Knock-off Carlos Castaneda. It also manages to be pap, with a side of “run off and find yourself–the women are [stuck] taking care of everything at home, but you are special and deserve better than the drugery of daily existence.”
Here are a few more on my personal best-ever reads (I just looked at my “favorite books” shelf):
The Razor’s Edge by W. Somserset Maugham
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
The Chocolate Wars by Robert Cormier (it’s a YA novel, but I don’t care; I still love it)
Even if you count Sir Vidia’s Shadow (which probably shouldn’t be included since it is a memoir),that’s only 7, not 10, books, but I’m not sure how many books are on my favorites shelf, and it includes nonfiction as well, so I don’t have exactly 10 favorite fiction books. The titles I’ve listed would be on it if I did, though.
Brother Cadfael?
A rose is a rose is a rose…
ETA: honestly, I love all of Umberto Eco’s novels and his brilliant essays, but “The Name Of The Rose” is his masterpiece. But “Foucault’s Pendulum” is almost just as good, published in 1988, so years before the WWW, but precognisant of many developments of what became the internet, up to the blur between truth and fake news nowadays.
Spoilers about The Name of The Rose
To this day I’m sad about an inexistent library burning down, I keep rereading the book and everytime I get my hopes up that this time it will not happen…
Yeah, I have the same reaction, and it always breaks my heart when it happens in real life:
I’ve read some really good books since first posting this. I took some advice from here. I’ve since read a number of books that people recommended.
The Invisible Man was great! I also read The Day of the Triffids and loved it. I also reread The Chrysalids which was one of my childhood favourites. I’m currently reading Frankenstein.
I love the idea of reading the words of a story that someone, born hundreds of years ago, wrote.
Note that The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and Invisible Man (no “The”) by Ralph Ellison are two different books, both of them arguably considered classics.
I read the H.G. Wells one. Should I also read the other?
I got through 1/3 of it when I was about 22 or 23. I really wanted to like it and get into it, but I just don’t like Tolkien’s writing style and that genre just doesn’t resonate with me. I’ve felt no need to read any more Tolkien, though one of my girlfriends at the time thought I was a fan and bought me the Simarillion and some other adjacent works that just sat on a bookshelf and stayed there when I moved out.
I’ve read about half those books, and all were great. However, I could not get through 100 Years of Solitude. It’s another one I got about a third through, put down for a month, picked it up later and was completely lost with who was who and what was going on and I would have to start again to get back up to speed. Same thing happened with Satanic Verses (not on the list). Thought those two were beautiful books, but I just didn’t have the concentration or patience to finish them.
That’s as good a top ten list as any. I’m really surprised Catcher in the Rye is on there. It’s a book I’ve read twice and liked both times, but I realize just how absolutely polarizing it is.
I don’t know what my top 10 list would look like, but I know it would include Nabakov’s “Lolita” and Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” Maybe even Nabakov’s “Pale Fire,” but that’s a bit of a nerdy read that I enjoyed as a literature major. Ivo Andrić’s “The Bridge on the Drina” would probably make it, too. Antal Szerb’s “Journey by Moonlight,” as well. I do seem to like Central/Eastern European writers.
I finished it, but I think I would have liked it better if it were a book of short stories rather than (ostensibly) a single narrative.
It was cutting edge and controversial back in the 1950s.