very tough to do off the top of my head, but i’d have to say:
in case an anthology is cheating, my first alternate would probably be A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers.
i just started reading The Winter Zoo, by John Beckman.
1.) Flowers for Algernon- Daniel Keyes (Charlie- movie made off the book, about a mentally retarded man that is experemented on and turns into a Genius before he reverts back)
2.) Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole (Hilarious, Ignatious is the main character, and what a character.)
3.) To Reign in Hell- Steven Brust (The war in heaven with a twist)
4.)Whose Song is Sung- Frank Schaefer (Beowulf done in the perspective of an outcast dwarf)
5.) Ship of Fools- Richard Paul Russo (A space faring generation ship tries to find land, but discovers something frightning out in space, and within themselves. Dark and dreary, not for those that like happy feel good books)
1.) Flowers for Algernon- Daniel Keyes (Charlie- movie made off the book, about a mentally retarded man that is experemented on and turns into a Genius before he reverts back)
2.) Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole (Hilarious, Ignatious is the main character, and what a character.)
3.) To Reign in Hell- Steven Brust (The war in heaven with a twist)
4.)Whose Song is Sung- Frank Schaefer (Beowulf done in the perspective of an outcast dwarf)
5.) Ship of Fools- Richard Paul Russo (A space faring generation ship tries to find land, but discovers something frightning out in space, and within themselves. Dark and dreary, not for those that like happy feel good books)
Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy Series, the five of them(in fact any Douglas Adams)
A Clockwork Orange
Nineteen Eighty Four
I haven’t worked out my list yet, but you’ve hit on one of my pet peeves here: The Talisman is not by Stephen King, nor is Black House. They’re by Stephen King and Peter Straub, who IMHO is a better writer. I guess it’s nit-picky, but when two people put in a lot of work into something, and people tend to only give one person the credit for it…
Oh, Ukelele Ike, you’re the best. The Master and Margarita is fantastic. I’m calling it number six for me.
Favorite book: Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
Rest of the top five, in no particular order:
How to be Good, Nick Hornby. A great postmodern novel that actually tells a story. Just incredible.
Telling the Truth about History, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. They attempt to reconcile postmodern/deconstructivist ideas with the traditional idea of history as fact. Very interesting take on a big issue in historiography.
The Plague, Albert Camus. A philosophical treatise with characters you care about. Very moving, an important work, and yet easy to read.
1984, George Orwell. The most frightening book I’ve ever read.
I am amazed that The Stand is on so many people’s lists. I knew Stephen King was a popular author I just never could get into him.
I would have also put the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy in the top 10. That was a very good series.
As I look over everyone else’s lists, I’m inclined to agree with you.
[insert smiley of your choice here]
I’m currently reading LotR at work on my breaks, I just started The Two Towers. I’m also working my way through The Books Of Magic series of TP’s and then I’m going to be starting The Dreaming TP’s, then the John Constantine Hellblazer TP’s, followed by the JSA TP’s and somewhere along the way I will finish up james McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom and Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative 3 volume set.
Gosh… hard to pick favorites out of so many good books… here’s one attempt:
Sorry, couldn’t keep it to five… there are so many more too!
Anyway, I’m in between books right now. I just finished Neil Gaiman’s Coraline about 20 minutes ago (it was wonderful!), and next I’ll be reading The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza.
Five-ish, huh? OK, fiction only:
[ul]
[li]The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov [/li][li]Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne[/li][li]Let Us Build Us a City: Eleven Lost Towns, Donald Harington. (not exactly fiction, but not exactly non-fiction either)[/li][li]The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon[/li][li]The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (a.k.a. Epitaph of a Small Winner), Machado de Assis[/li][li]Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.[/li][li]The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson[/li][/ul]
It pains me to leave off George Macdonald Fraser, Patrick O’Brian, John Banville, Tom Sharpe, P. G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, James Joyce, Mark Twain, and Dawn Powell, among others. There are books by each of them that I re-read with pleasure nearly as often as the ones on my list.
My favorite 5ish books are (in no particular order):
The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway
1984 by George Orwell
The Giver by Louis Lowry
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
A Farewell to Arms again by Hemingway.
The Theif of Always by Clive Barker
The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer (no, not Simpson)
I also like any book in the Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy. 
I am currently reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and On the Road by Jack Kerouac
You’re right, of course. :smack:
hmmmm. Well… Mine will probably be the low-browest of them all, but… here goes.
What I am reading now? Birthing from Within (England Horowitz), which I don’t love but was recommended by my midwife, and The Hundred Secret Senses (Amy Tan) which is very good.
In no order:
The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut
Shibumi by Trevanian
The Devil Drives - an autobiography of Sir Richard Francis Burton.
How Things Work
The Stars my Destination by Bester
Cosmic Banditos by Weisbecker
Franz Kafka The Trial
Joseph Heller Catch 22
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy
Edgar Allen Poe Complete Stories and Poems
Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
G. K. Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday (I just read this, after it was mentioned in this thread. I had to leave the library because I couldn’t stop laughing! It is already one of my favorite books.)
I am currently reading Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground and Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night A Traveler, and I like both so far.
“Will There Really Be A Morning?” - Frances Farmer
“Invisible Monsters” - Chuck Palahnuik
“The Bell Jar” - Sylvia Plath
“Alice in Wonderland” - Lewis Carroll
“Complete Short Stories” - Dorothy Parker (cheating, but what the hey.)
And right now I’m reading “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.