Keys to the Kingdom. The best way I can describe these books is a it takes place in a hidden world that’s a mixture of fairy tales with steam punk vibes. The books aren’t very long and there are only 7 of them, so I highly recommend them if you want a series to read without it taking months/years to do so.
the last one was a Joy Fielding book called The Housekeeper. as with most library books, i take them out but then often don’t even open them. with this one i just *happened* to open it on a Friday. ended up reading 50 pages. then 50 on Saturday. then 50 on Sunday. and then on Monday, which was a workday not a long-weekend, I ended up reading 200 pages and finishing the book. and i was relatively new to this job too. thankfully worked from home haha.
Krampus, by Brom. Dark fantasy horror about a feud between Krampus and Santa’s Claus, and a mortal guy caught in the middle of it. Sounds silly, but it’s really really good. Brom also illustrates his own books, so the imagery us incredible.
Like others in this thread, I remember as a kid I powered through the Harry Potter series and the Deltora Quest series. I always had a soft spot for The Invention of Hugo Cabaret, as well; That was probably my favourite non-series book ever.
As an adult, I love The Name of the Wind (and the rest of the Kingkiller Chronicles books)
Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone. I was in my 20s. Tbh it was the the 1st chapter title that got me. “The boy who lived” I was also a boy who lived.. I wasn’t expected to have lived very long
The Green Mile by Steven King. It was originally released as a series of 90ish page novellas. I don’t remember how often they were released but it was torture waiting for the next one. I was young so would have to wait for my mom to buy each one and read it before handing it off to me.
The Book Thief
Winter’s Tale
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
The Doomsday Machine:
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Steel Beach
The Ozark Trilogy (technically three books)
Persuasion
The woefully under appreciate series by Rick Yancy, The Monstrumologist. It’s classified as YA but it’s an absolutely brutal and unflinching look at insanity of a parental figure that puts it firmly in my recommend to millennials dealing with aging parents category. It’s a violent, sad, graphic look at our superstitious humanity. It’s also filled with absolute banger quotes like this;
“It occurred to me. . .that aberrance is a wholly human construct. There were no such things as monsters outside the human mind. We are vain and arrogant, evolution’s highest achievement and most dismal failure, prisoners of our self-awareness and the illusion that we stand in the center, that there is us and then there is everything else but us.”
Operation dark heart… non fiction, true story of when we was in Afghanistan, from a cia operative, before he published, cia went through and blacked out aot of the important details, the most frustrating, but edge of the seat read I’ve ever had
I’ve got a few. Had to read Maestro for school, and I was one of the kids in the class known for being late with my homework, as was my mate who sat next to me. Well we get told to read like 2 chapters over the weekend. Both of us finished it over the weekend, teacher didn’t believe us at first.
Le Compte de Monte Cristo. Full disclosure I haven’t finished it yet, got about 100 pages to go. I strongly suggest reading it in the original French if you can, plenty of little linguistic jokes and plays on words that wouldn’t translate to English well.
The Cthulu Mythos. Collection of short Lovecraft stories that all kind of tie in with one another. Even though it is very interesting, it’s also great because of the format, you can jump in, read one whole tale, jump out. And because they’re all somewhat compartmentalised if you have to put it down for a week or two for whatever reason, you don’t have that thing where you have to reread a bit so you can remember what was going on.
Exactly by Simon Winchester. Basically tells the history and development of metrology (science of measuring stuff) through time, how the development of certain tools made things more precise. Not told from a strictly engineering perspective so you don’t necessarily need to have that kind of education or experience, but if you do it really grabs you.
My absolute favourite though? Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I remember getting so into the Hunger Games books that by the time I was reading the final one, I was pacing. When I got to the big plot twist 3/4 of the way through, I threw my book.
Earth’s Children by Jean M Aul. A series of 5 books based around the neanderthal time frame. The 5th books sucks though because Jean died before completing it and whoever did finish the book failed story telling class
Clan of the cave bear. 2. Valley of horses. 3. The mammoth hunters. 4. The plains of passage. & 5. Homecoming
Every book I read keeps me interested from beginning to end. However, I mainly read thriller/mystery stuff. So no matter what, I pretty much always wanna figure out what’s happening. Some are better than others, but I really can’t get enough.
Comments
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins has a nice writing style, and he seems well-informed since he was a professor at Oxford for many years
Maze Runner when I was a teenager.
The Bible and Harry Potter. My favorite books!
Ender’s Game
Harry Potter
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell.
book of Life!!Bible
Blood Meridian.
Harry Potter and the goblet of fire
Duff MCagan from Guns n’ Roses write a good book. It may be the only book I ever read.
The Terror, a fictional accounting of the doomed Franklin Expedition
How Stella got her groove back. Acid row. Junk. To kill a mockingbird. The colour purple. The penal colony.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Killer Angels
The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. The entire series. AKA The Last Kingdom.
Garbology
The Two Towers is the best to read in the LOTR trilogy IMO and is engaging start to finish
The Magus by John Fowles.
Spider
The Giver
“The Source” by James A. Michener. I have read it multiple times through the decades.
Keys to the Kingdom. The best way I can describe these books is a it takes place in a hidden world that’s a mixture of fairy tales with steam punk vibes. The books aren’t very long and there are only 7 of them, so I highly recommend them if you want a series to read without it taking months/years to do so.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Dirt
The Handmaids Tale. So much better than any of the shows/movies. Middlesex, cloud atlas, where the red fern grows, cujo
the last one was a Joy Fielding book called The Housekeeper. as with most library books, i take them out but then often don’t even open them. with this one i just *happened* to open it on a Friday. ended up reading 50 pages. then 50 on Saturday. then 50 on Sunday. and then on Monday, which was a workday not a long-weekend, I ended up reading 200 pages and finishing the book. and i was relatively new to this job too. thankfully worked from home haha.
I know it’s cliche but the hunger games
Going Bovine.
Actually two of them. Both by Dean Koontz.
Fear nothing
Seize the night
They’re the same series.
Recently the Dungeon Crawler Carl series has been a small obsession
Project: Hail Mary. Couldn’t put it down after the first chapter, which was quite possibly the shortest first chapter in literary history.
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
The Darkest White
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Mists of Avalon
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire trilogy by Timothy Zahn
A History of the World in Six Glasses
Salem’s Lot is phenomenal from start to finish. Chilling and terrifying, with enough of a slow burn to be satisfying.
The Alchemist.
Any of the books that feature sam vimes of the city watch in ankh-morpork by terry pratchett.
Guards! Guards! Men at arms! Feet of clay. The writing, the wit, the dark humour, the sarcasm and world building are all amazing.
But I can always return to the one book that got me into pratchetts writings. Small gods.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
Dark Matter
Our Wives Under the Sea, Bliss Montage, Sure I’ll Join Your Cult
Red Rising
Uglies when I was in high school.
The Hobbit.
One day I was reading it in bed when my mother came into the room.
I instinctively hid the Hobbit under the covers like I would with a Playboy. In my mind, anything that enjoyable had to be against the rules.
Mellisa Gilbert’s Biography-A Prarie Tale
Star Trek Tales of the Dominion War.
Arc of a Scythe series, all of it.
The Hobbit
A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Fiction: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Nonfiction: Truman by David McCullough
Krampus, by Brom. Dark fantasy horror about a feud between Krampus and Santa’s Claus, and a mortal guy caught in the middle of it. Sounds silly, but it’s really really good. Brom also illustrates his own books, so the imagery us incredible.
We Used To Live Here
11/22/63
Lords of the Realm
Animal Farm, which I read as a HS senior. First book I ever read start to finish in one day.
I am legend. Would make for a really good movie concept. Just putting that out there.
The Stand and The Road
Every book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. They just keep getting better!
The windup girl. Very interesting world building.
The Outsiders
Glass Castle
Sorrel & Son
Gone Girl
Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
It by Stephen King
Catch 22, also only book I started to reread as soon as I had finished
Older (in that I read it a long time ago): Flowers for Algernon.
More recently: Call of the wild
Hustler humor
First wives club. The movie was awful the book fantastic
The Fifth Season was pretty awesome, as were the sequels.
Red dragon when I was 13. I followed it up with the novel adaption of the sam raimi Spiderman movie.
Project Hail Mary
11/22/63
Like others in this thread, I remember as a kid I powered through the Harry Potter series and the Deltora Quest series. I always had a soft spot for The Invention of Hugo Cabaret, as well; That was probably my favourite non-series book ever.
As an adult, I love The Name of the Wind (and the rest of the Kingkiller Chronicles books)
Pillars of the Earth
And if you like that, try
The Sunne in Splendor
Both are historical fiction.
The Dead Zone. One sitting in my parents living room.
haunting adeline
If We Were Villains by M.L.Rio. That book is good. I’ve read it several times and it keeps getting better!
Catch-22
Cat in the hat
Green eggs and ham
Anne rice vampire chronicles
Dan Simmons Hyperion and his othr books. Dune series
Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Read it.
Blood meridian
The Poop That Took a Pee, by Leopold Stotch. Douglas’ cry of existential dread really hit home.
The 5 People You Meet in Heaven.
Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone. I was in my 20s. Tbh it was the the 1st chapter title that got me. “The boy who lived” I was also a boy who lived.. I wasn’t expected to have lived very long
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
The Green Mile by Steven King. It was originally released as a series of 90ish page novellas. I don’t remember how often they were released but it was torture waiting for the next one. I was young so would have to wait for my mom to buy each one and read it before handing it off to me.
I still have them on my bookshelf!
IT by Stephen King
Harry Potter, Original of Species, killers of the flower moon, Why We Sleep
The Song of Achilles, The Disapearing spoon, and honestly maybe the Percy Jackson books.
The Book Thief
Winter’s Tale
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
The Doomsday Machine:
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Steel Beach
The Ozark Trilogy (technically three books)
Persuasion
The woefully under appreciate series by Rick Yancy, The Monstrumologist. It’s classified as YA but it’s an absolutely brutal and unflinching look at insanity of a parental figure that puts it firmly in my recommend to millennials dealing with aging parents category. It’s a violent, sad, graphic look at our superstitious humanity. It’s also filled with absolute banger quotes like this;
“It occurred to me. . .that aberrance is a wholly human construct. There were no such things as monsters outside the human mind. We are vain and arrogant, evolution’s highest achievement and most dismal failure, prisoners of our self-awareness and the illusion that we stand in the center, that there is us and then there is everything else but us.”
Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Slaughterhouse 5
The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin
Lies of Locke Lemora – Scott Lynch.
Watership Down
Lord of the Flies
The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon. Absolutely enthralling from start to finish.
Thinner and carrie
11/22/63
To Kill a Mockingbird
Foundation and Empire.
Operation dark heart… non fiction, true story of when we was in Afghanistan, from a cia operative, before he published, cia went through and blacked out aot of the important details, the most frustrating, but edge of the seat read I’ve ever had
Ready Player One. It has been one of those books that I fell in love with. I am a very slow reader and feel that I flew through that book.
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston
I’ve got a few. Had to read Maestro for school, and I was one of the kids in the class known for being late with my homework, as was my mate who sat next to me. Well we get told to read like 2 chapters over the weekend. Both of us finished it over the weekend, teacher didn’t believe us at first.
Le Compte de Monte Cristo. Full disclosure I haven’t finished it yet, got about 100 pages to go. I strongly suggest reading it in the original French if you can, plenty of little linguistic jokes and plays on words that wouldn’t translate to English well.
The Cthulu Mythos. Collection of short Lovecraft stories that all kind of tie in with one another. Even though it is very interesting, it’s also great because of the format, you can jump in, read one whole tale, jump out. And because they’re all somewhat compartmentalised if you have to put it down for a week or two for whatever reason, you don’t have that thing where you have to reread a bit so you can remember what was going on.
Exactly by Simon Winchester. Basically tells the history and development of metrology (science of measuring stuff) through time, how the development of certain tools made things more precise. Not told from a strictly engineering perspective so you don’t necessarily need to have that kind of education or experience, but if you do it really grabs you.
My absolute favourite though? Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. Crazy, crazy book, but I hung on every word.
Tarzan of The Apes
Nonfiction: “A Natural History of Seeing” by Simon Ings — Everything you never knew you wanted to know about how eyes work.
Fiction: “The Grand Ellipse” by Paula Volsky — Like a Victorian era season of The Amazing Race but set in a fantasy world where magic can exist.
Memoirs of a Geisha
Three Body Problem series
Shantaram. Cannot believe I’m the first to mention this GEM of a book.
Chickenhawk by Bob Mason. Great read about his experiences as a pilot.
Don’t tell Mum I work on the Rigs, She thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse by Paul Carter. Hilarious read from cover to cover.
Stephen King’s IT
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, it was so good
11/22/63
Go ask Alice.
“God Is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens
The hunger games
I remember getting so into the Hunger Games books that by the time I was reading the final one, I was pacing. When I got to the big plot twist 3/4 of the way through, I threw my book.
Earth’s Children by Jean M Aul. A series of 5 books based around the neanderthal time frame. The 5th books sucks though because Jean died before completing it and whoever did finish the book failed story telling class
Every book I read keeps me interested from beginning to end. However, I mainly read thriller/mystery stuff. So no matter what, I pretty much always wanna figure out what’s happening. Some are better than others, but I really can’t get enough.
Sunrise at the Reaping
Gothikana
ACOTAR
Haunting Adeline
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Anything by Dean Kootnz
Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris
Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson