Recommend me some books and I shall do the same

[m_mcgregor]

Being rather ill lately has made me want to curl up with a good book (or audiobook, thanks to migraines), but the problem is I tend to have a hard time finding a book I can really get into. For the last two years I've asked all of you out there to recommend TV shows to me, and I've gotten into some great shows because of that - Avatar: The Last

Comments

[dreadnaught_vv]

I suggest going to the Baen Free Library.
http://www.webscription.net/c-1-free-library.aspx
Lots of good books are available there, however be warned, they only have the first couple books of most series available there.

It's like crack, first hit's free.

I particularly suggest 1632 and Oath of Swords.

1632:

In the year 1632 in northern Germany a reasonable person might conclude that things couldn't get much worse. There was no food. Disease was rampant. For over a decade religious war had ravaged the land and the people. Catholic and Protestant armies marched and counter marched across the northern plains, laying waste the cities and slaughtering everywhere. In many rural areas population plummeted toward zero. Only the aristocrats remained relatively unscathed; for the peasants, death was a mercy.

2000 Things are going OK in Grantville, West Virginia. The mines are working, the buck are plentiful (it's deer season) and everybody attending the wedding of Mike Stearn's sister (including the entire membership of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, which Mike leads) is having a good time.

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED....

When the dust settles, Mike leads a small group of armed miners to find out what's going on. Out past the edge of town Grantville's asphalt road is cut, as with a sword. On the other side, a scene out of Hell; a man nailed to a farmhouse door, his wife and daughter Iying screaming in muck at the center of a ring of attentive men in steel vests. Faced with this, Mike and his friends don't have to ask who to shoot.

At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.

Oath of Swords:

Our Hero: The unlikely Paladin, Bahzell Bahnakson of the Horse Stealer Hradani. He's no knight in shining armor. He's a hradani, a race known for their uncontrollable rages, bloodthirsty tendencies, and inability to maintain civilized conduct. None of the other Five Races of man like the hradani. Besides his ethnic burden, Bahzell has problems of his own to deal with: a violated hostage bond, a vengeful prince, a price on his head. He doesn't want to mess with anybody else's problems, let alone a god's. Let alone the War God's! So how does he end up a thousand leagues from home, neck-deep in political intrigue, assassins, demons, psionicists, evil sorcery, white sorcery, dark gods, good gods, bad poets, greedy landlords, and most of Bortalik Bay? Well, it's all the War God's fault. . . .

[m_mcgregor]

I'll definitely check out 1632, as I like that sort of premise. David Weber's The Excalbur Alternative was a pretty fun light read with a somewhat similar idea, although this was taking the medieval characters to the future rather than the other way around.

[eleas]

1632 and its sequels are collectively known as the Ring of Fire books. They're absolutely wonderful, and surprisingly nuanced and even-handed (and, dare I say, compassionate) considering the potential for jingoism inherent in the concept.