h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Will have to try again.!

Craig Shaw Gardner is a bit of a Pratchett rip off. I also enjoyed the Robert Asprin books.

Your not alone! I don't get his books either. I just don't comprehend all the names.

Has anyone tried Jack Higgins??????????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????????????

Tom Clancy - Executive orders, very good series of 'Jack Ryan' books, I recommend these if you havn't tried.

I haven't read her most recent series. Is it Damia's children or something? Anyone read those? Are they any good?

What diverse lot you are!!!
I love reading and I can comment on two of the issues you raised.
First my daughter loved the 'Mog and Meg' books.Cant remember who wrote them all I know is that the author has a funny name.
Highly recommended.
I rembemer its Jan Pe---witz something like that anyway!!
I can recommend Jonathon Livingston Seagull and Illusions by Richard
Bach.-In all I must have bought these books at least 6 six times as people keep 'borrowing' them and then I never see them again.
I found these books were very much a part of my life in the 70's and
they still are as much a part now.
Also how about Sallingers Catcher in the Rye? a classic if ever I read one.

Jan Pienkowski . Great illustrations.

Catcher in the Rye is good. So is A kestrel For a Knave (Brian somebody). I too remeber the Mog and Meg books but I can't say I've seen them for a while.

I don't know if I mentioned this before but I'm desperately seeking a copy of RL Stevenson's Children's Garden Book of Verse for my son. I used to have a copy of it as a child (the proper version, not the silly reduced paperback one) but it got passed to a cousin or something. Whatever, I can't find it and it has such lovely poems in it. My favourite was The Land of Counterpane.

There you go its at Amazon.co.uk -A Child's Garden of Verse
Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Robinson

List Price: £6.99
Our Price: £5.59
You Save: £1.40 (20%)

Availability: This title is usually dispatched
within 2-3 days.

Hardcover - 128 pages (29 October, 1992)
Everyman's Library Children's Classics; ISBN: 185715908X

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 65,164

There are some good books mentioned above. Has anybody
read Iain Banks's books?

If you havent try the Wasp Factory or Complicity.

If you like Tom Clancy, try Frank Herbert "The White Plague". Very Clancy-ish stuff from the author of "Dune".

I don't know. When was he arrested? What was he charged with?

Seriously, though. I have read a few of his books. They are O.K., quite readable, but he's not one of my favourite authors.

What sort of books are they? Mystery or science or what?

Just remembered a series which I read when I was about 8 - The Narnia series by C S Lewis - the wonderful thing is that I bought it for my brother about 25 years later and read it again - I always do this with books I read as a child because some are remembered as better than they really are. Enid Blytons "Magic Faraway Tree" was one that I loved as a li'l un but when I reread it as an adult I realised how sexist it was and how it had dated terribly. I couldn't posssibly give it to young children. I eventually gave it to a teenage niece to read as an exercise in comparative reading and she was amazed at how children's books had changed.
The Narnia books stood up really well, though, and all the kids have read them - my 10 year old niece is reading them now - and loving them!!

Definitely read The Wasp Factory.Its rather a disturbing book -but well worth a read.Its one of those books that get you thinking.
I also agree with the CS Lewis books.Brilliant for 9years upwards.
Tolkeins 'Hobbit' is worth trying on this age group too.

The Wasp Factory is a very dark book. On the back of
of the book it says

"Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered
Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons
than I disposed of Blyth, and then a year later after
that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or
less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I
havent killed anybody for years, and dont intend
to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through"
- These are the thoughts and deeds of a thirteen year old boy.
Very disturbing with a cruel tortuous humour.

Complicity is just as disturbing...a book that will make
you jump as well!

Speaking as a 'thirtysomething', I had 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' when I was a kid and loved it. My husband bought me the complete set for Christmas a few years ago, and I still read them from time to time. Pure magic.

I've had at least one copy of 'The Hobbit' (I think I've got two at the moment) for as long as I can remember. That's another magic book.

Some people never grow up, but when books are this good, who needs to.

When I went to see the play "Shadowlands" there was a magical scene where a wardrobe opened onto that winter scene in Narnia with the lamp post - and it just took right back.
Beautifully done - very evocative. There was also a British TV series about Narnia which was very good.
BTW - My friend and I know the play as "Wetlands" - she cried from halfway through the first act to the final curtain.

I have to agree about the Narnia series. Magic is exactly the right word to describe it. No matter where I was at the time, I could read those books and be completely transported away to another time and place.

About the same time that I was reaing those books, I read another series by a man named Lloyd Alexander. The series was called the Prydain Chronicles, but the books were "The Book of Three", "The Black Cauldron", etc.

This series takes elements from Welsh myth and retells it in a totally unique story that I would reccomend for anyon of about 10 years old and up. I just reread them a couple of years ago, and they were every bit as good then.