# List your three favorite books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 28, 2012, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285 "2012-02-28T21:34:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barkis_is_Willin)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/61 "2012-02-29T16:30:32Z")
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger The Catcher in the Wry - Bob Uecker A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin The first two are pretty solid, the third could easily change from day to day. ---
**Author:** ![limegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@limegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/limegreen)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/62 "2012-02-29T16:31:27Z")
Well, I’m not home, so I can’t sit down and scan the four sagging bookcases to refresh my memory. As others have said, this is the choice of this moment in time. And I’m going to cheat a bit… 1. Dies the Fire series by Stirling 2. Outlander series by Gabaldon 3. Mercedes Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/63 "2012-02-29T16:42:30Z")
_[ol] [li]Crime and Punishment[/li][li]All Quiet on the Western Front[/li][li]East of Eden[/li][/ol]_ Three is hard. And I assumed novels - if you include nonfiction, it gets harder. I don’t even know how to compare them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/64 "2012-02-29T17:18:01Z")
> [@Invisible\_Chimp](#): > > This list is only valid today. Ask me tomorrow and the list will possibly be different. Also, this is in no particular order… Truer words were never spoken. Hmm. At this instant, I’ll say: _Tuf Voyaging_ by George R.R. Martin - Brilliantly satirical sf novel. _Aztec_ by Gary Jennings - Sprawling, engrossing historical novel about the downfall of the Aztecs. _Founding Brothers_ by Joseph Ellis - Wonderful explanation of the genius of the Framers, and how they related to each other. I could easily list another two dozen books which I like nearly as much. And it hurts me not to list LOTR. > [@Stelios](#): > > …3. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon. > > Simon’s book should be of particular interest to fans of The Wire… To say nothing of fans of this show: [Homicide: Life on the Street - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide:_Life_on_the_Street) ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/65 "2012-02-29T17:19:26Z")
…and I left out _One Hundred Years of Solitude_. This task is impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/66 "2012-02-29T21:40:10Z")
Someone upthread, when I’d mentioned I’d been compiling a list of the choices here, asked if I could put it in the thread for future reference and summer reading. I’ve done that for all the choices up to post #65. A few things to mention I’ll speak of here. The first fourteen books on the list have a number after them. That’s how many times they were chosen. If a book doesn’t have a number, it was selected only once. If a poster listed a series, or all the works, of a particular author, I haven’t included it on the list. Exceptions are _The Lord of the Rings_, the Bible, and the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy. I haven’t listed authors, because some books came with just titles. Nine or ten authors did have at least two different titles selected, but I think Robert Heinlein had the most, with four separate titles selected. But the winner for most selections was LOTR. I may have made some errors, sorry. The Lord of the Rings 5 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress 3 The Stand 3 A Suitable Boy 2 All Quiet on the Western Front 2 Bleak House 2 Crime and Punishment 2 Gone With The Wind 2 Lolita 2 Lonesome Dove 2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 2 The Caine Mutiny 2 The Great Gatsby 2 Watership Down 2 1984 100 Years of Solitude A Beautiful Mind A Confederacy of Dunces A Fall of Moondust A Game of Thrones A Prayer for Owen Meany A Soldier of the Great War A Tale Of Two Cities A Voyage for Madmen Absalom, Absalom! All Creatures Great and Small And Then There Were None Ariel At Swim-Two-Birds Aztec Bridge of Birds Captain Horatio Hornblower Catch 22 Catcher In The Rye Cat’s Cradle Chronicle of a Death Foretold Cloud Atlas Consciousness Explained Critical Path Double Star Dracula Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain East of Eden English Passengers Farmer Boy Ficciones Fight Club Finnegans Wake For Whom the Bell Tolls Foucault’s Pendulum Founding Brothers From the Corner of His Eye Gaudy Night Grapes of Wrath Have Space Suit, Will Travel Heartbreak Hotel Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets House of Leaves Howard’s End I Know This Much Is True If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler In This House of Brede Invisible Man Jealousy Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norrell Kingdom Come Les Misérables Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century Little Women Little, Big Love, Loss and What I Wore Midnight’s Children Molloy My Antonia Needful Things Night Watch Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha Persuasion Pop. 1280 Portnoy’s Complaint Pride and Prejudice Red and Black Replay Shogun Sometimes a Great Notion Song of Solomon Starship Troopers The Bluest Eye The Brothers K The Brothers Karamazov The Carpet Makers The Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Wry The Confidence-Man The Crimson Petal and the White The Dollmaker The English Passengers The Fire Rose The First Evil The Fountainhead The Haunting of Hill House The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy The Hobbit The Holy Bible The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Maltese Falcon The Mote in God’s Eye The Omnivore’s Dilemma The Pearl The Power of One The Robber Bride The Sot-Weed Factor The Way We Live Now The Wind in The Willows The Winter of Our Discontent To Kill a Mockingbird Tuf Voyaging Ulysses Villette Voice of the Whirlwind Watchmen We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda Where the Red Fern Grows Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ---
**Author:** ![Southern\_Yankee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/southern_yankee/32/2800_2.png) [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/67 "2012-02-29T22:51:22Z")
Thanks, **Baker**! ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2012, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/68 "2012-02-29T23:07:43Z")
This is nearly impossible! After much mental wrestling, I’ve come up with: Lord of the Rings Trilogy- Tolkein (duh) Little Women- Louisa May Alcott Green Darkness- Anya Seton (more historical than romance, set in England in the 1500’s, this book has a surprisingly large number of fans) All three are special in that I can immerse myself, instantly, in another world. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/69 "2012-03-01T00:06:17Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I may have made some errors, sorry. Yep. **Catch-22** was listed at least twice; **Desert Solitaire** and **One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest** listed at least once. . ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/70 "2012-03-01T00:28:48Z")
**The Catcher in the Rye** was also listed twice; it appears as two separate entries on the list, with and without the first “The.” ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/71 "2012-03-01T00:59:06Z")
> [@TreacherousCretin](#): > > Yep. > > **Catch-22** was listed at least twice; **Desert Solitaire** and **One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest** listed at least once. > > . I see where the error was with those three. The post listing them was being made while I made a post that came nine minutes later. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/72 "2012-03-01T01:01:55Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > **The Catcher in the Rye** was also listed twice; it appears as two separate entries on the list, with and without the first “The.” That’s the kind of thing that kept me hopping in December while compiling poster’s choices over in the Death Pool. Slight misspellings, different titles, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Gil-Martin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Gil-Martin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gil-Martin)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/73 "2012-03-01T01:54:52Z")
The three great works of novel-length fiction that come to mind at the moment: [ul] [li]_All the King’s Men_, by Robert Penn Warren[/li][li]_Slaughterhouse-Five_, by Kurt Vonnegut[/li][li]_The Stranger_, by Albert Camus[/li][/ul] But it could be a totally different list tomorrow, no doubt. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/74 "2012-03-01T02:35:37Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I see where the error was with those three. The post listing them was being made while I made a post that came nine minutes later. oh KAY, then. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/75 "2012-03-01T06:03:56Z")
Thanks, **Baker**. That’s quite a list! ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/76 "2012-03-01T06:22:45Z")
Here, in the order I wrote them down, is my list: _A Tale of Two Cities_, Charles Dickens _La Chartreuse de Parme_, Stendhal (_The Charterhouse of Parma_) _L’Éducation sentimentale_, Gustave Flaubert (_The Sentimental Education_) I’m pretty sure that these are all books that I just happened to read at the right time. But there you go. ---
**Author:** ![deadindays](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@deadindays](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deadindays)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2012, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/77 "2012-03-02T06:52:51Z")
BIg Bang - SImon Singh 100 Years of Solitude Siddartha - Hesse ---
**Author:** ![Philliam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/philliam/32/3011_2.png) [@Philliam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philliam)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/78 "2012-03-03T00:36:16Z")
This is really hard, even sticking to fiction. I’ll choose from books I’ve read multiple times and always seemed to get something more each time. ‘The Magus’ - John Fowles ‘Fifth Business’ - Robertson Davies ‘Para Handy Tales’ - Neil Munro ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/79 "2012-03-03T03:30:32Z")
_The English Passengers_, Matthew Kneale _The Song of the Dodo_, David Quammen _The Botany of Desire_, Michael Pollan ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2012, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285/80 "2012-03-03T10:15:05Z")
> [@Lissla\_Lissar](#): > > Cripes. That’s hard. Just fiction, or anything? > > Fiction: > > _Gilead_- Marilynne Robinson > _The Dispossessed_- Ursula K. Le Guin > > You know, for the third, I can’t decide between about twenty books. I’ll throw in a non-fiction book: _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_. There. IIRC, this book contains the _almost_ perfect sentance. What was written was, “The rain pocked the water.” If it was, “Rain pocked the water,” well…it sets up a whole scene in my mind. I love it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/list-your-three-favorite-books/614285.md?page=5)