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Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

As a related note--I just recently purchased C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy and am looking forward to re-reading them. (They were a rec from AtheistPreacher in the original thread.)
 
Heh, I'm the one who gets credit for recommending Hobb. Glad so many of you liked her. I've been reading her Rain Wild Chronicles and waiting for book 3 to come out. Not as good as Fitz and Fool were, though.

Have you read anything by Barry Hughart, AP? He wrote Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. They're oldies but goodies and not very well known. I still think you'd enjoy his writing very much. It's kind of a cross between Chinese mythology, mystery and humor. Not a typical fantasy the way we think of fantasy now. It doesn't have a specific genre where it fits. But if you run across anything by him in a used bookstore give it a try.
 
colton said:
As a related note--I just recently purchased C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy and am looking forward to re-reading them. (They were a rec from AtheistPreacher in the original thread.)
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Looks like we're all misremembering. I've never read anything by C.S. Friedman! :)
 
Jazz Traveler said:
Heh, I'm the one who gets credit for recommending Hobb. Glad so many of you liked her. I've been reading her Rain Wild Chronicles and waiting for book 3 to come out. Not as good as Fitz and Fool were, though.

Have you read anything by Barry Hughart, AP? He wrote Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. They're oldies but goodies and not very well known. I still think you'd enjoy his writing very much. It's kind of a cross between Chinese mythology, mystery and humor. Not a typical fantasy the way we think of fantasy now. It doesn't have a specific genre where it fits. But if you run across anything by him in a used bookstore give it a try.
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Ah, yes, Jazz Traveler, of course of course. Now I remember. Thanks be to you. I actually haven't picked up Rain Wild Chronicles yet... I've been busy with grad school anyway, and thought I might wait until the series was finished. And honestly, I was a little disappointed by the Soldier Son Trilogy. It had its moments... but it was very experimental in some ways, and ultimately a lot of it didn't quite work like I think she wanted it to.

I've just now added Bridge of Birds to my Amazon cart (which is my way of remembering to buy things later). Looks like it won the World Fantasy Award in 1985... that's good enough for me. I'll probably buy it next time I've got $25 worth of random stuff in my Amazon cart, so I can get the free shipping and all. I'll get to it eventually.

I actually have some Dan Simmons stuff I want to get to as well... I've mentioned already that his Hyperion Cantos novels (there are four of them) are my favorite sci-fi, excepting maybe Ender's Game. Well, I've got three books by him on my shelf that I haven't read yet: Ilium, Olympos, and Black Hills. And then my roommate has some Sanderson stuff for me to borrow (Way of Kings, I think).

And realistically, I probably won't be able to read much fiction for a while, if any. I need to study for my German reading exam, and there are also some books I need to read by the professors I'm going to do my PhD with at Claremont School of Theology... just seems like a good idea to be able to discuss their work intelligently when I get there.
 
Jazz Traveler said:
Heh, I'm the one who gets credit for recommending Hobb. Glad so many of you liked her. I've been reading her Rain Wild Chronicles and waiting for book 3 to come out. Not as good as Fitz and Fool were, though.

Have you read anything by Barry Hughart, AP? He wrote Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen. They're oldies but goodies and not very well known. I still think you'd enjoy his writing very much. It's kind of a cross between Chinese mythology, mystery and humor. Not a typical fantasy the way we think of fantasy now. It doesn't have a specific genre where it fits. But if you run across anything by him in a used bookstore give it a try.
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Thanks for recommending her. I also read the rain wild books. They are good, but not as good as the others like you said. Is their going to be a 3rd book? I was not sure after the 2nd book ended.
 
To chime in:

It's unbelievable that some knucklehead would make a list of fantasy books or authors and fail to mention R.E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft or Fritz Leiber. Ridiculous.

I didn't see CJ Cherryh mentioned either, her "Morgaine" series is very good aside from pirating the name Morgaine. An author that is not really fantasy but rather historical is James Clavell. SHOGUN is incredible. As long as I'm breaking the rules I'd also very highly recommend Herman Hesse's SIDDHARTHA.

Seriously, anybody that wants great fantasy/sci-fi should concentrate on books published before the '90s. There are exceptions, of course, but by and large you will find much better work from the old days. It's also pretty underrated how fun it is poking around looking for old novels in a used bookstore or library as opposed to shopping on Amazon.
 
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