Need book recommendations for my boyfriend

Eline · Post by **Eline** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 12:51 pm

My boyfriend does not like reading, while I love it. I have been reading everything in sight since age four, and could spend the whole weekend in the library now that they sell food.

But, I am slowly starting to get him to read, and to enjoy it.

Yay!

But now I don't know what to give him next, so I'd like some recommendations from you guys. The book has to be easy to read. I was thinking of Philip Pullman (? the golden compass etc) but am not sure.

So far, he has read and liked the following:
- the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
- dragonlance chronicles
- robin hobb's trilogies (assassin, ship of magic)
- big books about AI in computer games

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:13 pm

I'm in the middle of The Golden Compass ('Northern Lights') right now. I found the start very slow, but have yet to find anyone to agree with me...

Post by **Kaylee** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 1:16 pm

The Dark Materials

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 2:28 pm

How 'bout that Potter fella?

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:13 pm

Horus Heresy Warhammer 40k - book 6 and counting...

Eline · Post by **Eline** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:17 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:How 'bout that Potter fella?

Why didn't I think of that? Thanks!

Post by **Best First** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 3:32 pm

yay! Potter.

Ig he liked Hitchikers then the Discworld stuff may also be a good bet.

And maybe some of the Red Dwarf books.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 5:32 pm

Best First wrote:Ig he liked Hitchikers then the Discworld stuff may also be a good bet.

Also, some of Adams' other work - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul...

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Wed Oct 24, 2007 8:33 pm

If he likes Robin Hobb try George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. Long, bloody, full of sex and impossible to put down.

Eline · Post by **Eline** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 7:16 am

Thanks guys!

Those sound all very good.

I'll have a look in the bookstore / library this weekend.

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 8:58 am

Pretty much what everyone else has said - maybe some William Gibson to keep up the techie/AI stuff as well.

Spidey, I found the start of Northern Lights to be slow-going, but trust me by the time you get to the end of the first book you'll be looking at the page-count of the next two and despairing that they won't be long enough.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:39 am

Metal Vendetta wrote:
Spidey, I found the start of Northern Lights to be slow-going, but trust me by the time you get to the end of the first book you'll be looking at the page-count of the next two and despairing that they won't be long enough.

Good to know.

I'm past the half way mark and it's definitely picked up.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:42 am

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 9:57 am

Oooh, good choice.

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:38 pm

I definitely thought The Subtle Knife was an improvement over Lights/Compass. (Curiously, I read it as Compass but bought an edition of Lights.) Things got a lot more dangerous from the first page.

The only bad thing to say about His Dark Materials is that, occasionally in a Narnia mode, his polemic shows through. He's trying to write the anti-Narnia but I thought it had the same flaws as Narnia with the allegorical stuff.

Metal Vendetta · Post by **Metal Vendetta** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 2:11 pm

sprunkner wrote:The only bad thing to say about His Dark Materials is that, occasionally in a Narnia mode, his polemic shows through. He's trying to write the anti-Narnia but I thought it had the same flaws as Narnia with the allegorical stuff.

Fair point - it is a little overdone in places, but that only showed through for me on the second or third read. The first time I was too swept up in it all to really notice.

Incidentally, there's a line in The Amber Spyglass that Pullman wrote as a direct reference to my housemate. Something about screaming marsupials...

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Fri Oct 26, 2007 12:57 am

The Road, by Cormack McCarthy.

A charming epic about a boy, his father, and the end of life as we know it.

If your boyfriend has a dad, or enjoys post apocalyptic dystopias, or just thought the movie Mad Max was cool, he'll like this book.

In fact, ALL of you will like this book. If Poetry and Prose had a baby, and that baby was raised by Ernest Hemmingway and George Romero, this would be it.

If you'll indulge me, here's an excerpt:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent, godless. He thought the month was October but he wasnt sure. He hadnt kept a calendar for years. They were moving south. There'd be no surviving another winter here.

When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke

Eline · Post by **Eline** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:05 am

It worked!

I feel like an evil genius.

Got The Golden Compass from the library last Friday, gave it to him, and now he's finished it already

Next I'll be looking for the other books mentioned.

Yay!

Post by **Best First** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:34 am

Eline wrote:It worked! I feel like an evil genius.

There's a reason for that...

Cathy_Quinn · Post by **Cathy_Quinn** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 4:22 pm

How about
The Catcher In the Rye (J D Salinger)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
Anything by Jeffrey Archer

For fantasy fans I hear Ursula le Guin has written some good stuff

Definitely good calls on Pullman and Potter

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:51 pm

I'm on The Amber Spyglass now. Loving this trilogy.

It's got me really back into reading again. What else am I gonna do on the bus? Scowl at strangers?

Once I'm done on this I'm gonna work through a Top 100 Books of All Time list. Then at the end I'll be all clever like.

Post by **Best First** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:22 pm

Get 'im to read the Debtford Mice! Woot.

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 7:47 pm

I never read the third one of those, Besty, but the first two were real good. Like Redwall with black magic. I'm going to check out Mice Templar on my next trip to the comic shop.

Hello, Cathy Quinn. Always nice to have femaleship around here.

[edit] Whatever happened to our transfans book club? I was all excited to read American Gods together. I've got Chuck Palahniuk's True Stories in my queue for the holidays, if anyone wants to try again.

Jazz · Post by **Jazz** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 5:55 am

go with car magzines and comic books can't go wrong in reading them.

Post by **Best First** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 8:39 am

sprunkner wrote:
[edit] Whatever happened to our transfans book club?

Computron betrayed us like the slag he is.

sniff...

..no, i'm ok. i'm ok.

i'm ok

Eline · Post by **Eline** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:22 am

There's some excellent recommendations there (though I doubt he would be interested in car stuff except for Top Gear); I'll have to write them all down for my next library visit.
So far the boyfriend has finished and loved the whole Pullman trilogy (so we'll have to see the movie when it's out) and read a nice post-apocalyptic sci-fi book that I got for myself. Time for the next one!

This also means that we're watching much less tv. Yay!

sprunkner wrote:Whatever happened to our transfans book club? I was all excited to read American Gods together. I've got Chuck Palahniuk's True Stories in my queue for the holidays, if anyone wants to try again.

We can always start it up again?

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:27 am

Yes, lets!

sprunkner · Post by **sprunkner** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 2:04 pm

Spidey, are you volunteering to be in charge?

I say we read the God Delusion.

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:02 pm

Make him read Preacher.

It has pictures, if that helps.

Post by **Best First** » Fri Nov 23, 2007 4:30 pm

A graphic novel club would be AMAZING.