The Gaming Den

I'm surprised we don't have that thread already, but whatever.

I'm looking for a few book recommendations - specifically, I want to read some good gunfight scenes as I'm unsatisfied with the one in the novel I'm writing.

If the rest of the book could be good, that would be a plus. I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount of milsci-fi rightwing nutjob ranting and/or relentless exposition about Mark-7 Air-to-ground Talon missiles and the like.

MisterDee wrote: If the rest of the book could be good, that would be a plus. I'm willing to tolerate a certain amount of milsci-fi rightwing nutjob ranting and/or relentless exposition about Mark-7 Air-to-ground Talon missiles and the like.

John Ringo is the man for when you want gunfights and don't mind rightwing nutjob ranting.

David Drake is also good, but be advised that his scifi is all set in the Vietnam War.

I've heard nice things about the Alloy of Law. A sort of fantasy western, by Branden Sandersen. The main character can mess with his weight and gets a lot of mileage out of that and a shotgun, I understand.

Oh right, seconding Alloy Of Law and also Sanderson's Reckoner's series.

Stuff with gunsfights and such:
Armor by John Steakly
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King
Three by Jay Posey
A Call to Arms by Alan Dean Foster
The Dire Earth Cycle by Jason M. Hough
"Hell's Gate" "Hell Hath No Fury" by David Weber & Linda Evans
Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn
The Metzada series by Joel Rosenberg
Emile and the Dutchman by Joel Rosenberg
Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Sci-Fi:
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Contact by Carl Sagan
Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Uplift series by David Brin
Farmer in the Sky by Heinlein
Tunnel in the Sky by Heinlein
Starship Troopers by Heinlein
Jurassic Park by John Chriton
Sam Gunn, Unlimited by Ben Bova
The Asteroid Wars series by Ben Bova
The Demon cycle series by Peter V. Brett
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson
The Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison
The Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison
The Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy by Yoshiyuki Tomino
One Second After by William R. Forstchen
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain by Jim Bernheimer
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
Day By Day Armadeddon series by J.L. Bourne
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Fantasy:
The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
The Night Angel series by Brent Weeks
Antipaladin Blues by Jess Gulbranson
The Black Company by Glen Cook
World War Z by Max Brooks
Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Keepers of the Hidden Ways series by Joel Rosenberg
Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck (I helped proofread it, a little)
The Caiphas Cain series by Sandy Mitchell

Spy/Political Novels:
Cauldron by Larry Bond
To Protect and Defend by Eric L. Harry
The Lion's Game by Nelson DeMille

Non-Fiction:
The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

General Reference:
Back to Basics (1st edition), by Reader's Digest
History of Blacksmithing (Revised) by Alex W. Bealer
Daulaire's Guide to Norse Myths

I second the good omens recommendation. It's both funny and interesting at the same time, though kind of rooted in it's era and you may not get some of the references.

MisterDee wrote:I want to read some good gunfight scenes as I'm unsatisfied with the one in the novel I'm writing.

Check out Draw, by James Reasoner.

Terry Pratchett. Pretty much all of it. Start with Small Gods or Feet of Clay. Then basically pick a sub series and go in order.

Preacher, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon (it's a comic/graphic novel).

The Orphan's Tales, by Cathrynne Valente. These are so good--it's a nested story structure, a la the original 1001 Nights, and it's amazing how much ties together in the end. And it's gorgeous stuff.

Dresden Files. I'm in for the ride at this point

Branden Sandersen hasn't disappointed me yet.

Ursula Vernon, author of Digger, has several other things out now. Most of them are e-books, and some are under the pen name T. Kingfisher. Nine Goblins and the Seventh Bride were pretty good. And she has a kid's series called Dragonbreath that she both wrote and drew. And a YA called Castle Hangnail, about the trials of minioning and being a good Dark Master in the modern(ish) day.

I've liked Six-Gun Tarot and the Shotgun Arcana, a sort of Weird West by R.S. Belcher, but they have their rough edges. Six-Gun does a lot character flashbacks/scenes because it's pretty clear the author had a hell of a setting and cast but not much plot.

The Nightside series, by Simon Green, is a weird sort of fantasy Noire in a kitchen sink setting. It pisses me off a little because Green has so much creative muscle that he can throw some neat concepts away.

And I'm currently looking for book 4 of the Robert Asprin "Myth" books. The whole thing, really. They're short and goofy, but I like them.

Oh, the Vampire Files by PN Elrod have been good to me. Guy gets turned into a vampire in mid-30's Chicago. It's a refreshingly old-school look at vampirism. He's got powers, yeah, but he's got limitations.

There's more, of course. I'll post 'em as I think of them.

Anything by the following authors: Robert Heinlein, Jim Butcher, Brandon Sandersen, Terry Pratchett, Seanan McGuire.

Hit or miss authors: Simon R. Green, P.S. Powers

To Start:

I recommend any of the Rincewind books from Terry Pratchett or Indexing from Seanan McGuire if you are in a semi-serious, semi-whimsical mood.

I recommend Stranger in a Strange Land from Heinlein if you are looking to stretch you mind.

Terry Pratchett has gun fights?
Or did the Thread drift allready to good books?
(and not books with good gun fights)

Just seemed to drift to me *Shrug* so I chipped in.

Oh, well. I'll have to make a new post with the just the fighty books. Much smaller.

Korwin wrote:Terry Pratchett has gun fights?
Or did the Thread drift allready to good books?
(and not books with good gun fights)

Since Meikle had posted, I figured the ice was broken. General Good Stuff.

Edited my post to have a category for stuff with gunfights. Some of the other books in the post do feature some wars and such, but I don't really count those as the same thing in most cases.

Since we seem to have drifted, I am going to go ahead and recommend the Martian.

I can't actually think of any good gunfight novels. The only thing that really comes to mind is Ream De, and I only thought the gunfight in that was interesting because it focuses on the level of sheer tedium that many times happens in a gunfight.

But seriously, read the Martian

I'm going to recommend Lonely Werewolf Girl and it's sequels. It's a good urban fantasy series.

Newton's Cannon, by J. Gregory Keyes

No. Run, save yourself. That series is interminable.

Ancient History wrote:No. Run, save yourself. That series is interminable.

+1

I got the whole series since I enjoyed the Briar King so much. And well, to put it in perspective, I have a frequent desire to re-read many of my books. I've gone through the entire Dresden series like half a dozen times. But I have yet to feel the urge to re-read Netwon's Cannon at all. Maybe in 10 years I'll forget and crack that spine once more, but I doubt it. I think I'll save it for my kids to read when they're older and deserve punishment.

The thing is, Keyes can be really good, but his fantasy epics tend to be drawn-out blah in the style of Kevin J. Anderson. Fool Wolf? Awesome. Waterborn Trilogy? Fuck me on toast.

The Waterborn Trilogy was awesome. You could really sense his background in anthropology and his knowledge of native magical paradigms.

If you want good scifi fighting but not neccessarely good book . .
Take a long hard look at the WH40K Books.

Or, David Drake's Hammer's Slammers.

I will be traveling on airplanes kind of a lot soon, because that is a thing I do around Christmas most years.

As such I require things to be read.

Generally speaking I like sci-fi/fantasy, but probably, if there's much of that I already have found it, I just bring it up as an aside. The main thing I'm looking for recommendations for would be non-fiction books about philosophy/science/sociology/scholarship.

The problem is, they need to not make over use of charts and diagrams, which narrows the field, since those things usually convert like garbage on my kindle.

This year I read some of Stephen Jay Gould's books and found them interesting. I don't usually read serious philosophy/science/sociology/scholarship, but his stuff was pretty readable to me.

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