The Official "Books Worth Reading" Thread

myanime002 said:

In the event that you have a bustling life I can prescribe Audible for tuning in to books. Such a great amount of simpler to tune in to books while driving, strolling the puppy, having intercourse to the spouse, washing the dishes, having intercourse to someone elses wife. Helps fill in the exhausting holes throughout everyday life.

Luciferous said:

I created this post a while back, I found some great recommendations from forum members.

https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/29656/vr-books

Or the summary (editing it a bit to distill it down to just the ones I think really worth reading as that is the post title. Credit to the recommendations are in my previous post.)

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline - (highly recommend) Fantastic Book. No need for introductions.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson's - (highly recommend) Great unique novel. A no holds barred brutal Cyber Punk future with large servings of action, VR, mystery and Katanas. Unusual writing style but you'll get used to it.(read twice)

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan (highly recommend) - Cyber Punk Noir / The Maltese Falcon style Book - fast paced and Action packed. VR in it but not main story. Real cool book.

Broken Angels - Richard Morgan Change of style for this book 2 - more of a tomb raider kind of feel. Still good and worth a read.

William Gibson sprawl trilogy
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If you like cyberpunk few beat Gibson' imagined worlds. Not many books I read twice but Gibson's are pretty deep and atmospheric and I seem to need to read them twice to get the full benefit)

1. Neuromancer - (highly recommend)  (read three times, probably my favorite sci-fi book ever)
A washed-up computer hacker is hired by a mysterious employer for one last job against a powerful AI. 
2. Count Zero - Good but more like epilogue for the first one but who can't get enough of the Gibson universe
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive - Another good one better than Count Zero. More Atmospheric Cyber Punk.

Another Gibson
The Peripheral - (Recommend)  In a distant future technology has been discovered to communicate with the past. Every time they connect it creates a different alternate universe. Rich people can hire a server and play god with their own instance. (Gibson on form again)

Ascend Online Series (three books plus an offshoot to story): If you like good light adventure stories (Ready Player One kind of style) all based on a Skyrim type RPG VR game (Sword art online technology). 
'Jason logs into Awaken Online fed-up with reality. He's in desperate need of an escape, and this game is his ticket to finally feeling the type of power and freedom that's so sorely lacking in his real life. ...'

Permutation City from Greg Egan - - (highly recommend if you like deep thought provoking books) The concept of this book is mind blowing. A real universe is born from the virtual auto-verse.

Bobiverse Series - (highly recommend) A man is copied into a computer and sent into space as one of man's last hopes. These are epic books.

'Masters of Doom'
The story of John Romero and John Carmack's rise to infamy.
Not normally my kind of book but I really recommend this as it charts the rise from unknown teenagers to their eventual split and onwards until up to 2004.

For me it was incredibly interesting as I never knew the back history of the games that help define my childhood (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake). Especially as I had no idea how much I owed these guys and their team for bringing virtual worlds to my life.

John Carmack joining Oculus was like a jigsaw piece clicking into place. Another bonus is Wil Wheaton is narrating it on Audible. That guy can make stamp collecting sound interesting.

The Girl with all the gifts
Post apocalyptic Zombie romp, what more could you ask. Rated quite highly on audible and rightfully so. They made a film out of it which was dire. Only watch after you have read the book, so you can curse film industry for another pathetic attempt at drastically changing a books story line to give everybody a happy, fuzzy, warm feeling inside.

The Name of the Wind - (highly recommend) or also know as The king killer chronicles first two books in the series by Patrick Rothfuss

Like a darker version of Harry Potter, couldn't stop listening to it. Slow start but it warms up very very nicely. Plus the other good thing is you really get your monies worth, I think both both books each were 40 hours plus. It takes him 6 years to write each one which shows the attention to detail he puts in them. I think the last one is due in the next 2 years.

Great story telling and the narrator is first class Rupert Degas (who also has won awards for narration)