The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. Coming of age story set in South Africa just before WWII. Compelling characters, apartheid, deep emotions, vivid landscape. Cider House Rules The abortion debate, wacky characters, tragi-comedy throughout, yep, this is a John Irving novel. One of my favorite, favorite books.
Mary Stewart’s Arthurian Series There are many King Arthur novels out there. Stewart did it the best of all. Human, magic, timeless.
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. Extraordinary lives of ordinary people…lots of minute details which say so much with so little.
Trinity – Leon Uris. The story of Conor Larkin and his childhood friend against the backdrop of the struggle for respect and freedom for Ireland’s Catholics. I have read it three times. It is not only what it is about, but how it is about what it is about. You must get past the first 150 or so pages though.
Rebecca – Du Maurier (spelling uncertain). A favorite since high school and an absolute classic! It begins as a romance and deepens into an intriguing mystery as your read. Much, much better than the Hitchcock movie.
Forever Amber Scheming heroine in England during the Court of Charles II. This book ruined a perfectly good marriage. I took it on my honeymoon in 1974 and simply could not put it down. Huge and wonderful!
Cheri and The Last of Cheri by Colette. One of my rooms is a shrine to Colette and so it is hard to choose. These two are short novels and should be read together. They are a love story set in France about a hundred years ago. But it is the writing, the detail and the concept which take my breath away.
Hmmm…How did I leave out The Thornbirds? It is a must read!
CS Lewis’s THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA- to me, the ultimate theological work of the last century
Bram Stoker’s DRACULA
Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN
Stephen King’s THE STAND- 2nd ultimate TWoTLC
and the close runners-up~
John Irving’s A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
Walker Percy THE SECOND COMING (a more enduring story, tho I prefer LOVE IN THE RUINS for its social satire which is both dated & still resonant- think I’ll start another thread on that)
CS Lewis’s TILL WE HAVE FACES - a GREAT novel of love & tragedy & introspection & theodicy
CS Lewis’s THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH - the Round Table is a collection of C’tian academists & their domestic help (who are just as important) fighting a conspiracy of occult fascists
CS Lewis’s THE GREAT DIVORCE - not great writing, but a creepy & plausible vision of Damnation (AND post-mortem Salvation!)
Oh, Miss Mapp, you and I should have a Literary Salon–except for that Tolkien thing, whatever it is, we have much the same tastes! Have you ever read Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford, or anything by that wonderful, completely forgotten proto-Dickens, Douglas Jerrold (The Story of a Feather and Mrs. Caudel’s Curtain Lectures)?
Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse. Read it when I was a young un (high school or college, don’t remember) and thought, damn, I want to learn to play the glass bead game – but why does he give it up in the end? Read it again soon after leaving academia and understood the ending much better. It’s been 15 years, I think I’m due to read it again.
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. A big fat 19th-century novel written with a modern sensibility. It’s the interwoven story of explorers, smugglers, clergymen, and Maori. A wonderful, wonderful book. Everyone I’ve recommended it to has loved it.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. A feminist retelling of the Arthurian legend. Long, and I tore through it eagerly – until the last hundred pages, when I slowed to a crawl because I didn’t want it to be over. I’ve recommended it whole-heartedly to at least a dozen people over the years, and every single one has come back with a heartfelt “thanks!”
The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. (Thanks, Miss Mapp, for reminding me of one of my favorite authors!) This is my favorite of hers – it’s about trying to fit love into the confines of social expectations in 19th-century New York.
Hmmm, fifth: I’m gonna fudge and go for a trilogy: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. A brilliantly throught out fantasy series about the struggle between good and evil.
The Prestige by Christopher Priest. As good as a book about feuding magicians (top hat and tails - not swords and sorcery!) could possibly get…
The Truth by Terry Pratchett. His best book (since Mort anyway) which proves you can carry a message in a joke 8)
The Alchemist’s Apprentice which isn’t Jeremy Dronfield’s 4th novel apparently The fact you can write something this clever and not get your next book published worries me…
Vurt by Jeff Noon. Feathers and software - mmmm…
Only Forward by Micheal Marshall Smith. Too clever for it’s own good really.
Note: I really wanted to include LOTR - but it’s too trendy - and Hitch Hikers - but that works best as a radio series, not a book.
SM Stirling’s ISOT trilogy:
Island in the Sea of Time
Against the Tide of Years
On the Oceans of Eternity
Stirling has modern day Nantucket sent back in time to the Bronze Age (1250 BC) by some unknown phenomenon, and chronicles their quest to survive and reshape the world.
Robert Heinlein’s “Have Space Suit, Will Travel.”
I first read it when I was 8 and although it was one of his “juveniles”–ie written to be sold to libraries, so no sex or profanity—it has an ageless appeal and every once in a while I still break it out and re-read it.
Douglas Adams’ “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.”–Very underrated book, I always find something I missed every time I read it. And it always makes me laugh.
Dean Koontz’s “Phantoms.”–A very intelligent horror novel. I can’t help but get wrapped up in the story every time I open the book.
Aaron Allston’s “Doc Sidhe”–a send-up of Doc Savage set in an alternate reality where magic is an everyday part of life.
I haven’t read Cranford, but I have read Mary Barton, North and South (Mrs. Gaskell’s, not the Civil War miniseries) and Sylvia’s Lovers. I’ve got her biography of Charlotte Bronte around here somewhere. Jerrold? No. I’ll have to see if I can find him.
Just for you, I can gently set aside LOTR (it’s not as if I haven’t had ample opportunity to talk about that elsewhere) in favor of something a little farther down my list: Portrait of a Lady, Vanity Fair, A Room with a View.
If you’re looking for lighter reading, have you read E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels (yes, this is where my user name comes from)? They’re about the social squabbles of a set of middle-aged ladies and gentlemen in England between the World Wars. If you like Wodehouse, I recommend them highly. I often describe them as being similar to Wodehouse, had he written less about Bertie Wooster and more about Aunts Dahlia and Agatha.
Permutation City by Greg Egan - artificial intelligence, virtual reality, the nature of consciousness, sentience and existence, but nothing like you’ve seen it done so badly in the movies.
Weapon by Robert Mason - a sentient military robot escapes and does what it wants to do (again, you’ve seen this done terribly in the movies, indeed in the movie ‘solo’ supposedly based on this book, but this is different - it is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be a person)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Impossible to describe adequately - read it!
A History Of The World In 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes - everybody who takes themselves even a little bit seriously should read this.
Ringworld by Larry Niven (or anything else by Larry Niven)
Synchronicity! I just bought this a couple of days ago.
My five:
The Dollmaker by Harriette Simpson Arnow, heartbreaking story of an Appalachian family who move to Detroit after WWII.
The Lord of the Rings, just read it for the first time. I really liked it but I think I’ll like it more after re-reading.
Blind Voices by Tom Reamy, this book is sometimes compared to Something Wicked This Way Comes, but it holds up better IMHO. And it’s a bit more raw and edgy.
Stephen King’s first four books – Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining and The Stand – it’s like going home.
Feesters in the Lake – by Bob Leman, these are short stories he wrote for Fantasy and Science Fiction in the 60’s and 70’s, and every one of them deserves classic status. This is the best collection I own.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Calvino’s seventh book, more of a series of prose poems than a structured novel. Old Kublai Khan and young Marco Polo sit in a palace garden at sunset, weaving tales about the evolution of the universe.
The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren. The great 1947 realist novel about the mean streets of Chicago, winner of the first National Book Award, admired by Carl Sandburg, Malcolm Cowley, and Hemingway. Filled with great characters like Frankie Machine, Solly Saltskin, and Record Head Bednar.
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. Even realer, and meaner. Like Algren ratcheted up to beyond the max. His more-or-less sympathetic characters are replaced by monsters, whores, and benzedrine-popping sex maniacs.
Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Soderberg. Set in Stockholm during the closing years of the 19th century, this 1905 novel details the inner life of an empathetic physician who murders the revolting Reverend Gregorious. A psychological novel well ahead of its time, and a strong influence on Arthur Schnitzler.
Monkey by Wu Ch’eng-en. Part of the Journey to the West cycle of Chinese folk epics, it’s appeared in many translations under many titles. The one I’ve got on hand is the Arthur Waley translation from 1943. A combination of picaresque novel and fairy tale, it follows the Monkey King’s adventures among gods, minor spirits, demons, and sages. And its funnier’n hell.
Several of mine are on here already - Pride and Prejudice (Eve, if you haven’t read Austen, you must. Somehow, I suspect you have.), To Kill a Mockingbird, Cidar House Rules.
Other favorites. I can’t possibly narrow down five, but here are a few unmentioned that come to mind as wonderful.
Margaret Atwood (yeah, an author, not a book) - particularly Robber Bride, or Alias Grace or Handmaids Tale. Three very different books. Handmaid’s Tale is a book about a dystopia where women are chattle. The dystopia is based on fundamentalist Christianity of the extreme. Haunting. Alias Grace is a murder mystery. Robber Bride is about four women, three unlikely and very different friends, and the bitch that screws over the men in their lives.
Possession by A.S. Byatt. On of the more lyrical books I’ve read. Make sure to give any Byatt 50 pages before you throw it aside. This one is about the romance of two Victorian poets, and the mystery of their romance unraveled by two contemporary scholars.
House of Spirits by Isabelle Allande. Also very lyrical (are you getting the feeling that words are as important as plot to me).
These are the books that I read at least once every year, from start to finish:
**Lord of the Rings ** Yeah, I know. But I have been reading them since 1970 and I am still not tired of them.
**The Foundation ** Trilogy by Isaak Asimov. A sweeping epic of galactic history.
**I, Claudius ** and **Claudius the God ** by Robert Graves. These books tell the story of the reigns of the Ceasars from the point of view of Claudius, the family ‘idiot’ who became emperor. The Door Into Summer By Heinlein. IMO the definative time travel novel.
OK, so its only four. I will leave my fifth one blank to make up for the others who posted six.
Pride and Prejudice - it’s like going home. I read it about every five years.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - I liked this literary equivalent of a gothic chick-flick so much there is a member of the 'addi household named after one of the characters.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - has the best opening paragraph ever. A ghost story that I measure every other ghost story against. Wonderfully creepy and gorgeously written.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - the most compelling anti-war statement ever written. Brutal, terrifying, I’ll never read it again. A perfect book.
Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door & Ghost Road) - It’s hard to believe that this woman was not there in the trenches of the First World War-- that she never met Siegfried Sassoon, that she is an ordinary middle aged English woman writing today. Of all the books I’ve read in the past 20 years, these are the most memorable.
Okay, here’s mine…initially, it took a bit of thinking (I’m an early modernist, so I’m not used to novels ;)) but after that I realized I’ve got a ton of candidates! The top five:
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Once and Future King by T.H. White Les Miserables by Victor Hugo A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. Watership Down by Richard Adams
Five honorable mentions: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
That was really hard…way too many choices there. :eek:
The fact you can write something this clever and not get your next book published worries me…