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Request - Book Recommendations
Request - Book Recommendations
#1
I recently acquired a Kindle and am now looking to expand my book collection some.

Being a fan of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I was wondering if any of the illustrious people here would have any recommendations for me.
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#2
(most of these links go to amazon, cause you specifically mentioned a kindle)
These are just what I can remember, as I am currently on the other coast from all the books I grew up reading.
Dresden Files (link to first book, it's been discussed here before)
The Kingkiller Chronicle (only 2 out of 3 have been published, in the case you don't want start an incomplete series)
American Gods and Good Omens
Warlord of Mars (link to gutenberg.org, it's FREE!)
Snow Crash
Darwins Radio

and in the young adult vein (I consider them print-candy):
Percy Jackson
The Stepsister Scheme
The Young Wizard Series

(I have specifically not mentioned any Anne Mccaffrey or Mercedes Lackey, as the filter of nostalgia has rendered me unable to say if they are actually good or not. Just that I liked them as a teenager)

and we also have this thread
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
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#3
Dark Tower (all 7) if you haven't read them yet :3
There is no coincidence, only necessity....
- Clow Reed
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#4
I'd be more clear on my response if I knew what kind of books you liked.
Chalion and Vorkosigan series by L McMaster Bujold.
The Mageworlds trilogy. (The sequels and prequels are pretty missable, though.)
Island in the Sea of Time.
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More superheroic than fantasy
#5
How to Succeed in Evil
http://www.amazon.com/How...id=1337205535&sr=8-1
Consultation with a vampire
http://www.amazon.com/Con...UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
$4.00 for the pair and you will have a great time with them.  Check out the free audiobook versions too.  http://www.patrickemclean.com/

Black Jack Justice (Noir/comedy - also get the radio shows)
http://www.amazon.com/Bla...id=1337205613&sr=1-1
Tales of the Red Panda (3 books - also get the radio shows!)
http://www.amazon.com/Tal...UTF8&m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC
www.decoderringtheatre.com
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#6
All of the Baen Free Library can be downloaded in Kindle-compatible .mobi format.

Steve Miller & Sharon Lee's 'Liaden' space opera stories are some of the best out there, available from Baen. The Kindle store also has their short-story chapbooks for a couple of dollars each, and they are well worth picking up. (Note that if you get the full bundle from Baen, it includes the compiled edition of the first dozen or so of these chapbooks, so double-check before you buy.)
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#7
If you can get Black Library's stuff, out of all the 40K books I won (the fantasy stuff was always to grim/dark for my liking) I suggest the Ciaphas Cain series by Sandy Mitchell.

Think of it as a bit like Black Adder, if he was an Imperial Commissar (hell, he even sort of has a Baldrick Tongue )


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#8
The Way of Kings
It is the first book in The Stormlight Archive, which is expected to run ten books (only one out so far).  It is by Brandon Sanderson, the guy that was tapped to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  Epic fantasy. 
Also, take a look at his Mistborn series, if you haven't already.  Its a sort of post-apocalyptic urban wuxia fantasy, is the the best way I can think to describe it without spoilers. 
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.
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#9
Let's see, to help people have a better
idea of my tastes. Of those mentioned here:

Dresden Files: Have been reading them
as they come out and loved them. They aren't perfect but they are a
fun read.

Young Wizard I took a look at a while
back and it seemed aimed to a much younger crowd than me. (*is 28*)

Baen free library, I read several Honor
Harrington books and quite liked them though I eventually grew tired
of the series, are there any other books in that that would be
recommended Norway?

Ciaphas Cain series: Loooooooved them,
have the whole series up to date from a while back when I bought them
all.

Apart from those, though, I'll
definitely look into the other recommendations and I'll probably grab
the Baen free library in its entirety if it's doable in a reasonable
manner.

I'm really happy about the reaction
this got, thank you very much everyone.

-Edit- DANGIT. Good Omens is not available in electronic form in canada which is a great shame because damned if Pratchett and Gaiman doesn't sound like a really fun combination.
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#10
Good bits on the Baen Free Library:

1632 and its sequel, 1633. Eric Flint and David Weber dump a West Virginia mining town, ca 2000 AD, into the middle of Germany at the height of the 30 Years' War. Highly acclaimed historical AU. Ring of Fire and volume 1 of the Grantville Gazette, both short-story collections, are also here.

Oath of Swords, by David Weber, is the single best Paladin story I've ever seen. Bazhell Banakhson is a Barbarian Prince who's stuck in a bad situation when the God of War descends and asks him to become a Champion. Yeah, you can guess where he tells Him to stick the offer. Smile At least one of its sequels (The War God's Own) is also available here.

An Oblique Approach, In The Heart of Darkness, Destiny's Shield, and Fortune's Stroke are 2/3rds of the 'Belisarius' series by David Drake and Eric Flint. Warring factions from the Far Future have sent back technical advisors to the 5th century AD. One is backing an empire of terror in India... the other is building a bastion of freedom in Imperial Rome.

A Desert Called Peace is the first volume of Tom Kratman's Not-Really-911-Revenge-Porn series. VERY YMMV due to blatant political preaching, but well-written.

If you don't like conservative/libertarian political preaching, avoid Freehold, too. If you can handle that, though, it's good.

Retief! is the story of a diplomatic functionary in a rather imperialistic future. It's caper stories as much as anything else, and frequently hilarious. Highly recommended.

The Excalibur Alternative is a sequel to David Drake's "Ranks of Bronze", with a group of medieval warriors kidnapped by aliens to serve as enforcers on primitive planets so they don't violate their version of the Prime Directive.

The Shadow of the Lion - Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, and Dave Freer. First of a series of Magical History AU, with the basic premise that the Library of Alexandria was never destroyed and the knowledge of magic never lost. In medieval Venice, political intrigue is rife... (Readers of C J Cherryh's "Merovingian Nights" shared-world series will note that Lackey has reused several plot points from her contributions there.)

March Upcountry, March to the Sea -- first two of four in Ringo and Weber's coming-of-age tale, with the bratty, spoiled Prince Roger and his bodyguards marooned on a primitive planet.

The Wizardry Compiled - What happens when you let a computer programmer loose in a world where magic works? Well, first, he gets into a whole lot of trouble. Then he gets to work...

Earthweb - Earth is threatened by Berserker-like monsters. Defense planning takes the idea of cloud-sourcing to its ultimate conclusion.

Starliner is a David Drake classic, with the troubled staff of an intersteller cruise liner dealing with crisis after crisis and trying to protect and please their passengers.

Inherit The Stars is possibly one of the best. A classic from the 70's, it tells the tale of a genuine scientific investigation, with strong character-based action. Explorers on the Moon have found a human corpse in a spacesuit... that has been carbon-dated to 50,000 years ago!

Mutineer's Moon by David Weber starts with an astronaut testing a new sensor with a flyby of the far side of the moon... only to be caught up in an intersteller mutiny that started 50,000 years ago.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#11
First of all, yes, Good Omens is a great read. 8)
expanding on one of ECS's suggestions:
Mutineer's Moon is the first of a trilogy, the whole trilogy has been compiled as an omnibus under the title 'Empire from the Ashes'.
'With the Lightnings', first book in David Drakes's RCN space opera series
since you like Dresden Files, these may appeal to you:
Monster Hunter International (Larry Correia)
Black Blade Blues (J. A. Pitts)
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin
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#12
http://www.amazon.com/Tau-Zero-ebook/dp ... 880&sr=8-1]Tau Zero, by Poul Anderson. Classic hard sci-fi from the early '70s.

Capsule summary: a colonist ship leaves Earth for the distant star Beta Virginis. Due to time dilation the trip will take 30 years real time, but only 5 years ship-board time. However, an accident renders the ship unable to decelerate and she and her crew are doomed to continually accelerate, inching closer and closer to but never quite reaching light speed.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head for e-available sci-fi. Or fantasy. If I think of others I'll add them.
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#13
The Baen free library also has some of the Vorkosigan series, but there's more on Baencd.
It also has Doc Sidhe and The Federation of the Hub (Telzey stories).
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#14
The Telzey stories are very dated -- they're basically late Golden Age, or a good simulation thereof -- but are still a fun read. Schmidt's an enjoyable writer; look for his "Witches of Karres" stories if you can (I have no idea if they're available for the Kindle, though).
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#15
Bob Schroeck Wrote:The Telzey stories are very dated -- they're basically late Golden Age, or a good simulation thereof -- but are still a fun read. Schmidt's an enjoyable writer; look for his "Witches of Karres" stories if you can (I have no idea if they're available for the Kindle, though).
Baen republished them, IIRC, so they should be available there. Collection would be priced $4-6 if it isn't in the free library.
If you like the kind of stuff Baen purchases you will love their webscriptions. Every book they release is available, either in monthly bundles at a discount, or for $4-6 per book bought individually. DRM-free.
And, yes, a LOT, including several complete series, are available on the baencd site, free and legal.
If you're a fan of Mercedes Lackey, they've been re-releasing her 'Serrated Edge' urban fantasy elves-in-racecars series.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#16
I just got a PlayBook... How many of these are available for Kobo?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
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#17
The Baen ebooks should all be available in epub format which the Kobo handles quite nicely.  And if you can't find something in a supported format, Calibre can be used to convert between most of the ebook file formats.
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#18
Project Gutenberg also has CD/DVDs out (one just for SF.)  You can convert any of these eBooks to your Kindle, as Firvulag said, using Calibre if they are not in a format you can use.
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#19
I'll also recommend a utility, http://www.flagfic.com -- this will let you convert FFNet, TTHFanfic, and several other sites, into epub, mobi, or a couple of other formats, suitable for reading on your mobile device. It works very well and can grab all chapters of a fic in a single go.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#20
On that topic, let me recommend http://fanfictiondownloader.net/]The Fanfiction Downloader, which will download directly into any of 14 different formats (including MOBI, EPUB, PDF, RTF and TXT) from all of these sites:

FanFiction.Net
FanFicAuthors.Net
The Wonderful World of Makebelieve (%[link=http://www.squidge.org/~peja]http://www.squidge.org/~peja])
Mugglenet.com
AdultFanFiction.net
FictionPress.com
MediaMiner.org
ficwad.com
twilighted.net
archiveofourown.org
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
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#21
The fun part with FlagFic is that I have a bookmarklet in Safari on my iPad that lets me browse to a 'fic, click a button, and it automatically converts and downloads it to iBooks. Smile Been building up a good-sized library that way.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#22
Mmm, I tend to read fanfiction the boring way, mainly because I have a massive collection of bookmarks and so get a regular influx of new chapters to read. I've been gradually grabbing everything that was recommended otherwise though and managed to get my hands on Good Omens.
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#23
Since you are here and reading about a super-hero(Doug), Wearing the Cape by Marion G. Harmon and Death to the Centurion by Mike Misercola.

I have all the Nick Pollota books on my Nook: That Darn Squid God, Full Moonster, Damned Nation, and so on.

This site also has a lot of stuff set up for both the epub and mobi formats: http://www.baka-tsuki.org...ndex.php?title=Main_Page

Definitley needed if you want to know what really went on in ZnT.

I can't help you with a Kindle that much, since I chose the Nook(slot for a memory card and I can drive up to Barnes & Noble if the battery goes bad).
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor
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#24
Redshirts. By Scalzi. You should go get, and read this now.
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#25
Well, I just found a new one for you to read

'Confessions of a D-List Supervillian'

I wonder what Doug would make of Calvin 'Mechani-Cal' Stringal and the way his life was screwed up by Lazurus 'Ultraweapon' Patterson.
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor
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