Good call! I’m a big John Gardner fan - Freddy’s Book should have gone into my OP. I’ve been meaning to re-read Nickel Mountain for some time now, but I still want to read someone I haven’t read before…
A friend recomended Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold. Anyone read it?
Well, I think I may have liked the people because they were so unreal. I mean, they became more and more insane and twisted as the book went on,( you quitter 
) and the surreality was what grabbed me.
Pillars of the Earth, though. Man. You’ve got to really really dig learning how to build a church to enjoy that book. And not enough sex for my tastes 
jarbaby
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell
Anthem by Ayn Rand
I read those two once a year and am glad for where I live and for what I have.
Summer of '49 David Halberstam
Into Thin Air Jon Krakauer
Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry
The Godfather Mario Puzo
A Princess of Mars Edgar Rice Burroughs
How can you people not like Pillars of the Earth? Great book! What sort of things rally go into the building of a medieval cahedral. Note that hey don’t even start building until more than halfway into the book. Heck, I recommend it.
In the same vein, I recommend The Bronze God of Rhodes by L. Sprague deCamp. If you can find it, that is. All the good books seem to go out of print. It’s about the building of the Colossus of Rhodes, told in detail by an engineer and classcist and historical novelist (not to mention science fiction and fantasy author of the highest order). as in PotE, the first half of the book sets up the historical situation.
The best story I ever read is Bridge Of Birds by Barry Hughart.
Anything by Cecil Adams
all of the stories by Rue De Day, story guy
All the James Herriot books. If you love animals this is required reading
Confederacy of Dunces
All David Sedaris
An Incomplete Education-everything you should have learned in school and didn’t or proptly forgot immediatly after taking the test. Written by two Esquire editors, very funny
and written so that you WANT to read it.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Gone With The Wind Margret Mitchell-I love this book
I think I took it out of the library at least 13 times in jr. high alone. I agree with none of it, but it was like a big window opening and I could see what the other side was thinking. I hope that makes sense.
I’m sure tons more to follow
and for those of you thinking about either Moby Dick or David Sedaris here is a nice combination of the two
I don’t know why, but the first book to pop into my head when I saw the OP was “The Cuckoo’s Egg” by Clifford Stoll.
A very interesting read.
Emily of New Moon and the sequels Emily Climbs, and (I just forgot the name of the third one) by L. M. Montgomery. Just as good, if not better, than the Anne of Green Gables series.
White Noise by Don Delillo. Intriguing look at modern society.
Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor. Dante’s Inferno in an affluent black community.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Much, much better than any of the movies.
A brief query: Am I the only one in the world who absolutely loathed The Catcher in the Rye? I just can’t stand that whiney Holden Caulfield, yet everyone I’ve ever talked to loves him.
Although this series is fantasy, really they are books of incredible self sacrifice. Truly unbelievable. Thomas Covenent Series by Stephen R. Donaldson
This one is by Dean Koontz, normally known for his horror novels, but this one is quite a bit different than the rest. Strangers
A classic in the truest sense, Sidhartha by Hermann Hesse
Ringworld by Larry Niven (actually there are plenty of must reads by him, and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card have been mention a few times… Take these serious, I nominate them again.
Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World should be made required reading to graduate from anything greater than the fourth grade.
And two toughies… I am sure to get flamed for this phrasing, however, it gets the point across. On the next two books, people I have aquainted with them either didn’t have the mind or the background to follow them, or they were among the most amazing books they had been exposed to. There seemed to be nothing in between. Really though, if the person didn’t report LOVING them, they reported not understanding them.
Robert M Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to start.
And second would be Einstein’s Bridge by John Cramer. This book truly requires a STRONG science background to get the most from it. This is the science fiction that science fiction authors should be reading. Astounding is not a strong enough word. Actually, if you have read this book, I would love to hear from you… Can’t be that many of us.
How Proust Can Change Your Life - Alain De Botton
The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain De Botton
The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake
The Doubters Companion - John Ralston Saul
No kidding. first we have to read about how to find true north to position the cathedral, how and where we get the stone from, where everyone lives in relation to the stone, how churches are designed, how tools are used, how to get money for the church…
Don’t worry, I’ll finish it someday. But it feels more like a history lesson than an entertaining lay-in-the-bathtub-and-read book.
For a quick, plane-trip book, I’d like offer Mall by Eric Bogosian. Super short, quick moving. It’s like reading an action movie.
jarbaby
Some of these have already been mentioned:
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
History of Western Philosophy
Bertram Russell
I’m certainly not an athiest but I did feel like I was following the development of religion as man’s philosophical complexity was evolving.
You and I are in complete agreement on this. Definitely one of my top 5 of all time, might be #1.
Others that spring to mind:
Lonesome Dove
The Power of One (The description was totally uninteresting, but friend demanded I read it. LOVED it, cried like a baby)
Stranger in a Strange Land
Cold Mountain (hard to get into, but once I did I was in love)
Memoirs of a Geisha
Unintended Consequences by John Ross
This is the book the government doesn’t want you to read. People told Ross that he should publish it under a pseudonym, but he didn’t. Sure enough, the feds are harassing him and his ex-wife (who is on good terms with him, fortunately!) They also threatened small businesses who sold it, to the point where they stopped doing so.
However, the large bookstores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble still carry it.
At one point Ross was saying he was working on a sequel, but now he says he’s not, “for health reasons”. Hmmm.
It is a long book that goes into a lot of detail about the characters’ backgrounds before the exciting part starts. If you get bored during some of the earlier parts, stick with it. Believe me, the second half is worth it.
The Master & Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov
The Life & Opinions of Tritram Shandy, Gentleman: Laurence Sterne
Gargantua & Pantagruel: Francois Rabelais
Moby Dick: Herman Melville
These are mostly great, but have some flat/not so great parts:
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Fathers & Sons: Ivan Turgenev
The Decameron: Bocaccio
Oh, and props to the poster who referenced The Manuscript Found at Saragossa: Jan Potocki. You keep peeling the onion, and get more and more oddball connections…
I’ll second these. Both very rewarding, and not at all written in the elitist academic style that characterizes most philosophical treatments.
My picks:
We wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch. He takes you there while managing to be neither sanctimonious nor dry and still moving and readable. No matter what you think, you won’t be able to put it down.
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American indie underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad. Even if the music isn’t your cup of tea, it’s fascinating to see how these marginalized bands with no major financial backing created a subculture thats effects are still being felt today. Then you can watch their inevitable implosions.
Lipstick Traces: A secret history of the 20th century by Greil Marcus. Starts with the Sex Pistols, then goes on to cover underground art and philosophical movements throughout the past century (and beyond). Will change the way you think about the world. Warning: kinda pedantic.
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. An excellent introduction to physics and the latest thoughts in superstring theory written for the layman.
For fiction, I’d recommend Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. About a family of circus sideshow freaks. Haven’t read it in about ten years, but it was pretty dark and made an impression.
Last but not least:
Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. So dark it goes beyond noir fiction. Like Camus’s “The Stranger” without the angst and rationalizations. Read it.
Please don’t flame me!!!
Desert island reading material: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.