Postby Davidizer13 » Sat Jul 18, 2009 9:45 pm
The Giver by Lois Lowry.
It gave me my taste for dystopian fiction.
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
All of 'em, but especially The Bells, The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher and Hop-Frog. Man, that guy had some real issues, didn't he?
Animal Farm by George Orwell
You can read it on the surface: as a story about an animal society descending into barbarism, or you can read it as an allegory for the Soviet Union. Either way, it's a short, entertaining, thought-provoking read.
The Mortal Engines Quartet by Phillip Reeve (Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices, A Darkling Plain)
OK, so it's in the far future, and it's about cities on wheels that hunt eat each other. As in, chase each other down, take bites out of, and swallow each other.
...Still with me? Good. Obviously, it becomes more complex than that, as it follows the adventures of a young historian from London. He falls out of London with a would-be female assassin, and it takes off from there. The series has a great start in Mortal Engines, takes it slow through Predator's Gold, shows its lighter side in Infernal Devices, but steadily ramps it up to its devastating conclusion throughout A Darkling Plain.
The first and last are the best of the series, but you should definitely read them all; it's the only way you'll understand it all.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
A genius kid is enrolled in a battle school, where he's trained to fight a war against an oncoming alien race, by fighting with his other students. Also an excellent read, but skip the other three in the series (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind). They get steadily worse as time goes on (I slogged through Xenocide, then couldn't bring myself to get more than 50 pages into Children of the Mind), though your mileage may vary. Instead, once you're done, check out Ender's Shadow, a much better book than the other three.
Well, that's about all for my favorites. I'll probably post some others when I think of them.
We are loved even though we suck.
Psalms 37:37 (NHEB)
Mark the perfect man, and see the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace.