Books are movies with all the deleted scenes.

This has the potential to spiral into a pages-long post for me, due partially to the fact that I have an entire ROOM of my house dedicated to books.  For the sake of the people who may read this post, though, I'll try to keep it to a manageable length.  ... The operative word in that sentence being "try", mind you.

I grew up reading books.  This is something that I unmistakably inherited from my mother - she has piles and bookcases and stacks and leaning towers of books that she'll almost certainly never read.  But they're there, and available, just in case she wants to peruse them.  My dad reads, too, though not anywhere near the level that my mom and I do.  I still remember the days that my elementary school had book fairs.  Most kids in my class would get a handful of books.  I would get several bags full of books.  It was never much of an effort on my part - I was, for the most part, interested in reading whatever I could, and my parents were only too happy to support that.  The books I got could only last me so long, though, even with multiple read-throughs, and so eventually I branched into my sisters' books too.  I--

Crap, I'm already going off into random territory.  This is what happens when I have -too- much to write about, I suppose.  Back to the topic at hand - favorite books.  This is a bit hard for me to narrow down, because whenever I think about the books I like, it leads me to think about similar books that I like, and then to think about completely different books that I like... and then it's half an hour later and I've been staring off into space, or something equally creepy.  I'll try to prevent that from happening too much here.

The first author that comes to mind is R.A. Salvatore.  I've read a lot of his books, but I'm especially fond of his Forgotten Realms series of books, particularly the ones involving two of my favorite characters created: Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri.  I was completely clueless about these books until I started working at a bookstore in 2002.  In July of 2003, the first book in another series centered on Drizzt and his friends (the sixth series, if I'm counting correctly, though I didn't know that then) was released.  The title of it was "The Thousand Orcs", and just from looking at the cover, I knew: I really, really wanted to read this book.

I hadn't yet discovered my fascination with dark elves, but to me, this was the coolest book cover ever.

I read this book, and it was pretty good - but I felt like I was missing something... something essential to really get the most out of it.  That's when I discovered the extensive backlog of books that I'd missed out on.  Fortunately, there were two things working in my favor at that point.  First, almost all of the older books had been collected into single-book compilations at that point, and they were readily available for me to purchase.  Second, working at the bookstore got me a 33% discount on books (which I miss to this day).  Several months later, I was caught up, and hooked.  I have been ever since - these books speak to the part of me that's always wanted to be a D&D player, and they let me live out adventures that (possibly?) could have happened.  Drizzt was easily my favorite character in the series for years, and it's only recently that he's been replaced by Artemis, which... well, I'm not going to get into the reasoning behind it.  But the point is that R.A. Salvatore writes some pretty decent fantasy, and I enjoy them greatly.

Next up on my list is a series of books called The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks.  My discovery of this series was an interesting experience.  I'd hit a lull a little over a year ago where I didn't have anything new to read, and so I'd been researching popular fantasy books online to see if anything sounded good.  The first book in the series, The Way of Shadows, came up a couple of times, and I added it to my list and moved on.  A couple of months later, I was coming home from Los Angeles, and I stopped at a bookstore in LAX to see what they had.  Boom, the book was there, and I bought it to read on the flights home.  ... Occasionally, if I really enjoy what I'm doing (reading, gaming, whatever), I'll get completely absorbed into it and do it until I'm interrupted.  That's exactly what happened with this book.  I read it for the entirety of my first flight, gave it a break during my layover, and finished it on the second flight.  688 pages, gone in a day.  It took me several weeks after my return, but I finally tracked down and purchased the second and third books in the series (Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows, respectively).  These were devoured in short order, and then I was only left with the sad feeling of being finished with something that was supremely satisfying (much like eating a piece of delicious cake).  The story is fairly basic, at least in the beginning - scared guild rat wants to train under master wetboy (-not- assassin), trials and stuff happen, etc.  But somewhere within the story, you come to realize that you actually care about the characters, and what's going through their heads.  There are a lot of twists to the story, some foreshadowed and some not.  But I found the story, as a whole, to be pretty fantastic and well worth reading.  I've re-read the entire series at least twice this year alone.  I only wish there was more to it, after the end of the third book.

Third on my list is The Coldfire Trilogy, by C.S. Friedman.  More fantasy here (anyone see a trend?), and it's mostly your typical fantasy fare, with one notable exception.  The main anti-hero character is twisted, cruel, typically selfish, and completely badass.  To be fairly honest, without that character, I likely would have lost interest in the series halfway through the first book.  But his presence, and the constant question of "what is this guy going to do when (insert situation here)", kept me going.  I don't re-read this series often, honestly, just because the story isn't as gripping when you know everything that happens - but I really enjoyed it while I was reading it, so there we go.

Before we get to my next thought, I need to interject a series that I only recently started, and (sadly) probably wouldn't have thought to include if I didn't have several volumes of it sitting next to me.  I was a supporter of the Kickstarter drive for a webcomic called The Order of the Stick, and part of my reward was getting a reprinted copy of most of the books.  I would assume that most people reading this are familiar with the strip, and read it - if for some reason you're not (or you don't), go here and start reading it.  But only a few, mind you.  Come back and finish my post before you get sucked too deeply into the strip.  Everything about the comic fulfills the D&D itch that I mentioned in my R.A. Salvatore paragraph... only moreso.  My only complaint, really, is that the story drags on in several places.  Having the books is nice, but having to wait for comic updates is agonizing sometimes.

... Wow, this post is getting pretty lengthy.  I'll try to wrap it up over the next few paragraphs.  There are several books and series that I enjoy, but I'll just list them out with little blurbs of info.

- Killobyte, by Piers Anthony.  Real people in a VR game world.  Silliness, gaming fun, a "save the girl" mission, with a dash of adult-themed situations.  Throw in an angsty teenage hacker to cause conflict, and stir.

- The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner.  The story of a thief who gets sent on a secret mission for a king that he doesn't claim allegiance to, trying to retrieve an ancient relic.  It's a pretty simple read, but I really enjoyed it.  I recently discovered that it was the first in a series of four books.  I had no idea about that until several days ago.  The other three books are now near the top of my "need to read" list.

- Catspaw, by Joan D. Vinge.  Actually the second book in a trilogy (but the first one I read), it follows a young halfbreed crippled psion as he tries to fix himself (and not get killed in the process).  More of a sci-fi/fantasy blend than most of my other books, and more of the adult themes than the others as well.

- Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind.  Oh, the Sword of Truth series.  The first four books in the series were good - and I'd even call the first two (WFR, and Stone of Tears) great.  But after the first four books, the series went downhill, and in a bad way.  The eighth book, Naked Empire, made me physically ill to read.  Not many books can claim that.  But, I digress.  Wizard's First Rule is about a woods guide named Richard, who decides to help a strange woman in a white dress, and gets himself caught up in an epic battle against an evil tyrant.  The characters are fairly well-developed, but the story is the main attraction here.  Fighting, and wizardly wisdom, and love, and some red leather-clad blonde-haired women.  No, really, that last part is pretty important to the series as a whole.  I'm not sure how many chapters in this first book alone focus on them, but it's a lot.  Anyway.  I recommend the first four books, but tread carefully after those.  I won't be held responsible for any brain damage incurred by later entries.

- The Harry Potter series.  Enough said.

Finally, I'll wrap it up with the novel Battle Royale.  All of this excitement and fandom about The Hunger Games, and all the controversy about how edgy and dark it is?  This book did all that, and more, twelve years before Hunger Games even came out.  After an economic crisis, Japan becomes a totalitarian state, and every year a randomly selected class of junior high students are selected to participate in "The Program".  They're placed in an isolated area and fight to the death, until only one of them is left alive.  Some of the students want to group together and find a way out.  Some want to kill everyone.  This makes Hunger Games look tame in comparison.  It was popular enough to spawn two movies and a manga series, and it's still popular today (partially thanks to Hunger Games, no doubt).

Actually, on the subject of manga - I don't read it anywhere near as much as I once did, but I really enjoy Prince of Tennis, Rurouni Kenshin, Maison Ikkoku, Hot Gimmick, and several other series that I won't mention for fear of damaging my public image further.

Whew, this took longer than I thought it would.  Hopefully you find something potentially interesting my list - and if you have any questions about any of them, or (somehow) want to know more stuff I like, just comment below.  Thanks for reading!