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Best Book you ever read

jallenecs

Thinker
J
Joined
Sep 18, 2003
Messages
137
As an antithesis to "The worst book you've ever read" I'd be curious to know what were the best?

For me, there are so many to fall into the Best Category. In SF, it would have to be "Dune" by Frank Herbert. It was an epiphany for me. My father forced me to read it (practically at gunpoint! ;) ). Before that, I was a "Star Trek" kind of girl. Dune helped me figure out what REAL Science fiction was like, and I've been hooked ever since!

In horror: "Salem's Lot"

In classics "Bleak House"

Historical stuff "A Distant Mirror" (nonfiction, granted, but still)



Then there's "Ender's Game" and "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Pride and Prejudice" and "Twice Told Tales" and......

Oh, golly, I need to get to my bookshelf, pardon me, I'll be back sometime before I become a grandmother...... :wink8:
 
A woman after my own heart! Indeed, I have to credit Frank Herbert with my love of science fiction. Dune was the first book of his I read, but hardly the last. Unlike most people I've spoke to on the matter, I happen to enjoy his other works as well. But, that's beside the point; for science fiction, Frank Herbert wins hands down.

For non-fiction science, I definitely choose Carl Sagan, either Dragons of Eden or Boca's Brain. Both were extremely interesting, though a tad dated.

For horror, I'd say anything by H.P. Lovecraft as far as short stories go. Watchers, by Dean Koontz, though suffering of some plot holes towards the end, was good up until they became glaring.

For straight up fiction, I'm going with The Magus by John Knowles. I wouldn't call it obscure, necessarily, but it's not well known and is certainly one of those books that is characterized as a mindbender throughout. You're clueless as to what's real and what's not throughout the entire thing, but it's not fantasy, which makes it even better.

My favorite novel series is either the Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal series by Thomas Harris or the Necroscope series by Brian Lumley.

And I'm afraid I must guiltily admit that I'm a fan of Tom Clancey. I think it's the guy in me that is obsessed with guns and bombs and intrigue and action.

On a similar note, I love Michael Crichton's work because it's so thoroughly researched yet still entertaining. He tends to do quality work which can be rare in literature. I also greatly enjoy E.R., but that's nothing unique.

I have countless more favorites, but the only other one I'll mention is Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. It's heavy on the biology, but extremely engaging nonetheless.
 
I like Dune and A Distant Mirror, but here are my picks for those categories instead.

SF: Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
(really a series)

Historical stuff: Making of the Atomic Bomb
Don't laugh. It starts with the early lives of all the scientists, their views on life, and takes it all the way through Hiroshima. Won the Pulitzer prize too.
 
For non-fiction I'd say Under the Banner of Heaven, only because I just read it recently and its at the top of my head. I'd recommend it to anyone in this newsgroup. Krakaur takes an unashamably skeptical look at the extreme elements of the mormon religion, and religion in general.
 
Renfield said:
For non-fiction I'd say Under the Banner of Heaven, only because I just read it recently and its at the top of my head. I'd recommend it to anyone in this newsgroup. Krakaur takes an unashamably skeptical look at the extreme elements of the mormon religion, and religion in general.
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got it on order. should be ariving next month. Will be a nice counterpoint to reading the Book of Mormon.
 
I can barely read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein out loud without crying.

As a child my favorite book was One fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss.

:)
 
uneasy said:
Making of the Atomic Bomb
Don't laugh. It starts with the early lives of all the scientists, their views on life, and takes it all the way through Hiroshima. Won the Pulitzer prize too.
Click to expand...
I'm about half way through this at the moment, WWII hasn't even started yet. It's a fascinating, in-depth account, I'm loving it.
 
Fiction:
"The Clan of the Cave Bear", by Jean Auel
"Arc Light", by Eric Harry
The novels of the Belgariad saga, by David Eddings
"The Godfather", by Mario Puzo

Nonfiction:
"The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan
Any book by Ulrich Kienzle and Bodo Hauser - they did the best political TV show ever, "Frontal", and their books are even better.
 
Fiction:
well, I love the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, it would be difficult to just one in that series. OK, if you push me, 'Guards Guards'.
'Lightning' By Dean R Koontz I just love Time travel plots

Non Fiction:
'No Man Knows My History' - Fawn M Brodie The first book to show me the historical cracks in Mormonism.
'Demon Haunted World' - Carl Sagan

Peter
 
My favorite non-fiction book is "Lies my Teacher Told Me", it does a good job of showing how political forces on both the right and the left have managed to distort History education in this country for their own purposes. "The Death of Common Sense" is up there too.


Fiction is harder to pin down an all time favorite, mostly because I don't read a lot of fiction lately. Obviously I like Lovecraft but I can't really use him because he wrote short storys, not novels. So I would have to go with "The Coffin Dancer" by Jeffery Deaver, I love crime fiction almost as much as I love horror, Jeffery Deaver is my favorite crime fiction writer, and I consider "The Coffin Dancer" to be his best work. I don't want to give too much away but it is about a forensic scientist named Lincoln Rhyme (if the name is familiar, another book in the series "The Bone Collector" was made into a so-so movie) tracking down a hitman called "The Coffin Dancer", so named because one of his identifying marks is a tatoo of Death dancing with the soul of a woman in her coffin. I can't say too much more because it has a LOT of good plot twists.

"The Blue Nowhere" also by Deaver, runs a close second. It isn't in the "Lincoln Rhyme" series but it's still good. It details the hunt for a serial killer who is also a talented hacker. The killer uses his skills to get close to his prey (i.e. finidng out personal details about potential victims so as to figure out a plan to get close) and to throw the police off his track. Some of the technologies made me roll my eyes but it also had a lot of good twists and was overall a good read.
 
Par Lagurkvist (sp?) The Sibyl.
Hemmingway's first 3 books.
Celine - Journey to the End of Night
 
Fiction: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Non-fiction/historical: Black Boy by Richard Wright.

Mixture of fiction and historical: The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton.
 
Black Boy reminds me...
Invisable Man by Ralph Ellison
One of tightest novels ever, he spent 8 years writing it. One of the all time best opening passages too.
 
Prospero said:
My favorite novel series is either the Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs/Hannibal series by Thomas Harris or the Necroscope series by Brian Lumley.
Click to expand...

cool, a fellow brian lumley fan!

fiction: necroscope

non-fiction: demon haunted world
 
Atlas Shrugged.
And I've read To Kill a Mockingbird at least 30 times.

Oh, and the O.E.D. I've never read the whole thing, but it's my most prized possesion.
 
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle - Stephen Jay Gould
The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco
The Horseman on the Roof - Jean Giono
Mad Love - Andre Breton
Zarafa - Michael Allin
Bright Paradise : Victorian Scientific Travellers - Peter Raby
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder - Lawrence Weschler
Awakenings - Oliver Sacks
The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis
The Adventures of Augie march - Saul Bellow
Night - Elie Wiesel
Stirring the Mud: On Swamps, Bogs and Human Imagination - Barbara Hurd
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
The Naked Civil Servant - Quentin Crisp
 
Funny how "Atlas Shrugged" Tends to wind up on a lot of best and worst lists.

For me: Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."
 
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