Who's your favaorite author and what are the coolest/trippiest books you've ever read?

reply to post by LevelHeaded

For just fun and the sake of reading for fun, I have to go with Douglas Adams "Hitchhikers Guide" series.

Ya beat me to it

I heard the BBC radio series on NPR back in the late 70's before I read the books.

Then bought the game when it came out for the Commodore 64.

Good stuff.

you want a trippy book.....read "the electic kool aid acid test" by Tom Wolfe. It reads like fiction, but it is all true !!!!

For good fantasy, check out the wheel of time series by robert jordan

I dont really have a fave. I have what I call "Mood Authors". I read several books at once depending on my mood. When Im in a foul mood.. and I am in a foul mood lately... it colors what I read. This has colored my suggestions below, so beware. Maybe Ill dig up this thread when I am in a nice or contemplative or happy, or whatever mood and post others. Today, you get blood, guts, fingers, and toes!

I really really really enjoy Jack Ketchum. Been reading a lot of his stuff lately. His real name is Dallas Mayer or Mayr.. whatever.. met him through my aunt and uncle who are both well known authors. He is as disturbing in real life... and I LOVE it. If the apocalypse.. tupocalypse, zombpocalypse, Heffpocalypse,Baconpocalypse.. whatever happens : I expect to see Dallas with heads of vanquished enemies on his belt and a lobotomized maiden at his side.. along with an army of feral children.. hungry ones.

I am an obsessive perfume psycho.. so naturally this book is so disturbing and involves scent.. its a must read. Its called "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind. The guy has no natural human scent of his own so he kills and tries to make the perfect scent. When it was described as "utterly vile" I knew I had to have this book. It does not disappoint.

ANYTHING by Chuck Palahniuk’s is more than amusing. Chuck has kept me from putting Thallium in the water supply more than once.

I also read cookbooks like novels.. but I am sure no one is interested!

Please dont kill me, but I really liked S King when younger, but now I just find him tedious. I enjoyed the idea of Needful Things, but Id be lying if I said I didnt want to call King and tell him to stop being so damned descriptive, long winded, and tedious!

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Many people panned Under the Dome, and it was far from my favorite of his works, though I enjoyed it. Most who did not like it, as far as professional book critics go, thought it was a thinly-veiled allegory for the Bush administration and the way of our country at the time, which is exactly what it was by Stephan's own admission. The ending was awful and another deus ex machina, which again many critics think he uses too often in his books.

Many of his short stories are first rate. It's hard to compare them with his earlier works, which were so good it was scary (literally), but I think he has continued to issue stellar short works of fiction. Just After Sunset, Everything Is Eventual, and Full Dark, No Stars have some great short work therein.

Oh, and I don't see anyone mentioned him yet, though I may have missed a post or 2....

Phillip K. Dick has written some of the trippiest, most thought-provoking, and just plainly all around awesome work I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

Many of his books are the basis of famous sci-fi movies like Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, and Blade Runner.

I'd recommend a book of his but seriously, pick out any one of them, they are all that good in my opinion. I guess if I had to go with one it would by Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis of Blade Runner) and VALIS.

reply to post by Zarniwoop


I wonder if Video game authors and game story lines would be considered off topic? I worked in the industry for a few years before all the major downsizing

There are some great story lines & plot twists that because it's game related get over looked by the establishment because of its genre

Originally posted by PatriotGames2
Many people panned Under the Dome, and it was far from my favorite of his works, though I enjoyed it. Most who did not like it, as far as professional book critics go, thought it was a thinly-veiled allegory for the Bush administration and the way of our country at the time, which is exactly what it was by Stephan's own admission. The ending was awful and another deus ex machina, which again many critics think he uses too often in his books.

Many of his short stories are first rate. It's hard to compare them with his earlier works, which were so good it was scary (literally), but I think he has continued to issue stellar short works of fiction. Just After Sunset, Everything Is Eventual, and Full Dark, No Stars have some great short work therein.

Oh youd love some books Id read last year.. unless youve read them already. They are dystopian and fit nicely with the subject matter here at ATS

Parable of the Sower, off the top of my head I cantr recall the author! Great book tough.
Ashes of the Earth: A Mystery of Post-Apocalyptic America by E Pattison
The Giver by Louis Lowry
The entire "Restoration" series by Terry Blackstock is great! Lots of survival and definitely likely scenarios. Great characters. Idf love to see this made into a movie.

reply to post by SLAYER69

I wonder if Video game authors and game story lines would be considered off topic?

There is a close parallel there, just a different medium.

I say, list 'em.

reply to post by Zarniwoop


Well let's start with a couple of older ones which may by today's standard have slightly dated graphics but interesting premises. I'll let others post others before I add more.


Clive barker's Undying


American McGee's Alice Adventures in Wonderland

I love horror and the macabre so...

Stephen King and Poe are my fav authors..

Grapes of Wrath (to me) was trippy...

The most riveting book I ever read was "Species" it wrapped me up, I read it straight thru.

Koontz to me is too flowery, but I like his stories and characters.

That's not a high-brow opinion I guess, just honest

My favorite book is probably Joseph Heller's Catch 22.

My favorite author (different than favorite writer) is Charles Dickens. Dickens is an acquired taste in 2012, but when you start getting into the rhythm and pacing of how he writes, combined with his extreme eloquence and ability to tell a good story, you actually want to start memorizing whole paragraphs.

My favorite writer is Edgar Allen Poe. Nobody before or since has had a gift with words like Poe. And yes, I think he had more of a gift with the actual words than Shakespeare. Shakespeare had a better ability to structure a story, create interesting characters and use metaphor, and he was certainly very, very clever. But Poe was in another world.

Oh and I've enjoyed Wally Lamb immensely. His inaugural book was called "She's Come Undone" so I tried him again with a couple of his other books and they really pull on the heart-strings in a rather unique and interesting manner, in fact you can get so emersed in his writing that it begins to feel like you're not reading at all but are surrounded by the atmosphere of the unfolding of a piece of real life, even though it's entirely fictional. They're books you can curl up with and move into and call your own.

Btw, thanks for everyone's contribution so far - great place to get a book reccomendation.

What I've gotten from some of the suggestions here is that sometimes you've got to hang in there with a book, especially if it's a classic to begin to get a taste for it and in the process get sucked into the story. Thus, something like Poe or Dickens might be well worth considering, and many of those 100+ year old books, if not all of them, being now in the public domain are absolutely 100% free if you have an e-book reader, although I suppose you can download them off the net as well and read on your PC or laptop too.

I think I'll look into that and come back and post some links to free classics as free e-books.

#1vStephen King.
Dark Tower Series. Hands down my favorite.

#2 Jonathan Mayberry. Good Stuff if you like Zombies, sci-fi action, end of the world stuff!

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I love Wally Lamb's writing myself, She's Come Undone was great. I think I'd have to say my favorite was The Hour I First Believed though, incredibly tender and heart wrenching, to say the least. He is a wonderful author.

reply to post by Advantage


Thanks for the recommendations! The Giver is one of my all time favorites, but I have not read the others yet. I will certainly check them out!

A Fly Went by by Mike McClintock. First book I ever read. It was exciting!

www.bing.com...

reply to post by PatriotGames2



Cool.. and if you are the kind who can really get into characters in a book.. you will LOVE the Restoration series. I mean you worry about those folks when you are halfway through the book, its bedtime.. and you wind up turning the light back on and reading some more! LOL! Im rarely moved like that with what I read and have come to really appreciate the author. Most things I read these days are just junkfood for my mood, but this series was not only really interesting and informative ( researched VERY well) , but the thought put into the characters made it as if they were real people and somehow compelled me to care! Its the kind of series that sticks with you and you find yourself thinking on the things later. KWIM?

Oh i would have say im a big fan of Mathew Reilly.

I go all weak at the knees for Scarecrow, If you love action pact, fast paced, ancient history, modern warfare, hero adventures and every character written within with a background and past. then i highly recommend having a sticky at any of Mathews books.



Love and harmony
Whateva

For those into popular science books which explain to the layman the findings and implications of modern physics and in particular, quantum theory, and if you're into things like The Holographic Universe, or The Self Aware Universe, and might have enjoyed such books as The Holographic Universe by Michale Talbot, or, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, by Gary Zukav who also authored an interesting "New Age" book called The Seat of the Soul - you might like the two books referenced in the following post re: The God Theory, which open up whole new vistas of human potential and understanding, whereby we can begin to see, at the very leading edge of scientific inquiry, the emergence of a whole paradigm of science where bleeding-edge science and ancient metaphysical wisdom and spiritual and religious traditions, begin to intersect! It's a real trip, imho.

The God Theory

"The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249274834&sr=8-1

Haisch is an astrophysicist whose professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Deputy Director for the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. His work has led to close involvement with NASA; he is the author of over 130 scientific papers; and was the Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nine years, as well as the editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

an excerpt

If you think of whitte light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)...
If there exists an absolute realm that consists of infinite potential out of which a created realm of polarity emerges, is there any sensible reason not to call this "God"? Or to put it frankly, if the absolute is not God, what is it? For our purposes here, I will indentify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential...
Viewed this way, the process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything. Creation is not capricious or random addition; it is intelligent and selective subtraction. The implications of this are profound.

If the Absolute is the Godhead, and if creation is the process by which the Godhead filters out parts of its own infinite potential to manifest a physical reality that supports experience, then the stuff that is left over, the residue of this process, is our physical universe, and ourselves included. We are nothing less than a part of that Godhead - quite literally.

Next, by Ervin Laszlo

Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything, 2004
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-1

And, his other seminal work
Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-6

Ervin Laszlo is considered one of the foremost thinkers and scientists of our age, perhaps the greatest mind since Einstein. His principal focus of research involves the Zero Point Field. He is the author of around seventy five books (his works having been translated into at least seventeen languages), and he has contributed to over 400 papers. Widely considered the father of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, he has worked as an advisor to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2004 and 2005. A multidisciplinarian, Laszlo has straddled numerous fields, having worked at universities as a professor of philosophy, music, futures studies, systems science, peace studies, and evolutionary studies. He was a sucessful concert pianist until he was thirty eight.

In his view, the zero-point field (or the Akashic Field, as he calls it) is quite literally the "mind of God".

Naming Hal Puthoff, Roger Penrose, Fritz-Albert Popp, and a handful of others as "front line investigators", Laszlo quotes Puthoff who says of the new scientific paradigm:

[What] would emerge would be an increased understanding that all of us are immersed, both as living and physical beings, in an overall interpenetrating and interdependant field in ecological balance with the cosmos as a whole, and that even the boundary lines between the physical and "metaphysical" would dissolve into a unitary viewpoint of the universe as a fluid, changing, energetic/informational cosmological unity."

an excert from Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything

Akasha (a . ka . sha) is a Sanskrit word meaning "ether": all-pervasive space. Originally signifying "radiation" or "brilliance", in Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements - the others being vata (air), agni (fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces the properties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything we percieve with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. The Akashic Record (also called The Akashic Chronicle) is the enduring record of all that happens, and has ever happened, in space and time."

Laszlo's view of the history of the universe is of a series of universes that rise and fall, but are each "in-formed" by the existence of the previous one. In Laszlo's mind, the universe is becoming more and more in-formed, and within the physical universe, matter (which is the crystallization of intersecting pressure waves or an interference pattern moving through the zero-point field) is becoming increasing in-formed and evolving toward higher forms of consciousness and realization.

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According to James Oroc's experiences (Tryptamine Palace), when the ego is dissolved in consciousness through the temporary formation of a type of neurological "Bose Einstein Condensate", there is no real dilineation or distinction between individual consciousness and God-consciousness or the universal "akashic field" (Lazslo) aka Zero Point Field.

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if you're looking for a trippy read, try the Illuminati Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Bob Shea. It is an awesome read.
I also really like Jim Dodge, especially his book Stone Junction. heres a quick blurb about it from google books -

Stone Junction is a novel about Daniel Pearse, an orphaned child who is taken under the wings of the AMO - Alliance of Magicians and Outlaws. An assortment of sages sharpen Daniel's wide-eyed outlook until he has the concentration of a card shark Zen master, via apprenticeships in meditation, safecracking, poker, and the art of walking through walls. This unconventional education sets Daniel on the trail of a strange, six-pound diamond sphere, held by the U.S. government in a New Mexico vault, rumored to be the Philosopher's Stone or the Holy Grail.

And for Sci Fi, Id say phillip K dick, but I see someones already covered him, so Id highly recommend the Altered Carbon Trilogy by Richard Morgan. The rights to these books were bought by the same company that produced the Matrix, so they may be getting made into films sometime soon.
I also agree with what Slayer69 was saying about Game storys being overlooked. Richard Morgan recently was lead writer for Crysis 2 and another game I forget the name of.
Anyway, these are my suggestions.
Might have to grab a couple that were mentioned previously that Ive not heard of.
Cheers