Book recommendation: something that blew your mind

This is an easy one for me! I cannot recommend this lad enough: David Gemmel.

He writes fantasy novels, swords and sorcery stuff. What makes him stand out by a mile compared to other authors is his ability to explore the greyness of the human condition, the distinction between what is good and what is evil. You end up questioning your own decisions in life reading one of this books somehow!

What also makes him exceptional is that he researches everything completely. He knows weapons, swordplay, his battle descriptions are brilliant, and it goes right down to things like how they manages the horses and what characters eat and wear, it's all fantastically accurate.

He wrote about 20 books before he passed away. They're ridiculously easy to read so they only drawback of his books is that you'll fly through them all at nearly the rate of a book a day, because you'll not put the book down all day long. Read any of them, I recommend starting with Legend or Sword in the Storm.

Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything".
It covers pretty much the entire history of Science, the Universe, and the Earth. Fantastic read. It covers all the major discoveries, and the people who discovered them. What i loved most about it was, he goes into detail about who these people were, what they were like etc. Definatly worth reading

Almost somehow nearly forgot Neil Gaiman- American Gods and Nick Cave- The death of Bunny Monroe. Both entertaining in totally different ways. Bunny Monroe is wrong in so many ways, I loved it! American Gods is a book to get stuck into, another one to own.

Imajica by Clive Barker. There is nothing else to say.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

"Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" — and find that there is no death"

"Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disappointments before you realize that truth"

"...words in themselves are not important. They are not the Truth; they only point to it"

"Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself"

Power of Now quotes

Red Mars or Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Ozziej wrote: »

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell

I'm just reading his next book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, just as brilliant as Cloud Atlas

if into science fundamentals, John & Mary Gribbin's classic Deep Simplicity can't be faulted (btw, Jim al-Khalili's BBC4 series The Secret Life of Chaos covers most of the same ground, the final episode is esp. class with the chaotically evolved animations, unreal)

Catcher in the rye by JD Salinger. Amazing read.

Law of attraction - Micheal Losier

Its short and very straight forward but more importantly it worked for me.

Pablo_ wrote: »

Bit disappointed that this is a 'whats my favourite book' thread .... and not mind blowing, really out there books that deserve such an adjective.

Ps . i'm not trying to be a git with this post

You might look like like less of a git if you post your own suggestion. :P :pac:

18AD wrote: »

The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.

Brilliant book!