Category: Reading

Here are my favorite novels, ranked by preference, including how many times I read that book or novel series:

1. ‘The Hobbit‘ & ‘Lord of the Rings‘ by J. R. R. Tolkien (4x)
2. ‘Watership Down‘ by Richard Adams (3x)
3. ‘Childhood’s End‘ by Isaac Asimov (1x)
4. ‘Tarzan‘ & ‘The Return of Tarzan‘ by Edgar Rice Burroughs (2x)
5. ‘A Princess of Mars‘ and the Barsoom Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs (2x)
6. ‘Ringworld‘ and the ‘Tales of Known Space‘ series by Larry Niven (1x)
7. ‘Ender’s Game‘ by Orson Scott Card (1x)
8. ‘Byzantium‘ by Stephen Lawhead (1x)
9. ‘The Martian Chronicles‘ by Ray Bradbury (2x)
10. ‘The Winds of War‘ and ‘War and Remembrance‘ by Herman Wouk (1x)
11. ‘I, Robot‘ series by Isaac Asimov (1x)
12. ‘Hyperion‘ by Dan Simmons (1x)
13. ‘The Chronicles of Narnia‘ series by C.S. Lewis (1x)
14. ‘The Hunt for Red October‘ and the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy (1x)
15. ‘Conan‘ novels and short stories, by Robert E. Howard (1x)
16. ‘Solomon Kane‘ short stores by Robert E. Howard (1x)
17. ‘Foundation‘ series by Isaac Asimov (1x)
18. ‘A Wizard of Earthsea‘ series by Ursula Le Guin (1x)
19. ‘The Mote in God’s Eye‘ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1x)
20. ‘Rendezvous With Rama‘ by Arthur C. Clarke (1x)
21. ‘Starship Troopers‘ by Robert A. Heinlein (1x)
22. ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy‘ series by Douglas Adams (1x)
23. ‘In Conquest Born‘ by C.S. Friedman (1x)
24. ‘Horatio Hornblower‘ series by C. S. Forester (1x)
25. ‘The Bicentennial Man‘ by Isaac Asimov (1x)

The above are mostly Sci Fi and Fantasy but a few other genres appear. #1-2 are amazing ‘mileau’ classics which immerse you in very different worlds. #3, #7 and #8 are ‘meaning of life’ or morality tales which have compelling spirituality (Childhood’s End ends up being a sort of secular Sci Fi Theosis motif, which is interesting). Robert E. Howard’s and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works are pulp, escapist novels which aren’t literary classics perhaps but are amazingly fun if you like the Flash Gordon pulp adventure feel (which I do!).

I’ve read Frank Herbert’s Dune and George R. R. Martin’s first Game of Thrones novel — amazingly well written but too dark or morally ambiguous for my tastes, so neither made it to my top novels list. I’ve read many other fantasy novels (by Roger Zelazny, Fritz Lieber, etc.) and sci fi novels (by Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and many others), and while many were good, they didn’t make it to my top list above either.

I’m currently reading:

1. The ‘Mistborn‘ trilogy by Brandon Sanderson (I’ve finished the first book in the trilogy).

I have these books in my reading backlog:

1. ‘Coyote‘ series by Allen Steele (I’ve finished the first book in the series)
2. ‘Divergent‘ trilogy by Veronica Roth (I’ve finished the first book in the series)
3. Re-read ‘Ringworld‘ and the ‘Tales of Known Space‘ series by Larry Niven for the second time
4. ‘Leviathan Wakes‘ and the The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey
5. ‘Destiny’s Road‘ by Larry Niven
6. ‘Revelation Space‘ by Alastair Reynolds
7. ‘WondLa‘ series by Tony DiTerlizzi
8. Re-read ‘The Hobbit‘ & ‘Lord of the Rings‘ by J. R. R. Tolkien for the 5th time
9. ‘Steelheart‘ and the Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson
10. ‘Old Man’s War‘ series by John Scalzi
11. Re-read ‘The Mote in God’s Eye‘ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and read the other books in this series for the first time
12. ‘Looking for Alaska‘ by John Green
13. ‘Under the Eagle‘ and the Eagle series by Simon Scarrow
14. ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events‘ series by Lemony Snicket
15. ‘The Nomad of Time‘ by Michael Moorcock
16. ‘Odd Thomas‘ and the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz
17. ‘The Thin Man‘ by Dashiell Hammett
18. ‘The Skin Map‘ and the Bright Empires series by Stephen R. Lawhead
19. ‘The Way of Kings‘ and The Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson
20. ‘Spartan Gold‘ by Clive Cussler

These articles have other books I might be interested in reading:

• http://blamcast.net/articles/best-science-fiction-books.
• http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-science-fiction-series.php

What are your favorite novels, and why?

One of the things I love about Amazon’s Kindle services is that I can read my books across multiple devices (I read on an iPad primarily, but also use my iPhone, an Android Google Nexus 7, and sometimes my older Kindle Keyboard). Regardless of my device, Amazon will keep my location, bookmarks and notes synchronized. But Amazon is constantly evolving their services. Here are some features you may not know about:

Adding Non-Amazon Books to your Kindle

Login to Amazon.com, and go to “Your Account > Manage Your Kindle > Personal Document Settings”
Here you can find settings to email your non-Amazon books such as PDFs and ePub files to your account, and you can manage which emails can send such files to your device. These personal documents are now stored in the Amazon cloud, and they will sync your location, notes and bookmarks across your Kindle devices just like Amazon purchased books. You can also send documents to your Kindle using Send to Kindle, which is available for free download at www.amazon.com/sendtokindle.

Borrow Kindle Books from Your Local Library

Borrow books from your local library onto your Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000718231

Export Notes from Your Books 

This article shows how to get the notes into Evernote, but you could easily use this technique to get them into Google Docs or any other format:

http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-get-your-kindle-highlights-into-evernote.html