Since my wife got me the great Kobo Aura HD, I mostly read from this e-reader. But I manage my books with the excellent Calibre app, and it has a nice feature: you can also add books by ISBN without having the matching electronic file. It is a cool way to keep an offline list of the books you've read, and also the ones you do not own yet!
This is how I know that out of 931 books (and growing), I have yet 223 (and growing) I did not read!
Since all my old-school books (you know, the ones made out of paper) are quietly sitting on shelves at my parents house, I feel like it's OK to use covers found on the net, and not pictures taken from the cover. Also, since for most of you, English is your first language, I tried to come up with more exotic/beautiful/less known covers, such as French ones.
The following 5 books are in not in any order, please don't ask me to choose the best of the best!
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The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
This is a beautiful leather-bound collector's edition that can be bought from Barnes&Nobles, and that is out of stock, of course.
The premise is simple: Harry Seldon, a master psychologist, using the new science he has founded, the "psychohistory", predicts that the Galactic Empire will fall within a few hundred years. While it cannot be avoided, he discovers it can be shortened to a single millennia instead of thousands of years. Using that knowledge, he puts up a secret scheme in place, in order for the civilization to follow the "right" path, even after his death.
This one was really obvious to me: I love Asimov's books and his storytelling. Characters are not his strength, storytelling mostly advances through dialogues, and more than often the protagonists are male (note: this was written between 1942 and 1950)
I think I read it when I was still in high school, and it just blew me away. A few years ago, I re-read the while series along with the Elijah Bailey series and I still found it incredibly solid, logical and captivating. Just perfect but simple storytelling.
I also like the books that come after and the prequel books, but I find them a notch below the first three books.
I hope I did not cheat by including here an omnibus containing Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation... But technically, that's one book!
Finally, I strongly hesitated between Foundation and The Caves of Steel from the same author which I read much later, but found as enjoyable.
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Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
No, the cover is not a mistake: the French title was adapted to roughly translate back in English to Children of Icare, which is not bad either, considering the story. The cover is by David B. Mattingly
The book starts sometime in the 60s in an alternate timeline, with alien ships suddenly arriving and stationing over Earth's big cities. After some time, communication is established, and one human being is chosen to discuss with the "invaders".
The premise sounds very basic, and it is in a way, but this is far from your typical alien invasion book. And even though there is now an Amazon series based on this book, I don't want to say too much. You see, this book made me loudly say "What? No?! Wow, this makes sense!!!" and that does not happen often (at all in fact). Just know there is a big reveal and that this book goes into exploring a lot of interesting subjects: an utopia future of humanity, basic income, world without war, etc.
It is widely considered as a true masterpiece that brought the lettres de noblesse to the SF genre.
I chose this one over Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, purely because of nostalgia. They share a lot of similarities in terms of ideas, and I might even agree that Spin is better.
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The Player of Games, by Iain Banks
The cover was done quite some time ago by a celebrated French illustrator named Manchu.
The book is about a master player of board games being requested by the Culture, an intergalactic society, to travel to an Empire of planets where social rank and political status is determined by a complex game named Azad.
If you don't know what the Culture is, you can check out my previous article about it. For now though, let's just say that the Culture is a very advanced intergalactic pseudo-communist post-scarcity society where people are free to do whatever they want, basically.
I find this book absolutely brilliant: the story is very original, funny (IA talk between each other), clever (as usual with Mr. Bain) and has one of the most likable characters of the whole series, arguably.
The games the author invents here can be quite complex to follow, hence a high potential to discover new things/ideas at second and third reads.
I hesitated a lot here between this, Dune (Frank Herbert), Postman (David Brin), and Planet of Adventure (Jack Vance). Very very different books, but the two other positions were already taken.
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Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
This is a French edition, roughly translating to "The Dark Crusade of the Mad Jedi". Yes, this is an atrocious title.
Do you want to know what happens to your favorite Star Wars heroes in the originally approved sequel trilogy? This is the trilogy that revived the Star Wars franchise in 1991, and that sparked the creation of the Expanded Universe. It follows Luke, Leia, Han and Chewie in the aftermath of the Return of the Jedi. While it is cool having these characters back, Mr. Zahn had charmed fans by introducing new ones who had become since then favorite expanded universe characters: Mara Jade, Gilad Pellaeon, and of course the Admiral Thrawn, one of the last admirals of the Empire, of supreme intelligence and cleverness... And there is a mad Jedi of course!
Among my 5 books, there had to be a Star Wars one, this is basically my "popcorn" choice. I read these 3 books when I was 13/14 year old, and I found them amazing. More than twenty years later, I still think they are as good as I thought. The storytelling is good, the universe is respected while introducing new planets, species, ships, and the books are in tone with the original movies.
These books have now been labelled as part of the "Legends" universe by Disney, which means they are not part of the official Extended Universe. But, Disney is doing it right in progressively re-introducing Admiral Thrawn (and other characters?) as part of the official universe.
This one was toe to toe with the first book of the Witcher series, by Andrzej Sapkowski. I had read most of them before playing the eponymous games, and while Witcher 3 gathered universal acclaim, let me tell you the books are even better. Also, I hesitated with another Star Wars book, Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole.
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Mort, by Sir Terry Pratchett
I love the original covers but wanted to show you another beautiful one. This is the most recent pocket edition of Mortimer, with the cover done by Marc SIMONETTI. Please take a look at his portfolio, you'll see he's far from being a beginner.
Also, interestingly, since "Mort" means "Death" in French, the main character could not be named Death, since.. well, there already is a Death character! Hence the "Mortimer" title.
Taking place in the Discworld universe, Mort is the 4th novel of the series. It is about a teenager, Mort, landing an apprenticeship with Death. Which mainly translates into collecting souls after their owner's physical death.
There just had to be a Discworld novel. If I could, I would have lied that I found a rare collector's edition containing all 40+ books.... But since I have to choose only one of them, this might be it.
If you know nothing about the Discworld, please read this nice article recapping what the books are about. For now, just think that, as for nearly all Discworld books, Sir Pratchett uses his fantasy world to draw analogies with our own world, all the while entertaining us with clever play on words and humor (can I say British Humor?) and complex stories.
The only reason I still have 6 books to read out of the 41 is that since Sir Pratchett passed away, I want to think I still have "new" books to discover. Opening a Discworld novel I haven't read yet is like having a second birthday party in a year.
If you were to read only one book from Sir Pratchett, do yourself a favor, and read this one. And if you like it, start from the beginning and read them all.
Mort was top place, but it could also have been Guards! Guards!, Reaper Man, or Moving Pictures for me.
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Thanks 
Finally, here is a list of a few books that could have made my top 5, some I've already mentioned:
- Blade Runner - Philip K. Dick
- Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
- Dune - Frank Herbert
- Postman - David Brin
- Guardians of Time - Poul Anderson
- Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
- I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
- Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien
- Lord Valentine's Castle - Robert Silverberg
- Mastodonia - Clifford D. Simak
- Mockingbird - Walter Tevis
- Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
- Perdido Street Station - China Miéville
- Planet of Adventure - Jack Vance
- Postman - David Brin
- Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett
- Rogue Squadron - Michael Stackpole
- Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
- Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
- Stardust - Neil Gaiman
- The Black Company - Glen Cook
- The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
- The Fountains of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke
- The Last Wish - Andrzej Sapkowski
- The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
- Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson
And in French:
- En Panne Sèche - Andreas Eschbach (technically, in German, was translated toFrench, but not in English yet)
- Janua Vera - Jean Philippe Jaworski
- La Voie du Sabre - Thomas Day
- Vingt mille lieues sous les mers - Jules Verne
- Voyage au centre de la Terre - Jules Verne