Favorite Books

[redrover]

Just a place for talking about your favorite books. Fiction, nonfiction, Sci-fi, mystery, whatever, post it here. I'll start by recommending Martin Caidin's "Silken Angels" for aviation buffs out there...

 

[streb2001]

I'm a Clarke bore so:
The City and the Stars
Imperial Earth
The Fountains of Paradise

The Lord of the Rings (forget the movie, read the book!)

 

[Biscuit]

Most everything Clarke wrote, same with Heinlein ...

The "Saga of Pliocene Exile" and "Galactic Milieu" series from Julian May.

ooh ... "The Integral Trees" by Larry Niven ... taught me most of what I know about orbital mechanics.

 

[dbeachy1]

I'm a big Larry Niven fan -- in particular, Ringworld. I'd love to see a Ringworld modeled in Orbiter -- could Orbiter handle a one-AU-in-diameter mesh?

 

[Insane]

That I've read in the last few years - The Man in the High Castle, and Ubik, both by Philip K Dick, and Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut. 2001 series and Rama series by Clarke too, and anything by Douglas Adams. On the non sci fi front its just fantasy mainly, Discworld, Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter is a guilty pleasure.

 

[streb2001]

Harry Potter is a guilty pleasure.

Why guilty? Harry Potter got millions of PS2 addicted kids actually reading books and that can only be a Good Thing.

 

[SlyCoopersButt]

I haven't many Novels, The most major ones I've read include On the Beach and Excaliber (I think that's what it's called).

 

[GregBurch]

I haven't many Novels, The most major ones I've read include On the Beach and Excaliber (I think that's what it's called).

On the Beach? You must be ancient (like me)!

 

[Insane]

Why guilty? Harry Potter got millions of PS2 addicted kids actually reading books and that can only be a Good Thing.

Of course. Still guilty though.

 

[Missioncmdr]

Some of my favorite books are:

Fiction:
The Space Odyssey series by Arthur C. Clarke (although 2001 is clearly superior to the rest)
Contact by Carl Sagan
Voyage and Titan by Stephen Baxter
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Non-fiction:
A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin
The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin
Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years (composed mainly of excerpts written by dozens of Shuttle astronauts)
Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

Of course there are many non-fiction and a couple of fiction books that I have read and liked, but there are too many to list here. The ones above are just examples.

I am currently reading two books:
The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul
British History for Dummies by Sean Lang

 

[n0mad23]

For your "Must Read" list:

Neil Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. Historical fiction, but about our favorite Natural Philosophers.

 

[Brad]

Bradbury...I liked the Illustrated Man as a kid and enjoyed the well known the Martian Chronicles. R for Rocket was also good.

 

[pattersoncr]

For SciFi, I recently read the “Time Odyssey” books that Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter wrote together:
Time’s Eye
Sunstorm
Firstborn
I highly recommend them, especially the 2nd and 3rd.

For historical stuff, I recommend Michael & Jeff Shaara.
Michael Shaara wrote The Killer Angels, about the battle of Gettysburg.
His son Jeff wrote two novels that covered the rest of the Civil War.
Jeff went on to write several series of novels that cover the American Revolution and both World Wars. These cover historical events but are written as novels. They really bring the men we all learned about in history class (us Americans at least) to life.

 

[eveningsky339]

Bradburry, Steven King, Dean Koontz...

 

[Apollo 11]

Riding Rockets by Mike Mullane.