GREAT books you never hear about....

[shooter1201]

I also read this book....about 10 years ago. It would make an AWESOME movie. The following quote is from a review on Amazon.com:

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The Far Arena brought me back to ancient Rome., July 13, 1998
Reviewer: [email protected] willie.salem.cc.nj.us from New Jersey, USA

In his novel about an ancient Roman Gladiator who is found and revived in modern times, Sapir has managed to make us believe it could really happen. I read it many years ago, and as others have also described, I lent it to a friend in order to share the wonderful experience. It was never returned. I have been teaching Latin in a public high school for the past 25 years. This story is one that has stayed with me, and I relate the plot summary to my students hoping they will somehow find a copy and read it. One of my favorite parts is when Eugeni is in the hospital and can't figure out why the light appears every time someone puts a hand to the wall. He is sure there must be very attentive slaves with lamps in the ceiling which they light or blow out quickly when the signal is given. Also, the fact that he can't understand the nun when she pronounces Latin as modern scholars assume it was spoken was a source of great levity for me. Bravo to Mr. Sapir for a fantastic and well written story. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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[RachelR]

I think a great book that would be made into an awesome movie is one by Jack Finney titled Time and Again. It's one of my absolute favorite novels.

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"Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never heard the name Richard Nixon."

Did illustrator Si Morley really step out of his twentieth-century apartment one night -- right into the winter of 1882? The U.S. Government believed it, especially when Si returned with a portfolio of brand-new sketches and tintype photos of a world that no longer existed -- or did it?

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It also, of course, involves a love story aspect of it but it incorporates so many elements that it cannot be possibly labeled as a chick flick or romance. It's just a magnificant story.. sigh.. Now I want to go reread it, lol.

[ 01-17-2003, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: RachelR ]

[kirch]

Shooter:

I read that book too, probably 15 years ago. Of the hundreds of books I've read since then, most of which I've completely forgotten, I always remember certain aspects of it. For example, when a nurse comes in to tend to the gladiator and he freaks out when he sees her wearing a necklace with a crucifix on it. In his time the crucifix was a feared tool of punishment that epitomized excruciatingly painful death.

[PeacefulDragon]

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Originally posted by RachelR:
I think a great book that would be made into an awesome movie is one by Jack Finney titled Time and Again. It's one of my absolute favorite novels.

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That does sound like a good read! It also reminds me of two other "time traveling" books that I absolutely loved (and will probably now re-read) by Connie Willis. Its been too long since I've read either of them for me to give an adequate description, but here is what Amazon had to say:

Doomsday Book: Connie Willis labored five years on this story of a history student in 2048 who is transported to an English village in the 14th century. The student arrives mistakenly on the eve of the onset of the Black Plague. Her dealings with a family of "contemps" in 1348 and with her historian cohorts lead to complications as the book unfolds into a surprisingly dark, deep conclusion. The book, which won Hugo and Nebula Awards, draws upon Willis' understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

To Say Nothing of the Dog: To Say Nothing of the Dog is a science-fiction fantasy in the guise of an old-fashioned Victorian novel, complete with epigraphs, brief outlines, and a rather ugly boxer in three-quarters profile at the start of each chapter. Or is it a Victorian novel in the guise of a time-traveling tale, or a highly comic romp, or a great, allusive literary game, complete with spry references to Dorothy L. Sayers, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle? Its title is the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's singular, and hilarious, Three Men in a Boat. In one scene the hero, Ned Henry, and his friends come upon Jerome, two men, and the dog Montmorency in--you guessed it--a boat. Jerome will later immortalize Ned's fumbling. (Or, more accurately, Jerome will earlier immortalize Ned's fumbling, because Ned is from the 21st century and Jerome from the 19th.)
What Connie Willis soon makes clear is that genre can go to the dogs. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a fine, and fun, romance--an amused examination of conceptions and misconceptions about other eras, other people. When we first meet Ned, in 1940, he and five other time jumpers are searching bombed-out Coventry Cathedral for the bishop's bird stump, an object about which neither he nor the reader will be clear for hundreds of pages. All he knows is that if they don't find it, the powerful Lady Schrapnell will keep sending them back in time, again and again and again. Once he's been whisked through the rather quaint Net back to the Oxford future, Ned is in a state of super time-lag. (Willis is happily unconcerned with futuristic vraisemblance, though Ned makes some obligatory references to "vids," "interactives," and "headrigs.") The only way Ned can get the necessary two weeks' R and R is to perform one more drop and recuperate in the past, away from Lady Schrapnell. Once he returns something to someone (he's too exhausted to understand what or to whom) on June 7, 1888, he's free.

Willis is concerned, however, as is her confused character, with getting Victoriana right, and Ned makes a good amateur anthropologist--entering one crowded room, he realizes that "the reason Victorian society was so restricted and repressed was that it was impossible to move without knocking something over." Though he's still not sure what he's supposed to bring back, various of his confederates keep popping back to set him to rights. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a shaggy-dog tale complete with a preternaturally quiet, time-traveling cat, Princess Arjumand, who might well be the cause of some serious temporal incongruities--for even a mouser might change the course of European history. In the end, readers might well be more interested in Ned's romance with a fellow historian than in the bishop's bird stump, and who will not rejoice in their first Net kiss, which lasts 169 years! --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

[Bob A]

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)

A sci-fi futuristic story about a little boy with certain traits which are sought by Earth's government for use in the military.

The characters are well developed, and though the story can seem a little farfetched because of the idea of so many children, it all makes for a pretty good book.

It's followed up by 2 sequels, and 2 parallel stories.

Eyes of the Dragon (Stephen King)

This is the best King novel I've read, and isn't a horror story. It's set back in the days of medieval knights and wizards.

Hammerheads (Dale Brown)

Brown usually writes military novels, but this is more LE oriented. It deals with a fictitious drug interdiction unit which uses the V-22 Osprey tilt rotor airplane.

The Ransom of Black Stealth One (Dean Ing)

Good sci-fi thriller about a radar transparent spy plane, with kidnapping and murder, plot twists, and all the stuff that makes stories like that good.

Last Man Standing (David Baldacci)

This is a crime drama about an FBI HRT member who is the only member of his unit to live through a raid. Baldacci has several other good books: The Winner, The Simple Truth, Saving Faith, Total Control and a couple of others.

[PeacefulDragon]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob A:
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)

A sci-fi futuristic story about a little boy with certain traits which are sought by Earth's government for use in the military.

The characters are well developed, and though the story can seem a little farfetched because of the idea of so many children, it all makes for a pretty good book.

It's followed up by 2 sequels, and 2 parallel stories.

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I can second this one -- great book! You do need to be able to get into (or at least get past) the SciFi aspects of this book to enjoy it, but if "space adventure" doesn't cross your eyes (in a bad way), then this book has lots to offer. Like most of Card's books it explores important ethical/moral issues (without being at all preachy).

[CinaC]

Methinks Bob A and I have similar taste in fiction.

Bob, did you know Ender's Game is being produced as a movie? Screenplay by Orson Scott Card, directed by Wolfgang Peterson. http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/index.html

Also, let me reccomend "Enchantment", also by Orson Scott Card.

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The moment Ivan stumbled upon a clearing in the dense Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed. Atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, the beautiful princess Katerina lay still as death. But beneath the foliage a malevolent presence stirred and sent the ten-year-old Ivan scrambling for the safety of Cousin Marek's farm.

Now, years later, Ivan is an American graduate student, engaged to be married. Yet he cannot forget that long-ago day in the forest--or convince himself it was merely a frightened boy's fantasy. Compelled to return to his native land, Ivan finds the clearing just as he left it.

This time he does not run. This time he awakens the beauty with a kiss . . . and steps into a world that vanished a thousand years ago.

A rich tapestry of clashing worlds and cultures, Enchantment is a powerfully original novel of a love and destiny that transcend centuries . . . and the dark force that stalks them across the ages.

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Also, since I have the opportunity ... everyone knows the story of Richard the Third. That he murdered his nephews to secure his position on the Throne of England, and was himself overthrown but a few years later by Henry the Seventh. But Shakespeare is a dirty lying Tudor-loving muckraker.

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While at a London hospital recuperating from a fall, Inspector Alan Grant becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard. A student of human faces, Grant cannot believe that the man in the picture would kill his own nephews. With an American researcher's help, Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes.

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The research Josephine Tey put into this book, Daughter of Time, is AMAZING. It should be required reading in any English History course!

Also, for anyone who enjoys fantasy, I cannot recommend "The Farseer" trilogy by Robin Hobb enough. Young Fitz is the bastard child of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised to serve the King as his "silent emissary" ... an assassin.

Argh. Called in to work. I'll post more on Farseer later!

[MikeinMN]

As I may have mentioned here before, I spent six years working for the company Alison Bechtel refers to in her comics as Bunns & Noodles. I've read most of the books already mentioned, with the exception of the Stephen King one...

I've got a copy of Ender's Game; I've read it a couple of times, even got it signed a few years ago. It's an OK book, but not (IMO) as great as everyone makes it out to be. I will freely admit, however, that it's better than, oh, most of the other SF&F books teenagers are reading these days.

The Farseer books by (Megan Lindholm writing as) Robin Hobb are pretty good, and much better than the series that starts with "Ship of Magic". Not the most original plot in the world, but at least she can write well.

The series by J.V. Jones that starts with The Baker's Boy is usually mentioned in the same sentance as Robin Hobb's books. Despite having met (and had lunch with) the author, I'm not entirely enthused about these. They *are* very entertaining if you like food; the author has a deep interest in cooking (or "having people cook for me", as she put it) and some of the meals consumed in these books (greased duck, anyone?) are, um, interesting. However, the series, when you come right down to it, is just Tad William's "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" all over again... and "Memory, Sorow, and Thorn" is just the original three "Star Wars" movies in a fantasy setting. No, really. Just compare Binabik and Yoda...

But I digress.

Because I'm an iconoclast who thinks that good books don't have to come in trilogies, I'd like to recommend the following, quickly:

Bull, Emma: War For the Oaks. Classic urban fantasy set in modern-day (well, late 1980's) Minneapolis. Single-handedly responsible for the plethora of bad "elfpunk" imitations all through the 1990's.

Kerr, Peg. Emerald House Rising. One of the only worthwhile "coming of age" type fantasies in recent years, and a very good one at that.

Wells, Martha. Death of the Necromancer. Basically, in a strange, alternate-history sort of 19th century, a couple of people, including the world's most powerful living magician, must save the world. It would be a lot easier if the magician weren't tranked out on opium all the time...

I highly recommend all of the books by James Alan Gardner, which start with 'Expendable'. Very entertaining, very funny SF series about a part of the League of Peoples (or somesuch thing) called the Explorer Corps, the folks responsible for first contact with new planets, etc. In order to lessen the trauma of their member's deaths (which occur quite often) they only recruit the crippled, the deformed, the mutated... the main character has a purple birthmark over half her face... and has been trained from the academy to think, daily, "My name is Festina Ramos and I take great pride in my personal appearance. My name is..." She's not the world's happiest or best-adjusted protagonist, but, hey, I can relate to her... Highly amusing.

And an anti-recommendation: All 25 of the "Gor" books by John Norman. Avoid. Just avoid. Don't even bring one into your house. They're bad. They're really, really bad. And, worst of all, they're *intentionally* bad...

[PeacefulDragon]

As long as we seem to be focusing on SF/Fantasy at the moment, I'll add a couple more gems to the pot. The following are my favorite SF/Fantasy authors and I would recommend any book written by any one of them:

William Gibson -- start with Neuromancer and just keep going. IMHO, one of the best SF writers alive today.

Neil Gaiman -- if you like dark humor or fantasy with an edge, this is the man.

Terry Pratchett -- if you like to laugh, you've got to read his Discworld Series

[Bob A]

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Bob, did you know Ender's Game is being produced as a movie?

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I've heard it before, but this is the first time I've seen any kind of confirmation.

Thanks for the link. I hope I rememer to check on this.

[shooter1201]

Good EASY reading sci-fi: James Axler's Deathlands series...

[CinaC]

Mike,

Even Megan Lindholm is a pen name! Her real name is Megan Olgden (or something similar). I don't know if you know, but she's just published the second book, "Golden Fool", of "The Tawny Man" trilogy, which picks up with FitzChivalry fifteen years after "Assassin's Quest."

Oh: Peter David's "Knight Life." It's modern day New York. And there's a nut claiming to be King Arthur running for mayor. Oh, and by the way? That IS the Lady in the Lake standing around freezing her *** off in winter holding Excalibur!

[ 01-19-2003, 01:37 AM: Message edited by: C in a J ]