Favourite book/author

[AlexS]

Pretty well anything, except anything by JRR Tolkein. Especially like anything by Douglas Addams. All time favourite is "Such is Life" by Joseph Furphy - written 100 years ago but most of the characters are still living down the NSW riverina.

[Ben from Vic.]

I can't read.

[vsquizz]

Patrick Robinson; Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, Seawolf etc

Bryce Courtney; all of them, but read Smokey Joe's Cafe 3 times.
Gerald Seymour; Holding the Zero, Traitors Kiss
Judy Nunn; Best one was Territory
Jolife's Outback
Garfield
The Drinking Man's Survival Guide by Nicholas Read
Gone Troppo by Nino Culotta (John O'Grady), have to read it every couple of years
My Wicked Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn
Grants Guide to Fishes
A Vision Splendid the complete works of BP
The adventures of the Muddle Headed Wombat by Ruth Park

[jshaw]

Silent,

If you like Iain Banks in his Complicity/Crow Road mould I'd be surprised if Christopher Brookmyre wasn't up your street too. I've liked all of his so far, especially the Jack Parlabane ones. John McCabe is also good for a daft romp with Banks-like over-tones. Try "Paper" if you see it somewhere.

Apart from Iain Banks (though not with the M) I like Ian Rankin for a good whodunnit and Andrew Grieg for something more meaty. His reworking of John Buchan's "John Macnab" ("The Return of John Macnab") was great, though not as dark as "When They Lay Bare". Irvine Welsh is always worth a read except when he gets too up himself in his short stories. Have you read "Porno" (the sequel to "Trainspotting") yet? Absolute laugh!

Being fairly new to these shores I'm still finding my way round the local authors. Just found Shane Maloney, love John Birmingham, open to suggestions from those with more local knowledge than me.

Cheers,
John

[namtrak]

In no particular order and for no particular reason - ( I used to be a big SF fan but over the last 10 years or so have moved onto other pastures - so prior to this list pencil in Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, Diceman, Foundation, LOTR ya da ya da .....)

Cloudstreet : Tim Winton
Grapes of Wrath : John Steinbeck
Unbeliever series : Stephen Donaldson
Corellis Mandolin : Whats his name
Rustle in the Grass : Whats his name
The Fatal Shore : Robert Hughes
Going the Tonk : Warick Todd
Patio : Jamie Durie

Any renovation, gardening, woodworking book, magazine, show ever written...

[Honest Gaza]

Patrick Robinson; Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, Seawolf etc

Good Books.

+ John Grisham novels...although each story can be similar

[Alastair]

Very eclectic tastes

Mainly Sf/Fantasy. Include Asimov;Heinlein;Arthur C Clarke;Poul Anderson;Ann Maccaffery,the Dune books;Tolkein;Steven Donaldson; David Eddings;the Hitch Hiker books;Wilson Tucker; etc, etc.

To make it worse, my daughter is a voracious reader, with a similar bent, and as fast as I sell her on my favourites, she is hooking me on new ones.

General fiction: Steinbeck; Ayn Rand; Shute; Alistair MaClean; Seb Faulkes; Jody Picoult; Bryce Courtenay; Geoffrey Jenkins; Wilbur Smith; Hammond Innes; and on and on

Non Fiction : Woodworking and woodturning (DUH)

Alastair

[Dan]

Robert G Barrett.

Go team Norton!

http://www.harpercollins.com.au/robertgbarrett/

[simon c]

It seems almost a cliche now, but my favourite book of all time is Lord of the Rings. The movie gave me a real dilema as on the one hand it was a brilliant rendition of the book but on the other hand I knew it would ean me having to convince people that it really has always been my facourite book since I struggled to read it as a 13 yr old. Before the movie I probably read it every 5 years.

Favourite authors: Iain Banks, Pratchett, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Nick Hornby

Good books: Last Orders by Graham Swift, With Nails by Richard E Grant

I like to read old classics to see why they are so well thought of: I read the Phillip Marlow books by Raymond Chandler and they were very good if you like crime and stories of post-depression America. To Kill a Mocking Bird rates very high on my all time list.

I'm also a big fan of popular science: A brief history of time started it for me, others are Longitude, the Code Book, Fermat's Last Theorem

Simon

[hilltopper34w]

Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, James Michener, Wallace Stegner
About once a year, I read Nevil Shute. So far, I have read
BEYOND THE BLACK STUMP
PASTORAL
BREAKING WAVE
TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOL ROOM (my favorite)
A TOWN LIKE ALICE
I am currently reading THE FAR COUNTRY
I enjoy narratives, travel ( TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT & THE QUIET AMERICAN both by Graham Greene ) mysteries & true adventure ( Sir Richard Burton's accounts of his travels in the middle & far east & Brazil )
Just about anything on woodworking & shopbuilt jigs and methods.

Good reading to ya
Spence

[Daddles]

Anything dark or horror based.
Clive Barker, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Grahme Masterton, Richard Matheson, and on and on and on.
The best of the lot is King - his work can be patchy but that's because he is so prolific and at his best, he's the master.

Crime also, lots of crime.

And the stuff that used to be calle 'ripping yarns' but which has no vanished under the weight of political correctness and this stupid desire that things be 'real' (yeah, like fantasy is real). I've nearly every one of J E Macdonnell's yarns about the Aussie Navy.

Richard

[Gingermick]

The best writer of this age is Salman Rushdie.(Midnights Children, The Satanic Verses, et al) I also like Gabriel Garcia Marquez.(One hundred years of solitude, love in the time of cholera)
Norman Mailer and some older stuff, Kafka, Beckett.

[womble]

Fantasy such as JRR Tolkein with lord of the rings, silmarillion & hobbit, Raymond E Feists Magician series, and the Dragonlance series as well.

History books, particularly military/aviation.

Tom Clancy isnt bad either although his latest stuff is a bit out there...

But Tolkien is 'the' favourite at the moment

[julianx]

It depends on my state of mind, I've been reading a lot of my kids books lately (wonder what that says about my state of mind) . I borrowed a book called northern lights by philip pullman off my daughter recently and couldn't put it down till I had finished it and the other two books in the series.

mostly though I like humor the blacker the better anything that holds up a mirror to humanity and lets my laugh myself silly at it. names that spring to mind are Ben Elton, Spike Milligan, Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert A Wilson and William S Burrows.

books that have really impressed me

shrodingers cat trilogy Robert A Wilson
the adventures of huckleberry finn
Hard Times Charles Dickens
last chance to see douglas adams
Yertle the Turtle Dr Zuess

Can't stand bryce courtney

[Gingermick]

William S Burrows.

I would never have picked Burrows for someone who would die by any means other than drugs. Came as a shock to learn that he'd done a Hemingway at 60 or so.