The Wayfinders by Wade Davis

Band Of Brothers by Ambrose would be an obvious suggestion - good read & falls under what yer after!

Something along those lines I also really enjoyed Blue Blood by Edward Conlon, a beat cop in New York & gradually progressing through his carear. A great read with a really harrowing chapter on 9/11.

"Das Parfüm" - Patrick Süßkind
"Homo Faber" - Max Frisch
"Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten" - Christian Kracht
You really have to read: "Der ewige Krieg/The forever war" Joe Haldemann (Science-Fiction; probably the most exciting book i've read so far; actually the book is the first real good action-movie)
"Der Fremde/L' étranger" - Albert Camus
"Traumnovelle" - Arthur Schnitzler (Kubrick made "eyes wide shut" out of it)
Forget Martin Walser/Günter Grass.
For Hermann Hesse you are probably too old.

the forever war - definitely one of my favorite reads in the past decade! I liked old man's war a lot too it was somewhat similar to the forever war, but all the sequels sucked

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/sex...sts_3d.htm

If you like science fiction, I suggest you read some stuff from Philip K. Dick, like :

Ubik
The Penultimate truth
Solar Lottery
The Man in the High Castle
(I didn't like the divine trilogy that much)

He has dozens of absolutely brilliant short stories too.

Daughter of Destiny - Benazir Bhutto (autobiography)
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
The Prodigal Daughter - Jeffrey Archer
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons (4 books, can be bought in 2 omnibus editions)

Enders Game - Orson Scott Card (there are several addition books that flesh out the universe more)

Both series were epic for me.

those two series are simply amazing.
come on, recommend a third that i havent read ;)

Not strictly sci-fi due to the horror elements but Stephen Kings the dark tower is probably my favorite book series to date.

Over seven books it has just about everything you couldn't possibly want out of such a story.

The Gap Series by Stephen Donaldson

most interesting book is ur own life

that was deep as fuck right there

ye i enoyed "Schachnovelle" much...

Irvin D. Yalom - Und Nietzsche weinte
Albert Camus - Der Fremde

try Max Goldt btw.

maybe Thomas Mann - Der Tod in Venedig (the first 20 Pages are horrible, but then the little prussian Pedo wants to destroy everything in his dionysic Trip)

If u r not a kid, avoid science fiction books. I used to like them and recently tried as an adult to read some more of the must read ones. It was an absolute fail. You can smell that you read somebody’s weak imagination from miles, even in the best ones. A thread here in ESR made me excited to try them again, but I now came to the conclusion that is a very hard genre to write (and read) and probably the only one that the movies come usually better than the books.

tried as an adult to read some more of the must read ones. It was an absolute fail. You can smell that you read somebody’s weak imagination from miles, even in the best ones.

what books did you read?

Well, I tried 2 books from Arthur Clarke, since “2001: A space Odyssey” was one of my favourite sci-fi books and movies. I heard that the 1st sequel “2010: Odyssey two” is also very good and that the “Rendezvous with Rama” is his best book. So, I bought both of them. I managed to read 70-100 pages from the 1st and finish the later, but they were both crap. The stupidity and childish imagination is of the record in both of them. Who will read a chapter called “A spider”? I did in the “Rendezvous with Rama”. The characters were non-existent, their dialogs bullshit and their actions non-believable. I came to the conclusion that the brilliance of “2001: A space Odyssey” had to do more with Stanley Kubrick, rather Clarke himself. Both the book and the movie were written/directed at the same time and it seems that Clarke took many ideas from Kubrick (usually happens the opposite). That explains why the rest of Clarke’s books aren’t even close to that one. For me Clarke is a fluke, a fake, and can’t understand why I liked him when was younger.

The other books that I bought were the “Consider Phlebas” from Iain M. Banks and the 1st of the Foundation series of Isaac Asimov. The first didn’t finish it (nor will). The Isaac Asimov’s one was fine, a solid sci-fi book. I think that Asimov is very talented, has good imagination and writing skills, but still wasn’t very satisfied.

The sequel of 2001 is 2010 isn't it?

yes

I feel the same way. I love Kubrick's movies and I love 2001, but Arthur Clarke's other novels and short stories, of whcih I've read many, just aren't very good on average. I do think 2001 was decent, though, and I think The Nine Billion Names of God is a pretty good short story, but the rest of what I've read just leaves a lot to be desired.

clarke is optimistic towards future, that's why

That is such a bs statement that it's not even funny :(

No, it's actually true (unless your progress from appreciating life's complexity has been null since you were a kid).

I don't think this takes into account cultural convenience. while Verne and Wells's contemporaries may have been just as imaginative, their imaginations probably didn't converge on the same sorts of topics, because society hadn't developed a tradition of "science fiction" at that point in time .. or, well, maybe I'm wrong about that particular example, but I think you get the idea.

you are fortunate enough to have been born into a pretty well advanced culture technologically and intellectually. if one didn't have access to such an enormous amount of education and media, why couldn't it be just as likely for a thinking individual to encounter entirely new concepts in fiction? I also think that perhaps you're not imaginative enough to think beyond the parameters of traditional novels (library of babel?). of course they've been tired out to some extent, but that has no bearing on the progression of the medium--only on the ingenuity and motivation of authors. and since when is originality the only relevant factor in assessing the quality of a work? there's something to be said for the aesthetic as well. it seems that too many self-styled intellectuals get hung up on how trivial something appears in its premise, but they may be missing out on the things their minds aren't tuned into.

EDIT: Actually I don't think that pattern is limited to science fiction (although it is the most pronounced there). *All* fiction becomes too shallow with experience, in all genres.

I believe intelligent people gradually shift to documentary/history books, as the real world is the most amazing and exciting "fiction" ever.

No it doesn't, and fiction and non-fiction are not mutually exclusive genres. The post below is wrong as well.

Catch 22.

Its about a fisher man who caught how many fish? Thats right, 22.

also available:

catch 22 for dummies

It's about STDs, not fishes. And he caught 22 of them.

Duty of Genius

Also;

Steinbeck - East of Eden
Melville - Moby Dick

Mein Kampf - 88

knew u faggots read tthat shit :DDDD

The biographies from Zweig are all very good without exception (Fouche, Magellan, Marie-Anoinette and so on). Easy reading, and i guess that satisfies 'political' and 'historical'.

Could also recommend Neal Stephenson, especially the Baroque books, for historical novels. His sci-fi and contemporary novels are also exceptionally good (but dont read Cobweb' - his only mediocre piece imo).

Have you read "Die Welt von Gestern", "Ungeduld des Herzens" or "Castellio gegen Calvin" by Zweig? They also sound quite interesting for me topic-wise.

Only "Die Welt von gestern", i think all of the other biographies, "Sternstunden der Menschheit" and of course the Schachnovelle.

Clarke – Rendezvous with Rama
Niven – Ringworld
Pohl – Gateway
Stephenson – Snowcrash
Clarke – Childhoods End
John Haldeman - Forever War
Pournelle/Niven - The Mote in Gods Eye
Vernor Vinge – Rainbows End
Chris Beckett - The Turing Test
Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl

Thanks for the suggestions.
I hope some of them are available in the bookstore I go to tomorrow.

Cormac McCarthy is also a very good author whose books you'll find easily in bookstores.

if its novels youre looking for specifically, t.c. boyle might be a good adress
i think hes been called one of the very best novelists alive
though its not a novel i can recommend the baader meinhof komplex

There is a really good thread on Sci-Fi books somewhere on ESR, lots of great suggestions, of which I've taken some of them up on :)


Edit:
Also, pretty much any recent Iain M Banks book is a good bet; his most recent one was fucking awesome!

Finished Gene Wolfe's Latro in the Mist recently.

It's about a roman mercenary (Latro) in the Persian army who is injured (likely at the Battle of Thermopylae) and has lost his short-term memory. He is found by some Greeks and nursed back to health. In exchange for his short term memories he now, apparently, has the ability to see the Greek gods wandering the ancient landscape. When ensues is an epic tale of loyalty, deception, and manipulation and Latro is caught in the middle of an ancient power struggle between the Gods.

If you're unfamiliar with Gene Wolfe, I would highly recommend anything he has written. Probably one of the best living writers. Period. I know that's a bold statement, but I don't know many current authors who have as strong a command of the language as he has. Moreover, not many quality writers that write in genres like SciFi/Fantasy.

Also, see the Book of the New Sun series; very, very good. Have gotten several people to read that series and none regret it.

shantaram - gregory david roberts

All Quiet on the Western Front was marvellous, give Ubik a try.

Genres I'm mostly intersted in: political, historical, science fiction.

The Dune series by Frank Herbert covers all of those genres.

"the ones you have to read before you die"
2012 syndrom much?

The brothers Karamazov
A song of ice and fire
Calculating god
Straship troopers
A fire upon the deep
The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
1984
A study of history
The rise and fall of the third reich
Cambridge history of xxxx (fill in whatever you want)
.
.
.