What are your favorite fiction and non-fiction books?

[FireYourJob]

As a voracious reader, which I attribute to living mustachianism (which I called FireYourJobism) long before it existed, I'm always curious what other successful and thoughtful colleagues choose to invest their time reading.

I'll start:

Fiction - Atlas Shrugged

Non-Fiction - Confessions by St. Augustine

[Glenstache]

My favorite book shifts a lot through time, but I would recommend Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, and pretty much anything by Chuck Palahniuk. For science fiction fans, Iain Banks Culture books are enjoyable.

[Oscar_C]

Fiction:
-Harry Potter (Still a kid at heart, I'm 23 :|)
-American Gods

Non-Fiction
-48 Laws of Power
-Millionaire Next Door
-How to Make Friends & Influence People

[FoundPeace]

Fiction:
The Way of Kings
Ender's Game
The Name of the wind
Anything by Brandon Sanderson. He is one of the few authors I have found who has good and convincing plots and world building. He also makes it so that fantasy books make sense; magic tends to work because of physical laws (physics, chemistry, etc.) and not because of chanting, potions, or runes (I can't stand that stuff!).

Non-Fiction:
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (wish it wouldn't have finished right before the revolution though...)
Journal of Hans Zobel and other family history journals

I love family stories! I had an ancestor who owned a bar in the wild west who tricked an incoming competitor into getting drunk and giving away all of his whiskey. The competitor ended up going out of business as a result and my ancestor got all of the rest of his liquor at a steep discount. Also, some of my ancestors in Denmark believed in trolls!

Fun stuff, but I usually stick to Fiction unless I'm trying to learn something specific. I don't think I could ever say that a textbook is one of my favorite books.

[Travis]

My non-fiction library is extensive (history and political science degrees) so I can't pin down a favorite.  On the fiction side, I picked up the Game of Thrones series about a month ago and I've been blasting my way through it having just started Dance of Dragons.  It's the first pleasure reading I've done in two years since finishing my Masters a couple months ago.

[eyePod]

Ender series is awesome, especially the last few, which get really philisophical.

GoT series started off so strong, first three books are some of the best I've ever read, not so good now though. The waits make me more disappointed each time a book comes out.

A lot of stuff by Daniel Quinn hits on the mental strings for me. Really makes you question some of the stuff that's out there and normal, kind of the way that MMM does when you first read it. When he gave a better explanation of the Cain/Abel story, my mind might have exploded.

[surfhb]

Fiction- The Perfect Storm

Non-Fiction:  John Wesley Powell's journal of the Expedition through The Colorado River.   It must have been amazing to just stumble upon the Grand Canyon !

[ImCheap]

Fiction: Anything from Vince Flyn, RIP.

Non Fiction: Blind Mans Bluff, Red Star Rouge, anything cold war related. Millionaire Next Door, All about Asset Allocation, Your Money or Your Life, Bogleheads Guide to Investing (one of the better more simple investment books).

[Jon_Snow]

Anyone care to guess what my favourite fiction books are? ;) Of course you can.

Right up there is the steampunk/fantasy/sci-fi masterpiece PERDIDO STREET STATION by China Mieville. If you want to get drunk on the written language, and bask in some of the most amazing/disturbing imagery ever, READ THIS. Only if you can handle WEIRD though.

For whatever reason, not a big fan of non-fiction...

And keep the suggestions coming! I need to load up my Kindle for Baja trip!

[Otsog]

Non-fiction
Poor Charlie's Almanack - Charlie Munger

Fiction
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

[mancityfan]

Non - Fiction: Pretty much anything by Bill Bryson
Fiction: Edward Abbey. Ray Bradbury

[dodojojo]

Fiction
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

Read it last year--what a great book.  Thanks for reminding me.

My favorite fiction book I read this year was Kate Atkinson's Life After Life.

I can't remember the last great non-fiction book that I read.  Lately, I read non-fiction based on interest/self improvement rather than actively seeking out a great book.

[retired?]

Hey, you stole my favorite, Atlas Shrugged.  Rather, I'd say it was the most exciting book for me to read.  So, I went on to her other stuff and her non-fiction.  Other fiction - I am basically catching up on a lot of classic authors - Carver, Cheever, Faulkner, went through all of Steinbeck I could find.  Have headed to short stories, a la the annual Best American Short Stories series.  Each usually contains about 20 good to great stories that average 15-20 pages. 

non-fiction - I like Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" and writings by Thomas Sowell.

[vern]

Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion is the greatest American novel ever written IMHO.

[PhysicsCat]

Fiction: There are so many.

Fantasy: Anything Brandon Sanderson or Neil Gaiman
Sci Fi: John Scalzi, Isaac Asimov, Heinlein

Non Fiction: I'll digest a good technical manual, but thats for work.

[so.mpls]

Fiction

All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
A Song of Ice and Fire (series) - George R.R. Martin
Empire Falls - Richard Russo

Non Fiction

The Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
A Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold

[Villanelle]

Non-fiction is The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches us about Being Alive, Brian Christian

Fiction is too hard to pick just one favorite, so I'll go with my favorite I've read in the last couple years, which is The Martian: A Novel, by Andy Weir, with honorable mention going to Ready Player One.

For all time favorite fiction, I'd have to add A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving), Catch-22 (Heller), The Passion (Jeanette Winterson, and no, despite the title it is not remotely a romance novel!), and American Pastoral (Roth).

[Zikoris]

This would get flamed by any feminists present for sure, but I'm a really big fan of Helen Andelin's "Fascinating Womanhood" series. It was written in the 50s, I believe, as sort of an instruction manual for women to build character and be better wives, and I've found that working through the exercises and applying the principles has really helped me in both self improvement and improving my relationships. It would obviously only apply to women.

[CommonCents]

Fiction- The Perfect Storm

Non-Fiction:  John Wesley Powell's journal of the Expedition through The Colorado River.   It must have been amazing to just stumble upon the Grand Canyon !

Really?  Aww, it's partially based on my dad.  To out myself, he was the Captain of the Coast Guard ship that performed the rescues.  For the record though, the book is generally classified as non-fiction.  In the movie they took more liberties, from big picture to the little ones (e.g. the breaking wave the ship flipped on was actually the wrong direction), as it was only "based on" the true story.   

Non-Fiction: Perfect Storm (of course)
Fiction: Hard to narrow down.  It changes a lot, and it's usually by author not by book.  Some current favs:

George Martin (less so of late)
Patrick Rothfuss
J.K. Rowlings
Brian Sanderson

Although a friend is publishing soon, so maybe I should add her :)

[Alchemilla]

Fiction The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Non Fiction...The Periodic Table Primo Levi

[socaso]

Fiction:
Wise Children
Good Omens
A Confederacy of Dunces

Non-fiction:
Will You Miss me When I'm Gone (a history of the Carter family)
Kink by Dave Davies
Knitting without Tears (ok this is a knitting book, clearly, but Elizabeth Zimmerman's writing style is so warm and witty. I can't think of another time I've laughed out loud reading a knitting book)

[DC10]

Fiction- The Perfect Storm

Non-Fiction:  John Wesley Powell's journal of the Expedition through The Colorado River.   It must have been amazing to just stumble upon the Grand Canyon !

Great thread and recommendations. This is the only time of year I buy new books and Powell's journal is exactly the kind of book my brother would like for Christmas.

[AllieVaulter]

I love to read, so picking a favorite book is hard.  I'll go with favorite authors:  Brandon Sanderson, Jim Butcher (Dresden Files - give it at least the first 3 books, the editing gets better), Patricia Briggs (specifically the Mercy series and Alpha & Omega series), and Ilona Andrews. 

Oh, and The Giver!  I loved it when I read it in 5th grade, and I just re-read it.  It's still enjoyable.  I'm not sure how the movie's going to turn out, but you can probably read the book in just about the same amount of time as watching the movie. 

[esperto]

Fiction:
The Mistborn Trilogy (another Brandon Sanderson fan here)
www:wake trilogy by Robert J Saywer
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
A Logic Named Joe by Murry Leinster/Will F. Jenkins - A 1946 story that effectively nailed the invention of skype, napster, google, youtube, online porn, phone/address directories, recipe sharing, and other modern computing stuff decades before they happened.
Resonance by Chris Dolley
I better quit here before I get carried away.  I like a lot of books.

Non-Fiction:
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clayson
Most stuff written by Dan Ariely
Most stuff written by Michio Kaku

[Gen Y Finance Journey]

Fiction:
100 Years of Solitude
Cloud Atlas

Non-Fiction:
Outliers

[surfhb]

Fiction- The Perfect Storm

Non-Fiction:  John Wesley Powell's journal of the Expedition through The Colorado River.   It must have been amazing to just stumble upon the Grand Canyon !

Great thread and recommendations. This is the only time of year I buy new books and Powell's journal is exactly the kind of book my brother would like for Christmas.

He's actually a very good writer as well.     There's murder, mutiny and near starvation....he was also had one arm.

I spent childhood summers houseboating on Lake Powell so to hear the first written words describing Glen Canyon is interesting to say the least

[basd]

Fiction: Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett

Nonfiction: either The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson or Feet In The Clouds by Richard Askwith (covering both the history of fell running in the UK and the preparation of the author to complete the Bob Graham Round).

[tracylayton]

Fiction: Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett

Nonfiction: either The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson or Feet In The Clouds by Richard Askwith (covering both the history of fell running in the UK and the preparation of the author to complete the Bob Graham Round).

Pillars of the Earth is definitely one of the best books I've ever read!

[offbrand]

Fiction: 
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The Hunger Games series

Non-Fiction:
All Creatures Great and Small (and everything James Herriot)
The Diary of Anne Frank
Rework

[twbird18]

Fiction -
YA - Anne of Green Gables
Mystery - In Death series
Sci-Fi - Ender's Game
Paranormal Fantasy - Ill Wind or Guilty Pleasures
Fantasy - Damia's Children
Romance - Sean Donovan
General Fiction - The DaVinci Code
Classic - Pride and Prejudice

NonFiction:
Millionare Next Door
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The Case for Christ
The Making of a Chef:Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institue of America

[Dicey]

I'm a total book junkie and get all my books at the library (where I volunteer) for $1 or less. If I don't like something, I typically don't finish it. I read so many that my "favorite" book is generally something I just read. So, just I had three going at once.

"Orange is the New Black" by Piper Kerman

"Wild" by Cheryl Strayed, followed by her "Tiny Beautiful Things". The second book was a complete surprise gift. I wanted to photocopy entire sections and share them with the friends they remind me of. There is an awesome essay that speaks to anyone who's faced the devastation of losing a child and wonders how they'll ever find the strength to go on. Recommended.

Next up are "Quiet" and "Lean In".

And after that, the latest Bill Bryson, "One Summer: America, 1927". I scored an audio book and an saving it for a road trip coming up in December. Love him, love audio books read by him even more.

Haven't read much fiction lately, so no recommendations there, sorry.

[Grog]

Fiction: Disc-World series, Terry Pratchett. The night's watch books are amazing and highly entertaining, not many other books had me laughing. Maybe some smile for some funny jokes, but Pratchett's books are really highly sarcastic and satyrical.
The Dark Towers series, Stephen King

Non-fiction: Energy and Equity, a must read for every bike commuter.

[Anatidae V]

Fiction: Terry Pratchett's disc world series, his new Long Earth series with Stephen Baxter sucks me right in as well.
Also the No. 1 Ladies' detective agency series by Alexander Mc Call Smith.

Nonfiction: I read a lot of self-help styled books in the past few year, but my current favourites are Delusions of Gender, Cordelia Fine, and The Wife Drought, Annabel Crabb; and Playing Big, Tara Mohr.

[Schaefer Light]

Fiction:
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Non-fiction:
Quiet by Susan Cain
Good Bounces and Bad Lies by Ben Wright

[randommadness]

Fiction:
-Harry Potter (Still a kid at heart, I'm 23 :|)
-American Gods

Don't ever feel like you need to explain what YOU enjoy to other people =D

American Gods is an amazing book. Gaiman is great, you should check out his other stuff if you haven't.
Also going to +1 Brandon Sanderson.

For the Robert J. Sawyer - look into his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. I thought it was great and kind of makes you think about how we evolved and how it has affected our technology. (Sure it's a fantasy book but that is part of what I took out of it)


For me...
Fiction:
Shogun, (historical fiction) by James Clavell. My favorite book. With it you can follow up with Gai-Jin and Tai-Pan which are also amazing.
Battlefield: Earth (sci fi) by ole L. Ron Hubbard. Great sci fi.
The Wheel of Time series (fantasy) by Robert Jordan.

[AgileTurtle]

Fiction:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson
Blood Meridian, McCarthy
Cats Cradle, Vonnegut

Non fiction:
Market Wizards

[market timer]

Books that left an impression on me at some point.

Fiction
Lost Illusions, Balzac
Journey to the End of the Night, Celine
Glass Bead Game, Hesse
Everything by Murakami, but especially Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Confederacy of Dunces, Toole

Nonfiction
Molecular Biology of the Cell, Alberts et al.
Complexity, Waldrop
Evolution of Cooperation, Axelrod
The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played, Chernev

[hokiegb]

I loved reading a lot of books. The ones that made the most impact:

Fiction - Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham and Atlas Shrugged

Non-Fiction - I love true adventure books, Endurance, Adrift, Into Thin Air, etc. And Anabasis by Xenophon - the movie The Warriors was based (in part) on it!

[dude]

eww, feel a little biind-sided by the Ayn Rand nods (god, i hate that woman)

Fiction (in no particular order):

Infinite Jest -- David Foster Wallace
A Prayer For Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Call of the Wild -- Jack London

(somebody mentioned Shogun -- man did I love that book too!)

Non-fiction:

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

[Villanelle]

eww, feel a little biind-sided by the Ayn Rand nods (god, i hate that woman)

Fiction (in no particular order):

Infinite Jest -- David Foster Wallace
A Prayer For Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Call of the Wild -- Jack London

(somebody mentioned Shogun -- man did I love that book too!)

Non-fiction:

Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

Me too.  And I really thought that mostly only college students, with their unique mixture of cynicism, angst, and optimisim, were big Rand fans.  Apparently not the case, however!   /fellow Owen Meaney lover

[frompa]

Well, there really are too many to mention.  But I can't pass up the opportunity:
FICTION:  Into the Forest by Jean Hegland
                Great Expectations, by Dickens
                Oryx & Crake,
                Year of the Flood,
                and MaddAdda, all by Margaret Atwood (this is a fabulous trilogy, and well worth the effort of learning Atwood's dystopian world)

and probably my favorite, most-read NON-FICTION book is Walden.  I think EB White once described Thoreau as "a regular hair-shirt of a man," (funny enough in itself) but I've always found Thoreau to be deeply, deeply amusing. Sick of me, perhaps.   

[AgileTurtle]

eww, feel a little biind-sided by the Ayn Rand nods (god, i hate that woman)

I am not a big Ayn Rand fan but I dont see how so many people hate her. She is so popular to hate and I dont get why. People dont seem to hate other philosopher/authors as much.

[enigmaT120]

Fiction:  Roger Zelazney stuff.  The rest has already been mentioned. 

Non-fiction... mostly magazines:  Adventure Cycling and Bicycle Times, and Scientific American ever since I graduated from college in '87. 

[Tetsuya Hondo]

eww, feel a little biind-sided by the Ayn Rand nods (god, i hate that woman)

I am not a big Ayn Rand fan but I dont see how so many people hate her. She is so popular to hate and I dont get why. People dont seem to hate other philosopher/authors as much.

I few reasons I don't like her: 1) Her pop-philosophy is just a warmed over popularized amalgam of Neitzsche and the Great Man Theory. 2) She writes like an angry, emotionally stunted child. 3) Even as stand in's for ideas, her characters and dialogue are thin. The heros all seem to suffer from Asperger's. 4) She rails against strawmen. 5) She was a hateful woman. Many who read her books seem to see themselves as John Galt, but I think she would have truly despised many of her fans. 6) Her work all reads like a screed. While I'm all for celebrating the do-ers and self-reliance, she rides the pendulum all the way over to the other side and into absurdity.

But, surely I've read her all wrong and this ended up reading a lot more negative than I intended when I started typing. Hmm. Guess some things had been pent up. That said, I don't think her stuff is all completely bad, but, I just don't see how some can put her on such a pedestal.

Now, back to books we like. Here's a few random things that I've enjoyed off the top of my head and recommend:

• Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples - British history never made sense to me until I read it.
• Bertrand Russel's A History of Western Philosophy - The most lucid read of philosophy that I've come across (up to the late 1800's anyway).
• Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World - This should be required reading for every high school student.
• The Magic of Thinking Big - MMM's pick. It's a little hokey, dated, and at times sexist, being very much a product of the early 60s, but had it landed in my hands as a younger person, I would have been a much better person for it.
• Arabian Sands - A fascinating trip to Arabia's Empty Quarter and portrait of the people who live there.
• The Worldly Philosophers - A great overview of great economists.

[/list]

[Eric]

Arabian Sands - A fascinating trip to Arabia's Empty Quarter and portrait of the people who live there.

That sounds really interesting.  Thanks for the recommendation.

I'll add a book that's an incredible sensory journey, that's a "mostly autobiographical novel", which makes it non-fiction but I'd guess with a touch of fiction as well.
Shantaram -- by Gregory David Roberts
The author escapes from an Austrailian prison, lives in a Mumbai slum, joins the mafia, fights with the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, and lots of craziness in between.  He's an extremely vivid writer.  Don't let the nearly 1000 pages dissuade you, it's worth it.

[sheepstache]

Me too.  And I really thought that mostly only college students, with their unique mixture of cynicism, angst, and optimisim, were big Rand fans.  Apparently not the case, however!   /fellow Owen Meaney lover

Don't most people pick books they read when they were young? I think you're less likely to find a favorite book after 25 but even if you do it won't bump your first loves off the list.

[Tetsuya Hondo]

Arabian Sands - A fascinating trip to Arabia's Empty Quarter and portrait of the people who live there.

That sounds really interesting.  Thanks for the recommendation.

I'll add a book that's an incredible sensory journey, that's a "mostly autobiographical novel", which makes it non-fiction but I'd guess with a touch of fiction as well.
Shantaram -- by Gregory David Roberts
The author escapes from an Austrailian prison, lives in a Mumbai slum, joins the mafia, fights with the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, and lots of craziness in between.  He's an extremely vivid writer.  Don't let the nearly 1000 pages dissuade you, it's worth it.

I love books that leave you with a deeper sense of the people and their place, Arabian Sands certainly does that for the Bedu people of the early 20th century. I thought it was fascinating.

If you like Arabian Sands, you might enjoy another similar book by Thesiger, the Marsh Arabs. It's not the page turner, but it satisfied my desire for more in the same vein. Other good travel reads include The Road to Oxiana, The Snow Leopard, and The Places in Between (although, a bit too masochistic at times). I'm forgetting so many others.

Thank you for the recommendation, it sounds like it's right up my alley. I'm a sucker for adventure travel writing.

[Sparafusile]

Fiction:
William Gibson's books.
The Ender books.
Kurt Vonnegut's books (a fellow Hoosier).

Non Fiction:
Mostly programming books.


I also just got done reading The Martian by Andy Weir. Pretty good.

[Villanelle]

Me too.  And I really thought that mostly only college students, with their unique mixture of cynicism, angst, and optimisim, were big Rand fans.  Apparently not the case, however!   /fellow Owen Meaney lover

Don't most people pick books they read when they were young? I think you're less likely to find a favorite book after 25 but even if you do it won't bump your first loves off the list.

Of my short list that I posted here, only one, Catch-22 was read before my late 20s.  Several were well into my 30s (and I'm not yet 40).

As an 8 year old, I loved Judy Bloom.  But I no longer relate to her books, and I recognize that they aren't exactly fine fiction, so they wouldn't be on a "favorite books" list.  Same with Bridge to Terebitha, Where the Red Few Grows, and many others.   If an 8yo girl came into my library and asked for a pick, I might recommend them (though I suspect Judy might be a bit dated), but as I've grown and evolved, so has my favorites list.

I read a ton (~100 books per year, thanks in large part to not currently working) so to reach back that far to a book that I connected with when I was a different person seems unlikely.  I've reread some old favorites and while some (Vonnegut, for example) stood the test of time, others no longer spoke to me.  And so they are no longer favorites.  I'd like to think that I can honestly assess a work and decide if it truly meets my standard for a great work, or if it just spoke to me at the time because I related in some way, not because it was amazing (by my standards). 

[golden1]

Hmmmm so many to choose from. Here are a few favorites that I have read more than once:

Fiction:  The Shipping News, Like Water For Chocolate, The Stand, I Know This Much Is True
Science Fiction:  The Hyperion Cantos, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Dune
Non-Fiction:  Lies my Teacher Told Me, Guns Germs and Steel, The Devil in the White City
Memoirs: Wild, Unbroken
Classics:  1984, Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice

Recent Stuff:  The Orphan Master's Sun, Cloud Atlas, The Power of Habit, The Invisible Gorilla, 10% Happier