Korenith

Blind Guardian base pretty much all their music on some work of literature or other: Lord of the Rings, Peter Pan, Wheel of Time just to name a few. And as a few have mentioned Symphony X also like their epics. They did an album retelling Paradise Lost which is one of my favourite albums ever.

Jaws is the first film I think of which I enjoyed more than the book. There is something about the subject matter which demands visuals and suspenseful music even though I read the book first as a kid (because I wasn't allowed to watch the movie). Also I enjoyed 2001: A Space Odyssey more as a film because it was so boundary pushing whereas the book is just a solid Sci-fi with a lot of the mystery taken away because Clarke decides to explain too much.

I loved the world in The Algebraist but the villain felt a little too cartoony for my tastes. I'd probably put it around the middle of the pack if I were doing a list of his best to worst novels.

Well the article is done so if anybody is interested in taking a look the link is here: http://lit-fix.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/getting-into-iain-m-banks.html

I have to side with the "Ulysses is a great work" camp. I don't agree at all that all art should be accessible because then what happens to people who really want a challenge and instead have to read stuff written for "everybody". Don't get me wrong, I don't think "difficult" necessarily means "good" but just as there should be books aimed at children so to should there be books written specifically with the academic community in mind and that's what Joyce did. He wrote for the people who studied literature and its conventions on a minute level so when you consider his goals yes Ulysses is absolutely a triumph because it totally succeeds. As far as what good writing "should" be goes, I think the whole concept is just wrong minded. There is no rule in writing that cannot be broken but only people who have done so with a good reason for doing it get remembered.

This looks like a pretty good list though I will never understand why people like Paulo Coelho or why they picked Dead Air instead of The Bridge when they were chosing Iain Banks novels but nobody ever agree 100% with these lists. Here's what I've managed so far: Pre-1700 992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1700s 985. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe 983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift 1800s 931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe 911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe 909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe 908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë 902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë 900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell 896. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville 876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 867. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky 866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne 848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne 825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain 820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson 809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde 804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 801. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman 799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 794. Dracula – Bram Stoker 789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James 788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin 1900s 781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad 769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy 761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster 748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell 741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham 736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce 731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West 728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence 723. Ulysses – James Joyce 701. The Trial – Franz Kafka 699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald 698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf 687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson 686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf 671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner 663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway 649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon 636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller 623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft 622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner 610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien 608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett 605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene 603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier 593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce 592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway 564. Animal Farm – George Orwell 559. The Plague – Albert Camus 547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell 538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing 531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett 529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger 527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov 526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham 525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett 514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis 512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett 508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding 494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien 490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon 484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac 481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham 473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe 472. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe 456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller 450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark 445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger 440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing 437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess 436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey 433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon 411. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys 409. The Magus – John Fowles 399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez 390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick 389. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke 376. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles 375. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson 354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood 345. Crash – J.G. Ballard 320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice 312. The Shining – Stephen King 310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter 302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan 301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 288. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan 282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray 274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro 272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker 265. Waterland – Graham Swift 260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis 258. Neuromancer – William Gibson 255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter 254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard 243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind 242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis 237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson 236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez 227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons 222. Beloved – Toni Morrison 216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan 215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind 208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga 207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks 203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie 200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco 199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood 190. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson 186. A Disaffection – James Kelman 184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi 170. Regeneration – Pat Barker 167. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis 166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis 153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks 138. Complicity – Iain Banks 135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh 129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres 128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman 125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami 112. The Information – Martin Amis 109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood 96. Underworld – Don DeLillo 95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan 94. Great Apes – Will Self 93. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho 87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis 81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan 2000s 63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood 54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith 49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel 48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk 42. Atonement – Ian McEwan 35. Dead Air – Iain Banks 24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters 19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon 13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 2. Saturday – Ian McEwan 1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

I recommend The Crow Road, Complicity or The Bridge though The Bridge can be a bit weird for some people so you might want to check out some reviews in case it isn't to your taste.

They are Sci-fi set in a techno-utopia for the most part and they deal with how The Culture (the utopians) react and deal with other societies with different views from their own. They tend to be about things like human rights and what it means to be human but they have a fair bit of action in some places and lots of speculation about what new technology might ultimately be used for. If that sounds like your kind of thing then Player of Games seems to be what most people recommend as a start point. They are all set in the same universe but there is almost no character or story overlap bar the odd few mentions here and there so you can read them in whatever order you like (with the exception of Surface Detail which has a direct link to Use of Weapons)

So general consensus is Player of Games is a good start point. I think I agree since some of his later ones can get a bit heavy on the technology side of things which for Sci-fi newbies might get boring. I want to say Consider Phlebas but as Karsa and Athena both said, it's one of his weaker ones so might put people off. Use of Weapons and Surface Detail are my other two favourites. I think UoW is a good follow up/digging deeper book if somebody liked the first one and then SD and Feersum Endjinn as ones for people who really get into his style because whilst they are harder reads they are also really good.

This is a question for all the people who read Iain M. Banks. I'm currently writing a "Getting Into" article for my blog on him that gives people a place to start getting into his work and then a few ideas on where to go afterwards. The question is Where did you start? And which of his books do you think works as the best introduction? Sci-fi only please since I've already done a "Getting Into" for his mainstream work.

It might be a good idea to start with some short stories. Stephen King has some good collections if you like your horror at all. Skeleton Crew is my favourite collection but most of them have good stuff in them. I also agree with Chrissy. Starting with a few tv shows or films you enjoy that are based on books can make getting into reading a lot easier. Fight Club or I Am Legend for example are excellent books and quite short, only a couple of hundred pages.

If we aren't including the Modernists as classics then I guess my three are: Frankenstein Gulliver's Travels The Turn of the Screw

I read Beloved and thought it was excellent but as others have said it can be heavy going at times. The style is very abstract and fragmented at times which as an effect is very clever but doesn't make for easy reading. I enjoyed her work enough to want more though and I have Sula on my to read pile near the top.

Death Note and Berserk are the only mangas I've bothered actually buying but I'm on a One Piece anime binge at the moment so I'll probably get that next.

Can't say I'm overly thrilled about this. It always feels like somebody is trying to live off other people's ideas when somebody continues a series or setting they didn't create themselves. That said, maybe it'll be amazing and I'll have to shut my mouth. Here's hoping.

Just to jump on the bandwagon It is also my favourite of SK's novels. I hated Eyes of the Dragon but his whole career has been hit and miss for me.

Have you read anything else by him? I hear that Kafka on the Shore and Norwegian Wood are the ones to go for next but if you've any other suggestions I'm all ears... or eyes I suppose this being the internet and all.

Murakami is a name I've seen and heard floating around for a while. Until recently though all I knew was that he was a Japanese writer who wrote books which everybody loved, be it critics or a bloke I met down the pub and there was one novel of his which kept being mentioned. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." Hype is often a cruel force. You hear so much about how good a book is, how the style is so well polished, how interesting the concept is, the comparisons with other writers you love only to have it turn into a hideous disappointment. It's tough for any novel to live up to that kind of expectation. Happily I get to say that this time the Hype-Machine got to trundle on its merry way, completely oblivious to the hundreds of hidden pitfalls it could have plunged into. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is a brilliant novel which sketches in stark language the crushing isolation which lurks beneath the surface of contemporary Japanese culture. It really does deserve the praise it's been getting since it was first published in 1994. So, what is it about then? As with a lot of novels it is fairly difficult to explain and the blurb just confuses the matter but I'll do my best. It is a magical realist novel in a similar sort of vein as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" where the magical aspects remain below the surface for the majority of its six hundred odd pages but contribute to a sense of dislocation from reality which seems to be the story's soul. The central character, Toru Okada, is a man who has just quit an unfulfilling job in order to take stock of his life and give it new direction and purpose but he finds that his wife is growing distant and that family issues which he believed to be dealt with have started to re-emerge. What follows is an exploration of the worlds and people forced to the margins of Japanese society as Okada acts as a conduit for a host of other stories told by a bizarre mix of characters, all with their own dark and sometimes eccentric pasts. These characters range from a psychic investigator who refuses to be paid for her work to a teenage girl who has an obsession with the morbid and their stories encompass subjects as diverse as spirituality, war guilt and the world of fashion. This has the potential to turn them into "quirky" characters, a phrase loved by publicists but often meaning shallow empty people who have one weird characteristic which makes an otherwise uninteresting person supposedly fascinating, but nothing feels forced and all the oddities are tied cleverly into the Murakami's main themes. As you would expect from its wide scope this is a novel which jumps around a fair bit between stories but the narrative has a natural flow which carries you along. Murakami is not a stylist so his prose is often stark and bleak (but not Cormac MacCarthy stark and bleak). He does a wonderful job of creating a world which you feel entirely immersed in through an accumulation of quiet, reflective moments. There is one thing which as a potential reader you should be aware of though. Though surrounded by strong personalities Okada himself is a very passive character for the most part and as such you are unlikely to engage him as you would a more forceful protagonist. This is, I think, deliberate on Murakami's part as this passivity is directly linked to the isolation which pervades the novel but it inevitably means that as a reader you are less emotionally invested in his struggle than you might otherwise be. That small potential issue aside though "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is well worth your time, particularly for fans of writers like Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Rating: 9/10

Personally I think it's genius. Very very dark as people have pointed out but everything is so well written and so convincing in its insanity. Its also his best along with The Bridge and Use of Weapons. And the other thing about it is that rereading it is a really good idea. Once you know the twist you can see the really clever way Banks has patterned Frank's thoughts and voice, all the clues you missed. Would definitely be in my top 100 novels of all time.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is a good one. The ideas are clever and the characters are very well written. Also The Forever War by Joe Haldeman if you want something more futuristic.

A lot of the ones I wanted to say have already been mentioned but Ian Irvine is a writer I really find incredible in the fantasy genre. Complicated world and characters with none of the usual black/white good/evil stuff. A View from the Mirror is the first series but the second series (Well of Echoes) is much better I thought and it's set 200 years after the first so there is no continuity you need to be aware of if you want to start there instead.