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Best Book you ever read

A few more:

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People - Lenny Bruce
The Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham
The Tower of Babel - Robert T. Pennock
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Dime Store Alchemy - Charles Simic
The Plague - Albert Camus
The Mind of a Mnemonist - A.R. Luria
Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society - Peter McWilliams (Excellent book. I recommend this to everyone.)


Loved Dune, as well, and definately agree with To Kill a Mockingbird.

I loved Ayn Rand in high school. I read the Fountainhead in ninth grade, and immediately decided I was going to be an architect. On the first day of college, they asked everybody why they wanted to study architecture. Only two of us said it came from reading The Fountainhead. The professors laughed. We were the first ones to leave the program (Now I'm a librarian. Natch.)

I haven't read Rand in years. My feeling now is that I wouldn't be impressed. Her ideas sound great in a novel, but could never be implemented with any practicality. I can't help but think of the South Park episode in which Atlas Shrugged is an argument against literacy.
 
The Brothers Karamozov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Conformist - Alberto Moravia
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - Gregory Maguire
 
Fiction (novel): Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
Fiction (short stories): Stories in the Worst Way, Gary Lutz
Nonfiction: A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn
 
How do you define the "best" book, when so many have moved me or been important to my life?

Some titles that I love dearly:

Sci/Fi Fantasy:
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy/The Hobbit
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Foundation Series
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Dune Series
Lord of Light
The New Oxford Annotated Bible

Humor:
Bored of the Rings (when I was 13, this made me howel uncontrollably and still makes me giggle)

General Fiction:
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Lolita
East of Eden
The Angel of Repose
The Tale of Genji
Slaughterhouse Five
The Last Temptation of Christ
Elmer Gantry
We
1984
Animal Farm
I Claudius
The Master and Margarita
The Illiad and The Odessy
The Arabian Nights
The Magus

Some Non-Fiction:
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Black Book of Communism
The Alexiad of Anna Comnena
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Byzantium (Norwich)
Thucydides' History of the Peloplenisian War
Tacitus, the Annals of Imperial Rome
The Gulag Archipelago
The First Coming
The Last Place on Earth

Tons more, all wonderful, all important.
 
For SF I'd go with Zelazny's Lord of Light.
I was just thinking of Wolfe's Severian novels earlier today. I read the first one and have meant to get into the rest for some time now. I also enjoyed his Latro books -- I read them just after I'd seen "Memento" and they meshed well.

A couple by Faulkner: The Sound and The Fury andAs I Lay Dying.

Really, too many to list.
 
headscratcher4 said:
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
[snip]
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"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon was very good.
 
HENRY MOLISE said:
women by bukowski
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Love that guys stuff. I think the shorts are way better. Ordinary Madness, Most Beautiful Woman, South of No North.

"You're lucky that you're ugly. At least that way if someone likes you, you know it's for something else."

The Gut Wringing Machine.
 
Aztec, by Gary Jennings is amazing. In fact, it was recommended on the last "great book" thread here about a year ago.

A couple other books I love are:
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

Of course, I could reiterate many other books on this thread, but that would just be a waste of space. Go read them all. :D
 
tamiO said:
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.

:)
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This reminds me of my favorite book when I was a kid, The Upside-Down Man.

The story is basically that he's a man who is upside-down, and literally going around hanging in the air upside-down. This bothers people, but at the end, he grabs everyone else in town and turns them upside-down too. :)
 
So many possibilities, but confining myself to what is in this room:

"serious" Fiction:
Anything and everything by Toni Morrison, John Irving, Timothy Findley, Margaret Laurence, Virginia Woolf

Airplane Fiction:
John Saul or Jonathan Kellerman or even Agatha Christie

Poetry
Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Bukowski

Popular Science books:
The Man who mistook his wife for a hat ~ Oliver Sacks
Without Conscience ~ Robert Hare
The Challenge of Pain ~ Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall
The Burning House ~ Jay Ingraham

Spirituality:
The Prophet ~ Khalil Gibran
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry ~ Jack Kornfield
The Hero with a Thousand Faces ~ Joseph Campbell
The God Experiment ~ Russell Stanard

Inspiration/Self-Improvement
anything by SARK
Revolution from Within ~Gloria Steinem (also, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions)
The Hundreth Monkey ~ Keyes

And books I have and keep because I love the title or the author/title combo:

Satan is alive and well on Planet Earth ~ Hal Lindsey :D
Guidelines for Successful Living ~ Lawrence Welk :D
 
How about Von Clausewitz's On War? If nothing else, it probably had the profoundest affect of any book in shaping my views. There have been other books that affected me, of course, but I can't really get the longer list down to anything below twenty--clearly too many for a list of the greatest book that I've read
 
fhios said:
How about Von Clausewitz's On War? If nothing else, it probably had the profoundest affect of any book in shaping my views. There have been other books that affected me, of course, but I can't really get the longer list down to anything below twenty--clearly too many for a list of the greatest book that I've read
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Then you should check out A History of Warfare by John Keegan. It's basically an anti-Clausewitz book, and it's good to get other viewpoints.
 
TruthSeeker: The Hundreth Monkey ~ Keyes
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AACCK! The Hundredth Monkey Myth again. Not that I wish to take away your inspirational enjoyment of the book, but I find it difficult to be inspired by any author who perpetuates and exaggerates a pseudoscientific myth like Keyes has done.
 
xouper said:
AACCK! The Hundredth Monkey Myth again. Not that I wish to take away your inspirational enjoyment of the book, but I find it difficult to be inspired by any author who perpetuates and exaggerates a pseudoscientific myth like Keyes has done.
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I debated whether or not to include this in my list. I agree with you completely. And yet, there is something about the story if taken as fiction/myth that is encouraging. I probably should not have included it. :(
 
Hmmmmm . .as an adult I would say my favorite novels I've ever read are:


  1. Shogun by James Clavell
  2. The man who folded himself by David Gerold (sp?) - This is a time travel story which fully explores all the paradoxes of time travel with this guy meeting up with himself etc
  3. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers - Another time traveling story. This guy goes back to 1810. I love time traveling stuff too. I've read lightening as well by Koontz and really enjoyed it, but not one of my VERY favorites.
  4. Grand Canary by A.J Cronin - The rest of my family read this ie my parents and brother, but none of them were really keen on it LOL
  5. Clan of the cave bear by Jean Auel - the second of the series (valley of horses?) is good as well, but then the series goes downhill.
  6. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov - er . .another time travel thing lol
  7. Nightworld by Paul F Wilson - Simply horrific, but nevertheless excellent!
    [/list=1]

    Oh, and as a kid I would say
    1. The magic wishing chair again by Enid Blyton
    2. The Magicians Nephew by C.S Lewis - The first in the series of Narnia books although not the first one published.
    3. Thanks to Jennings by Antony Buckeridge - Simply hilarious!
    4. Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippe Pierce (sp?)
      [/list=1]
 
TruthSeeker said:



I debated whether or not to include this in my list. I agree with you completely. And yet, there is something about the story if taken as fiction/myth that is encouraging. I probably should not have included it. :(
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From doing a quick google, I think the idea has been expressed by others in a less mystical way. I can still remember one of my high school teachers when he told us "There is nothing so powerful, as an idea who's time has come".

This has been seen many times in recent history. Look at the fall of communist USSR, for example, or the nationalist movement lead by Ghandi. There is nothing mystical about all this, just a common realisation that "The Emporer has no clothes".
 
This is my 'short-list', as I have too many favourites to just pick out one or two. There are more, but these are the highlights:

FICTION:
The entire Elric saga by Michael Moorcock

Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series

The Ringworld set by Larry Niven

Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson (yes, I rather like this one; read it over seven times!!)

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman (what if Drac survived, and was Queen Victoria's Consort?)

NON-FICTION:
Catch Me If You Can by Frank W. Abagnale--read this years ago, way before the film. If you haven't, you might want to give it a look.

Cosmos by Carl Sagan (read this Billlllions and Billllions of times :roll: )

DEPRAVED: The Shocking True Story of America's first Serial Killer by Harold Schechter--I love true crime stories!
 
Just a small selection of my favorite SF/Fantasy books:-

To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis.
(Those of you who love time travel books should definitely read this one.)

Little, Big - John Crowley

The Last Coin - James P Blaylock

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
(I'm just about to start 'Quicksilver' :) )

On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers
(Pirates!!)

Bones of the Moon - Jonathan Carroll

I could go on all day and will be checking out many of the titles that people have recommended in this thread. :book:

STJ
 
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