I bought this a couple of weeks ago. It will be within the next 3 books for me. It looks like it could be a quick read.

Do books that weren't in English until the last 10 years count? Because if so...

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera

Best book I have ever read by miles.

Took a whole class on Kundera, he does have some very good stuff, although I hear even better if you can read French.

This is a good book, but it's also from 1967 - it really helps to know that when you read it incase you weren't aware.

I think my favourites recently have been Shadow of the Wind and Pattern Recognition, nothing else really springs to mind though there've been dozens of good but not great books for me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_murakami

I really think most of Haruki Murakami will please you alot Martin, the emotional experience of reading his books reminds me of the time where I was a kid and loved to read and fantasize about all things that lay ahead of me. I think its one of the best flow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) experiences one can have, it also helps that all activities in his books are flow activities. (Which I think is the case for almost all 'great' novels and the reason why so many people experience flow while reading, since its possible to experience the same feelings/emotions as someone else if you see/read/hear someone having that feeling, which might have to do something with mirror neurons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons).

Ive read almost all of his work and agree The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is his best, Kafka a close second and Norwegian Wood a close third.

Im currently reading alot (Murakami, Csikszentmihalyi, Ayn Rand, Ramachandran, Luke Rhinehart, George R.R. Martin, Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Fitzgerald, Kafka etc etc.) and thinking of writing myself since its such a creative process and on paper you can write anything you want. Which makes me think about all kinds concepts, theories, human relations, philosophy, cognition, semantics etc. I also believe that the more you read the better you get at writing (or more the creative process of what you want to write, not the writing in itself). I probably just have to work on my writing fundamentals first but that will be rewarding in itself. Any recommendations of books on writing?

Just read the bookworm of Infinite Jest and its about some really interesting topics I never really thought about before (http://web.archive.org/web/200406060...rk/bookworm96/)

I liked this quite a bit though I don't think its for everybody. Well it won a Pulitzer so maybe I am wrong.

I loved City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz is a weird and interesting read.

+1 Just finished this a couple months ago. Amazing writer. Oblivion was great too... and I'm currently reading some essays of his ('A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again').

+100000 on Kafka and anything else by Haruki Murakami; Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of The Earth was also brilliant.

I liked American Gods as well, but would hesitate to put it amongst the ones I enjoyed most.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was brilliant as well.

lol... reading this thread and can't remember f%*k all what I've read until reading other posts. Alzheimers ftw!

Although Fortune's Formula was good, I'd give the nod to "How Would You Move Mt. Fuji" to my favorites of William Poundstone's works. 2nd place "Gaming The Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair". 3rd place: Prisoner's Dilemma.

Ok, I'll shut up now/stop monopolizing this thread

+1

Amazing read, fantastic story, even inspirational. It's my favourite book.

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

dont know if it is the best book of the last 10years, but it had the most impact on me.

check the reviews...its certainly a book that you either like or hate..
http://www.complete-review.com/revie...m/partelem.htm

life of pi (and its zany-south-asian-bildungsroman-booker-prize-winner cousin, the white tiger) are both very good

I really liked the Christopher Brookmyre books. Theyre mainly crime/comedy...heres an extract from the sacred art of stealing where he talks about paying for head:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/03...0A#reader-link

Pillars of the Earth, and the sequel World Without End, by Ken Follett. (Okay so only the sequel was made in this millennium, nits)

I literally just finished the first. In one way I was happy with it - I was expecting it to be like Eco's the Name of the Rose which I found pretty hard going, taking me a month to finish. Pillars of the Earth was a lot more readable and presented the historical information much more fluidly it felt to me, though Eco's probably a better writer.

However, the characters are all pretty one dimensional - they're good or they're bad and they don't really change (I guess you could say that Alfred or Richard had character arcs, but they aren't exactly amazing). The twists are also pretty obvious, as are the solutions to their problems. On the other hand, the period is interesting and one I know very little about, and it was quite exciting at times. It had some pretty graphic scenes in that I didn't see much point in - some of the sex, notably rapes, for example. It was a good enough book that I read its 1100 odd pages and ordered the sequel, but I'm not going to fidget in anticipation for the delivery.

Oh, and Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is easily the best historical-style series I've read, and what got me looking into Name of the Rose in the first place. I'd definitely recommend that over either choice.

knockemstiff by Pollock was fantastic if you like the palahniuk style (the old way when he was still good obv).

Convince me to finally push through Quicksilver?

The next two books are better. I really enjoyed Quicksilver though, so... Have you read Cryptonomicon? That's probably the best starting point for reading these, weirdly.

I have Cryptonomicon as well as the entire BC, but I've never finished any of his books ...

I've immensely enjoyed parts of QS, just never made it through ...

Edit: Also, oddly enough, I'm right in the middle of Pillars of the Earth ... I like it quite a bit as well, even tho it is pretty simple ... I think that's an advantage with the scope of the book tho ... compare that with the Baroque Cycle which is quite a bit more scattered and I think it's easy to see why I'll finish PotE soonish, and why I've started Quicksilver 3 or 4 times ...

"The Kindly Ones" - Jonathan Littel, the fictional memoirs of a german SS-officer about his life during WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire

Infinite Jest is a bitch of a book. About 100 pages in and not entirely sure what is going on yet and have a headache.