The Book Thread

[SaltyMonkey]

OK, you're sitting in some slow cafe or walking around a bookstore awaiting a weather window, and someone approaches you and asks you for the name of your favorite books as suggestions. You, being quite literate (or not) have a few.

So, what are your top 3-10 favorite books in each category?:

• Fiction
• Non-Fiction

They do NOT have to be nautical books, unless, of course, that's what you enjoy reading.

[saw77]

A few off the top of my head...

Fiction:
Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion by Tolkien
Green Grass Running Water by Thomas King
Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Also loved all the Harry Potter books

Non-Fiction:
Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills

[Pau Hana]

Fiction- the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn
Clive Cussler- Dirk Pitt and Oregon Files series
Tom Clancy- any, especially Without remorse
John Jakes- Bicentennial series (The Bastard thru The Americans)

Non-fiction- A Higher Call
Clapton's biography

[Sam Plan B]

Fiction: Into the Second Watch, William McFee
Nonfictin: Harbours of Memory I, Harbours of Memory II, William McFee.

Salty turn of the Century stories written by a Chief Engineer when off watch.

[RainDog]

Fiction:
Dune - Herbert
The Razor's Edge - Maugham
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
Lonesome Dove - McMurtry
Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
Bluest Eye - Morrison
Song of Solomon - Morrison

Non-Fiction:
The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas - Dennis
Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting - Pearson
Running the Amazon - Kane
Goodbye to a River - Graves
The Snow Leopard - Matthiessen
My Experiments with Truth - Gandhi
Autobiography of Malcolm X - Haley

[svmariane]

English Passengers, written by Matthew Kneale.

Historical fiction, smugglers, rollicking sea yarn with comic undertones (well, except for one sub-plot dealing with the aboriginals in Van Diemen's Land).

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, written by Tony Horwitz

Short voyage on a replica ship brings the past into today. Then by plane, ferry or sailboat, author visits many of Cook's landings and surrounds. Wish I'd read this before heading across the Pacific!

Pago Pago Tango (Jungle Beat Mystery), written by John Enright.

Great contemporary detective yarn; vivid island and cultural descriptions; brings to life current American Samoan vs mainland-American differences (locals vs invaders).


And, really, almost ANYTHING written in English or German that we haven't read before! We avidly swap books with other cruisers and haunt the discount stores / swap shelves at pubs.
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Wait a moment... shhhh... Can anybody hear us? No? Alright then, I'll share this but you GOTTA swear not to tell anybody else! Okay? You swear? Then listen up: we also like National Geographic magazines, old or new. Don't laugh! Aw, hell. You're gonna tell somebody else, aren't you? Sheesh.... Last time I tell YOU a secret.

[Dod42]

Always been a big "Terry Pratchett" fan. Particularly the Disc World Series.

[hblask]

Fiction:

Easy choice for number one fiction: Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon -- a book for and about book lovers, a book within a book

Other fiction: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo -- the famous anti-war novel, I read it over 35 years ago and still remember it.

For fiction, I'd also recommend anything by Neil Gaiman, who is an absolute genius. If you are not familiar with him you could start with Neverwhere, but American Gods is great, as are his collections of short stories.

Non-fiction:


A top non-fiction read: The Devil in the White City -- a true story of the Chicago World's Fair and a mass murderer.

It's getting a bit old now, but Spin Cycle is everything you need to know about how to decode what politicians are saying.

For some heavy reading for math/science/wordplay geeks, Godel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

[Rhapsody-NS27]

Sailing Around the World - Slocum
Common Sense - Thomas Paine

War and Peace - Tolstoy (only read a quarter of it and actually enjoyed it so far)
The Odyssey - Homer

I have a lot of old classics that I haven't started yet, like books from Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jack London, Alexandre Dumas and looking for others to eventually get to too.

[Ziggy]

Just a sampling, in no particular order:

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, especially the earlier books
Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind
Joseph Conrad, The Rover (and Lord Jim, and others)
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Colleen McCullough, the Rome series and Morgan's Run
Jack London novels
Ernest Hemingway's novels
Tolkien's The Hobbit and Farmer Giles of Ham
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper
Doctorow, Ragtime
John Irving, The Cider House Rules and other novels
Mike Saunders, The Walkabouts


Non-Fiction
Thor Heyerdahl, Kon Tiki
Roland Huntford, Scott and Amundsen
Brown, The Bodyguard of Lies
Duncan, Eastward and A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast
Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician
Mostert, Supership
Tracy Kidder, Soul of a New Machine and House

[jongleur]

Absence Unexpected, a Juggling Mystery by ...no wait...I wrote that one.

I also liked Godel Escher Bach.
Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Who me? Plug? Absence Unexpected: Bill Robinson: 9780595098712: Amazon.com: Books

[rebel heart]

Really, really good fiction book I'm reading right now:

Amazon.com: Brilliance eBook: Marcus Sakey: Kindle Store

[SaltyMonkey]

Great and very diverse recommendations from everyone.

Keep them coming.

[carstenb]

Here are some authors (in no particular order)

Zafon
Twain
Tolkien
Grisham
Robert Parker
Elmore Leonard
Dumas
Cervantes
Walt Whitman
Robert Heinlein
Arthur C.Clarke
Beth Leonard
William Least Heat Moon
Robert Ludlum
The Hornblower series
Alexander Kent
& lots and lots more

[Normanby]

Originally Posted by RainDog

Fiction:
Dune - Herbert
The Razor's Edge - Maugham
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
Lonesome Dove - McMurtry
Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
Bluest Eye - Morrison
Song of Solomon - Morrison

Non-Fiction:
The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas - Dennis
Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting - Pearson
Running the Amazon - Kane
Goodbye to a River - Graves
The Snow Leopard - Matthiessen
My Experiments with Truth - Gandhi
Autobiography of Malcolm X - Haley

Quite the existentialist there eh RainDog?

Don't read much fiction ( 'cept Tristan Jones) but I love a good thriller page-turner:
Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larson.
Dan Brown.
James Elroy ( American Tabloid in particular).
Erskine Childers: Riddle of the Sands.

Non-Fiction:
Bernard Moitessier
Niall Ferguson (the intellectual libertarian's mentor)
Will Durant ( heavy going philosophy, but worth it).
Hunter S Thompson

So many sailing books that I reckon if I got a refund on every one I could afford a bigger boat.

When I find an author I like I chase down everything he/she wrote and read that too.