Ok, that time again...Your Top 5 Books

I need something to get my mind off of things, so here we go!

Mine:

1) Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
2) The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
3) The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath
4) American Gods- Neil Gaiman
5) Drawing Blood- Poppy Z. Brite

* Honourable Mentions:
Love in the Time of Cholera- Marquez
The Plague- Camus
Les Liaisons dangereuses- de Laclos

What are yours? :bounce:

Hemingway, and fuck be damned, but I can't pick one particular book. Perhaps if I had to, it would be Farewell to Arms. Though it might be A Movable Feast. Or maybe The Sun Also Rises.

One of my faves, absolutely :)

(no pun intended). In many ways, not the kind of masculine Hemingway that one gets used to, but yet still totally consistent with Hemingway.

Just a beautiful book.

and it was bizarre, to be reading about the neighborhoods where i was walking and sitting every day...and Gertrude Stein's apt. that figures so heavily in it was directly across the street from my school, i walked past it every day. Very cool. :)

Never could get into Hemingway, though.

and the Foundation Series.

I haven't read all the Dune books, and the ones I have read, I've only read once so far.

I'm going to have to read A Movable Feast, heard good things about that one.

1) Exquisite Corpse - Poppy Z. Brite
2) Steel Beach - John Varley
3) Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
4) Bastard Out Of Carolina - Dorothy Allison
5) Raising The Stones - Sheri Tepper

Honourable mentions:

Drawing Blood - Poppy Z. Brite
Kinflicks - Lisa Alther
Emma - Jane Austen
The Heart Of The Country - Fay Weldon
Grass - Sheri Tepper


Khash.

My sincere compliments. It is not often I have the privilege of witnessing a person who's path in life is so completely different from mine.

It is reassuring, yet humbling, to know that there is still so much for me to learn.

1) Weaveworld- Clive Barker
2) The Dragon Prince- Melanie Rawn
3) The Star Scroll- Melanie Rawn
4) SunRunners Fire- Melanie Rawn
5) Imajica- Clive Barker

I met Melanie Rawn and she is so damn cool!

Clive, however, is a little more difficult. He's started implying horror rather than explicating it. I understand why, but it's still a bad move. "The Midnight Meat Train" or "Jaqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament" (or my fave "The Skins of the Fathers") beat his later works to shreds. Coldheart Canyon is a case in point, Weaveworld all over again except we see very little of the other world. We just have to take his word for the terror and beauty of it.
Come back, Clive. Although the new book of paintings may do much to heal the breach. I still have his St.Sebastien on my living room wall.

Khash.

I was so fucking hung over I could barely stand. And I got her to sign my book. When I told her how to inscribe the book, she looked at me and said "It's you."

"Yeah, it's me."

"No, it's really you!"

Then we went to lunch. She's pretty damn fabulous.

Khash.

either Lolita or The Plague

1. Watchers - Dean Koontz
2. Lightning - Dean Koontz
3. Jailbird - Kurt Vonnegut
4. Herland - Charlotte Gilman
5. In His Steps - Charles Sheldon

6. There will be time - Poul Anderson
7. Time and Again - Clifford Simak
8. Stand on Zanzibar - John Brunner

Love in the Time of Cholera- Marquez
Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera
The Loop - Joe Coomer
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway
Sound and the Fury - Faulkner

RL

fucking excellent :toast:

I read it in high school and hated it and faulkner.

I read it again in an upper level grad class and just loved it! Professor didn't want to let me add his class, said he'd end up failing me or I would drop the class. I took his challenge and got an A-. :D

RL

I could not understand a word of it, especially in the parts where Benjy is narrating in stream of consciousness. It was the bane of AP English for me--a pity, because even the Shakespeare I read was fairly good.

"Demon Haunted World" Carl Sagan
"Joy Luck Club" Amy Tan
"All Quiet on the Western Front" Erich Remarque
"Freedom and Destiny" Rollo May

The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Fools Die - Mario Puzo
My collection of Eudora Welty short stories.
And I love some Elmore Leonard but it's hard to pick one book

1. Experience and Education - John Dewey
2. Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
3. A Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4. Lying Liars and the Lies they Tell - Al Franken
5. House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

The Life of Pi
Gone With the Wind
Dr. Zhivago
The James Herriot Books (All Creatures Great and Small, etc.)

I might have to add that to mine downthread.

Interview with a Vampire
The Historian
The Odyssey
The Stand

"Lying Without Conscience", "Avoiding Responsibility" and "Dividing: It's Not Just for Math Anymore".

Opps! Sorry, that's W's list.:evilgrin:

:rofl: "Dividing: It's Not Just for Math Anymore" :rofl:

:evilgrin:
My reading list is not deep. Sorry.
Duckie

i've never read them, but i know that many, many people enjoy them quite a bit :)

Harry Potter 1-7.

I have supreme confidence in JK Rowling. O8)

Did you know that she plotted out all the books before book 1 was even finished?

I'd really like to name something more highbrow, and I guess Confederacy of Dunces, Lolita, Poisonwood Bible, and Lord of the Flies all get honorable mentions, but Harry Potter has brought great joy into my life during some dark times.

how much did you cry at the end of book 6?
Duckie

I was too stunned.

I've long been a big fan of good ol' whatsisname who uh, did the thing at the end of 6, ya know? Not the other dude so much. Not that he wasn't cool, but whatsisname.... him I dig.

You?

I cried and cried from that point until the end.
Duckie

Monkey Wrench Gang -- by Edward Abbey
The Stranger -- by Albert Camus
Crime and Punishment -- by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Looking Backward -- by Edward Bellamy
Ender's Game -- by Orson Scott Card

Wow, that is hard. And I know I'm missing a bunch.

I loved Ender's Game! and w00t for Camus! :bounce:

Good choice.

1. The Dragons of Eden - Carl Sagan
2. The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
3. Time Storm - Gordon R. Dickson
4. The Shore of Women - Pamela Sargent
5. Eighty others by various authors.

Poisonwood Bible and The Bluest Eye.

Streetcar Named Desire,Long Day's Journey Into Night,The Crucible and Death of a Salesman are my favorite plays.

Plenty of others..so many books,so little time.

I thought it pretty good, and I loved how everything combined at the end.

You listed all of my favorite books. Throw some Faulkner in there and you pretty much have my list.

so of course "Confederacy of Dunces" (John Kennedy Toole) makes the cut.

"The Dispossessed", Ursula LeGuin.
"The People's Almanac", David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace.
Lord of the Rings trilogy (counts as one selection), J.R.R. Tolkien.
"Hawaii", James Michener (I was right in the middle of it when the old man died, shortly before I settled here).

edit: check back with me after the Harry Potter series is done, and we may have to make it a Top 6.

rebuilding boards you visit? Thanks!

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
On the Road- Jack Kerouac
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter S. Thompson
The Guns of August- Barbara Tuchman
Seven Pillars of Wisdom- T. E. Lawrence

The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
The Magus - John Fowles
The Flounder - Günter Grass
How Late It Was, How Late - James Kelman
The Riders - Tim Winton

Runner ups:
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Confessions of Nat Turner - Willian Styron
Jessica - Bryce Courtenay

Here's the top five (in no real order):

1. Cat's Cradle--Kurt Vonnegut
2. Franny & Zooey--J.D. Salinger
3. Middlesex-Jeffery Eugenides
4. Slaughterhouse-Five--Kurt Vonnegut
5. Me Talk Pretty One Day--David Sedaris

And here's the last 5 that I read:

1. Don't Get Too Comfortable--David Rakoff
2. A Fractured Mind--Robert Oxnam
3. Persepolis & Persepolis II--Marjane Satrapi
4. The Areas of my Expertise--John Hodgman
5. A Man Without a Country--Kurt Vonnegut

Middlesex was absolutely wonderful.

and it's so different from The Virgin Suicides, which I didn't really care for.

Virgin Suicides was very depressing.

which I know is what it was supposed to be, but it's not my favorite thing to read.

Middlesex was lush--I could get lost in it. I love books like that.

In no particular order:

-Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places - Brad Steiger
-Dracula - Bram Stoker
-The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
-The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (sure, it's a collection of his poems, but it's in book form, so it counts :P)
-The Conscience of a Liberal - Paul Wellstone

"Remains of the Day" - Kazou Ishiguro.

I don't think I'll ever again be as impressed by a novel as I was with this one. I think it's perfect.

1. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2. Palimpsest - Gore Vidal (this one is a memoir, but you didn't specify fiction)
3. Two Girls Fat and Thin - Mary Gaitskill
4. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
5. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

The Divine Comedy--Dante Alighieri
Fast Food Nation--Eric Schlosser
Lord of the Rings--J.R.R. Tolkien
Moby Dick--Herman Melville
The Prince--Niccolo Machiavelli

should be good fun seeing the responses

n/t

I want to read Moby Dick as a challenge someday.

Lord of the Rings, I tried and didn't get too far. :-(

I thought I heard they were doing a movie of this book recently? If I recall correctly it had some high quality actors/tresses?

Anyone hear anything about this?

1. Patrick O'Brian: The Aubrey-Maturin Saga (all 20 books, but it's one story)
2. R.F. Delderfield: To Serve Them All My Days
3. Robert R. McCammon: Boy's Life
4. Graham Greene: The Quiet American
5. Thomas Harris: The Hannibal Lecter trilogy
6. Robertson Davies - all of the novels (cheating I know)

Honorable mentions

Ray Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Dan Simmons: Summer of Night; Carrion Comfort
J. K. Rowling: The Harry Potter Saga
Tom Sharpe: Porterhouse Blue, Riotous Assembly, Indecent Exposure (quite possibly the funniest books ever written)
R. F. Delderfield: The Swann trilogy; A Horseman Riding By

:thumbsup: I like McCammon a lot.

1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
2. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
3. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
4. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
5. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Doestoevsky
Slaughterhouse Five (the Childrens Crusade)- Kurt Vonnegut
From Here to Eternity - James Jones
The Caine Mutiny -Herman Wouk

That's all I can think of right now...

after reading Slaughterhouse Five. Lovely city.. It is a bit strange to see that a large part of it hasn't been repaired yet.

I am surprised to hear that. A constant reminder of the evil of war.

That book captivated me. Thank goodness for Mr. Vonnegut.

1) The Seed And The Sower by Sir Laurence Van Der Post.
2) Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison.
3) The Name Of The Rose by Umberto Eco.
4) The First Man In Rome by Colleen McCullough.
5) Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.

2)1984 - George Orwell
3)A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
4) Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
5) Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut

I think I've read The Grapes of Wrath three or four times.

Drizzt books by RA Salvatore
Glen Cooks', the Annals of the Black Company
Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice
The Stand by Stephen King

Since they all have a common theme.

The Odyssey - Homer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
American Gods - Neil Gaiman

I'm not sure what a fifth would be - those four are the ones I tend to read at least once a year. It interests me because the common theme is that of a journey - both a physical and a spiritual journey. And that is the story of my life - always moving, always learning more of who I am.

I've often wondered if I love the books because of the way I am or if I am the way I am because I love the books.

Smilla's Sense of Snow, The English Patient, A Separate Peace, Bright Lights, Big City.

literature and have been in a very snotty Book Club for over 20 years...and I count Stephen King books among my all-time favorites. They really stay with me, the amazing stories and the characters.
I'm also a "Smilla" fan. Very eerie, unusual book.

1).- The Ascent of Man - Jacob Bronowski
2).- The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
3).- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
4).- Animal Farm - George Orwell
5).- The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

* Honorable Mentions:

Love in the Time of Cholera- Marquez

1. In This House of Brede (Rumer Godden)
2. The Women's Room (Marilyn French)
3. Anything by Tony Hillerman
3. The whole Pern series (Ann McCaffery)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird

Honorable Mentions: Another Roadside Attraction and Still Life with Woodpecker, both by Tom Robbins; anything by John Sandford and Patricia Cornwell

My favorite fiction:

The Fountainhead
All of the Harry Potter books (counted as one?)
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
A Stone for Danny Fisher

I also love a lot of nonfiction.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Of Mice and Men
3. Where the Red Fern Grows
4. The Once and Future King
5. Friday

The Harry Potter series and American Psycho.

because my favorites change all the time.

Thanks for the thread though, I love to hear what everyone else likes to read!

Billy and Girl -- Deborah Levy
Notable American Women -- Ben Marcus
Tristam Shandy -- Laurence Sterne
House of Leaves -- Some Guy Whose Last Name I Can't Spell, Don't Feel Like Looking Up, and My Friend Stole My Book.

That's fiction, but I actually like poetry better:

Collected Works of Wallace Stevens
Alcools -- Apollinaire
A Bernadette Mayer Reader
Cocktails -- D.A. Powell
Song of the Andoumboulou -- Nathaniel Mackey

and these 4:

The Grizzly Years - Doug Peacock
Dispatches - Michael Herr
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

(this is likely to change in a few days, if not hours :))

William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Don Delillo - White Noise
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Emmett Grogan - Ringolevio
Brett Easten Ellis - American Psycho

Special mention: Lawrence Stern - The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman
Bonus non-fiction pick: James Mills - The Underground Empire

Dune- Frank Herbert
The Once and Future King - TH White
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Possession - AS Byatt
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

We have similar taste :-)

I wondered if Neil would get a mention. He's often neglected but then he's written so much great stuff it's hard to choose just one.

Jane Austen - Oh Lord, I can not praise that woman enough. What people seem to miss is her wicked sense of humour, she was a real bitch. In one of her letters to her sister about a neighbor's miscarriage, she says that the doctor said that the woman must have "taken a fright". Jane's response to that is "Yes, she must have looked at her husband".

I think we have similar tastes. Check out some of Pat Cadigan's short stories, you might like 'em.

Khash.

The Moor's Last Sigh, Asimov: The Gods Themselves
and of course the entire Foundation series.

2)100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3)The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4) Dubliners by James Joyce
5)The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

The Sabbathday River by Jean Hanff Korelitz

It's a mystery novel about a liberal Jewish woman living in upstate New Hampshire who finds a baby in the river.

If anyone's into mysteries that have some good twists and really make you think and reflect, check it out. I was very impressed.

(I also liked the Secret History by Donna Tartt and a lot of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine)

the other four are a'comin'.....

In no particular order

The Mists of Avalon---Marion Zimmer Bradley
Lamb---Christopher Moore
The White Plague---Frank Herbert
Dragon Rider Series---Anne McCaffery (I cannot pick just one)
The Witching Hour---Anne Rice
The Red Tent---Anita Diamant

I love short stories and some of my favorite authors are:

Ray Bradbury
Stephen King/ Richard Bachman

And I love kids books!
Max and Ruby
Stellaluna
Auntie Claus
Toestomper and the Caterpillars
The Mouse of Amherst
Green Angel (Alice Hoffman)

too many others to consider for the other ranks.
Billy the bard would rank up there. Hitchhikers Guide just for sarcasm, cause I'd hate to panic.

Moby Dick - Melville
Golden Bowl - James
Man Without Qualities - Musil
Notes on the State of Virginia - Jefferson
Discipline and Punish - Foucault

The Rabbit series by John Updike (4 books cant pick one)

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G. Chandler

Dune by Frank Herbert

In no particular order...

1. Shogun (and Tai-pan and Gai-jin, etc.) - James Clavell
2. The Far Pavilions - M.M Kaye
3. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. Watership Down - Richard Adams
5. Sarum - Edward Rutherford

the ones I can think of

1. To Kill A Mockingbird
2. Amy Tan..can't pick just one
3. Cry, The Beloved Country
4. George R R Martin...can't pick one ; on going series
5. The Joyous Season by Patrick Dennis...Read it too many time to count.


I also loved Tracy Chevalier's books: ALL of them
and Like Water for Chocolate is fantastic

Too many books and too little time.

My husband just called me to ask if there were any Michner books I did not have that I wanted and proceeded to reel off a list of books...which we narrowed down to five. Turns out he was in the Billings MT public library at library sale.

My next book is going to be "Wicked", then The Red Tent, then "Knife of Dreams" I think.