Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek
Teaching a Stone to Talk
Letters from the Earth
Juniper Time
Not the Bible
Don’t know why, but these get reread more than most.
I’m shocked by the lack of Alan Dean Foster on your list. I thought he would cut the top 5 for you.
You should post in Khadaji’s monthly Whatcha Readin’ threads. I always feel like I’m the only one reading fluff!
Pride and Prejudice - Jame Austen
Stranger in a Strange Land- Heinlein
Catcher in the Rye-J.D. Salinger
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency- D Adams
Ender’s Game - O. Scott Card
That Dark and Bloody River - Alan W. Eckert
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Double Whammy - Carl Hiasen
Dead Solid Perfect - Dan Jenkins
Children of the First Man - James Alexander Thom
3cushion
Watership Down (my all time favorite novel since I was like 10. Yes, it’s its difficult to recommend or describe to someone who hasn’t read it without making it sound silly and childish, but it is neither of those things. This is not a Pixar novel).
Huckleberry Finn (probably the greatest American novel ever written)
East of Eden (Just an awesome, awesome book. Maybe even better than Finn)
Blood Meridian (I don’t think any novel I’ve ever read has made me think as much as this one did)
P.G. Wodehouse’s collected Jeeves and Wooster stories. They’re like mood enhancing drugs.
Not including the Bible:
- LOTR
- John Adams by McCullough
- That Hideous Strength By C.S. Lewis
- The Continental Op By Dash Hammett
- The Great Divorce by Lewis.
It was hard to leave out 1984. I’m going to have to re-read Lolita. I liked it but I wouldn’t have considered it one of the all-time best books.
Here are mine (at least my five favorites today – ask me on a different day and you might get a different answer), in no particular order:
Ulysses, James Joyce. The English language hot-rodded to the breaking point. A work of genius. Joyce will be remembered as long as Homer, and justly so.
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels. Yes, I know there are twenty of them. So what? I’m counting them all as one novel. It’s really one novel in twenty volumes anyway. And, Shodan, if you liked the Hornblower novels, you’ll love these. They’re much better (not that the Hornblower novels aren’t great).
The Power and The Glory, Graham Greene. Catholicism and human weakness in the hands of a writer who knows them both intimately.
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy. I’m really putting this here as a stand-in for anything by Hardy.
Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad. Another great book about human weakness and redemption. Written, in English, by a man for whom English was a second language. Amazing.
infinitii, your mention of Sei Shonagon’s *Pillow Book *made my day. A classic. While it’s not a novel, her personality shines through every word. I practically fell in love with her while reading this book, even though she’s been dead for centuries. I’ve had a crush on her ever since.
Estilicon, I’m a huge Trollope fan. Haven’t read all of his books, but I will.
And, finally, my first favorite book (by which I mean the first novel that really gripped me, to the point where I was actually living in its world), was Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. I was probably 12 years old. I’m 49 now.
I just ordered it. 
The same with me. I got it because I love lists, but little did I know how exquisite it was. The McKinney translation has some interesting cultural annotations and explanations which I found enhanced it, if you haven’t seen that version.
Also: upon re-reading this thread, I am sad I didn’t provide any commentary on the five choices I made. Oh well, I’ll know better next time.
I requested The Brothers K from the library and I’ll be picking it up today. I’m anxious to see what the fuss is about.
My copy arrived yesterday and I started it last night. If 50 pages is enough to form an opinion, I love it. But it’s exhausting. It reads fast but I want to slow down and appreciate it.
I love family sagas (like The Forsyte Saga), coming of age stories (Black Swan Green), books about family relationships (Wish You Were Here), especially when they include the little details, stuff that’s important but that we don’t realize as important. So far, this book has everything I like.
Lordy, yes. I read that book when I was a kid and it made a huge impression. Not quite as much as The Scarlet Pimpernel, though, which completely colored my view of fiction and turned me into a lifelong fan of secret identities.
I thought Rebecca and Brian de Bois-Guilbert got the short end of the stick, though. Rowena was such a… wuss!
I’m so glad to hear this! I actually don’t even have a copy (gave it away and haven’t found the first edition I plan to replace it with) but I read the first couple pages at the book store yesterday and just the first few paragraphs can almost bring me to tears. Heart-breakingly good. The part that ends with one of my favorite lines of the book: “There he is. Papa. There is my father.” as he lays as a child in his father’s lap.
Order depends on day/mood. Although I don’t normally reread a book, I return to these again and again. I am 45 btw.
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A Dirty Job - Christopher Moore (I laugh until I blow diet coke out of my nose EVERY time I read it)
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Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving
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The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings trilogy- Tolkien
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Ride the Wind - Lucia St Clair Robson (fictionalized account of Cynthia Ann Parker and the last days of the Commanche)
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The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I have had a weird fascination with Afghanistan ever since I read Caravans by James Michener when I was 12 or 13 yrs. old.
Also should include…Memoirs of a Geisha, The Little House Series, Lamb - Christopher Moore, Little Big Man.
Wow - just reading these lists is going to be a project, before I even get to any of the books…
- Speaker for the Dead, *Orson Scott Card *- Surprised not to see it mentioned by other fans of Ender’s Game, to which it is a sequel. Fascinating look at the problems involved in trying to understand a truly alien culture, and up there with Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.
- Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen - What a great book; everybody I recommended it to loved it as well. Remarkable story about an unusual life in depression-era America.
- The Lord of the Rings, *J.R.R. Tolkien *- Read it for the first time in 7th grade, and about a dozen times since then. Always though it would make a great movie
- The Princess Bride, *William Goldman *- Even better than the movie, and I *LOVE *that movie!
- The Pillars of the Earth, *Ken Follet *- Unlike anything else KF ever wrote, and the best historical novel I have ever read, bar none (can’t wait to read the sequel, World Without End). Like Michener, but better.
Just five??? OK maybe…
- The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold
- Blue Coyote - Liza Ketchum
- Momo / Neverending Story - Michael Ende
- Timefall - James Kahn
- The Philosopher’s Stone - Colin Wilson
see all my favs here
*honorable mention:
Fifth Sacred Thing - Starhawk
Enemy Mine - Barry Longyear
Enigma - Milligan Fegredro
Brooklyn Dreams - J.M. DeMatteis
Replay - Ken Grimwood
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series esp So Long and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams
Dark Tower series - Stephen King
Rama series - Arthur C Clarke
Still Life with Woodpecker & Even Cowgirls get the Blues - Tom Robbins
Sphere - Michael Crichton
The Fountain - Darren Aronofsky
Watchmen - Alan Moore
Testament, Ecstasy Club - Douglas Rushkoff
The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein - Theodore Rozak
Interstellar Pig - William Sleator
I only counted fiction. If we’re counting non fiction, Selfish Gene / Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams, and Sex Lives of Cannibals by Troost might be in there somewhere…*
Is that related at all to the movie with the same title?
Well, the movie references the book, and I guess you could say it was ‘inspired’ by it, but the movie is actuallii a modern story and is completely different. FWIW, I really liked the movie and was inspired to get the book after watching it, but I like them for completely different reasons ultimately.
Is the book just a ‘list of things that make me happy’?