What Book Series have you read?

[k_russell]

Douglas Adams - Hitcher's Guide(s)
Cormac McCarthy - Border Trilogy
Carlos Casteneda series

[Wade Hampton]

I've read all of the Harry Potter books, getting through all of them even though the last two or three were kind of a slog and finishing them felt kind of like doing a classroom assignment.

Also:

All of the Matthew Scudder novels by Lawrence Block.

All of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser

All of the Lucas Davenport novels by John Sandford

All of the Virgil Flowers novels by John Sandford

All of the novels and short stories set in India by Rudyard Kipling

All of the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels by Mark Twain (there's more than just the two famous ones.)

All of the Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot novels by Agatha Christie

All of the Sherlock Holmes short stories and novels by Arthur Conan Doyle

All of the historical novels by Arthur Conan Doyle

All of the Kinsey Milhone novels by Sue Grafton

All of the crime novels and short stories by Elmore Leonard

All of the Western short stories and novels by Elmore Leonard

All of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings novels by J.R.R. Tolkien

All of the Jane Whitefield novels by Thomas Perry

All of the Butcher's Boy novels by Thomas Perry

All of the novels by Tony Hillerman

All of the Mike Bowditch novels by Paul Doiron

All of the adventure novels by Herman Melville (pre-Moby Dick)


And the list goes on beyond that, I'm just tired of typing.

These books were read by me at different stages of my life. I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels when I was a kid and teenager, but didn't discover Conan Doyle's historical novels until fairly recently (tip: start with The White Company.) Similarly, my mother had a tall metal shelving unit in the basement crammed with mass market paperback editions of every book Agatha Christie has written, and on sick days and over summer vacations I read all of those. But Christie was still alive and continued to publish books once a year or so after I left home, so as a young adult I bought those as long as she continued to write.

Yeah, I guess you could say I read a lot.


Wade Hampton Miller

[rllink]

The G&B Detective Agency series. Six novels set in the Midwest. Good reading. Not particularly deep, just entertaining.

[H165]

There is a story in there somewhere...

Unfortunately, yeah. Fortunately though, I try to think of it as "burned in the novel Fahrenheight 451".

[Riverwolf]

My fave of all time- All the pretty horses trilogy by Cormac McCarthy.

[815C]

The Story Of Civilization (11 Volumes) by Will & Ariel Durant

The History Of The Ancient World
The History Of The Medieval World
The History Of The Renaissance
---By Susan Wise Bauer

The Space Trilogy
---By C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia
---by C.S. Lewis

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (+ The Hobbit)
---J.R.R. Tolken
(I read this series 17 times between 6th grade and 9th grade, and finally stopped when I knew how a sentence on the bottom of the right hand page would end when I turned the page.)

Foundation Trilogy
---Issac Asimov

The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer

And tons of Sci-Fi/fantasy series when I was a teenager (John Carter Of Mars series, and Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, all the Conan books by Robert Howard, and probably a few other series I can't recall).



...oh, and The Hardy Boys when I was in grade school

[boscowsu]

Originally Posted by ManyMartinMan

It's been a while but the Redwall series was a great deal of fun. If you didn't have any little one's, or haven't read it, try the first book - Redwall. You'll either not like it a lot or get sucked right in.

The Redwall books were my favorite as a kid. Started reading those in the 4th grade and didn't stop until adulthood. Still have them all, looking forward to reading with my kids in a few years. RIP Brian Jacques.

[dirkronk]

So I want to thank all you guys for making me feel a little less weird. A little.

To call me a voracious reader would be a massive understatement. As a very small child, I could not wait to start going to school so I could learn how to read properly. Meanwhile, I cajoled and nagged both parents and my babysitters to teach me words...any words. They started with the short ones, of course: a, an, the, that. And nothing would do but I had to go through the entire encyclopedia (my parents had bought The Wonderland of Knowledge when my brother was little, late 1940s or about 1950, when I was born, and we never did get a proper World Book or Britannica or Americana...grrr) and "read" every a, an, the and that I could find.

Once I was actually going to school, I had school textbooks and comic books and the occasional sports biography to keep me reading. Summers I'd spend at least two weeks with my paternal grandparents, who had a 30+ volume set of Mark Twain novels and over a few years I read most of 'em. My maternal grandfather was a true autodidact and consumed history (the full Will & Ariel Durant series), plus books on philosophy and comparative religion, so a lot of people in my family were providing examples of bookloving.

Then 6th grade came, and my teacher Mrs. Williams announced a reading contest: only real books counted, no comics or pamphlets or picture books allowed, and no textbooks that we'd all have to read anyway. Ah, so now here was reading PLUS competition! And I was in fierce combat with my lifelong buddy David Beckworth for the title. I raided the elementary school library, my church library, the public library. Read every Hardy Boy mystery available. There was a series of books about famous people as children and my church library had dozens...read 'em all. Read horse books: all the Walter Farley Black Stallion and Flame books, plus all the Marguerite Henry books. By the end of the year, my verified list (carefully kept on 3x5 cards on a huge poster, with an envelope for each student, in the classroom) totalled well over 90 books (96, I think)...while David had compiled 80-something. Victory was sweet. But...

...that had created a bit of a monster. Near as I can figure, that's when I got into the habit of reading one book, and if I liked the author, I'd hunt out his or her entire oeuvre and read all, starting with the earliest published tome and going in order toward the present. I'll turn 70 in July and I still do that.

First up: James Michener. His massive "Hawaii" had come out only a couple of years before (1959), but I read all of his books that summer and polished off Hawaii just shy of my entrance into 7th grade.

That got me into reading "adult" fiction (meaning some had occasional sex scenes...ahem) and junior high and high school were laced with Steinbeck, Hemingway, Ohara and pretty much anything my grandfather and parents had read and jettisoned. Schoolwork became too demanding for me to do the marathon reading jags I loved, but I made do.

Then college. Freshman year too was a loss for recreational reading, but in sophomore year, I transferred to UT in Austin and had no close circle of friends to take up my time. So on weekends and whenever forced to bed with bad colds or flu, I indulged my habit again: with appropriately non-challenging but entertaining stuff...Erle Stanley Gardner's entire Perry Mason series. Also much of his work under the name A.A. Fair.

Eventually, I found other bibliophiles at UT and one introduced me to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. Read 'em all then...and have re-read them all at least once every 12 or so years since. Yeah, they're that good. Just finished my most recent read-through two months ago.

Occasionally, my "read everything they wrote" jags take a screwy turn, such as a few years after college, when I somehow got into the challenge of reading Sir Walter Scott. I'd never read any of his books, not even the ubiquitous Ivanhoe, and his prose was often so dense that a single sentence could go on for over a page. (Which is how I learned the flexibility of the language, the essence of parenthetical phrases and semicolons and other punctuation...like I say, it was a challenge.) But darned if his plots weren't compelling!

So...yeah. I read a lot. Which has included:

Mark Twain. Novels are great, but his essays may even be better. And once you perceive his storytelling rhythm, books of his collected speeches are like immersing yourself in standup comedy, 19th century style. No wonder he was in demand worldwide as an after-dinner speaker.

P.G. Wodehouse. Not just his Bertie & Jeeves novels, but the Psmith, Gawf, Blandings and other series...with Mark Twain, among the funniest authors in the English language. Ever. But never, EVER judge him by the attempts to put him on screen. His work must be read to be appreciated. Laugh out loud stuff.

Edgar Rice Burroughs. All the Tarzan, most of the Carter/Mars/Venus, Pellucidar, Lost World, and his western (!) novels.

Arthur Conan Doyle. All Sherlock Holmes, check, but only some of the historical novels.

Nikos Kazantzakis. Read it all. Recommend it all.

Hermann Hesse. Everyone had to read Siddhartha when I was in college, but if you never read the rest of his books (especially Narcissus & Goldmund and Magister Ludi), the journey is nowhere near complete.

Robert Parker. Started with the Spenser stuff. Loved it, but didn't follow up on his Jesse Stone series until after the TV movies started. Also avoided his westerns (Cole & Hitch) because I thought I didn't like westerns. Big mistake. They're utterly brilliant examples of drama moved forward by dialogue and masterful brevity. (The guys who continue to write the series are OK for staying true to the characters, but are amateurs at dialogue compared to Parker.)

Lawrence Block. Read most of the Matt Scudder books, but his Burglar (Bernie Rhodenbarr) mysteries are the best.

Tolkien. Hobbit/Lord of the Rings.

Donaldson. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. (Also Asimov/Foundation, Herbert/Dune, plenty of Morgan Llywelyn, Ursula Le Guin stuff, and a couple of dozen other authors of sci-fi/fantasy when trilogies seemed to be par for the course for that genre...but oddly, only a couple C.S. Lewis and none of the Game of Thrones series. Yet.)


Christopher Moore. You have to be in the right mood, but once you are, this guy is the late 20th and early 21st century successor to Twain and Wodehouse for laugh-out-loud funny stuff.

Sarah Bird. Fabulous writer...and hey, Texas claims her! Gotta go with my homegirl.

Also, like Wade, many others if I wasn't getting tired of typing.

Cheers. And happy reading to all.
;-D

Dirk

[dirkronk]

Originally Posted by H165

Bhagavad Gita is sitting on my night stand right now.

I'm guessing you already know this, but the Bhagavad Gita is a small(ish) part of the larger Mahabharata...sort of like excerpting the four gospels (or possibly just the red letter passages) from the New Testament. But if you're reading a good translation with decent commentary on context, you're probably getting what you want for now. Eventually, you might want a readable English translation (or even abridgment) of the larger work just for grins. Quite a story.

And since I didn't see it listed, check out the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. No plot there, of course, but quite brief and, especially with a good commentary, incredibly dense in meaning and pragmatic suggestions. (The Isherwood is super common, but I'd suggest the Alistair Shearer for greater clarity and readability.)

Now the big question: am I missing anything in NOT having read Nancy Drew? You know how it was in the '50s...boys couldn't be reading girls' books. Just curious.

Cheers,

Dirk

[OregonJim]

The Lights of Marfa by Doyle Dykes. Highly recommended, even if you're not a guitar player.

[nacluth]

Last year I read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death. I have read too many series to remember, but that was definitely the longest straight slog of any of them. It was immersive.

[Tahitijack]

Spencer Quinn the Chet and Bernie series. Even the short stories.

[Dru Edwards]

Originally Posted by nacluth

Last year I read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death. I have read too many series to remember, but that was definitely the longest straight slog of any of them. It was immersive.

I have a Wheel of Time book or two but I never read it. Very long series indeed.

[ziapack]

Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Narnia
Tony Hillermans - Chee/Leaphorn novels
McGarrity's- Kevin Kernie novels
Johnson's - Longmire mysteries
King's - Dark Tower Series
Box - Joe Pickett Novels
Penny's - Inspector Gamache mysterys
I'm sure there are more...

[jmat]

Just finished the Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. Best WWII books I have read,