The Lord of the Rings

I can’t resist an invocation:) Most of these are old since I’ve been reading more articles these days but here are a few good books or series I’ve read more than twice: The Hobbit, LOTR, the Silmarillion, Neuromancer, the Chronicles of Narnia, Hong Lou Meng, The Heart Sutra, The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao De Ching, The Wheel of Time series, No country for old men, Persuasion, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, The Way of Kings, The Talisman, the Dark Tower Series, and The Prophet.

And yes: Tolkien, Dune, Pratchett, Douglas Adams, Asimov/Foundation, McCaffrey/Pern, Janny Wurts, Raymond E Feist, and more recently Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, and Melissa McPhail (who sadly passed away, with the Pattern of Shadow and Light incomplete).

J.R.R. Tolkien: The lord of the Rings (lost count) Philip K. Dick: Ubik, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly, etc. too many to count (many more than twice) William Gibson: everything at least twice Neal Stephenson: Snow crash (three times, I think) Clifford D. Simak: City H. P. Lovecraft: everything at least twice. There is a French compilation of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Silver Key, and Through the Gates of the Silver Key that I've read countless times. I've used two editions and I'm at my third. Maurice G. Dantec: Babylon Babies (three times) Possibly many others.

Mary Renault. Fire From Heaven. I think she was ahead of the curve in recognizing that Alexander had monstrous qualities at a time when he was still seen as a kind of superhero. Tolkein. The Silmarillion. I’ve bounced off this book a dozen times over decades, despite deeply enjoying The Hobbit and LoTR. This time I discovered that the best way to read it is backwards, tracing connections to characters you already know. Stephenson. Anathem. I think I’ll skip the end next time. The first time I read it, I was confused; this time I understood exactly what was happening but I thought it was a bit pointless. Still worth it for the first 3/4 of the novel. Lots of short stories. I was expecting to like Mark Twain better, but ours is a much more earnest era, and no match for his Gilded Age cynicism. What passes for cynicism today is Twain in his sunniest mood. At any rate, I appreciate Twain, but I enjoy EM Forster, Henry James, JG Ballard, William Gibson, and lots of others I’m forgetting at the moment.

harry potter lord of the rings dune game of thrones berserk vinland saga robinson curso : happy reading time!!!

If you never listened before, can I recommend (to both of you) the lovely BBC radio dramatization of it? The cast is excellent and it plays out over multiple hours so they didn't have to chop it about too much. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(1981_... (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_%281981_radio_series%29)

Great recommendation, thanks! Unfortunately for me, they’re probably my favorite books of all time. :) Cheers!

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings both stand alone as unparalleled fantasy novels. Buy a version with no foreword or footnotes and just, immerse yourself.

I finally read Lord of the Rings this year, in my mid-thirties. Enjoyed it a lot. Recommend it if you haven't read it.

I like to read a wide variety of genre from fiction to human psychology. For the mind: Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg - A great book on how to communcate more effectively with others. Thinking fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman -He is the only psychologist ever to recieve the Nobel Prize if I remember correctly. This book scientifically digests human biases and errors and how they influence our every day lives and decision making. Sometimes it a bit too technical for my taste and I like mostly the first part. (its not an easy read) I rarely had so many Aha-moments. A random walk down on wall street - For investing your income in stocks. What to do and what no to do. Simple, with facts. Sapiens by Harari -Interesting, I remember it was a great read and fun read. Connecting a lot of dots :) On programming: Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann - I am failry a junior web dev, so any material that is clear and explains well is a great source of information and inspiration. This is such a book.…

I just reread LotR, and concur. Better than I remember and makes me sad about the movies anew. But I’m a romantic sucker.

Lord of the Rings. I re-read LotR, one volume a day, every day in 5th grade. Speed reading practice. Have re-read it several times since then, it still holds up.

A good chance reflect. There are several: - A Conferedancy of Dunces, Peter O'Toole: tragic, hilarious and absurd - Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb: this was my first exposure to a lot of biases and other interesting phenomena - The Design of Everything Things: eye-opener! Harry Potter, Tolkien, Dune and a lot of other sci-fi has also affected me, although I find it hard to point out one in particular. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein stands out a bit.

A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle I probably read it in fourth or fifth grade, not too many years after it was published. It was definitely the first science fiction novel I ever read. It wasn't until many years later that I saw how foundational to my worldview it was that my first SF book had a female protagonist. I was going to give a few other examples of truly life-changing works (LOTR, Dune, Neuromancer), but I'm not sure how I would have found them if A Wrinkle In Time hadn't opened by pre-adolescent eyes.

I've gone through phases where I'm more or less organized. Since the start of COVID and not needing to commute, I found myself with time to exercise for the first time in many years. In order to use that time efficiently and avoid injuries that would inevitably come from someone in his late 30's pretending he's in his early 20's, I read a bunch of books around running, biking, strength training and nutrition over the summer. I try to make myself read some fiction, but I don't feel compelled too often enough, so it doesn't happen much. I end up re-reading Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia every 2-3 years. I've been listening to a few Audible books lately about Roman History. A finished a biography of Caesar and a book offering (yet another) set of theories on the fall of the Roman Empire. I'm currently listening to a book about Cicero's life. For sorta-related-to-work I have a few really niche books I'm reading on Telecom OSS/BSS, network planning and telecom regulation.…

1. New Testament (I was not raised in a religious household) 2. The Imitation of Christ 3. The Lord of the Rings 4. The Iliad

Over christmas break? Lord of the Rings. More than enough wisdom packed in there to last a lifetime.

The book I've reread the most is The Odyssey. For a long time, I've read it once every year. Another book I've read many times is Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. I've read Asimov's cycle of Foundation many times. Don't know how many, actually. I've also read several times some philosophy classics, particularly Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, Apology and Republic. Then there are many books that I've read at least twice, almost all considered classics (from 1984 to LoTR, Great expectations to Tom Sawyer, Crime and punishment to Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, etc).

- Sapiens - The Lord of the Rings - Siddhartha - Chaos: Making a New Science - The Death Gate cycle books - Neuromancer - Head First Design Patterns - Valis - Dune - The name of the rose I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - 3 or 4, including very recently. The latest time I appreciated his background as a writer and the stories behind the story much more. They’re worth a reread as adults. On the business side I read Deming’s Out of the Crisis several times. The ideas are profound but the writing is mediocre so it took a few times for it to stick.

I went through what I suspect is a common experience in that I had The Hobbit read to me at school at about 8, then read LOTR to get more hobbits. Even though the vocabulary was far too difficult for me, the experience of getting through a 1000 page book at that age, gave a massive boost to my reading and writing ability.

Agreed. No specific book has every "changed my life", or specifically been the source of positive impacts. But reading stories is fun, and something I do constantly. Currently I'm re-reading Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. Every year or two I re-read Dune, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Amber, and Steven Brust's Taltos series. Always a pleasure. My recommendations would probably echo those already posted, with the addition of small random stories that I remember fondly because they were just fun, interesting, or surprising (e.g. H. G. Wells: The Door in the Wall, or the original Mary Poppins books recently completed after finishing the Dresden Files for the first time.)

see my nick, but in addition to stephenson, the books i come back to over and over again for comfort and wisdom include: - Lord of the Rings: The other bible. Not even the very wise can see all ends; be of good cheer. - A Wrinkle In Time: 9 year old me, there is such a thing as a tesseract, and there is also Mrs. Beast. - The Master and Margarita: apocalyptic reading from someone who knew, and a cat who always pays his way. - the Discworld series: Sir Terry knew our hearts better than most, and sin, young feller, is treatin’ people as things. - If On A Winter’s Night, A Traveler: a perfect joke that you can tell once, plus a love story. - Good Omens: Gaiman and Pratchett team up, what’s not to love? - Moby Dick: And so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content. - Lucky Jim: grad school, a survival guide. Come in on the fa la la las, there’s a good chap. This doesn’t include poetry, which is also in my head constantly.

Dune and Lord of the Rings. Both have such detail to their worlds that is rarely done well in other works. On top of the world building, I enjoyed the internal struggles that both Paul and Frodo had to go through to become better people and achieve their goals

Ofer Gal - Baroque Science. A highly academic history of the scientific revolution, not the most readable book. It focused quite a bit on mathematization, especially in optics (and Kepler's optics revolution in particular), and also in observation via instrumentation like telescopes and microscopes. Paul Nahin - The Logician and the Engineer. About Boole and Shannon's work; I had already learned the material so i skimmed part of it and returned it to the library. Ian Mortimer - The time traveler's guide to medieval england. Talks about what daily life was like for different social classes in 14th century England eg towns & cities, food, clothes, housing, employment, travel etc. I got about halfway through and lost interest in the subject matter.…

Fully agreed with that. Along with LOTR are the series that I did read most times. The first book can also be seen as an antology of short stories, each one superb, but the total is far more than the sum of the parts.

CS Lewis for me (his non fiction stuff) and Tolkien (LOTR).

The Bible, Hobbit, LOTR series, Narnia, Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Papa Hemingway, these are all books that I’ve had to buy multiple times because they fall apart over the years. Never realized until just now how many comfort books I have...

I liked Name of the Wind because it's a perfect counterpoint to Lord of The Rings, in a way. LOTR reads like a classical history book, sometimes literally. Everything is true, everything is tied together. The narrator disappears for omniscience. Name of the Wind is an obvious post-modern slant with an unreliable narrator. The story Kvothe himself tells obviously makes him seem like a superhero and Rothfuss manages to (whether intentional or not) tell a story about a story that doesn't all add up. I can't say it's my favorite book. But, reading it against LOTR was fascinating.

The correct answer really depends on what you're into, and what kind of person you are. There are a lot of subcategories in fiction (just like there are in non-fiction). Lord of the Rings is much more than mere fiction. It is possibly interesting from a linguistic PoV as it contains an entirely new language called Quenya developed by Tolkien. It also contains a lot of subjects which are relevant IRL. Without getting further into LOTR I agreed with another poster on Dune and attempted to explain the subjects it touches in another reply to your post. Problem with both of these (as well as say GoT) is there are movies made of them. You might also be interested in stories which are based on non-fiction, but are written in a story telling kind of way, greatly adding to suspense. In that category I read the books Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick and Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen [1]. If you're interested in following a suspenseful hacker story I can recommend them both. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13240924

Well, "fiction" is an incredibly broad category (if it can even be called that). And "must read" is highly subjective ;-) If you're just looking for some light entertainment, go for sci-fi or fantasy (Lord of the Rings, anyone?). But if you don't mind some slightly "heavier" reading, have a look at the classics. In some cases they can be a little tricky to understand, but they are called "classics" for a reason... Specific suggestions (incomplete and in no particular order): Shakespeare's plays, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", Harper Lee's "To kill a mockingbird", JM Barrie's "Peter Pan", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories...

A Song of Fire and Ice Zennis Wheel of Time Quiet Lord of the Rings Irrational Exuberance

I've read, at the behest of my spouse, The Hobbit and the trilogy of the Lord of the Rings. As someone who was never really "into" the whole world Tolkien had created, I must say I was won over by the end. Who wouldn't want to be a hobbit? At least, a hobbit who is not Frodo. Every year or two I give a light reading to Andy Hertzfeld's compilation "Revolution in the Valley", which is a print edition of many (and probably some extras) of the stories available on www.folklore.org I am also midway through "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (Robert M. Pirsig) and I must recommend it. It's got a lot of philosophy in it that I think is both accessible and transcendent all at once. It's actively changing my world view. In terms of skills acquired, I don't typically read for that purpose. I learn skills primarily by active work, not passive ingestion of information.

http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is Some good stuff there indeed. The Game, Predictably Irrational, The Mating Mind, and Lord of the Rings stand out to me as excellent suggestions. I'm just now starting book 12 of Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and while I've enjoyed it so far, I'm not sure I'd cite it as "thought provoking". Entertaining, yes, and certainly worth reading, but the series doesn't stand out to me in that way.

I can't choose one, but I'd cite: * Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind, for explaining so much personally and culturally so concisely. * Everything on this list: http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-th... (http://jakeseliger.com/2010/03/22/influential-books-on-me-that-is). * The Lord of the Rings, for its combination of story, interior drama, and (underrated) political economy. * Blindsight by Peter Watts. * Heart of Darkness by Conrad, who seems more prophetic all the time.

Last week I finished re-reading LOTR. It was awesome. Besides that, I am currently reading Scala in Depth (Suereth) and re-reading Refactoring (Fowler).

I would pick Dune, Lord of the rings, and anything by Zelazny and Steven Brust as my two followups.

* Anything by Cortázar. * Trainspotting, * Fight Club * Anything by Carl Sagan, specially Contact * Lord of the Rings * The Hobbit * And finally: Anything by Michael Ende: The Neverending Story, Momo (one of my faves).

Since you're going with "classics" I'd add: * Les Liaisons dangereuses * The Count of Monte Cristo Plus my personal picks; Taltos the assassin, Chronicles of Amber, Dune & LoTR.

There's plenty of nerds here so I'm sure I won't be the last to nominate Lord of the Rings and Dune.

My favorite book as a kid was Lord of the Rings, so I'll recommend that. Also H2G2.

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

I would Second ANYTHING by Hesse, not got round to a thorough read of Siddhartha yet, but Damien is most excellent and The Glass Bead Games is a revelation for anyone who feels there is something just a little bit ill with the mind and motion of our modern age. Oh, and something along the lines of The Neverending Story (The Silmarillion/LotR), because it's something to lose yourself in with kids and doesn't even have to be read.

EDIT3: If we're going to go with fiction, this looks like a good list to pick from: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_... (http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/6.Best_Books_of_the_20th_Century) Personally, I've read almost none of these! 1) How can you have read none of these? Get started already! And don't wait for others to tell you which books to read! 2) That list is very suspect... I don't know how they compiled it, but it's a bit strange that it does contain some good books but then simultaneously allocates several positions to enjoyable but trashy books such as Harry Potter. Also gives several position to LotR (one is warranted, no more!), including one for the Silmarillion (wtf? I enjoyed it, but "best book of the 20th century"? no way!) Memoirs of a Geisha is also nice but hardly a thought leader. And it seems to be completely missing immortal masterpieces such as Narziss & Goldmund (Herman Hesse), Joseph and his Brothers (Thomas Mann), The Trial (Kafka), and many others. An "OK" starting point, but not even the shadow of a definitive list.

"Lord of the Rings" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", because seriously... you need to read something fun every once in a while.

V. by Thomas Pynchon The Life of Pi by Yann Martel the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (Not a book per se, but very enjoyable) Shakespeare (Everything, I'm surprised he's only been mentioned once so far) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe Shogun by James Clavell Then, of course, the regular hodgepodge of Card, Asimov, Adams, Gaiman, Pratchet, Stephenson, Feynman, and that LOTR guy, Tolkey or sommat. (In all seriousness, though, all of these authors are phenomenal, if well-known for being such)

The First Circle (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) LOTR Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) The Odyssey (Homer) The Dilbert Principle (Scott Adams) -- Alright, not literature! But come on, it's Dilbert :)

Fiction: - The Time Machine (still holds up very well, and seems strangely eerie and prescient in places)... (H. G. Wells) - Dune (Frank Herbert) - The Hobbit (and LotR) (Tolkien) - Neuromancer (William Gibson) - Idoru, All Tomorrow's Parties (I picked up Idoru first, so I haven't yet read Virtual Light) (also Gibson) - The Difference Engine (Gibson, Sterling) - Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) - Cryptonomicon (" ") - Circuit of Heaven, End of Days (Dennis Danvers) - All of the "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories and novels. (Fritz Leiber) - The Earthsea trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin) - 'salem's Lot (Stephen King) - Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein) - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain) - the Coldfire trilogy (C. S. Friedman) - various Cory Doctorow short stories - Kamikaze L'Amour (Richard Kadrey) - Lightpaths (Howard V. Hendrix) - A Canticle For Leibowitz (Walter M. Miller, Jr.) - Moonwar, Venus (Ben Bova) - the Stainless Steel Rat series (Harry Harrison) - Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) - Ringworld (Larry Niven) - Cthon (Piers Anthony) -- Trippiness level approaching Philip Jose Farmer ;-) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (Douglas Adams)…

LOTR Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) Devil in the White City (Erik Larson)

Among all books since the printing press? Can you be more specific? Actually, I take that back. I do know some great ones that you ought to read no matter what your situation. The Little Schemer http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/ Master and Commander http://books.google.com/books?id=rx_yw5iMtnIC&dq=&pg... (http://books.google.com/books?id=rx_yw5iMtnIC&dq=&pg=PP1&ots=quZSkX-66f&sig=4rmlsrtPNSRNEfB8Zg6BmXiA0us&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dmaster%2Band%2Bcommander%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title) Lord of the Rings (you can find this one yourself) and probably a lot more, but I've got to run. Good luck!