44 replies to this topic

[Red Frog]

Ok, so I started a version of this and it died, so I'll be more short winded.  But I do love me some lists (as is evinced by every post I've ever made in Music) and the Twain thread got me thinking.  Also, I'm soon to have more free time to do some fun reading so wouldn't mind suggestions, beyond what lurks on my bookshelves.

1. Homer, The Iliad.
Not technically a book (though the best are 1, 3, 6, 16, 18, 20-24), and not technically by Homer this is still the most relevant piece of writing I've ever read.

2. Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion.
This hit me like a ton of bricks in high school and, since it's awesome and in media res, I read it twice more straight through.  Also, Ken Kesey is the King of Kharacteration.  Wait.

3. Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard.
I love a book that spans a lifetime, and doubly so if it has an ending half as meaningful as the way Bluebeard wraps up.  This is a good distillation of Vonnegut's style without being so Breakfast of Champions over the top.

4. J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey.
I'm kind of contrarian, liking this better than Catcher, Great Notion better than Cuckoo's Nest and Bluebeard better than SH5, but Zooey especially has a great payoff and the Glass family are so much more interesting than the clihed and too-broad Caulfield.

5. Robert Graves, I, Claudius.
An incredibly thick book and one that makes learning about the Julio-Claudians fun!

6. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5
7. Philip Roth, The Human Stain
8. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
9. Ken Kesey, Sailor Song
10. James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain
11. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
12. Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan
13. Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
14. Anya Ulinich, Petropolis
15. f. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
16. Joseph Heller, Catch 22
17. J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
18. Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
19. Aldous Huxley,  Brave New World
20. Sophocles, Antigone

More people post lists!

[surprisepig!]

Most of these are high school reading material. I still love them long after though. Some books you read in English class are torturous, but these had great meaning for me.

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

George Orwell - Animal Farm

JD Salinger - Catcher in the Rye

Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland/through the looking glass

[Red Frog]

surprisepig! said:

Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland/through the looking glass

I just read a great application essay about Alice in Wonderland...it was one of the 10 best I think I've ever seen.

[Red Frog]

skifree24 said:

What specifically did it mention?

You need to take a class on how to start conversations.

[-kawada-]

I've read a bit, maybe slightly more than many of my peers (at least based on what happens when I try to talk about books with my friends) but the 'list' has yet to be filled out adequately. Top three are in order.

Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Haruki Murakami - South Of The Border West Of The Sun
Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky
Michael Herr - Dispatches
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Philip K Dick - A Scanner Darkly
Stephen King - The Body
Bill Bryson - A Walk In The Woods
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination

Except for the last two, these books are still with me quite intensely. There are others that have a considerable aftertaste; the other Murakami and McCarthy novels I've read, George R Stewart's Earth Abides, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, Franz Kafka's The Trial, William Golding's The Lord Of The Flies, Antony Beevor's Stalingrad and obviously many childrens books, especially Roal Dahl, but the former seem somehow more special.
As for A Walk In The Woods and The Stars My Destination, they don't reach me on a spiritual level but compensate greatly. A Walk In The Woods is my favourite by Bryson and he is a big favourite. The Stars My Destination is perhaps the most efficiently thrilling book I've read, it's ridiculous just how much Bester squeezes into a fairly short book and Gully Foyle is most certainly the ultimate anti-hero.

[odd fellow 151]

1. Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird

2. Alan Moore - Watchmen

3. Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius

4. John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy Of Dunces

5. Jack Kerouac - On The Road

[petruchio]

1. Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
2. Michael Ondaatje - In The Skin of a Lion
3. Kurt Vonnegut - (in order of preference) Bluebeard, Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night
4. Timothy Findley - The Piano Man's Daughter
5. John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the time of Cholera
7. Margaret Laurence - The Diviners
8. Alice Munro - Open Secrets
9. Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
10. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
11. F.Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night
12. Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting
13. Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon
14. William Styron - Sophie's Choice
15. Yann Martel - Life of Pi

Those are a few I love, without mentioning plays and I managed to only include one set of short stories.

[Red Frog]

petruchio said:

1. Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana

3. Kurt Vonnegut - (in order of preference) Bluebeard, Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan and Mother Night
I managed to only include one set of short stories.

I loved Tigana.  Haven't read it in maybe 10-12 years though.

Plus points for Bluebeard, but how Breakfast of Champions can be anywhere but the absolute bottom is crazy (ok, not crazy)

I do like a lot of short story collections...Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, Salinger, Heller, Miranda July, Lars Gustafsson, Flannery O'Connor, Malamud and Roth are all way up there.  Sonny's Blues is my favorite, but I could probably spend way too much time making a list of favorite short stories.

My original list needs to be amended to include something by Michael Chabon.

[I'll be the cup...]

Way too many to list--I have many of the same favorites that others have listed.

One favorite of mine off hand is: The Discovery Of Heaven by Harry Mulisch.

[stiperules!ok]

Loads too many to list em all, but, sad cow that I am, I still love the Silver Brumby books I used to read as a child. A couple of years ago I trawled the internet & bought as many Elyn Mitchell books as I could, some of them quite rare for paperbacks, and they're now on proud display in the living room.

[OneArpeggioPete]

- douglas adams - mostly harmless
- thomas mann - der tod in venedig/ death in venice
- oscar wilde - the picture of dorian gray
- stephen fry - moab is my washpot
- theodor fontane - effi briest
- salman rushdie - midnight's children
- nick hornby - high fidelity

:-)

oneArpeggiopete:cool:

[petruchio]

Red Frog said:

Plus points for Bluebeard, but how Breakfast of Champions can be anywhere but the absolute bottom is crazy (ok, not crazy)

Breakfast of Champions was the first one I read, and I was amazed at his stlye. I am probably attached to it for that reason more than its content. After reading it I read Vonnegut exclusively for quite a while.


I should have included John Irving Garp or Owen Meany.

[Red Frog]

petruchio said:

Breakfast of Champions was the first one I read, and I was amazed at his stlye. I am probably attached to it for that reason more than its content. After reading it I read Vonnegut exclusively for quite a while.

That's the way it was with me too...I even read the book his son wrote hoping it would help me get a fix.

[lizish]

1. Michael Ondaatje - In The Skin of a Lion
2. Mordecai Richler - Solomon Gursky Was Here
4. John Updike - Couples
5. John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany
6. Charles Frazier - Cold Mountain
7. Raymond Carver - Will You Please be Quiet, Please?
8. Margaret Atwood - The Edible Woman
9. Don DiLillo - Underworld
10. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest - although I have not finished it and probably never will.
11. Stephen Greenblat - Will in the World
12. Jon Krakauer - Into Thin Air

Very light on old stuff and props to Scott's inclusion of Ondaatje.

[Tronyé]

lizish said:

10. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest - although I have not finished it and probably never will.

Then we can never be together.

[lizish]

Derek said:

Then we can never be together.

That book is soo maddening. I tried to pick up roughly where I had left off about a decade ago with DFW recently being the news. Parts of it made me not sleep and cry and laugh for hours. Others with the endless page long footnotes drove me absolutely nuts.

You read the New Yorker article about Raymond Carver's editor? Turns out the editor was taking out about a third of Carver's paragraphs. I could see a strong editor doing the same thing with Wallace, but jeez, for Carver's direct prose, it was an incredulous thing to do.

Oh, here's a test for you, Texas. You read In the Skin of the Lion? If not you are a dunce.

[surprisepig!]

Cold mountain did not impress me at all. I think every one got carried away with their love for that. His second book was pretty much more of the same and flopped incredibly, which I think further magnifies the first books flaws.

[Tronyé]

lizish said:

That book is soo maddening. I tried to pick up roughly where I had left off about a decade ago with DFW recently being the news. Parts of it made me not sleep and cry and laugh for hours. Others with the endless page long footnotes drove me absolutely nuts.

You read the New Yorker article about Raymond Carver's editor? Turns out the editor was taking out about a third of Carver's paragraphs. I could see a strong editor doing the same thing with Wallace, but jeez, for Carver's direct prose, it was an incredulous thing to do.

Oh, here's a test for you, Texas. You read In the Skin of the Lion? If not you are a dunce.

"I bare my teeth to the second to last molar on cutting."--DFW, to his editor.

I have no read In the Skin of the Lion.  I'll check it out.