If thou gazest long into the Pit, the Pit will also gaze into thee

Folk I've started on your book/author recommendations:

I've got/am reading:

Weirdstone of Brisingwhatever - I am okay with this but not terribly charmed
Flashman - Dude is great, fucked his dad's gf, what a little tosser bitch
Cadon, Hunter - I don't have yet but it's on its way and I like the sample I read

I checked out a couple of others but wasn't quite feeling them/or I'd already read them.

Anyway here's a thread for recommendations.

P.G. Wodehouse. Timeless, charming, gentle, and hilarious. Right Ho, Jeeves simply teems with wonderful passages. Read the scene where Gussie Fink-Nottle is delivering the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar, and Anatole's complaints about Gussie's appearance at his skylight. If you don't at least smile, you are a Philistine. End of discussion. Oh, and The Great Sermon Handicap. Translated into 57 languages, and hilarious from beginning to end.

Just got a Wodehouse for my list. (Funnily enough the old local library only has Jeeves & Wooster books on audio, bugger them.) :D

J R Lansdale - writes crime and pulp/weird/horror fiction (The 'Hap and Leonard' books recently had a TV series based on them, and 'Bubba Ho Tep' was made into a movie). Has also done some comics ('Jonah Hex - Riders of the Worm and Such' - may be available at your local library).
Elmore Leonard - writes crime and westerns (his style is sparse in that he's never met an adjective he wouldn't strangle to death) - pretty well known - much of his stuff has already had films based on it.
Carl Hiaasen - comedy crime fiction based in Florida ('Striptease' was based on one of his books).
Donald Westlake - for the Dortmunder comedy crime books or his (the writers) alter ego Richard Stark for straight Crime.
Max Allan Collins - for historical crime (especially his 'Nate Heller' series') - has also done a lot of comics work.
HP Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith (classic weird fiction) - and China Mieville & Charles Stross (for more recent writing in the same vein)
Clive Barker - I've not read much of his stuff - though I prefer the horror shorts to the longer fantasy stories.
Bernard Cornwell - more straight 'action adventure' than Flashman - but still enjoyable (of course).
Anthony Hope - because everyone should know where the tropes come from (see 'Prisoner of Zenda' )
Arthur Conan Doyle - because, well you know...
Edgar Rice Burroughs - for similar reasons - though I'm not sure how many of the 'Mars' and 'Tarzan' books you really need to read to get the flavour.
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Athur C Clark - once the 'Big 3' of Science Fiction - they hold a special place in my heart.
...
and more to come, I'm sure.

I've also enjoyed the various series by crime writer Lawrence Block

[youtube][/youtube]

Hands down the best sci-fi novel I've read for a long time is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Very innovative and utterly terrifying. I'm almost afraid to read the rest of the trilogy.

I also recommend any of Haruki Murakami's books. Two that I particularly enjoyed this year are The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Not as excellent as the others I've mentioned, but still an enjoyable read is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Even if you're not a gamer, all the '80s pop culture references are quite fun.

American Gods Neil Gaiman

William Gibson - he seemed to define the future I grew up in
Richmal Compton - who warped my sensibilities at a young age

I have enjoyed many authors over the years but some that stick out and not mentioned above are:

Roger Zelazny - particularly The Amber Chronicles
Poul Anderson - NESFA are printing a collection of his short stories - volume 7 out soon
Frank Herbert - read some of his stories away from Dune - I particularly enjoyed Hellstroms Hive
David Brinn's Uplift Wars series (all 6 of them)
Iain Banks Culture Novels

My favourites are:

Stephen King (but his bads are very bad)
Stanley Elkin - The Magic Kingdom
The Band Plays On is non-fiction but an amazing AIDS memoir that's like everyone is a fuck up
Monster Love - Carol Topolski

What else is good... hmmm... I like Tom Sharpe.

Some of my favourites:

Monster Love, Carol Topolski
Dark Places, Gillian Flynn
And the Band Played on, some gay guy with AIDS, he dead now and I don't remember his name
The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper

All Tom Sharpe for sheezy and all of the Stephen King where he actually cares about the writing

mike150160 wrote:American Gods Neil Gaiman

Fuck yes.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

I tried everything you cunts recommended
Give me some more you sluts

Pavane by Keith Roberts - best alt-history ever.

A bit late to the party buut...

1) James Herbert (The Rats, The Lair, Domain - commonly known as "The Rats Trilogy")

Excellent horror novels dealing with large (dog-sized) rats running amok in London. I read the trilogy as a kid (thanks, mum) and they gave me fucking nightmares for a long, long time. Even though Herbert has written many popular horror tales, these three books are by far his best.

2) Brian Lumley (The entire "Necroscope" saga)

A vast, sprawling and utterly epic horror saga involving metaphysics, alternate dimensions, vampires and cold-war espionage. Sounds like a dumpster fire of mis-matched ideas but Lumley manages to weave it all together into a glorious whole. Oh, and when I say "vampires", I'm not talking about thin Eastern European nobility in silken capes, no, far from it! Lumley's vampires are hulking, armour plated shape-shifters with a lust for rape, blood and human meat. Deeply unpleasant in places, not instantly accessible (there are sixteen books in the entire saga and things are quite confusing until book four) but if you "click" with it, you'll be hooked until the last book. It's a trip and a half.

http://www.brianlumley.com/books/necroscope/

3) Clive Barker (Pretty much everything he has written)

Needs no explanation although "Books of blood" is a personal favourite.

4) H.P. Lovecraft

Is there anyone who hasn't heard of Lovecraft?

:D

Jim Butcher, if you are into light easy reading fantasy. The Harry Dresden Files, and The Aeronauts Windlass are fun.

Dark Sky Legion by William Barton. You can pick it up on Amazon for under two bucks.

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sky-Legion- ... 0553296167

Ignore the cover art, which makes it look like some steamy romance novel (to be fair, there's quite a bit of sex in it). It's a richly detailed, sad, and somewhat disturbing look at what our future as rulers of the cosmos might look like.

I can't imagine why some sly wag has not mentioned 'Ass Goblins of Auschwitz' or 'Shatnerquake' or some other example from the Bizzaro fiction genre by now.

Speaking of weird fiction in general - I chanced across this University level course on 'Weird Fiction' a while ago. Here's the into (and their are plenty more in the series if you like it - Ursula LeGuin, Shirley Jackson, Robert E Howard and the usual suspects are all covered):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2svyW-ka9fE