[Quiet Man Cometh]

I like fantasy but my favourite books tend to be older. I've read very fiew contemporary books lately, unless one counts Harry Potter. I dwell in the pre-1950's usually.

My favourite fantasy books are Homeland, by R.A. Salvatore, Evermeet, Island of Elves by Elaine Cunningham, and I, Strahd: Memoires of a Vampmire by P.N. Elrod. The first two are from the Forgotten Realms shared world stuff printed by Wizards of the Coast, formerly by TSR, and the third is Ravenloft which may or may not have been re-released relatively recently in a collection called the Ravenloft Covenant.

My favourite books in general, are War and Peace (long but easy to read once you get the main characters figured out) by Leo Tolstoy, All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (takes place in WWI from the prospective of a young German soldier) and Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (full title ;) by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein is from the 1800ds but Mary Shelley doesn't have the convoluted or overly flowery style that some other writers of the time did so it's fairly easy to read as well. I found it interesting in that I felt more sympathy for Victor rather than the monster, which I didn't really like at all.

The Golden Compass was an okay read if you're looking for more fantasy with a bit of philosophy to play with though there's a lot of reference to religion in it, the concept of original sin in particular, which was largely cut from the movie. The movie had the look right for the most part, and some of the scenes seemed to be taken right from the book, but the meaning was skewed a lot which irritated me a little. There's much more stuff going on in the book than in the film.