The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffreyHumans and their flying dragon companions live in fear of thread, a caustic, deadly material that falls sporadically from space. But when the thread doesn't fall for a long time, people become complacent, forgetting that it is the brave dragonriders who can save them from the periodic threat. But when the thread falls, human and dragon heroes must fight the scourge.
The Dragonriders of Pern is a widely popular, huge, and ongoing series of books, and is required reading for anyone even mildly interested in dragons or the fantasy genre in general. This set contains three of the first and most popular volumes in the series: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon
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Eragon by Christopher PaoliniEragon, a young farm boy, finds a marvelous blue stone in a mystical mountain place. Before he can trade it for food to get his family through the hard winter, it hatches a beautiful sapphire-blue dragon, a race thought to be extinct. Eragon bonds with the dragon, and when his family is killed by the marauding Ra'zac, he discovers that he is the last of the Dragon Riders...
The first installment of the Inheritance trilogy, this book is incredible. The plot, a boy from a poor village who gets launched into a world that he couldn't have imagined, is very exciting. Just when you think you know what's going on, a plot twist beats that assumption into submission.
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The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again by J.R.R. TolkienBilbo Baggins, the hobbit, is a peaceful sort who lives in a cozy hole in the Shire, a place where adventures are uncommon--and rather unwanted. So when the wizard of Gandalf whisks him away on a treasure hunting expedition with a troop of rowdy dwarves, he's not entirely thrilled.
The Hobbit is the classic fantasy story of the 20th century. This story of a little hobbit who is launched into an adventure he never wanted nor dreamed of, to eventually find himself face-to-face with a fire-breathing dragon is breathtaking.
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The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickenson
This book may be a bit tough to find, but it is well worth the search! Peter Dickenson lays out an entire set of circumstances in which dragons may have existed. He covers everything from the life cycle of these proposed dragons, to an explanation of dragon flight (despite the fact that the traditional idea of the winged dragon could not possibly have flown because their wings could not have been big enough to support their weight), to an explanation of the fact that nobody has ever found dragon bones.
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Dragon Tales, edited by Isaac AsimovA collection of 12 short stories about dragons by various authors.
This is a spectacular collection of some of the best short stories out there that involve dragons. Every single one of these stories is fascinating in its own way, and this collection provides an interesting insight into the different ways a dragon can be portrayed. Two of these stories even kicked off long-running series of books: St. Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson kicked off the Dragon and the George series, and Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey kicked off the popular Dragonriders of Pern series.
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