[blatz]

I used to really dig the Terry Brooks Shannara series.

I remember reading Sword of Shannara on the bus home from school - that was the first sci/fi fantasy book I'd ever read and I was hooked. 

The whole series was pretty good, but the first three really wrapped you in.

[narcout]

Well, I just finished The Gathering Storm, and it was fantastic.

Brandon Sanderson did an amazing job. I can't imagine how daunting a task it must have been, but he pulled it off.

[nicneufeld]

I am a sucker for comic novels, and I don't mean "graphic novels/comic books", rather writing with a penchant for humor.  My favorite series used to be the LotR but somehow the movies, which I initially loved and greatly anticipated, have neutered this series a little for me.  Characters have been not so much ruined, but degraded, cheapened, watered down from where they were in my mind before Peter Jackson's little foray.

Now my favorite series is the scifi/humor classic Hitchhiker's Guide series, and Adams' followup Dirk Gently books.  This too had its poor adaptations, but the 2005 movie was so, SO bad that it somehow has managed not to corrupt the books for me.  I turned it off halfway through, it was so bloody awful.  The BBC TV series was bad, but in a chintzy BBC special effects sort of way...somehow Big-Budget Awful is worse than low budget, we're-trying-but-we-just-don't-have-the-funds sort of awful.

Another great line of books that is not so much a series as a tangled web of interwoven novels and short stories are the two major canons of PG Wodehouse, the Jeeves books and the Blandings Castle books.  Having exhausted the former I am enjoying of late some of the more prominent examples of the latter.  Just finished Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather, both very good, and Leave it to Psmith being the first of the Blandings Castle series that I read, it remains a favorite.

[Hokerer]

(currently listening to Pournelle/Niven's  Lucifer's Hammer in the car while commuting)

Lucifer's Hammer is excellent.  After that, if you liked it, you ought to try Pournelle/Niven's Footfall, also excellent.

[Hokerer]

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher - This is what restarted me looking at Fantasy/Sci-Fi recently. It's a series of books that deal with a modern day wizard in modern day Chicago. He acts like a PI, but gets entangled in the ongoing war between humanity and creatures from the NeverNever including the Fae and the Vampire courts, etc. Lots of fun.

After you finish the Dresden books, check Netflix and get the Dresden Files TV series.  Half decent job of sticking with the books and pretty well done.  Season 1 (may have been all that was made) is available on something like three DVDs.

[dbeechum]

After you finish the Dresden books, check Netflix and get the Dresden Files TV series.  Half decent job of sticking with the books and pretty well done.  Season 1 (may have been all that was made) is available on something like three DVDs.

Actually, it was the TV Series that got me to check out the books initially. And yeah, one and done on the series. It was funny to see what they kept and what they didn't and of course, I can't read Dresden without seeing Paul Blackthorne as Harry.