Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (also A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
:o It’s seven, but that’s as short as I can make the list.
Hard to stop at five, alrighty.
This list depends on time of day, mood, eating habits, and whatever comes to mind. It would have been different if I hadn’t read the thread beforehand :).
INPO:
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (this book just feels like summer)
Dune by Frank Herbert
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (anybody else read this? It’s a really good YA book.)
And I’ll say Lolita as well (it gets to be on the list cause I’ve only read half of it.)
It’s eight! 
:dubious:
It’s seven. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, while very good, is second to To Kill a Mockingbird. It wasn’t meant to be on the list so much as it was another Harper Lee book that was a really memorable read.
Errr…A Tree Grows in Brooklyn isn’t by Harper Lee. She never wrote another book. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is by Betty Smith.
To Kill A Mockingbird
Dune
1984 / Brave New World
A Tale of Two Cities
Slaughterhouse Five
Ok, so I cheated and mentioned two books as one, but I can't help but think of them together.Already mentioned: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jitterbug Perfume, Jane Eyre.
Not yet mentioned: Le Divorce, Diane Johnson. Soon to be made into an inferior movie, by all appearances.
The book that warped my mind into the delightful shape you see today: *The Hippopotamus, * Stephen Fry.
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Ubik by Philip Dick
Time Out of Joint by Philip Dick
And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
Woman in White - Wilke Collins
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Angela’s Ashes - Frank McCourt
Possession - Jane Austen
Lie Down in Darkness - Wm Styron
I stand corrected.
Catch-22 (for me, this has stood since the moment I finished the first chapter as the finest literary work I have experienced)- Joseph Heller (personally, I found Closing Time- the Catch-22 “sequel” disappointing… anyone share/renounce my view?)
The Moor’s Last Sigh- Salman Rushdie (a landscape painted in words even more breathtaking than that described in the Satanic Verses, and without the need to look around for people who might be offended before picking it up)
Iain M. Banks- Excession (without a doubt for me the finest science fiction author ever, and yes, I mean better than Asimov)
Animal Farm- George Orwell (such a simple explanation of the perils of totalitarianism I grasped it even as a seven-year-old)
Magician- Raymond Feist (perhaps not quite on the same level in terms of sales and critical appeal as the others, but the first “big fat book” I ever got through, and the novel that defined “page-turner” to me)
(sorry about all the brackets)
Okay, okay, I missed #6, which has to be included…
Red Dwarf, by Grant Naylor.
US Dopers, if you’ve never heard of it, you MUST read it- far and away the funniest book that isn’t Catch-22, ever.
A little off subject, but I thought I should also mention my favorite short story- the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber.
pocketa-pocketa-pocketa
Get out of my head! 
Those three listed above, plus:
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frasier
The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
Lightning, by Dean Koontz (just about the only one of his I like)
This Perfect Day, by Ira Levin
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (a new favorite)
Oh, that was a great book!
These are the ones I keep coming back to:
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Dollmaker
Mists of Avalon
Six of One - Rita Mae Brown
…And Ladies of the Club - Helen Hooven Santmeyer
Limiting myself to 5 is tough!
Stranger in A Strange Land, Heinlein
The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols
The Tolkien Trilogy
Mila 18, Leon Uris
I am pumped - The Dollmaker is on three lists!!!
It’d be cool if someone could compile the lists and rank the books, wouldn’t it? Some of the books mentioned turn up frequently on other lists but there are a few books that seem to be peculiar to Dopers.
I’m amazed at all the Geek Love fans. For a while, I’d thought that Maggie Estep and myself were the only ones who’d heard of it.
“I gave you Geek Love and you didn’t wanna read it/I said you have to 'cause it says it all/It’s about the things that weave people together/and the finer points of surgery.”
Mm, I forgot Maus by Art Spiegelman. Damn, now I’m over quota.