I noticed Vestal Blue uses a quote from mine in his sig…
My personal favorite is Robert Heinlein. Time Enough for Love.
O
vidi vici veni
My favorite book is The Stand, by Stephen King. King has written many books which I have enjoyed immensely, and I few that have left me cold.
I am also partial to The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Excellent social satire. Very funny, clever, and insightful.
From my “school list,” Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky.
Son of a Circus - John Irving
captures the whole gammit of emotions. This book helped me through a tough time.
One room in a Castle (letters from Spain,France, Greece) - Karen Connelly. The only book I have ever read more than 10 times and can still discover new things. An intimate touching book or letters, stories, poetry and observations about life. Fantastic and inspiring.
My favorite is Godstalk by P. C. Hodgell. I consider it one of the finest fantasy novels ever written. It’s dark, funny, tragic, and exciting by turn–and it’s damnably hard to get. I finally had to order it (and the sequels) from a small press publisher who turned out a couple thousand copies of a collector’s edition. I really hope she gets a major publishing house to bring out the next one.
For those of you who like quotes, here’s the Widow Cleppetania:
“In this household, invalids do not come casually tumbling downstairs.”
“Bloody, singed, and dripping wet. Now I know we have a crisis!”
Time Enough for Love and The Stand rank high on my list as well, though.
Oooh, lotsa choices, and they change all the time.
One of my favorites is “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsythe. I’ve read it over and over. The descriptions are wonderful, and it’s easily the most realistic (and probable) thriller I’ve ever read. One thing I love is that it doesn’t involve US/USSR tensions or ex-Nazis getting hold of an atomic bomb. There’s an entire world out there with its own problems.
The Fred Zinneman film with Edward Fox as The Jackal was very well done. Don’t bother with the more recent bastardization with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere.
My favourite author right now is probably Neal Stephenson. My favourite book of his is probably The Diamond Age. Good stuff. I read it about three times a year, and every time its a little better.
Favorite Author: Stephen King
Favorte Book: The Shining
Roger Zelazny’s whole Amber Series. First Five are great, Second Five are good. Lord of Light, however, is a wonderful book.
Way too many to have a favorite…One of my earliest favorites was The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas. But then I was strange and the only kid in my 10th grade novel elective class that actually liked Ivanhoe. (Who “elects” to take novel anyway in high school? I think the others got stuck there.) My favorite horror novel back then was “The Other” by Thomas Tryon. My favortie now I can’t say there are way too many that I appreciate.
Needs2know
I just recently re-read the Amber series, as they had just put out all ten novels in one book. Well worthwhile.
I loved Ivanhoe as well, and the Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After I still read occasionally.
My favorite Tryon novel has to be Harvest Home.
Currently I am in the middle of “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankel. AWESOME account of a concentration camp survivor who was a practicing psychiatrist before his internment, and he goes in depth about the mindset and psychology of the camps and prisoners. HIGHLY recommended.
O
vidi vici veni
“Dead-eye Dick” by Kurt Vonnegut with “This Side of Paradise” by F. Scott Fitzgerald in a close second.
My favoriet author is Stephen King. I enjoy most of his work.
My favorite book is harder to narrow down. The Stand is probably my all time favorite, but I also liked Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Another favorite is Cosmic Banditos by A. C. Weisbecker. Not a very well known book, but it has something of a cult following.
John
Tropic of Cancer = Henry Miller
The Fionavar Tapestry(actually a trilogy) by Guy Gavriel Kay. I read the whole thing in abuot 4 1/2 days. It’s rare for me to find a series of books that hold me that long.
As for books I’ve read over and over again, I’ve read the Chronicles of Narnia several times. Don’t know why, since they’re really children’s books, but I enjoy them nonetheless.
I gotta lotta favorites since I’m a hardcore book addict.
Fave classic-Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
It’s a roller coaster ride satirizing love, romance, war, and fortunehunting in Napoleonic Era Britain. It is one of the few novels that makes me chuckle every time I read it.
Fave author- A three-way tie between Anthony Trollope, Terry Pratchett, and George MacDonald Fraser. Trollope’s Barsetshire and Palliser books examine Victorian attitudes and hypocrisy with equal amounts of drama and comedy. Pratchett uses his imaginary Discworld as a funhouse mirror to examine the human condition. For comedic fantasy novels, his books can get pretty profound. Fraser’s Flashman
is a cad, a coward, a lecher, and very, very funny as he gets caught up in the Taiping Rebellion(Flashman and the Dragon), the First Sikh War(Flashman and the Mountain of Light), and John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry(Flashman and the Angel of the Lord).
Fave author nobody else has ever read-Kenneth Roberts. In the 30’s and 40’s, Roberts’s novels of colonial America
(Northwest Passage, Oliver Wiswell) were very popular, but now he is totally forgotten and his books are all out of print, except for university press editions of a couple of his books. If you can find one of his books at your local library–read it, you’ll thank me!
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig.
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Dumas is a very close second.
I have recently started reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Funny at times and all of them have kept me turning pages late into the night yawn
I have too many to narrow it down to one. Heck, I think I might have too many to narrow it down to 50. I’ll just list some of the ones that come to mind.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Grey
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings series
Douglass Adams - The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy series (a trilogy of five)
Agatha Christie - pretty much anything she wrote, including her autobiography
Berkely Breathed - all the Bloom County books, and I don’t care if you consider them real books or not
And about a billion other books, ranging from classic literature to science fiction to non-fiction to more cartoons.
Author: Tom Clancy
Book: Rainbox Six
Favorite author(highbrow): Shakespeare…when you’re not reading him for a class, he’s fun!
Favorite author (popular): Robert Heinlein, especially “Time Enough for Love”, “Starship Troopers”, and “The Rolling Stones”.
Favorite book: “Foccault’s Pendulum”, by Humberto Eco. The first few chapters are extremely confusing. However, once you figure out which scenes are frame story and which scenes are flashbacks, it is a ripping yarn.
Honorable mentions to Tolkien, Dumas, and Tom Clancy.