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1. 

   Daniel Florien
   Administrator

   What's your favorite mythic novel — what I define as a novel that is sweeping in it's style and attempt to get at human nature.

   My first is East of Eden. To me it is Steinbeck's best novel and breathtaking in its beauty of writing and presentation of humanity in all its complexity.

   Second is Lord of the Rings. I don't agree with Tolkien's mystical worldview, but he was an excellent fantasy writer.

   Third is One Hundred Years of Solitude. I'm not sure exactly why I liked it, as it is very odd, but something about it really clicked with me, even through a translation. There's something profoundly heartwrenching about the story.

   So what are your favorites?

   Posted 3 years ago #
2. 

   Ty
   Moderator

   My favorite novel is "The Dragon Waiting." It's a mythical retelling of the reign of Richard III in which all the superstition and mythology of the era is true.

   Also, Christianity is a cult, and the Roman empire still exists in the West.

   Not many people know about this book, even though it won every award the year it came out. It appeals to my love of both mythology and history.

   Posted 3 years ago #
3. 

   rodneyAnonymous
   Member

   Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham ... liked this better than David Copperfield

   Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell ... best. dystopian. fiction. ever.

   Neuromancer / Count Zero / Mona Lisa Overdrive (trilogy), William Gibson ... great science fiction, original cyberpunk, coins "cyberspace" in first paragraph

   Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson ... cryptography in WWII and present/near-future... nerdy, probably not interesting to all... but epic

   Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien ...

   Posted 3 years ago #
4. 

   Custador
   Moderator

   Always suprises me fewer people have read this, but:

   <i>The Gormenghast Triology</i> by Mervyn Peake. The second book, <i>Gormenghast</i> is better than the first, <i>Titus Groan</i>, but both are excellent. The third, <i>Titus Alone</i> was written when Peake was dying and losing his sanity, so it's interesting to say the least! The triology itself is a masterclass in imaginative writing, from the incredible settings that Peake describes to the wonderful array of characters. To give you an idea about who Peake was, he did the original illustrations for <i>Alices Adventures in Wonderland</i> and <i>Alice Through the Looking Glass</i>, and was a member of a group of writers from Oxford who were collectively known as The Inklings because they used to sit in pubs around Oxford writing their stories. The Inklings were J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carole, C.S. Lewis and Mervyn Peake. Creativity, it seems, loves company. If you're ever in Oxford, visit the Lamb and Flag, the Eagle and Child and the Royal Oak - the pubs on which Tolkien based the Prancing Pony. The Royal Oak is probably my favourite pub in the world - I doubt it's been decorated in the last two hundred years! Anyway: <i>Gormenghast</i>. Give it a go.

   Posted 3 years ago #
5. 

   Mahou
   Member

   Definitely "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." That entire series is fantastic. I laughed the whole way through.

   Posted 3 years ago #
6. 

   420
   Member

   Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. It's about the last surviving member of a cult and him getting caught up with fame and commercialism and stuff. Pretty good book.

   Posted 3 years ago #
7. 

   BillZBub
   Member

   Survivor is a great book, my favorite Palahniuk novel; better than Fight Club or Choke, I think.

   Posted 3 years ago #
8. 

   seldomseen
   Member

   My favorite book is The Shadow Of The Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Set in post war Barcelona, it's about a mans search for a forbidden book and it's author.

   I'm not a huge fan of Stephen King, but growing up The Talisman was a book that I read over and over again. I read it again a few years ago, and it still holds up very well.
   The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier, and Vonnegut's, Slaughterhouse Five are favorites.
   From The Corner Of His Eye, was a book that I found so amazing, that I still can't believe that Dean Koonts wrote it.

   I'm currently getting into Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It's quite good so far.

   Posted 3 years ago #
9. 

   aPlatinumMtZion
   Member

   Shout-outs to novels already mentioned: Palahniuk, Steinbeck, Marquez, Zafron, Gaiman, Adams- all awesome.

   To add to the list:

   White Noise by Don Delillo- a postmodern classic, haunting and beautifully written. Captures the pall of disaster which I think hangs over the US suburbs even more pervasively than it did when it was written.

   The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami- relentlessly unsettling, but brilliant. Although it relies heavily on supernatural imagery, I think Murakami uses it in a way which makes the human condition more vivid, and doesn't mean it to be taken literally.

   Posted 3 years ago #
10. 

    scyechilde
    Member

    American Gods by Neil gamien, lullaby/Palahniuk, Imagica/clive barker, great and secret show/barker Job: a comedy of justice/Heinlein

    Posted 3 years ago #
11. 

    Tilly
    Member

    All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It was the first novel I ever read.

    Looking for Alaska by John Green.

    Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

    Posted 3 years ago #
12. 

    Measure
    Member

    I haven't read Hitchhiker's guide since I went atheist. I should re-read it all.

    Posted 3 years ago #
13. 

    Brian M
    Member

    Hello, all. I've bene reading UF for awhile and happy to see there is a forum now for more discussion! I'm an angry agnostic (I find the Jehovah described in the Bible rather appalling) who lives in Northern California (exactly halfway between San Fran and Sacramento). I am interested in bicycling, architecture, wine snobbery, and endless philophical ramblings!

    Anyone...epic novels??? I've been a Sci Fi reader for yeares, so: I will ditto the William Gibson novels listed above. I've loved ALL of his books, actually,. including the newer, less sci-fi-ish pair (Pattern Recognition is fascination) which may be less epic but still have a tone and sensibility that I find mesmerizing. For epic sci fi, I also love:

    The Brian Stableford "Werewolves of London" trilogy, which posits transcendental extradimensional beings who reside in the very fabric between the universes and who lose themselves and their ability to "compete" when they get too wrapped up in the "mortal" world.

    John C Wright's Golden Transcendence trilogy...even though the author apparatnly saw the Virgin Mary in a piece of bread and has always been a reactionary-libertarian crank and even though the books are about 40% too long, his vision of a transcendent, post-humanist, post-scarcity, AI filled solar system facing an existential threat from a colony which fell down a black hole, is amazing. He basically takes the Iain M. Banks Culture novels and cranks it up quite abit (while losing readability and the humanity of Banks' work).

    Speaking of Banks, I love the latest Culture now, Matter. A renaissance level war campaign, a billion-years old artifical world, and a buried enemy from the past. Wow!

    Finally, changing gears...I love Cajun author James Lee Burke and his Cajun detective novels. They again have an eerie tone and consider subjects of morality and the meaning of a "good life" that transcend the genre. In the Electric Mist With Confederate Ghosts remains my favorite.

    Anyway...too long a post for a first post, so! :)

    Posted 3 years ago #
14. 

    Offred
    Member

    I guess I'm pretty basic. These are not really considered "mythic or sweeping" but my favorite novels are "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee (and favorite movie) and "A Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. (I like James Lee Burke too)

    Having this list gives me many new books to check out though.

    Posted 3 years ago #
15. 

    Travis
    Member

    There are some great book suggestions here. While I have a hard time narrowing my favorites down to a few, I will give it a shot.

    Les Miserables - Hugo
    East of Eden- Steinbeck
    Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand
    Oh Pure and Radiant Heart and My Happy Life- Lydia Millet
    Tale of Two Cities- Dickens
    The Princess Bride- Goldman
    1984- Orwell
    The Historian- Elizabeth Kostova

    These are the ones that come to mind right away.

    Posted 3 years ago #
16. 

    thewarfreak
    Member

    Some of my favorites:

    The Great Gastsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    The Stand by Stephen King
    Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
    The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
    On the Road by Jack Kerouac

    Posted 3 years ago #
17. 

    Leo
    Member

    Am I the only person in the world who thinks Huxley's Brave New World is better than 1984?

    Custador, I loved Titus Groan and particularly Gormenghast, but couldn't get through Titus Alone. I got to the bit with the guy in the motor car. Stopped, had a think, read that part again and gave up. If you tell me it's worth persevering with I may give it another go.

    Also Neuromancer, Hitchhiker's Guide for sure.

    Posted 3 years ago #
18. 

    arrakis
    Member

    I'm surprised that no one has brought up "Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter Miller, Jr. It is, IMHO, the greatest post-apocalyptic novel of all time. I haven't read a book before or since that made me think so much and that I have been able to enjoy over and over again.

    Others: Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
    Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
    Dune (hence the username) - Frank Herbert
    A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
    The Men in the Jungle - Norman Spinrad
    Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper
    The Broken Sword - Poul Anderson

    There are more...these are all I could come up with off the top of my head.

    Posted 3 years ago #
19. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
    Dune - Frank Herbert
    The Screwtape Letters - C. S. Lewis
    The Man who was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton
    A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick
    The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
    Friday - Robert Heinlein
    The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
    A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr.
    The Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov

    I also rather liked Timothy Zahn's Conqueror's Trilogy, and David Weber's Honor Harrington series, though I wouldn't go so far as to call them favorites.

    Posted 3 years ago #
20. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    Hey Nope, if you're a Haldeman fan, did you hear about his recent health scare?

    He's been the hospital for the last week or two, and almost died. Looks like he's pulling through though. It was definitely a close call.

    Posted 3 years ago #
21. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    It's good that he's recovering. And no, I've only read The Forever War by him. Not familiar with his other works.

    Posted 3 years ago #
22. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    You did read what is arguably his best novel.

    I'm a fan, but like any other author his quality is a sine wave.

    Posted 3 years ago #
23. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    If one were to argue, what would his other "best" novel be?

    Posted 3 years ago #
24. 

    GeekGirl
    Member

    I've read quite a few of the books listed, and since others have all ready mentioned some of my favorites, I thought I would add a few more. I don't know that all of these would fall in the mythic category, but I love them anyway.
    Also, thanks for starting this thread, as there are some that I have not read, and can now add to my "get around to it" list.

    Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom Robbins
    Good Omens - Neil Gaiman/Terry Prachett
    Sarah Morgan: A Civil War Diary - Charles East
    The Feast of All Saints - Anne Rice
    Heretic - Bernard Cornwell
    Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book - Terry Jones (kids book, but awesome!)
    The Harry Potter books - yeah, I said it!

    My home library is huge, but those are the first ones off the top of my head, so I'm going with them.

    Posted 3 years ago #
25. 

    the_original_xy
    Member

    "Am I the only person in the world who thinks Huxley's Brave New World is better than 1984?"

    no, you are not. Brave New World will be a book that i will always remember no matter how old i get. 1984 will not, but only because numbers will be eradicated by Big Brother.

    Posted 3 years ago #
26. 

    Daniel Florien
    Administrator

    I thought 1984 was better from a literary perspective, but Brave New World is a bit more profound when it comes to most of our lives.

    http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/post_1.html

    Posted 3 years ago #
27. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    "If one were to argue, what would his other "best" novel be? "

    There are some fans who argue that "Forever Peace" is a superior work. I disagree even though I enjoyed it. It is not related in any way to Forever War, the forever in the title is misleading.

    I'm a big fan of "Buying Time" though it would be hard to argue that it's a better book than Forever War.

    And he has quite a number of fans who only read his non-genre work. He wrote a number of things on his experiences in Vietnam.

    Posted 3 years ago #
28. 

    Elemenope
    Moderator

    I shall have to check out those two.

    Posted 3 years ago #
29. 

    Ty
    Moderator

    If you enjoy short fiction, I can not recommend his collections of short stories enough. Some of his short stuff is brilliant.

    Posted 3 years ago #
30. 

    lif
    Member

    I'd have to say Brave New World in this contest. Quite disturbing, but fantastic. 1984 was a great work as well, but Brave New World wins out for me.

    And I'm glad someone finally mentioned Vonnegut.

    Posted 3 years ago #

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