I need a book to read, What are the best books? (See details for more info)

Ones that spring to mind are:
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver
Anything by Terry Pratchett, if you want some humour as well
I’ll probably be back with more :)

There’s a great sharing site, like FaceBook or MySpace, called Good Reads where you can post books you’ve read, are reading or would like to read. Then you can check out the “community” of readers, see reviews, get ideas, etc.

Brave New World is the obvious precursor to 1984. Huxley taught Orwell. If you really want a nonfiction ride down the rabbit hole along this line, check out this book. It’s six hundred pages of taking the red pill and looking at the man behind the curtain.

I highly recommend King’s Dark Tower Saga.

Planet Savers and Sword of Aldones by Marian Zimmer Bradley

Map of Bones James Rollins

If you haven’t read any William Gibson then stop what you are doing and don’t come back till you have.

Then there are many classics along the 1984 theme such as
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury,
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (well pretty much anything by Dick)
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Children of Men by P.D. James
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
Dayworld by Philip José Farmer
The Running Man by Richard Bachman (really Stephen King, but we all know that), Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson
Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley.

If you want some heavy duty Sci-Fi then Consider Phlebas or Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks are both excellent as are all his other books. They tend to be very dark and even his non science fiction verges on the weird.

And finally, slightly more main stream but still entertaining is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. A modern day Dracula story that avoids the usual vampire melodrama.

Also Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, or The Diamond Age.

I realise the Historian is a bit off topic but I’ve just read it and I liked it. sorry

A second for Fahrenheit 451. That was a pivotal book for me when I read it as a youngster.

You might also consider Ender’s Game and Dune. I second Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. I thought they were both wonderful.

Try the Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis