7-11) Order of the Stick books by Rich Burlew

Full titles (in the order you should read them):

1: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools
2: No Cure for the Paladin Blues
3: War and XPs
0: On the Origin of PCs
-1: Start of Darkness

What is The Order of the Stick?

Well, I'd never heard of it either until recently, but my gaming past is somewhat limited. In any event, OOTS is a webcomic that follows a party of D&D adventurers as they try to accomplish a large and difficult quest.

The books are essentially graphic novels. The art is deliberately simplistic - stick figures, in fact - but Burlew uses that to his advantage and lets the story shine with it.

If you were ever a gamer you'll get a good laugh out of the D&D rules jokes, particularly if you had campaigns cross rules editions. But beyond the rules jokes - which actually diminish over time - the story gets bigger and grander. At the end of War and XPs you've watched a huge battle - on the scale of things seen in the LOTR movies - and the outcome was not good for the heros. Still, there are lots of laugh-out-loud moments in these strips. Burlew is a good writer, and knows how to tell a story.

These are recommended, and you don't even have to buy them. you can read them all online at: http://www.giantitp.com/.