I’d also recommend Significa, if you can find a copy (I see used copies on Amazon). It’s another work by the Wallaces but they do longer pieces in this one rather than lists.
If you like movies, I recommend Danny Peary’s Cult Movies series. He did three volumes (Cult Movies, Cult Movies 2, and Cult Movies 3). He also did three other books on movies, Alternate Oscars, Cult Movie Stars, and Guide for the Film Fanatic. And then he inexplicably stopped - he hasn’t written a book about movies since 1991 and he now writes books about baseball. So his books on movies are a little dated because they don’t include any movie made in the last quarter century. But they’re still interesting on the movies they do cover.
My favorite Time Life series is Time Frame. It’s a general history of the world with each book covering a hundred year period.
1.) the Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
2.) Repairman Jack – Dr. F. Paul Wilson
3.) the Polseotechnic League/Terran Empire (David Falkayn/Captain Sir Dominc Flandry) – Poul Anderson
4.) Adam Dalgleish – P.D. James
5.) the Deptford Trilogy – Robertson Davies
I guess it’s not really a series like the others listed so far, but because I’m a frustrated, pretentious lit major, I’ll add the Yoknapatawpha novels by Faulkner. Dense, overwritten, and essential. If you read only one, read The Unvanquished.
And Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, which prove that hardboiled detective fiction can be literary and emotionally satisfying. I don’t know, but I have to assume, that David Simon and George Pelecanos are fans of his.
I strongly recommend the Quiller series (spy adventure) by Adam Hall. (Adam Hall is one of several pen-names used by Elleston Trevor. Other Trevor novels are also good, but the Quiller series is special. Several Trevor novels were made into movies. Searching just now it appears there’s a whole season of Quiller TV episodes I was unaware of!)
Interesting that my reaction to OP was exactly the same as yours!
I’ve heard of very few of the other nominations as well. Exceptions include:
I read the Hornblower series when I was in about 7th grade. Loved it. Recently I watched the 8-episode TV series and loved it also.
Read it quite long ago, but have forgotten. The 6-episode TV Smiley’s People with Sir Alec Guinness is wonderful (and freely available on YouTube) — I envy anyone about to watch it for the first time. ( I didn’t like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, also with Guinness, nearly as much.)
I read almost all the OZ books in 2nd grade! Decades ago, hearing my nephew was a Harry Potter fan, I bought him the Wizard of Oz. I don’t think he even opened it. :o
A Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin
The Change Series - S.M. Stirling
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series - Douglas Adams
Land of Oz works - L. Frank Baum
Ringworld Series - Larry Niven
Two SF series that may not be all-timers, but for their length (both in calendar time and the number of books published) and general popularity should be recognized:
Honor Harrington (Honorverse) by David Weber (and others)
Ring of Fire (1632) by Eric Flint (and many others)
Alan Quatermain, H. Ryder Haggard Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs The Oz Books, L. Frank Baum Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle Longmire, Craig Johnson: if you’ve watched the series, you really need to read the books, which are far superior.
Longmire is just one of a whole slew of more modern series that are excellent, like the Harry Bosch series (Michael Connelly), David Robicheaux (James Lee Burke), Joe Pickett (C.J. Box), and others.
The Napoleon Bonaparte books by Arthur Upfield top my list. If you, like me, love crime fiction because nothing else can implant such a deep and lasting sense of place and time, then you will love these.
Travis McGee
Spenser
There are so many others, Dave Robicheaux, although my tolerance can ebb and flow for the boneheaded way he talks to people, Elvis Cole, Lew Archer, Lucas Davenport, Virgil Flowers, Harry Bosch, the list goes on, but those top three? I can reread them over and over. And I have.
I am out of practice with fantasy and SF, but Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy comes to mind.
Hap & Leonard!!! :smack:
Y’all can all rest easy now.
The Hap & Leonard books are by Joe R. Lansdale. They’re about two good friends who are makin’ their way, the only way they know how. That’s just a little bit more than the law’ll allow. Or am I thinking of something else? Well, anyway, it’s these two guys who go around trying to make the world a better place by doling out well-deserved ass kickings. Admittedly, after reading a few of these I feel like I’m reading the same book over and over again, but I don’t complain about eating the same piece of chocolate cake over and over again, and so it is with these.
The James Bond novels - Ian Fleming. Grittier and more intense than the films
Dune and its sequels - Frank Herbert A sprawling blend of sci-fi, politics, ecology and mysticism
The Foundation series - Isaac Asimov The fall of the Roman empire, reimagined on a galactic scale
