I have read them all. - see also:Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter & the Red Dragon

You will be surprized, you will say"OMG, I know that guy!!!".

“Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives.”
"Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit."…read this one first
."Journey into Darkness."…and this one second.
“Obsession: The FBI’s Legendary Profiler Probes the Psyches of Killers, Rapists and Stalkers and Their Victims and Tells How to Fight Back.”
“The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI’s Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals.”
“The Cases That Haunt Us.”

I’m telling you, you read these profiles, you will know someone who fit them. Everyone has a Jeffery Dalmer intheir family.  This is real life. Much more scary that fiction!!!

Thanks guys!

The Asimov series was great, I read them (and many of his books) years ago and loved them.

I’ll check out Pratchett, and that list Jeff, thanks.

I’ve read most of the Wheel of Time, and have all of the books but can’t remember where I left off.  Around 10 or 11 I think.  The George RR Martin books . . . I loved the first one but felt it went downhill after that.  I think by the third one all of the characters I liked had been killed off.  It became more of a chore than fun to read it.  I might pick it back up though, my wife is starting the series so we’ll see if she can convince me to keep going.

I’ve read some Tad Williams but not Otherland, so I’ll check that out.  The Magicians and Hunger Games too, thanks.

Tubercle - thanks for the recommendations, but I prefer to remain blissfully ignorant of the psychopathy of those around me :wink:

I certainly know what you mean about vampires Tom :smiley:

So now that we got the recs out of the way what is your opinion of the Kindle? There are other options out there and the K2 has some flaws IMO. I’m particularly enamored with the app which has further enhanced my reading.

Pick up the DSM IV and start looking at the conditions and their symptoms. Then look at your friends. :-\

On the urban fantasy side of the fence, I’ve devoured every one of the “Dresden File” novels by Jim Butcher. Tom Sniegoski’s Remy Chandler books (A Kiss Before the Apocalypse) are pretty interesting as are Sandman Slim, the “Twenty Palaces” books by Harry Connolly (Child of Fire). The Dresden novels do have vampires, but they’re usually the bad dudes and only variety “glitter” all sexy like.

On Sci Fi, I just got done reading Blackout by Connie Willis. Awesome book about a group of historians who work for Oxford in 2060 who are sent back to the Blitz period of WWII in England to observe the happenings and study the events up close and personal. I’m waiting for the library to deliver the second half “All Clear” to the local branch.

Oh and read “Old Man’s War” yet if you haven’t. It’s like a really good non-juvenile Heinlein juvenile.

I have not read Blackout. Thought Connie Willis sorta dropped off the map abruptly. This might be my next book since I’ve read the others in her alternate world. Wow the last book I read of hers was “Passage” and that was 9 years ago. Thanks Drew!

I haven’t read Blackout yet either, but I read all of the older ones in the same series, Firewatch, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and another  . . . Doomsday Book.  Good stuff.

Old Man’s War is on my list, because it was on the list Jeff linked to and I haven’t read it yet.  There’s a lot of good books on that list, I’ve read more than half of them.  I’ve put the other rec’s on the list too, I’ll see what grabs me next time I am looking for good books.

I don’t have much of an opinion either way on the kindle.  It seems cool, but I got it as a gift and haven’t really had time to play with it.  But since I’m going to see the gift giver in a couple of weeks I figured I should bring it with me and put some books on it.  I don’t plan to bring any other books with me for a week at the beach, so I’ll have an opinion after that. :slight_smile:

I have to say though, it makes me a little grumpy that the kindle versions of some books are more expensive than the paperback.  How does that make any sense?  Then when there’s the public library and Half Price Books it gets hard to justify.  I can get a paperback copy of American Gods for $8 from Amazon, or the $10 Kindle version . . . I don’t expect them to match the used price, $3 from HPB, but shouldn’t it be no more than the paperback?  Or even less?

I don’t usually read a lot of sci-fi, but I’ve really enjoyed the William Gibson stuff I read. I just started reading Kraken by China Mieville. I’m not far enough along to offer an opinion, but my brother-in-law dug it and recommended it to me (he also recommended the Gibson books).

Can’t blame you there. Considering that the expenses for making an ebook are nowhere near those for producing a printed book, there’s no way I could justify to myself buying an ereader. (I’m a cheap SOB) I’ll keep my printed book library for the foreseeable future. (besides, I have some nice, collectable, 1st editions in there)

Asimov is one of my favorite authors, so most anything by him (never read any of his westerns or detective novels though) is a good read IMHO. A lot of his books also tie in to his Foundation series. Particularly the assorted robot novels.  (Think of those as prequels.)
Anne McCaffrey is best known for her Dragonriders of Pern series.
Orson Scott Card"s Ender series or The Tales of Alvin Maker series are good
Jack Chalker’s Quintara Marathon or Soulrider quadrilogies
C.J. Cherryh - most anything
Arthur C. Clark - Another of the “most anything is good” authors. The 2001 saga, & the Rama series are favorites
Gorden R. Dickson’s Childe Cycle
Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series was a much better read than the TV show based off of them. (go figure)
Ursula K. LeGuin - Earthsea series (the TV miniseries pales in comparison)
Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series. Because they’re amusing, over the top, escapism.
Katherine Kurtz She has a few interconnected series dealing with a race called the Deryni. medieval fantasy
Julian May - The Galactic Milieu series
Larry Niven - most anything
Margaret Weis - most anything
Roger Zelazny - Chronicles of Amber
There is also a 4 book set put out by the SciFi book club that is a compendium of the various thieve’s world novels edited by Robert Lynn Asprin.  Basically he takes all the novels (written by many different authors) and puts the chapters into something reasonably close to chronological order. Authors include Robert Asprin, Janet Morris, Poul Anderson, Lynn Abbey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andrew J. Offut. The omnibus volumes are titled Sanctuary, Crosscurrents, The Shattered Sphere, and The Price of Victory. They are unfortunately long out of print, but can be found in the occasional library or at online used book sellers.

http://www.bookcloseouts.com/ often has some really good sales on new books. (A few months ago they had a $1.99 fiction sale. Damn but that hurt the checkbook. :wink: )
And if any of you has a collection such as myself, this is an excellent program for cataloging your books. (also has music and movie versions) http://www.readerware.com/
And Baen (A large scifi publishing house) offers some free ebooks. Free Library - Categories