# Great Books, which are yours? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 7, 2000, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730 "2000-01-07T19:41:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Globe-trotter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cab0a1/32.png) [@Globe-trotter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Globe-trotter)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/41 "2000-01-09T06:07:00Z")
So many of my favourites have already been mentioned…you people have impeccable tastes. 🙂 _Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge_ - Thomas Hardy. _Les Misérables_ - Victor Hugo Most of W. Somerset Maugham’s material, but especially his short stories. Everything that Robertson Davies ever wrote. _The Master and Margarita_ - Mikhail Bulgakov Anthony Trollope’s _Chronicles of Barsetshire_ (made up of six novels). Albert Camus’ _The Plague_ Jane Austen’s novels And so on, and so forth… * * * Some drink at the fountain of knowledge…others just gargle. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/42 "2000-01-09T06:45:00Z")
Books, what a great topic! Of course I love all of The Straight Dope books, the best combination of knowledge and entertainment. Others that I enjoy are: American Tabloid - James Ellroy (really any of his novels are great); Get Shorty and other books by Elmore Leonard; Tourist Season - Carl Hiaisson; The Sun Also Rises; and The Great Gatsby. As you can see I read mostly fiction, escapist stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Kat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kat)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/43 "2000-01-09T09:14:00Z")
> [@](#): > > But I think my point got confused. I was primarily talking about non-fiction. Maybe so, but fiction can inspire people, make them think, change their lives or opinions, etc., also. Some of mine: _Dawn Song_ by Sharon Green _The Silver Sun_ and _The Sable Moon_ by Nancy Springer Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Place novels Robert Fulghum Ovid I had another specific book in mind when I clicked reply, but I cannot remember what it was. Gotta stop posting at 3 in the morning, I guess. _The God Game_ by Andrew Greeley * * * Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99. “We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/44 "2000-01-09T09:57:00Z")
I don’t read Non-Fiction. * * * **-PIGEONMAN-** Returning Soon! [The Legend Of PigeonMan](http://www.hotkey.net.au/~guanolad/pigeonman/) - **Watch this space…!** Great things are afoot! ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/45 "2000-01-09T15:33:00Z")
It shows. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Phaedrus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@Phaedrus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phaedrus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/46 "2000-01-09T15:35:00Z")
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself! 🙂 No slam intended. Yours, Ken ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2000, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/47 "2000-01-09T15:57:00Z")
😛 ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/48 "2000-01-10T02:35:00Z")
ok. Robertson Davies is indeed swell (my guilty bubble-gum reading), as is Oliver Sacks (sorry, non-fiction, cringe). I really like Umberto Eco’s novels, too. I just read “Cryptonomicon” by Neil Stephenson, and it was great. Snowcrash was very good, too. It’s the closest I can bear to sci-fi/fantasy lately. Someone will make razzberry sounds at this, but I do honestly like Joyce’s Ulysses (in addition to abovementioned “Dubliners”). Once you realize what he’s trying to do with the writing style, it’s a hilarious book. Otherwise I haven’t been able to read much fiction recently. Ooh, ooh, I also found"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and related works-- intellegently done cold-war era spy stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Cooper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Cooper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cooper)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/49 "2000-01-10T03:03:00Z")
I will give five must reads: 1. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway) 2. A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole) 3. Something Happened(Heller - enough have said Catch-22 already that I can give it a miss - also, this is in many ways a better book and much more underrated) 4. The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe (Adams) 5. The Man Who was Thursday (Chesterton - when an atheist recommends a book with such deep religious themes you should take notice!) ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/50 "2000-01-10T03:29:00Z")
Since the OP keeps begging us to talk about non-fiction, I will oblige. In the department of Great Object Lessons: **Das Kapital** by Karl Marx **Past and Present** by Thomas Carlyle Both magisterial books by 19th century geniuses, working at the height of their respective powers, laboring mightily to bring forth…well, what I can charitably describe as fundamentally flawed views of the world and its potentials. Still, they’re both still in my library, when much of my other college course-work has been culled long since. But I think the OP meant books that influenced one along their lines of argument, and not the reverse, so let me add: **Paterson** , a uniquely (and wonderfully) American epic poem by William Carlos Williams **Roughing It** by Mark Twain; I’m one of the contrarians who prefers Twain’s memoirs and other nonfiction to his (excellent though they are) novels **Parliament of Whores** , the best single book by P.J. O’Rourke, the writer who taught me (among millions of others) that one can be politically conservative without becoming William Buckley, Jr. **Democracy in America** by Alexis de Tocqueville, simply indispensible reading for anyone who is an American or wants to understand us. It’s interesting (and a bit disconcerting) to think that we’ve changed so little in the past 175 years. **Oscar Wilde** by Richard Ellman, the closest thing to a perfect “life” that I’ve ever read **The Devil’s Dictionary** by Ambrose Bierce, the original and still unchallenged masterpiece of bile and cynicism I can’t quite decide between Paul Johnson’s **Modern Times** and his **The Birth of the Modern** , two very different books about very different periods of history unified only by his all-encompassing eye. And I think I’d have to list all of the Simon Schama books I’ve read as well, not just **Citizens** and **Landscape and Memory** , but the gemlike **Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations**. Last but not least, Raymomd Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder,” a blueprint for a kind of fiction and a kind of man. Actually, I’m glad to limit this to non-fiction for the moment; compiling my fiction list would take even longer than this has (most of this evening) and probably be a longer list, too. This has been a great exercise in moving the mental furniture around to see which sofa or grandfather clock is really central – thanks, Phaedrus, for suggesting it. * * * …but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans! ---
**Author:** ![Catrandom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@Catrandom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catrandom)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/51 "2000-01-10T03:40:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Catrandom - you mentioned one of my favorites, Sharyn McCrumb!!! The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter - there is a passage in there that made me cry my eyes out, nonstop, for 20 minutes after I read it - do you know the one I mean? Yes, salinq, I think I do. It would have to do with the young mother from the trailer park, right? Sharyn McCrumb is wonderful, and I recommend her to everyone I can, but her Ballad Series are very sad books. Not “downers” at all, she’s too good a writer for that – just sad. Catrandom ---
**Author:** ![Catrandom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@Catrandom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catrandom)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/52 "2000-01-10T03:41:00Z")
Damn, damn, damn. Sorry, all. Catrandom ---
**Author:** ![Lawrence](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/2bfe46/32.png) [@Lawrence](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lawrence)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2000, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/53 "2000-01-10T04:59:00Z")
As for non-fiction, I prefer history, so here are a few recommendations: John Keegan: A History of Warfare and The Face of Battle. Also The Mask of Command, The Price of Admiralty, Six Armies in Normandy, The Second World War, and The First World War for people who can’t get enough military history. Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror, The Proud Tower. I would recommend The Guns of August but I prefer the analysis of the beginnings of the First World War in Keegan and in Donald Kagan: On the Origins of War. Paul Johnson: A History of the American People, A History of the Jews, Modern Times. Robert Hughes: Barcelona, The Fatal Shore. Hugh Thomas: The Slave Trade, The Spanish Civil War. David McCullough: The Path Between the Seas. William Manchester: American Caesar. Books I liked but that I don’t remember the authors of because I don’t have them: Plagues and Peoples, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, The Promised Land, Peter the Great. Historical novels I liked: Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain; MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; Gore Vidal, Lincoln; Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God; John dos Passos, the U.S.A. trilogy. For interesting what-if history, try Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History. ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2000, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730/54 "2000-01-14T13:56:00Z")
Thanks for the list, Lawrence. I’ve read and enjoyed) about half of the books you mention (besides the ones I listed myself, Tuchman and Hughes), so I think our tastes are in sync. So now I’ll have to look up the rest of your list… * * * …but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-books-which-are-yours/12730.md?page=2)