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[vadia]

For me, a useful book suggestion thread needs a lot of information to figure out why this book is being suggested.

So this is the format I am asking that you post in;

Title (if a series how much of the series)

1 Why might others not read this book?

2 What impressed you about this book?

3 What warnings do you have for others about the book?

I'll give my example here.

The Hunger Games  (All three.)

1 This was a teen book that is/was WILDLY popular -- like Twilight level popular -- either of those facts may turn you off, [but I figure that I like Potter 1,3, and 6 and can tolerate 2, so I don't give up on popular sci-fi/fantasy]

2 I thought I might like The Hunger Games, but I was shocked at how much I liked the main character who was flawed enough to be human, but human enough for me to accept the flaws. 
The plot was believable -- even the world was believable as an alternate future. 
The characters go through tough times -- much of it is psychological, though significant parts are physical danger [only 1/3 of the first book is actually during the dangerous "hunger games"].  The combination of those two elements of the psychological and physical danger intertwining kept me up (when I reeeeealy should have gone to bed) for the middle and last book.
There was a lot of philosophical depth to the series also.

Warning; You may need to make sure you have tissues. 
The second book starts slowly -- more or less it talks about what I felt to be the blindingly obvious political implications of the first book with a drip or drab of extra information.  Though for what's more or less a recap it does well. 
The third book starts a bit melodramatically, but given the first two books -- it's legit.
you really should make sure you have tissues.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Are you sure you want to see this it's on the very end and it's a big one.  According to Ms. Collins her editor called her in the middle of the night insisting that Prim shouldn't die -- because she liked her that much.

 

[Pnx]

Let's see, pretty much all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are great for a really wide variety of silly yet sometimes serious stuff in a satirical fantasy world. Notre Dame de Paris is a really great work of classic fiction with very great characters and dynamics, although the author can ramble on a bit too much for my liking sometimes. Neil Gaiman is also probably the king of urban fantasy. American Gods, The Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, and his short story books are all great reads.

I think those are my biggest recommendations.

[vadia]

Let's see, pretty much all of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are great for a really wide variety of silly yet sometimes serious stuff in a satirical fantasy world. Notre Dame de Paris is a really great work of classic fiction with very great characters and dynamics, although the author can ramble on a bit too much for my liking sometimes. Neil Gaiman is also probably the king of urban fantasy. American Gods, The Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, and his short story books are all great reads.

I think those are my biggest recommendations.

posting criticisms -- sorry
1: it didn't fill my requested format

2: and this reason # 1 is why my format is useful.  I've read pretty much all Pratchet, and read enough Gaiman to know I don't like his short stories and have read the rest of his stuff, why would you think that I hadn't read them?

3: there wasn't enough about Notre Dame de Paris to inspire me to read it -- or frankly to discourage me.

4: repeat criticism #1 for emphasis.  I listed a format so that I wouldn't get what to me feels like a list of a couple of favorite books of people whose taste in books may be quite dissimilar to mine.

[itisnotlogical]

Dune

1. You know how Lord of the Rings occasionally referenced events in Middle-Earth's history, and you could go read about them in the appendices if you really wanted to? Dune is like that, but you really need to flip back to the glossary just to understand what is going on in some parts. Later books in the series get a little better, but those ones don't have glossaries at all.

2. This book has an amazing setting. I haven't seen anything like it elsewhere. Dune captures something that I think a lot of modern science fiction misses, which is the evolution of society and human beings in general. Instead of the same old Space Americans fighting the same old Space Afghanistanis over the same old Space Oil fields (ahem James Cameron), Frank Herbert actually makes you believe that society and daily life have significantly changed from those of today. Although a large power is fighting a small native population over a universally valuable resource (gods I hate that cliche), that's not really what the story is about anyway:

Spoiler: Spoilers if you want 'em (click to show/hide)

Paul Atreides finds that he is the Kwisatz Haderach, a person capable of seeing the future and consulting with ancestors from the past. He sees a great religious war in the future waged in his name, and tries desperately to avoid becoming a messiah while leading the downtrodden Fremen to freedom.

Also, it's kind of like the Godfather films if they were set on Tatooine, so that's cool.

3. If you want to know the full story, you have to read every book in the series, and they peak at God Emperor of Dune, the fourth in a series of eight. Then they get really crap when Brian Herbert finishes the series (Frank died before finishing it).

Finally, stay away from anything with Brian Herbert's name on it. You'd fare better in the Twilight/High School Musical crossover section of fanfiction.net.

[Pnx]

posting criticisms -- sorry
1: it didn't fill my requested format

I'm sorry, I didn't really realise when you said this was being formal you really meant it. I'll admit I mostly skimmed your post and was just trying to quickly rattle out a few suggestions, although I'm not sure how much putting things in a very specific format is useful. My bad.

2: and this reason # 1 is why my format is useful.  I've read pretty much all Pratchet, and read enough Gaiman to know I don't like his short stories and have read the rest of his stuff, why would you think that I hadn't read them?

I'm sorry when did I become psychic and why did nobody tell me? Seriously, first of all I can't know what you've read and haven't read or what exactly your tastes are, you're going to get suggestions for books you've read or ones you're not really interested in reading, not much to be done about this.
Secondly this wasn't directed specifically at you, it was kind of intended to be for everyone that might be interested in picking something up to read. I picked those two specifically because they're my favourite authors and they generally go down well with most people. Unfortunately it is true they happen to be very popular authors as well.

3: there wasn't enough about Notre Dame de Paris to inspire me to read it -- or frankly to discourage me.

Eh, I'm not sure how much I can say without really spoiling the book. I found it had really well thought out, in depth characters, even if some of them seem very shallow when you first see them. It's also a work of classic fiction, which means that like most books written around that era the author is really verbose and rambles on about a lot of things you'd probably rather not hear about. There's also a lot of archaic language and culture reference you just won't get without looking them up. Reading through classical works often means reading at a snails pace which can be pretty irritating sometimes.

That said I found it extremely enjoyable to read, I started out basically just mocking the book and picking out bits of history and such from it, but by about half way I'd become very deeply engrossed in the story. And yeah, it really might not be something you'd enjoy, it's not something for everyone, but I can't say whether you'd like it or not.