Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewels trilogy. hee especially if you like a strong female lead. Gorgeous language, great characters. The kind of book I like to read over and over again (and usually I’m way too busy for that).
Tad Williams Otherland… sci-fi and fantasy at the same time. AWESOME characters. HUGE plot. Books heavy enough to smack your brother with
David Eddings… I can’t say enough about how GOOD he is. Going from him to LOTR is like going from hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream to week old water. (haha…I hate LOTR yes, yes, sacriligious fantasy fan am I)
I second the recommendation of Terry Goodkind through Temple of the Winds. The book right after that totally turned me off his writings. Instead of continueing the emotion and characters of the story, he used it to rant his opinions about 9/11. For pages. Upon pages. Upon PAGES. VERY repetative.
William Glasser for your dose of common sense psychology! Simplistic, but effective. I worked in a school based on it and it was AMAZING. Happy students, who would’ve thought it possible
Atlas Shrugged is definately worth the read, although Ayn Rand has a bit of an extremist view of things, you must take what you will and leave what you don’t agree with.
As for like a good intro to philosophy done in a novel I recommend “Sophie’s World” by Jostein Gaarder (I believe he is Swedish, could be mistaken). That book has taught me more about the basics of philosophy than my Intro to Philosophy course. He even sites subjects at the end of the book along with the original sources in text.
fiction:
Bless me, Ultima
The Thousand Orcs and all RA salvatore books
Alice in wonderland (I’m serious)
The Bride of dreams (difficult read, but beautiful)
The Bean trees
Pigs in Heaven
Sylvie and Bruno
The dark is rising (easy read, might be a tad too easy)
Greenwitch (same as the last one)
A walk in the woods
The illustrated man
also I dunno if I should put these in fiction, with all the controversy… but A million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. I don’t care if he made them up, they’re great books.
Non-fiction or philosophy… or other:
Walden
Lucid Dreams (Laberge’s new book)
Pure Drivel
yes, yes, sacriligious fantasy fan am I)