bobnick

I like books. I like epic books even more. But, there has only been two books that caused the word epic to pop in my mind while reading it. The first was
"The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett. Reading the description of this book may cause you to think its boring (its about building a cathedral in the 1100's) But there's so much more to it than that, with characters you love and hate, and attention to detail that makes you want to learn all about this time period. Also, it takes place through a lifetime, which i liked as well. I dont remember how many pages it was, but I think it was around 700 or 800, yet it wasn't too long, and I didn't want it to end.

The second book that falls into this category is the sequel, "World Without End"

I would love to find a new epic book to read, so what is your epic book?

Ratman

I just re-read "Pillars" and am almost finished with "World Without End". Clavell's Asia themed books border on epic in my mind.

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Redjake

I can't think of a more epic book than Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. one of the best books ever written and truly grandiose in every aspect.

FelixP

Armor, by John Steakley. Best book ever written. I can identify with the main character (except I'm not an ultra effiecient killing machine)

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kramus

Actually I find the Dorothy Dunnett "House of Niccolo" series works in an epic fashion for me. Historical fiction set in mid-fifteenth century early Renaissance - the education-civilizing/career path of a polymath. Good stuff and it covers a hell of a lot of ground.

Sort of the same thing I found in Mary Stewart's "Hollow Hills" books about the life of Merlin, or the Camulod series by Jack Whyte starting with "The SkyStone".

A single book? How about "Courtship Rite" by Donald Kingsbury. A great glorious feed of a read (if you like speculative fiction).

There's lots more, but I'll stop here.

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bobnick

Ooooh, i just thought of another one. "River God" by Wilbur Smith. Its about a slave in Egypt.

Anormalguy

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, but that's not really fair because TKAM reached classic status long before I first read it.

This Much I Know Is True by Wally Lamb is a lenghty novel that covers a lot of issues and involves many characters.

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vinceco252

Shogun - James Clavell
Imajica - Clive Barker
Hyperion - Dan Simmons (and its sequels)
The Stand - Stephen King

Grasshopper Green

Pillars of the Earth is in my top 5 favorite books ever. My copy is so tattered, I fear it will fall apart during the next reading and I will probably have to buy a new one. World Without End is a good book, but nowhere near as good as Pillars.

My first thought was Gone With the Wind. I haven't read it in a long time, but I remember I liked it more than the movie, which is a favorite of mine.

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lostgirl

Frank Herbert's "Dune". One of the best books I have ever read. I liked both the movie and the miniseries on Sifi, but nothing can beat the what I imagined in my minds eye while reading this book.

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Daniel_

Warning: Dune is great. Frank Herbert's related books are also pretty good.

Brian Herbert's corpse raping sequels are not so good.

Read them if you want (I did) but don't tell me you weren't warned - what has been seen cannot be unseen, no matter how much you want mind-bleach.

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╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗
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The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
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carrot glace

"The Walking Drum" by louis l'amour
the only one of its kind he ever did. i think.

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Charlatan

I can't believe nobody has mentioned, The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien or the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.

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uncle phil

don't forget the fountainhead...

also, the iliad and the odyssey were a couple of greek epics, as was the roman aenead...

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Leto

I was going to mention the Iliad as well. I attempted this when I was in gr 9, as we studied the Odyssey and I understood that the Iliad was a prequel. Well, my young brain was not prepared to accommodate the translation offered at the time, so I put it down in favour of my other choice (Dune) which in itself required a couple of false starts before I managed to consume it.

as far as epic, I would choose the Odyssey over the Iliad, as it was more far ranging.

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Lasereth

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was totally engrossing and epic.

Also, hate me if you want but Harry Potter 3 and 4 were extremely epic if you're a fan of the series.

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Baraka_Guru

I'm going to chime in on poetry.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty classic, as is Beowulf. There is a ton of other ancient works that are epic in scope, but my reading is limited in that area, generally.

I also tend to think of the more recent Paradise Lost, which, in my mind, is one of the most powerful epics ever written if you include technical, aesthetic, cultural, and metaphysical considerations. Plus, within those lines you will find some of the best turns of phrase you'll find anywhere in the English language.

I'm also going to throw in Don Quixote and Pound's Cantos as other epic works I've read worth mentioning, the latter being essential to the development of long poems through the 20th century to today.

I'll also mention Ulysses, though I never finished it. (I don't know anyone who has.) One day I'll do it...one day.... (What says 'epic' more than that?)

Oh, and shoutouts to the Lord of the Rings, the Odyssey, and the Iliad.

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vinceco252

Agreed on all points.

BadNick

Some of the classic epics can't be ignored. My first thought was Moby Dick.

snowy

After reading kramus's recommendations, I can't help but think of Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon. I consumed that book; despite its length I could not put it down until I was done.

Baraka also mentioned a lot of good ones. If you're interested in reading an epic gone wrong, try John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

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roachboy

william gaddis: the recognitions.
robert musil: the man without qualities

obviously, marcel proust: in search of lost time.
james joyce: ulysses, finnegans wake
thomas pynchon: gravity's rainbow
salman rushdie: midnight's children

there are lots.

o & my contempt for ayn rand really knows no limits. i am struggling not to get started about it. the queen of purple prose, the sort of writer that makes one pine for the austerity of style anne rice is o so known for...stopping now. clicking on post. must stop.

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ring

so many

Tolstoy - War and Peace
Dickens - Bleak House
Nabokov - Ada

mucho detestation for the ayn r.

Baraka_Guru

Heh, I didn't want to be the first to say it. I think in my case it isn't as much about Ayn Rand as it is the taking of her novels too seriously.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

-deathboy-

must second the vote for imajica by clive. that book takes you on a grand adventure.

i'd like to throw out "swan song" by robert mccammon. this is a fantasticly deep story that takes you on a journey that you wonder if it will ever end, yet hope that it never does.

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Leto

How about Michener's "The Covenant"? the grand sweep of South African history is a real page turner too.


and while I'm at it, Edward Rutherford's "Sarum: The Novel of England" takes you on a 10,000 year tour of the Stonehenge area up to the 1980's. Very epic...

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vinceco252

I haven't read "Swan Song" in years, but it reminded me of "The Stand". I liked it.

Is your SN a reference to Barker's "The Great and Secret Show"?

-deathboy-

great book right there in itself too, but no, it's not. i have been called that for years due to my fascination with all things horror.

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Halanna

Seconded.

Lindy

I'll only comment on works that I've actually read, which, of course, leaves out most everything in the world.
In no particular order:

Dune -Frank Herbert- Powerful. I agree with lostgirl and Daniel's comments

A Canticle for Liebowitz -Walter Miller- the greatest ever in the science fiction genre, and an epic in the timespan it covers.

Invitation to a Beheading -Nabakov's novel of induced insanity

August 1914 -Solzhenitsyn- one month in about 900 pages

Don Quixote -Cervantes- long, and absolutely delightful!

Ulysses -James Joyce- long, and like slogging through thick mud!

Leaves of Grass -Walt Whitman- epic in every way but length

And musically:
Symphony No. 10 in e minor -Dmitri Shostakovich- a masterpiece in every way.
String Quartet No. 8 in c minor -Shostakovich- gripping intensity

I've been on on the road, listening to Shostakovich and Bob Wills. What a combo.



That people of the liberal persuasion would diss Any Rand is as predictable as ...Ayn Rand herself.

Lindy

levite

+1's for Lord of the Rings (which was written to be a single volume, not a trilogy), for Dune, for Don Quixote, and for Moby Dick.

Also epic:

The Three Musketeers
Les Miserables
As A Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberg
I, Claudius, by Robert Graves
A Tale of Two Cities
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

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tisonlyi

All of the above, with a big thumbs up for Don Quixote - in Spanish if you possibly can.

(Minus Rand, naturally. Her reactionary politics, solipsistic philosophy and prose leave lots to be desired. Horrible reading + mind poison for NT's.)

As a suggestion from waaaaay out of the standard, you might think of two really epic series of books. The first are the books by Mika Waltari, Sinuhe The Egyptian, or just "The Egyptian" sometimes, is romp through the cultures in and around Egypt at and around the time of Akhenaton, who is The Daddy of Monotheism. The second suggestion would be . There's no describing the books, you'll love them or hate them, but they're a riot. Love love love. The tropics are a great place to start. Capricorn was better than Cancer for me, but you should read Cancer first.

Oh, and my enthusiasm for things Millerian made me forget the series of books... Which are another series of sprawling, truly epic books based around the key events in the history of Central and South Americas.

(the links are working randomly... Waltari works fine, but the others... meh. )

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Tully Mars

Sometimes a Great Notion.

Kesey's one of the only serious author I've really liked.

I made it through about 75 pages Ulysses and thought "why am I reading this? I could be doing yard work."

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squeeeb

the tale of genji. it's pretty fuckin epic. it'll take you about a year to read if you attempt the full unabridged version.

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highdro69

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is about cryptography and the nature of information, and yet so much more. It's actually an action story, but with a lot of grey matter. It spans from just before World War II through modern day, but with different characters. It's about 800 pages and is truly epic.

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Strange Famous

Well, its an old book - but I'd say Lord of the Rings

I read it in a weekend (700 pages a day) when I was 18 - and Ive never read that like (non stop all day) since.

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cdwonderful

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever ( the first series)----Stephen R. Donaldson
The Dark Tower Series --- Stephen King

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FuglyStick

The Brothers Karamazov--anyone who considers themselves the least bit well read has to read it.

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Strange Famous

I read this about two years ago... and Ivan's story about the Grand Inquisitor is still burned into my mind.

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yournamehere

One could easily argue that all of James Michener's books are epics.

My favorite was The Source, which gives a history of the Holy land told via a fictional archaeological dig in Israel. It's a great education on the history of Israel and the Middle East; from the Stone Age to the mid-1960s, and still very relevant today.

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tisonlyi

I really loved The Hobbit (first read aged 7 or 8), was never afraid of trilogies or enormously thick books, but just couldn't fall in love with LOTR... I have no idea why. I've tried. Really. I have.

The movies were great, though.

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"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Winston Churchill, 1937 --{ORLY?}--