Well sadly I'm going to have to say that the HP series (even if taken as one book for the purposes of this list) is not even in my top 15. Sure I love the basic ideas and characters, but I wouldn't be writing or reading fanfic if it was perfect.

Like others here, I am a bibliophile so it is very hard to narrow these things down. Overall, the things I look for are characterizations (I need complex, real characters), interpersonal interaction (whether this means a whole world for fantasy or just an office space for modern fiction, I need to see who is in charge, why they're in charge, and what the others think of it), and description (engage me in the world, even when the story is focused on one person I need to know that there is other things going on in the background).

Plot, surprisingly, isn't that important now that I really think of it. I've read "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back" and had it blow my mind. Then I've read stories with a twist a minute that I dropped a third of the way through.

So anyway, I'll give my top 3 fiction novels and why.

#1 Anne Bishop - The Invisible Ring

A VERY complex world full of magic and a social power structure that is like a room full of dancers. The plot is pretty simple, focusing on a slave who is bought at auction that eventually comes to love his new mistress, a Queen. She holds his very life in her hands and he knows that if he even thinks incorrectly she will know and torture him with pain beyond imagining. Her weapon? The Invisible Ring.

Contains a good bit of sex, romance, and BDSM, but it's fluffy and not to in-your-face. Dark and Sensual. My favorite fictional character in any book appears briefly towards the end to help unravel the plot, Daemon Sadi (aka "The Sadist" son of Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, ruler of Hell).

#2 Robert A Heinlein - A Tunnel in the Sky

While not as sacrilegious or provocative as Stranger in a Strange Land or Time Enough for Love, this story is both devilishly simple and hugely complex. Interplanetary travel is possible but to leave earth you must pass a test. The test is simple, survive in the wilderness for ten days with only what you can carry. Around one hundred students leave to take this test. One month later two of them meet up and try to figure out what went wrong. They spend two and a half years collecting other survivors and trying to build a village and a new society.

The plot is simple, but the meta plot is like a philosophy of government discussion mixed with a bit of social contract theory. There are side metaplots like man's inhumanity to his fellow man and the like as well.

#3 Micheal Z Williamson - Freehold

Tells half the story of the first War against Earth. Specifically it's about a woman from Earth (a member of the UN army) who moves to The Libertarian Freehold of Grainne just before the war breaks out. It's a hard sci-fi book about war and soldiers that sneaks in a lot of Libertarian propaganda while you aren't paying attention. This propaganda isn't subliminal, it's superliminal. It doesn't try to hide itself, it jumps right down your throat "this is the right way to do things" and "you are all slaves"... But instead of being preachy and pedantic, it gives you an outsiders view into this lifestyle and idealogy through this Earthling.

An example of this soft style propaganda is a scene that happens less than 24 hours after this woman arrives on planet. A local man offers to show her around the city. They go to a park, and during the heat of the day decide to buy something to drink. She goes to one of the vendors and picks something off the menu. He asks if she is sure, she confirms her order and drinks what is basically LSD mixed into sprite. Later on she is upset and basically complains "you should have stopped me." What's the response? It basically becomes the moral of the book, "You're an adult. You made a choice and were given a chance to back out. Nobody forced you to do anything, tough shit."

A companion book The Weapon details the second half of the war from the viewpoint of a Freehold native (and member of the Freehold army) who moved to Earth just before the war. The propaganda is not nearly as subtle or polite in this book however and is a outsiders view of American "democracy" if it ruled the world. Our hero is disgusted with the "democratic" way of life and proceeds to kill several million people (his team rack up a body count in the billions world wide) in a harsh morality play about fear and terrorism. The moral of this second story is simple. "There is are millions of tools in the universe but only one weapon, the human mind."

 

I don't have one particular book that I could call my favourite, so...
My favourite Fantasy books have to be Terry Pratchetts Discworld series, Particularly the Watch books.
Horror has to go to Ann Rice, including the non- Vampire Chronicles books, like Servant of the Bones.
My favourite classic book is Wuthering Heights, although I did enjoy reading Confessions of an Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey too.

 

Mine at the moment is probably The Historian (to you perceptive reader, I bequeath my history) by Elizabeth Kostova.

It's an interesting take on Dracula/Vlad the Impaler.

About a hundred times better than the Da Vinci Code

 

Ahhh yes, The Historian was a good book, unfortunatly due to RL problems I never got to finish it

 

Any of the Warcraft novels. Warcraft lore is absolutely amazing to read.

 

"Atlas Shrugged" by Anne Rand.

It hold the place in my heart as the first "adult" book I read. At the tender age of 11, it was just the thing for the pre teen age angst. I have read a few more times, and I think she would be ripped apart here on DLP, if she did a harry potter fan fic. So it goes.

 

David Brin's Uplift Trilogy (Ok, so there are 3 more books set in the same universe that are actually a trilogy and not set hundreds of years apart and connected only loosely, but I've not read those so I don't know how good they are. Need to get around to that .).

 

2Manatheron
BTW the Hebrew version is much better the the translated versions....

Abybody could find a link to a online Chlidren of Hurin?

 

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

 

Isn't that what I said?

Oh, and No, I couldn't find one that's HTML based. Try a PtP program like Ares, or else check the newsgroups.

 

I can't really decisively pick one book, so it's a toss up between the first two of the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake, 1984 by Orwell and Shadowdance by Angela Carter. 1984 needs no explanation; Gormenghast is one of the most dense, intricatly constructed books I've read, and Carter just pushes Shadowdance into this intense destructive spiral that draws you in even though it's weird and disconnected in places.

 

Hmm, there are a few series I like..

The Quickening by Fiona McIntosh, a very interesting trilogy. Starts with Myrren's Gift.

Another is the Second Sons Trilogy by Jennifer Fallon.

Both of these authors have written more series each, but these are my favourite.

 

It's hard to choose between 1984 by George Orwell, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, or Dante's Inferno. All great books, or as I call Dante's Inferno, a huge ass piece of literature.

 

Might I recommend the Uplift Series by David Brin?

 

mmm.. Probably The Hobbit by Tolkien, Midsummer Nights Dream by Shakespeare and a brasilian book called: Capitães da Areia by Jorge Amado.. If any of you guys have any interesting in south american romantism, this book is very good.. maybe you should try it out..

 

I'll be reading all those recomended books 'till x-mas at this rate...

On the topic, books I've read and recommend:

by Alistair MacLean

The Guns of Navarone
Goodbye California
Where Eagles Dare
Force 10 From Navarone
Fear is the Key (my favourite)
or anything else if you enjoy thrillers

by Robert Ludlum:

The Scarlatti Inheritance
The Osterman Weekend (I'd say it's more humor than action)
The Holcroft Covenant
The Matarese Circle
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Matarese Countdown
or anything else...

and one of my favourities, MtG novels (in plot's chronological order)
[hard to get outside of US, most of them can be found via p2p]

The Thran by J. Robert King
The Brothers' War by Jeff Grubb
Planeswalker by Lynn Abbey
Time Streams by J. Robert King
Bloodlines by Loren L. Coleman
Rath and Storm edited by Peter Archer
Mercadian Masques by Francis Lebaron
Nemesis by Paul B. Thompson
Prophecy by Vance Moore
Invasion by J. Robert King
Planeshift by J. Robert King
Apocalypse by J. Robert King

enjoy

 

Dresden Files, hands down better then Potter