Check out Carbon Grey. I'm not an avid collector of graphic novels, but I really love this. It's very gritty, and is set in an alternate Industrial Age reality where WWI never ended. You can actually download the first 3 issues for free on their KS page (it's in their Updates tab, Page 1 I think)

Thank you and again thank you! :DDD

Whatever you spend for it, it's worth the price. It's the best of a new genre of books, where historians analyze various personalities in history by what they read as well as their adnotations and analyzing how that might've influenced their actions in life. There's also a good one about Napoleon, but i can't remember what it's called, and i can't find it right now :(

Nice, i like analytical and philosophical stuff.

I would like to recommand another fantasy series:

The Raven books (7 in total) by James Barclay.

They are about a group of mercenarys called "The Raven" with gread comradship and a simple code of honor "Kill but never murder". These group are the main persons through the whole series even if some die and new ones join the core members will be there in all books and you will really like them, because there are some great characters witih different personalities which often leads to conflicts and funny situations. Another cool thing in this series is the concept of magic it has and the problems resulting out of misuse (like invading demons, dragons etc).

Probably sounds like a strange recommendation, but this is one of my three most liked series and it's kinda hard for me to write about it, because there is too much I love about that books :D

The Passage by Justin Cronin, a pretty recent book, its sequel is due out in the next couple of months.

Its hard to genrefy it as it covers many things, it starts off in the South American jungle and then turns into a couple of agents chasing an abandoned child and then ... well..... lets just say I was playing Fallout NV at the time and some parts reminded me of that alot.

A bloody good book.

EDIT for linkage..

http://enterthepassage.com/the-passage/

I like Lord Dunsany's short stories, but they're more abstract and poetic. I won't recommend them to people looking for fun, fast-paced narratives, but they make good screenplays, so if you have the patience to sit down and imagine away, you'll enjoy them.

DOS for Dummies by Dan Gookin. It's a lot of fun, really :-P

For fast-paced fantasy, I would recommend "The Lies of Locke Lamora". It's the first volume of one of these ridiculously long modern fantasy epics, that take forever to get finished, if they get finished at all, but it's actually pretty much self-contained and surprisingly good.

It is a book of historical significance!

Tony Hillerman : the Leaphorn/Chee series. Crime novels that take place in Hopi/Navajo reservations. Praised by anthropologists.

PG Wodehouse : the Jeeves series. Hilariously overcomplicated tongue-in-cheek aristocratic microdrama, with great self-derogative humour.

Arturo Perez-Reverte : the Alatriste series. Cynical adventures of a spanish blade-for-hire in the XVIIth century, with quite a few digressions. Other inrelated great Perez-Reverte novels include The Fencing Master, The Club Dumas and The Nautical Chart. Perez-Reverte is great at historical, erudite, "noir" stories. Only second to :

Unberto Eco : the Name of the Rose. Carefully historically grounded whodunit in an XIVth century abbey. Foucault's Pendulum. Hugely documented thriller about real or fake worldwide conspiracies. The absolute antidote to dan brown.

Michael Ende : the Neverending Story. Extremely deep allegoric fantasy novel, which episodes still haunt me in everyday life, where everything keeps echoing them since.

James Ellroy : The Lloyd Hopkins trilogy. Basically a darker, more twisted, more tortured version of dirty harry. The Los Angeles Quartet. A series of very dark thrillers involving multiple flawed, deep, multi-layered main characters, and a huge amount of political cruelty. Basically a darker, more twisted, more tortured version of the shield. Silent Terror aka Killer on the Road. A heavily psychological and disturbing first-person novel about a serial killer.

Arthur C. Doyle : the Sherlock Holmes series is about Sherlock Holmes, okay. A dude that applies modern forensics in an era where it was absolute novelty. Also, a vaguely recluse figure and a drug addict (at least user). You may have heard of him. The Challenger series are like more straightforward jules verne adventures, involving an opinionated giant bearded savant. His other stories are excellent short stories of poe-like or lovecraft-like horrors (The Parasite reminds lovecraft's charles dexter ward affair a lot), or adventure tales involving pirates or australian gunslingers, or little cynical moral tales such as Raffles Haw (about trying to make happiness around onself with an unlimited amount of money), or even parodies, historical novels, etc. Basically, everything is awesome, for Conan Doyle happens to rule.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It experiments with formatting, color, the idea of what makes a book...it's amazing. And unsettling. The basic plotline: a family moves into a house that happens to be a little bigger on the inside than the outside. And this is contained within a story of the man who finds the story. It's definitely one of the best books I've ever read.

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/House-Leaves-Mark-Z-Danielewski/dp/0375703764

It's best to get that edition; it's got all the proper color/formatting/etc.

I'd also recommend most of Chuck Palahniuk's books. I have four more to go before I've read all his fiction. My favorites have been Fight Club, Haunted, and Invisible Monsters.

Tom Stoppard is excellent if you like plays; my favorites there are Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

I was an English major, so I could go on all day about this...haha.

If you haven't already: Transmetropolitan. Then and only then try other things. Transmetropolitan first.

Thanks very much. :D
I seconded that House of Leaves recommendation.

I read it back when I was in high school and it was the easily most trippy book I've ever read. Simply brilliant stuff.