One doesn’t simply “walk into Powell’s for one book…”
$550 later…
(“They come in SETS?”)
Ho boy… how much time do you have? ;)
If you look on the shelf just below Tolkien, you’ll see Folio Society editions of The Princess Bride and American Gods.
Not only are those editions GLORIOUS, it’s really hard to go wrong with ANYTHING by the Folio Society. They’re kind of like to books what the Criterion Editon is to movies.
(I’m still waiting on them to publish the last book in the James Bond run, Octopussy, then I’ll buy that whole set). Apparently hung up by problems with the artist. :( She got caught plagiarising stuff for Wizards of the Coast.
https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/catalogsearch/result/?q=ian+fleming
Their edition of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is out of print, but you can still get it on the secondary market:
https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/chitty-chitty-bang-bang.html
Other than that?
Let’s see…
Science fiction, it’s hard to beat the Fuzzy books by H. Beam Piper:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/49377-fuzzy-sapiens
(stick to the three originals by Piper)
The Matador series by Steve Perry:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MatadorSeries
Really, read these in publication order, not chronological order.
Fantasy/Horror, the classic of the genre, for me, is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, 8 books proper, but it branches out and touches so many others of King’s works. Stephen King shared universe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(series)
Rumor has it a new book is coming.
Also Fantasy/Horror, the six book Night Watch books by Sergei Lukyanenko.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_(Lukyanenko_novel)
I hesitate slightly to reccomend these books, because as good as they are, the author has kind of gone off the deep end supporting Russia in the war with Ukraine.
All six books were written before Russia invaded Crimea, so it doesn’t color the text in any way, but Lukyanenko is of Ukrainian heritage and has now fully drunk the Russian kool-aid so if you have a hard time separating the author from the books, this can be a tough read.
As long as I’m talking about books in translation, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series by Carlos Ruiz Zafon are all quite amazing.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/9124283592
See if the synopsis for the first book doesn’t grab the hell out of you:
“At the first light of dawn in postwar Barcelona, a bookseller leads his motherless son to a mysterious crypt called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This labyrinthine sanctuary houses the books that have lost their owners, books that are no longer remembered by anyone. It is here that ten-year-old Daniel Sempere pulls a single book—The Shadow of the Wind—off of the dusty shelves to adopt as his own. With one fateful turn of a page, he begins an adventure that will unravel another man’s tragedy and solve a mystery that has already taken many lives and will shape his entire future.”
For non-fiction? I dearly love the travel books by Redmond O’Hanlon:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redmond_O'Hanlon
Into the Heart of Borneo (1984)
In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon (1988)
Congo Journey (1996), American edition: No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo (1997)[9]
Trawler (2005)
