Happy Atheist Forum

It occured to me that we've had threads for people's favourite music and films but not literature. So, I thought I'd oblige... partly for that reason and partly because I've run out of good reading material, so I could do with some suggestions. :)

My absolute and uncontested nr. one is The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

I also enjoyed Dan Brown's Angesl and Demons, Digital Fortress and Da Vinci Code.

There are plenty more books that I like, many of which are scientific in nature but those I named I place above others.

The Wheel of Time is a series that I've often thought about reading but thus far I haven't got around to it.

I read the Da Vinci Code (just like everyone else who reads, obviously because of the controversy it stirred up) which I thought was good. I didn't like Dan Brown's conspiracy theorist attitude about it though. It's fabulous as a piece of fiction but Brown's insistence that the stuff in his book was true got on my nerves a little. Which is a shame because the book is pretty good and I think my knowing that the author is taking himself so seriously has tarnished my ability to enjoy it a little.

Have you read Philip K. Dick's sci-fi A Scanner Darkly? That book is absolutely drenched with conspiracy and paranoia. They made a movie adaptation starring Keanu Reeves a couple of years ago but it was a little disappointing, I thought.

Quote from: "Mister Joy"Have you read Philip K. Dick's sci-fi A Scanner Darkly? That book is absolutely drenched with conspiracy and paranoia. They made a movie adaptation starring Keanu Reeves a couple of years ago but it was a little disappointing, I thought.

I'll look into it. Drenched with conspiracy and paranoia is my kind of night-table stuff  

Anything by Stephen King, I especially like the books he wrote under the name Richard Bachman.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein is another good one.  If you're into science fiction look for R.A. Salvatore, I really like him.  Chuck Palahniuk has some pretty good/different books.

Top 10? It's like Sophie's Choice. I might come back and edit this later, but here it is:

10 Hamlet, Shakespeare (I know it's a play, but it's magnificent)
9 Wladen Two, Skinner
8 Crime and Punishment, Dotoyevsky
7 Non-Violent Resistence, Gandhi
6 The Count of Monte Christo, Alexandre Dumas
5 Dune, Frank Herbert (the greatest science fiction novel of all time)
4 Don Quiote de la Mancha, Ceravantes Saavedra
3 Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche
2 War and Peace, Tolstoy (this will take up your entire life for months, be warned)
1 The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway (the book is simply sublime)

Quote from: "Willravel"2 War and Peace, Tolstoy (this will take up your entire life for months, be warned)

No kidding! Mine is in ONE tome. The thing is enough to build three houses out of. But it's a great work of litterature. I'm working on it in its native language too. Makes me sort of proud, that

Quote from: "Asmodean"No kidding! Mine is in ONE tome. The thing is enough to build three houses out of. But it's a great work of litterature. I'm working on it in its native language too. Makes me sort of proud, that

I'd get mine in one tome, but my book case is made of wood, not steel.

You're seriously reading it in the original Russian?! And a little French?! Dude. That's incredible.

well heres my top 10, not in any particular order
- It, stephen king. This was an "accidental" read. My brother bought it and somehow I ended up reading it instead. It is now one of my favourites
2 - The god delusion - richard dawkins
3. This book will save yor life - a. m Homes This book has no action/bad guys/etc bu for some reason I cant stop reading it
4. The safety of object - a.m homes
5. 1984 - george orwell
6. I AM legend - Richard matheson  I havent seen the movie, but from the few scenes I seen, the book is much much better
7. I, Robot- isaac asimov
8. The bicentnnial man - isaac asimov
9. Eaters of the dead - mihael crichton
10. A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson.

shame on me, I forgot the "hitchiker's guide to the galaxy, a trilogy of four" by douglas adams

Quote from: "Willravel"10 Hamlet, Shakespeare (I know it's a play, but it's magnificent)

It is. It's particularly enjoyable, I find, because it's inaccessible to stupid people. Much of it goes over their heads, especially the humour. The grave diggers: "Who's grave's this, sirrah?" "Mine, sir," is a good bit. At that point you can look around the theatre at people's faces - half will be confused, the other half will be smiling.

Unfortunately though, I've only seen one fantastic production of Hamlet and several bloody awful ones. It seems that with Shakespeare, directors want to get their grubby hands on his work so that they can contaminate it with their own ZaNy and 'artistic' modern ideas... which usually ends up ruining everything by being monumentally stupid. There are rare occasional where it works out to be pretty interesting but they're slowly becoming extinct, I fear. The daftest one I've seen was in Romeo and Juliet, where all of the fighting had been replaced with elaborate tap dancing. They'd dance around the stage for a bit, glaring at each other from afar, and eventually the 'loser' would suddenly and inexplicably drop dead, seemingly of a cardiac arrest, the dancing would cease and the dialogue would resume. Not only did it look stupid, part of what makes Romeo & Juliet so fun is that the audience gets see a load of dramatic sword fights on stage... & it's pretty obvious that Shakespeare had this in mind when he wrote it, too.

With Hamlet's character, I think directors often miss out on the whole 'comic character in a tragic role' thing. They don't see that he's an intellectual bloke who's been given a decidedly unintellectual responsibility that he can't quite cope with, so he starts a war with his own nature almost. So they end up doing a bit of editing to simplify him, ie cutting out all the bits where he's funny or antagonistic, or just altering them slightly to destroy the effect.

I imagine that they look at it and think "Hang on, Shakespeare must have made a mistake here. It's almost as though he's trying to have Hamlet make us laugh with his dry wit & cynicism... and even get us to look upon him as a being a bit of a bastard at times... pffft, that can't be right! Sorry, what? Conveying his frustration and depression in a human and 3-dimensional way? Nonsense! There's room for only one emotion at a time in our heads and we're supposed to feel sorry for him consistently. That's what Shakespeare MEANT to do, he just did it wrong. I've a better way: if we give him a sideways fringe, a pair of tight jeans, some black lipstick and rename him 'Ham' then that'll make our audience truly open their hearts to him. That's what's fashionable now, right?"

Bleeergharg, give me someone to hit!

Quote from: "MariaEvri"well heres my top 10, not in any particular order
- It, stephen king. This was an "accidental" read. My brother bought it and somehow I ended up reading it instead. It is now one of my favourites
2 - The god delusion - richard dawkins
3. This book will save yor life - a. m Homes This book has no action/bad guys/etc bu for some reason I cant stop reading it
4. The safety of object - a.m homes
5. 1984 - george orwell
6. I AM legend - Richard matheson I havent seen the movie, but from the few scenes I seen, the book is much much better
7. I, Robot- isaac asimov
8. The bicentnnial man - isaac asimov
9. Eaters of the dead - mihael crichton
10. A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson.

I still haven't read The God Delusion. Having said that, do I really need to..?

Quote from: "Salladin"Anything by Stephen King, I especially like the books he wrote under the name Richard Bachman. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein is another good one. If you're into science fiction look for R.A. Salvatore, I really like him. Chuck Palahniuk has some pretty good/different books.

Chuck Palahniuk is terrific.  I've not heard of R. A. Salvatore but I'll definitely give him a look.

Rarely do I read classic literature, but I do read now and then.

Fiction:

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
The Bible, by Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, et al (I am a confessed Horror-Comedy Fan. Leviticus is sooo hilarious! Deuteronomy is very gory though. I love it but feel bad for the REAL fans of that novel. )

Non-Fiction:

Most everything by Friedrich Nietzsche, but particularly Beyond Good and Evil, and the Antichrist. While I don't completely agree with Nietzsche, I'd say for the most part I "get" him. Any other Nietzscheans/Nietzscheists out there?

The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
Everything and anything by Charles Darwin.

Tao of Pooh- Benjamin Hoff  (funny and cool)
Hitchhikers Guide Triology- Douglas Adams (the best four book trilogy ever)
The short stories of Flannery O'Conner (depressed, weird and Southern)
Notes from Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky  (awesome)
The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath  (Craziness and being female)
Siddhartha & The Glassbead Game-Herman Hesse (Hesse is just brilliant)
A Clockwork Orange-William Burgess (better than the Kubrick film and so creative with language once you get the lingo)
Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are Dead-Tom Stoppard (a total trip, a play really but I guess I can include it)
Slaughterhouse 5-Kurt Vonnegut (Insanity, War and mental Isolation)
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit-Jeanette Winterson (Just a great book with a good perspective on religion)
Moby Dick-Herman Melville (obsession, insanity and a great big whale!  Queequeg kicks ass!)
Flowers for Algernon-Daniel Keyes (from the depths of stupidity to the heights of genius)
A Brave New World- Aldous Huxley (cloning and societal weirdness)
Nineteen Eighty-Four-Orwell (the scary reality of social and government order)

Quote from: "Mister Joy"I still haven't read The God Delusion. Having said that, do I really need to..?

YES. just....YES! it's a MUST READ for every Homo sapien. NO!.....for everyone in the Homo genus! (I could swear I've come across some Homo erectuses in my time...hahaha)

Quote from: "Salladin"Anything by Stephen King, I especially like the books he wrote under the name Richard Bachman.

I love the ones under Bachman! I just finished reading The Long Walk for the second time. Great book. Stephen King rules my world.


Some of my other favorites (in no particular order):

No Country For Old Men -Cormac McCarthy (The movie is great as well)
The Road -Cormac McCarthy
Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass -Lewis Carroll
Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
Candide -Voltaire
The Lottery -Shirley Jackson
Angels and Demons -Dan Brown
Of Mice and Men -John Steinbeck
Grave Matters -Mark Harris (non-fiction about the funeral director's job and the whole basic funeral process, I'm a future mortuary science student   )
Go and Come Back -Joan Abelove (great esp if you like anthropology)

I'm currently reading Huck Finn and I hope to soon read The God Delusion.

First and foremost is Dune. I got my fist copy when I was 15, and have read it every year since. So that's 25 times, give or take. I love the series, and read them all, but not with the same intensity as Dune. The second most read book in that series is God Emperor of Dune.

This list is by no means comprehensive:

1. Dune - Frank Herbert
2. God Emperor of Dune - Frank Herbert
3. 1984 - George Orwell
4. Animal Farm - George Orwell
5. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
6. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - I love the movie version with John Malkovich and Gary Senise
7. Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
8. The End of Faith - Sam Harris
9. Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
10. God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens
11. The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
12. Sword of Truth series - Terry Goodkind
13. Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy - Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
14. Dragonlance Heroes - The Legend of Huma - Richard Knaak
15. Dragonlance Legends Trilogy - Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins - Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
16. A Song of Ice and Fire series - A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast of Crows - George R. R. Martin
17. The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
18. The Chronicles of Prydain - The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King - Lloyd Alexander (The second most read series after Dune)

That's just off the top of my head. There are a billion or so more I haven't listed.

I used to be a Stephen King fan...but I just got sick of him, and stopped reading him about 10 years ago. Same for Dean R. Koontz. I swear that guy has a word template and he just changes the names of characters...talk about formulaic.

As for Shakespeare, In order - Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Richard III.

I tried, 3 times in fact, to read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. I got half way through each time, but just can't finish. Same with J. R. R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

Forgot to add: If you haven't read The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, I would counsel against starting. Although it's a good story, it drags on for about 5 books too far, plus he (Robert Jordan) died this year before he could release the finale. I only kept reading out of spite, I guess. But, like most long winded people, he ruined a fantastic story IMHO. Of course, YMMV.

I do enjoy various atheist literature, but I read ALOT of science books. Books about relativity, string theory, quantum mechanics, ect...

AND I'm an avid sci-fi fan. Asimov is my hero

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit   Great story about a young adopted child growing up in a extreme religious family.And her quest to look inside herself.She falls in love with another woman and her dealing with God,Love and tolerance.
Everything by Anne Rice before she turned her back on us fans and started writing Jesus books.
Jack Ketchum The Girl Next Door ...based on a true story of a crime that happened here in Indiana.

QuoteYES. just....YES! it's a MUST READ for every Homo sapien. NO!.....for everyone in the Homo genus! (I could swear I've come across some Homo erectuses in my time...hahaha)

I'm shocked and appalled! That could really hurt the feelings of anyone reading this who happens to be horribly inbred.

They can't help the fact that their parents were cousins and siblings simultaneously. Just like they can't help how hilariously disfigured and stupid they are. Or how the whole world laughs at them and their primitive swamp etiquette. Give them a break or the enhanced awareness of their nightmarishly inescapable genes may drive them insane. Which would be particularly unfortunate because no one would notice. :D

Quote from: "Mister Joy"I'd say King can be far better when he wants to be. Trouble is, he's lost popularity over his better books because most of his audience want the formulaic stuff.

Agreed. I'm of the opinion that King is at his best when he's writing human interest/drama as opposed to horror. Dolores Claiborne comes to mind.

I find that his scariest monsters are not the supernatural types -- Cujo, Annie Wilkes from Misery, Jack Torrance from the Shining -- those are my types of crazy.

I'm still a fan of his short stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Rage (not in print anymore), The Running Man (the only thing it had in common with the Schwarzenegger movie was the title), The long walk, Quitters Inc., Roadwork, wow, there are so many...

The movies based on his works for the most part suck: The Shawshank Redemption, Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and The Green Mile were exceptions to the rule.

QuoteEDIT (spotted something else):

QuoteEverything by Anne Rice before she turned her back on us fans and started writing Jesus books.

Oh I keeled over laughing when I heard that news, it struck me as so absurd. I haven't read "Christ The Lord" but I hope to high heaven that it still has her usual undercurrent of gothic homoeroticism. Now that would be an entertaining read. :hmm: A bisexual Christ...That I would read  

Quote from: "MikeyV"Agreed. I'm of the opinion that King is at his best when he's writing human interest/drama as opposed to horror. Dolores Claiborne comes to mind.

I find that his scariest monsters are not the supernatural types -- Cujo, Annie Wilkes from Misery, Jack Torrance from the Shining -- those are my types of crazy.

I'm still a fan of his short stories, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Rage (not in print anymore), The Running Man (the only thing it had in common with the Schwarzenegger movie was the title), The long walk, Quitters Inc., Roadwork, wow, there are so many...

Indeedy. I find psychological suspense & paranoia to be far more chilling than so called 'true horror'. I like all the ones I've read out of those you've listed. Truth be told though, the Schwarzenegger movie did put me off reading the Running Man. Maybe I'll give that a go after all.

Children of the Corn is quite a good one, I thought. The whole thing as kind of a simplified alternative ending to Lord of the Flies, just with the setting changed and the back-story altered a little.

Quote from: "Mister Joy"The Wheel of Time is a series that I've often thought about reading but thus far I haven't got around to it.

I read the Da Vinci Code (just like everyone else who reads, obviously because of the controversy it stirred up) which I thought was good. I didn't like Dan Brown's conspiracy theorist attitude about it though. It's fabulous as a piece of fiction but Brown's insistence that the stuff in his book was true got on my nerves a little. Which is a shame because the book is pretty good and I think my knowing that the author is taking himself so seriously has tarnished my ability to enjoy it a little.

Have you read Philip K. Dick's sci-fi A Scanner Darkly? That book is absolutely drenched with conspiracy and paranoia. They made a movie adaptation starring Keanu Reeves a couple of years ago but it was a little disappointing, I thought.

I read the book before watching the film. Loved them both for varying reasons. P K Dick is one of my favourite authors.

I generally read sci-fi so i've read everything from Greg Bear to Iain M Banks. From Asimov to Alfred Bester.

I've recently discovered a Scottish sci-fi author called Richard Morgan. He wrote a trilogy of stories based upon the same badass called 'Takeshi Kovacs'.. The first of these three books was called 'Altered Carbon'. It blew my frigging socks off! I've never seen so many genuinely original ideas packed into one book. He writes with a viscous vigor i haven't seen since 'The Use of weapons' by Iain m Banks. If anyone here is into cyberpunk noir intermingled with detective stories with amazing flair, then this is the book for you.

probably my favourite book of all time is The Picture of Dorian Grey. i love Oscar wilde.
there are many other books i love.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Lord of the Flies - Golding
Revolution in the head - Ian McDonald
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant/Amateur Marriage/Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
Atonement/Enduring Love/Cement Garden - Ian Mcewan
The Namesake - Jumpha Lahiri
Thunderbolt Kid/Neither Here Nor There/Lost Continent - Bill Bryson

Quote from: "Mister Joy"

QuoteYES. just....YES! it's a MUST READ for every Homo sapien. NO!.....for everyone in the Homo genus! (I could swear I've come across some Homo erectuses in my time...hahaha)

I'm shocked and appalled! That could really hurt the feelings of anyone reading this who happens to be horribly inbred.

They can't help the fact that their parents were cousins and siblings simultaneously. Just like they can't help how hilariously disfigured and stupid they are. Or how the whole world laughs at them and their primitive swamp etiquette. Give them a break or the enhanced awareness of their nightmarishly inescapable genes may drive them insane. Which would be particularly unfortunate because no one would notice.  It would just be a case of "Earl's dribbling more than usual today..."

Anyhoo, I don't know if I can be bothered to read The God Delusion simply because I get the impression that it would just be a big book to tell me what I already know - religion is baloney - just with a few extra fun facts to re-affirm it, as if I needed it re-affirming any more.

Mister Joy, you really should read The God Delusion I cannot recommend it highly enough. It talks about the flawed arguments for god, the arguments against god, memetics, polytheism, monotheism, secularism, the theism, deism, and atheism of the Founding Fathers, the roots of religion, the roots of our morality, a critique of the Bible, the moral Zeitgeist, What's wrong with religion and why we should be so hostile toward it, and how religion can be a literal "get out of jail free" card in slander, defamation, and even SPOUSAL ABUSE cases, and much, much, much, much, much, much more. They actually have the first chapter online so you can sample it at //richarddawkins.net. You can buy it from the site, but it would be much cheaper to get it on Amazon or Half.com.

As for the guy from Deliverance, take a whack at it as well.

oh yes how could i forget the God Delusion? one of the greatest books i've ever read!

Quote from: "Willravel"

Quote from: "Asmodean"No kidding! Mine is in ONE tome. The thing is enough to build three houses out of. But it's a great work of litterature. I'm working on it in its native language too. Makes me sort of proud, that

I'd get mine in one tome, but my book case is made of wood, not steel.

You're seriously reading it in the original Russian?! And a little French?! Dude. That's incredible.

Yes. It's not easy. Generic street-corner variety Russian I can handle pretty easily, but Tolstoi didn't write it in generic street-corner variety Russian.