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Books you could NOT put down

I've decided on:

The Psychopath Test
The Big Over Easy (this looked really fun)
The Life We Bury

That should hopefully keep me busy for 16 hours.

I might need another set for the flight back. :)
 
Faydra said:
I loved Stranger in a Strange Land - I usually don't like to re-read books, but I might make an exception in this case. It's been a long time.
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What's the one that is tangentially related? (Besides the juvenile one about Mars - Red Planet, I think). Was it Lazarus Long?
 
alfaniner said:
What's the one that is tangentially related? (Besides the juvenile one about Mars - Red Planet, I think). Was it Lazarus Long?
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You may be thinking of Number of the Beast which brings back Jubal Harshaw and other characters (notably NOT Michael Valentine Smith) from Stranger in the last part of the book.

Norm
 
I think you'll like The Big Over Easy, if you like that sort of thing at all. Engaging nonsense and fun to read. If you like that, some of the other Fforde novels involving Thursday Next are good fun too. He does a good job of making the utterly crazy hang together and somehow make sense.

I enjoyed Longitude too. A quick read well written if you like non fiction.

My reading has been all over the map recently and diminished considerably owing to visual issues, but if you like the dystopian, try Margaret Atwood's "Mad Addam" trilogy, starting with Oryx and Crake.

One I would highly recommend if you can find it is Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Travels with Herodotus. A fascinating bit of autobiography, history and travelogue by a Polish journalist and photographer, it's beautifully written. This was his last book, alas.

PS....I read Stranger in a Strange Land long long ago, and found it fun, almost mandatory reading in that it's one of those books that has contributed even to the language with the word "grok." But I also regrettably read The Number of the Beast, finishing this steaming pile only, as I recall, because I was traveling and had little else with me, and hoped it might get better. It never did. It was awful.
 
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theprestige said:
All the Heinlein books got tangentially related towards the end.
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Pretty much. All of his later works excepting Job and Friday were attempts to draw his entire literary history into a single multiverse (as Asimov also did). The results, while interesting reading (Heinlein could write interesting Grocery Lists) turned out to be rather sad.

Norm
 
The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Historical crime fiction set in 1890's where a psychologist (alienist) is brought in to profile a serial killer in NYC -before profiling was a 'thing'. He did a great job of transporting the reader to that time!

Its been so many years that Ive forgotten the story so I think I'll read it again!
 
Faydra said:
Never heard of it - I'll check it out.
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OK, some more serious suggestions:

Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series.
Almost anything by Iain Banks, perhaps starting with Espedair Street, Complicity, Whit, or The Crow Road.
Against a Dark Background, also by Iain Banks but with an extra initial.
China Mieville: The City and the City, or perhaps Perdido Street Station.
Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

I would second the Michael Marshall Smith trilogy mentioned earlier. The stuff he writes as Michael Marshall Smith is pretty good as well.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
If you're looking for newer books, Charlie Stross's Laundry Files series is excellent.
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His Merchant Princes series is entertaining as well.

Faydra said:
I tend to gravitate to crime/psychological thrillers...
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You could try Stross's Halting State, a sort of near-future science fiction/cybercrime novel. If you're OK with books written in the second person.
 
Faydra said:
I looking at a 16 hour trip on an airplane in about 8 days and I can't sleep on airplanes. :(

I need something that grabs me from page 1 and keeps me reading.

I tend to gravitate to crime/psychological thrillers, but I'm open to anything as long as it grabs you and doesn't let go.

Any recommendations for me?
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See, with your avatar I'd have had you down as a fantasy type and I'd have had loads of recommendations for you. I don't do crime or thrillers but I could recommend Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead as it has a slight noirish* feel. This is not high art - I am absolutely not recommending it as a work of literature but my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed it as a really fun, light read - in fact it was ridiculously readable and just flowed by effortlessly. We both read it in a few days (very unusual for my wife).

*You could also go with Jim Butcher's Dresden novels for a similar, and probably more highly regarded, experience.

If you want some more 'serious' fantasy suggestions, let me know. Don't really do any other genres, other than a bit of sci-fi.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
If you're looking for newer books, Charlie Stross's Laundry Files series is excellent. It's nerdy urban fantasy/horror, in which spells are computer programs, Cthulhu is real, and the only people stopping elder things from outside the universe from eating all of us are underpaid British computer scientists.

Also, for a lighter take try out Drew Hayes's Fred, The Vampire Accountant series, about a boring accountant who becomes a vampire, and discovers that it does nothing for his night life.
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Oooh, as a Cthulu fan and an underpaid British computer scientist that sounds like something I should check out!:)
 
I find it easier to put books down (no matter how good) now. When I was much younger...

Well, here's an example. Christmas vacation (back when it was called that) in my school district was about ten days long. Typically, from the day before Christmas eve through New Year's day.

The first time I ever read The Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Prydain, and The Lord of the Rings was during Christmas vacation. The same Christmas vacation, for all fifteen books. (The first twelve aren't all that long, but still...)
 
Going by the OP, said flight should be over. What reading did you finally decide on? Who do you now hate (or wish to thank) for their suggestions.

For reference, I also can't sleep on flights and when I was doing a lot of longhaul traveling, I'd pack books in two categories.... airplane material & lull me to sleep material.

In the former... try to get the Martha Grimes mysteries in order. The characters grow through the books and while they're all stand-alone mysteries, there's more nuance if you've watched the characters grow, particularly Lord Melrose Plante.

In the latter, I found a three volume Modern Library hardcover of Gibbon. I'd get through twenty or thirty pages and it'd lull me to sleep in hotel rooms. It took me three trips to Chile, one to South Africa and two to Asia to finish all of the books.

As to my own "couldn't put down" books... I remember them from the sight of the sun coming up and me saying to myself, "S'okay, I'll get an hour's sleep and I'll be fine, just a few more pages...".

Dune
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Several Ngaio Marsh whodunnits
 
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