I'll also recommend the Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy series, especially if you're looking for something humourous. They are all great books, but my favourite is probably The Resturant At the End of the Universe, due to the fact that the titular restaurant is ludicrous, and the events following the visit even more so. It's very British, however, and some of the jokes may fly over international heads (Life, The Universe & Everything has a scene where Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect teleports on a sofa to Lords cricket grounds. Hilarity ensues, but let's just say the teleporting sofa isn't the source of the majority of the ensuing hilarity).

Also, if you like comics and/or manga (judging by the first post, probably not), then the Scott Pilgrim books are worth a punt. Do note that they're quite short, due to their visual nature, but I find them very, very funny. Your mileage may vary, of course: if you didn't like the film, you won't like the comics (at least the first volume, which the film pretty much replicates. By the fifth volume, however, the film and the comic are very different).

"Good Omens" Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman.

You can also read the whole saga from pen Andrzej Sapkowki about the witcher:
"The Last Wish" would be excellent for beginning.:D

From that author I also recommend The Hussite Trilogy, but I don't know if that has been translated into other language than Polish.

Wow! Thank you for running this competition! It was a lot of fun and I'm definitely going to steal a ton of the book recommendations that you received. I will send you a PM with a game and my info.

I know i'm late, but you should also check out "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco. Not to spoil the story, it's a historical 'murder mystery' novel that takes place in 14 century Italy. Very good, atmospheric and open to interpretation. If you're interested in semiotics - must read.

Oh, and thanks to everyone, marking thread as 'favorite'. :)

Oh, books! I am a philology student, so you can trust me.

First 2 epics.

1) Gilgamesh

This is a fairly short epic, but a great storyline nontheless. It's reaching psychological depth which has never been there in other epics. It presents the anti-hero Gilgamesh, a tyrann king of Uruk, who befriended himself with the deus ex machina Endiku (with implied homosexuality) and screws with the gods. And we relive the passion of this great king as he tries to find the cure for immortality. The version of Stephen Mitchell is the best so far.

2) Book of Kings: Shahname
This is the biggest epic in world history. It's even thrice as big as Homer's epics altogether and as beatiful as any love novel. It tells of the heroes and kings of the mythological Persia and how they dealt with a world full of Turks and Deamons. It's pure awesomenes. If you are a Lord of the Ring fan, it plays in the same setting, only with more manliesness than just being manly. The only problem is that today releases tend to shorten the epic due ideological reasons. Dick Davis' version (the most complete so far) was shortening the introduction and other stuff to be able to justify that the poet Firdowsi was a muslim. Though the epic points out that he wasn't at all.

Now, modern works.

1.)Faust I
The great drama by Goethe is of a retell of the Alchemist Faust who made a bet with the devil Mephisto that he will give his soul in return to reach eternal happiness. It's a great work of poetry, and there are alot of good translations out there.

2.) Kafka: der Proceß
A fragmented novel of Kafka, where the protagonist K. gets arrested and put on trial. It's a sureal and modern-depressive work of art, which puts you into a world where no escape is possible.

3.) Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn

The very bestest best fantasy novel ever! If you ever watched the movie, get the damn book, it's even better! Trust me, so much poetry in a modern book is rare.
I recommend you to buy it over Beagle's personal shop, since he won't get any money by buying it on normal stores:
http://www.conlanpress.com/
His 52/50 project is also worth to check out.

4)Winnie the Pooh & Momo
My favourite series when I was a child. Seriously, the books were still the best.

5.) The Parfum by Patrick Süßkind
The Scott Pilgrim of Literature. If you want to know what smelling causes to associate, this book is good for this.

6.)Bert Brecht's dramas
Brecht is the modern Goethe of the 21th century. He made alot of stuff, but his best are still his theatre plays.
They are a critic of capitalism and show how human nature can't reach freedom by full product consumption. It's not much of a communist manifest, but more of a critic at Brecht's time.
I recommend you the dramas mostly because of the music. The Fall of Mahagony and the Three Penny Opera are most worth it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcmMmHQU8cg

7) Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz

One of the many great novels of the Weimar Republic. It's a syncretic work of so many literature styles and motives which almost feels like reading a movie. Great use of montage

8) Gottfried Benn: Morgue poems
Very nasty poems, portraying the corpes in Morgues. READ IT!

9) Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
A monumental work of Thomas Mann, whose other works are really recommending. It tells about an ideological washed dude who goes to the Magic Mountain to cross with the best intellectuals and philosophers. A great novel.

German literature is one of the many areas you can get so many good books. I might urge you to look deeper into this.

I would begin with At the Mountains of Madness. It provides a good stepping stone to his ideas of cosmological weirdness, and is very creepy and intense. Following that, you should be good enough to read the rest of his short stories in any order.

If you haven't read the Mistborn trilogy, do that.

For a different style, you need to read anything by O Henry and any of the "Jeeves" series by P.G. Wodehouse.

Light comedy, VERY clever writing, and probably all freely available on gutenberg.org

My favorite non-fiction book of late (this decade) is called Pagan Holiday by Tony Perrottet. If you're at all interested in ancient history this is a great read. The author and his pregnant girlfriend embark on a trip around the mediterranean, retracing the path of the first tourists. The Romans had secured for the first time in history a huge area, making tourism possible in the first century. The author's description of his journey is interspersed with writings from ancient tourists, and the similarities are amazing and often hilarious. I also found it interesting to see how much certain areas have changed over the millenia - Naples was once a ritzy resort town, apparently, but is now something of a pit. Anyway, put it on your list, you'll love it.

Thanks!

EDIT : My bad to have made a post after closure, i read from start and I replied half the way ... a great topic nevertheless from which I could get some great references. Thank you all.

I would have recommended those books if you hadn't (I didn't read the whole topic but you're the first talking abou it so you won a quote). I won't add much since the main things were said : magnificent plot, the most likable characters I ever met in a fantasy book. There are also several "How to" about using magic, since I mastered it, my everyday life is much more easier. One of the greatest saga I ever read (and I read a lot).

Historical :
For the sake of bringing knowledge of good books to Good Old People, I will recommend "Stalingrad" and its sequel "Berlin: The Downfall 1945" by Antony Beevor. Books about WW2 obviously, but those books were mostly written from testimonies and the way the historical facts are related really moved me.

The book "Stalingrad" is related to the movie. I think there were not any worse adaption of a book in the history of cinema. This book is about learning the events from the testimonies of eyewitnesses living that conflict wiyhout having a "good ones and bad ones" story. Just humans.

"Berlin: The Downfall 1945" is more 'geopolitical', but I remember feeling sorry for all the people who lived that hell. Once I finished this book, I was amazed to realize I just read the Introduction of the story of the Cold War.

In summary : very interesting books, mind opening, a great testimony of our past.

I love these books, but they are LOOOOOOOOOONG.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen series of books are great.

[url=]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen[/url]

Green eggs and ham! :D

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1761

It's called Visions of a Schizophrenic and it's a book of non fictional (for the most part) poems that were written during a period prior to, developing, and recovering from schizophrenia. Why should you buy this book? Because it was written by someone here on the GOG forums.

Oh don't let the buy count fool you, it's actually not a bad collection of poems, but it is only $1.50, so I would recommend getting a copy so the author can start work on his next project which he is saying is a survival guide to living with schizophrenia.
-Cym