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[NewoTigra]

hehe...
In contrast to the OP I read Mechanicum before starting to play DF, so whenever I first stuck magma (and consequently magma forges) I was reminded of the book 

I would dearly love to read novels set in the DF 'verse though, as most other fantasy seems to concentrate heavily on elves / orcs etc.
Dwarves would make a nice change, and quite frankly, the DF world is undescribably awesome.

Now to finish reading Nist Akath...

[sonerohi]

Phappyman- Agree wholeheartedly with the R.A. Salvatore. Especially when Bruenor crafts Aegisfang. I'd like to point out though, that me brudder said oo oi.

[Vester]

So does that make DF more like the Edda or more like Tolkien? Our dwarves are pretty grimy and their rulers are pretty petty/evil, then again: megaprojects!
(and the inevitable downfall)

Tolkien's dwarves were pretty bastardly at times, too.  In the early myths (The Silmarillion), one group slaughters a ton of elves to recover an artifact necklace, which is probably the most DF-like thing you'll find anywhere in his books (aside from Moria).

Well, they did forge that necklace after all. Also wasn't it just the King they killed?

[Ampersand]

Anathem. A bunch of people locked away from civilization for years at a time behind huge stone walls with overly complex devices for opening the doors...

[phappyman]

Phappyman- Agree wholeheartedly with the R.A. Salvatore. Especially when Bruenor crafts Aegisfang. I'd like to point out though, that me brudder said oo oi.

I am re-reading The Crystal Shard by RA Salvatore right now, and this book stands out by far as the most influential to DF. This is the first book of the Icewind Dale series, so if you're looking for it, you may just want to buy the 3-in-1 big paperback instead of just this one book.

Here's a few things you might recognize:

• Aegisfang - a named masterwork hammer, forged from mithril with an adamantium pommel and encrusted with diamond powder. Bruenor is taken by a fey mood and gathers his materials and secretly retreats to his workshop to complete the masterwork, which the book says only happens once in a lifetime (if ever).
• Caravans come to the Ten Towns (and the dwarven outpost) to trade primarily for scrimshaw made out of large fish bones (i.e. bone crafts).
• Goblin raiders attack the dwarven citadel carved into the topmost part of the mountain, but dwarves use a combination of a) levers, b) stone-fall traps, c) hand-to-hand combat to fight them off. When all seems to be lost, they collapse the entire entrance. The goblin war party far outnumbers the dwarves.
• The dwarven outpost is connected to the Underdark, though its passages remain unexplored for now.
• Inglaksdjflaksdjf, AKA "Icingdeath", is a dragon so famous it acquired the shorter name "Icingdeath." And no, I didn't bother to type out the real name. It's a doozy.
• ...there's probably more as I work through the book.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting as so many pieces of the book are represented in DF, and only now upon re-reading am I seeing them all.

[Yoink]

I've been reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and it pretty much shares its premise with DF: A bunch of adventurous explorers get horribly lost in South American jungle, found a village hidden away miles from any other settlements, and then receive many migrants over the years, and eventually a

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

magistrate (baron?).

It's actually an excellent book, too, which is a plus! I heartily recommend it, even though I've not finished it yet.

[Nagidal]

This is not a book, but a single web page dedicated to the Czech national hero Jan Žižka. He was arguably the most dwarfy and badass hero the Czechs ever had. What made me read the whole story in one breath is the Boatmurdered-style of narration. Here's the Intro:

Jan Zizka was a badass 15th century Czech knight who led the first real Protestant uprising in Europe by building gigantic fucking war tanks and using these homemade custom iron-plated juggernauts to crush the balls of anyone who opposed him with extreme prejudice all the way up their asses. In his fifteen years relentlessly smiting bitches apart and flattening the skulls of his enemies by swinging an oversized steel mace that was presumably modeled after his oversized steel testicles, Zizka never suffered a defeat on the battlefield – an accomplishment made duly impressive when you consider the fact that he was commanding a semi-unruly horde of untrained peasants and religious fanatics against battle-hardened men-at-arms from some of the world's most dominant military powers.

Oh, and he did it all with one eye. Except for when that got too easy, and he did it while being completely fucking blind in both eyes.

I think you'll enjoy the whole story just as much as I did.

[Berserkenstein]

It's not a book, but Andrew Zimmern's "Bizarre Foods" often reminds me of adventure mode cuisine.

[FearfulJesuit]

Lord of the Flies comes to mind.

[davros]

Your mileage may vary on this one, but I always thought Neon Genesis Evangelion was a fortress in the middle of a tantrum spiral.
As far as books go, everything by Pterry. EVERYTHING.

[Biopass]

+1 for Markus Heitz. I felt like the book suffered somewhat in translation (or I'm just not a fan of modern fantasy that's not Tolkien), but I thought it was a really fun, really dwarfy read, even if the dwarven badassery felt borderline mary-sueish.

[TinyPirate]

The book I am writing on Daarf Fortress makes me think of DF all the damn time

[kiaser90]

The stories people write about what their dwarfs do often remind me of the Gully Dwarfs from Dragonlance books.

[Matz05]

Phappyman- Agree wholeheartedly with the R.A. Salvatore. Especially when Bruenor crafts Aegisfang. I'd like to point out though, that me brudder said oo oi.

I am re-reading The Crystal Shard by RA Salvatore right now, and this book stands out by far as the most influential to DF. This is the first book of the Icewind Dale series, so if you're looking for it, you may just want to buy the 3-in-1 big paperback instead of just this one book.

Here's a few things you might recognize:
 

• Aegisfang - a named masterwork hammer, forged from mithril with an adamantium pommel and encrusted with diamond powder. Bruenor is taken by a fey mood and gathers his materials and secretly retreats to his workshop to complete the masterwork, which the book says only happens once in a lifetime (if ever).
• Caravans come to the Ten Towns (and the dwarven outpost) to trade primarily for scrimshaw made out of large fish bones (i.e. bone crafts).
• Goblin raiders attack the dwarven citadel carved into the topmost part of the mountain, but dwarves use a combination of a) levers, b) stone-fall traps, c) hand-to-hand combat to fight them off. When all seems to be lost, they collapse the entire entrance. The goblin war party far outnumbers the dwarves.
• The dwarven outpost is connected to the Underdark, though its passages remain unexplored for now.
• Inglaksdjflaksdjf, AKA "Icingdeath", is a dragon so famous it acquired the shorter name "Icingdeath." And no, I didn't bother to type out the real name. It's a doozy.
• ...there's probably more as I work through the book.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting as so many pieces of the book are represented in DF, and only now upon re-reading am I seeing them all.

I was just reading that... I thought the exact same things! I wonder if Toady read that one a long time ago... Will definitely read the whole series!

[Jacob/Lee]

I was reading Catching Fire today, and a couple parts caught my attention due to how similar they were to DF:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Paralysis causing, heart-stopping acid fog creeping over a part of the arena, blood rain, swarms of killer monkeys leaping from the trees and battering (and usually killing) the first person to look at them... So dwarfy.