Top 10 favorite books (any genre)

[First of My Name]

There wasn't really a thread for this and it seems like one that we just had to have. What are your top 10 favorite books (or series, if you really can't choose), and why? Genre or anything like that doesn't matter.

Mine, in random order:
-Blade of Tyshalle, Matthew Stover
-The Stand, Stephen King
-A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
-Harry Potter (counting these as one, I could never pick a favorite), JK Rowling
-The Liveship Traders (same as HP), Robin Hobb
-The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
-To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
-Misery, Stephen King
-The Book Thief, Markus Zusak.
-Lost Stars, Claudia Gray

These aren't  the best I've read, just my favorites at this moment. What are yours?

[Richard Writhen]

1. The Holy Bible (KJV) by God

2. Beyond Redemption by Michael R. Fletcher

3. A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

4. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

5. It by Stephen King

6. Watership Down by Richard Adams

7. The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

8. The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

9. Clockers by Richard Price

10. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

[Darth Richard II]

wut

[sologdin]

fairly conservative aesthetically here, so my list would be things like paradise lost, marlowe's faustus, the iliad, virginia woolf, blood meridian, &c. thoroughly predictable.

better to list out my ten favorite books to review on goodreads; they are all invariably among the worst books ever written and are thoroughly rightwing: protocols of the elders of zion; road to serfdom; tenured radicals; burke's reflections; peikoff's objectivism; the anarchist cookbook; the minutemen manual; the yeard; an atrocious early OSC; and gemmell's legend.

 

[Darth Richard II]

Man, I was just talking with someone about Songmaster a few days ago.

[Astromech]

Echoing Leap's sentiment of the fluidity of such a list:

Lonesome Dove*

Les Miserables*

Watership Down*

100 Years of Solitude

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th C. (at least one Tuchman required)

I, Claudius( Claudius the God isn't too shabby either)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Long Price Quartet (need at least one series)

LA Confidential

A Canticle for Leibowitz

 

* I don't see these three novels ever leaving my top 10

[Darth Richard II]

I'm still trying to get over the fact Captain Super Author up there thinks God wrote the bible.

[sologdin]

they took our grrrrrd

took our grrrrrrd

toogrrrrrd

[matt b]

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Dune by Frank Herbert

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The World According to Garp by John Irving

[TheRevanchist]

1. The Holy Bible - by the God
2. The Quran - by an another, though most likely the same God
3. The Torah - by definitely the same God
4. Tipitaka - by definitely an another God
5. The Dharma-shastras - by a few other Gods
6. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - by the most cool God

...

Now being slightly more serious and going with the one book at most for a series, my top 10 would be:

1. A Storm of Swords - by George RR Martin
2. War and Peace - by Leo Tolstoi
3. Crime and Punishment - by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. 1984 - by George Orwell
5. The Idiot - by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. The Fires of Heaven - by Robert Jordan
7. Name of the Wind - by Patrick Rothfuss
8. Heir to the Empire - by Timothy Zahn
9. The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy - by Douglas Adams
10. Hamlet - by William Shakespeare
11. Pulp - by Charles Bukowski
12. Hyperion - by Dan Simmons

because 12 is 6 times two. As you can see, God's effect is everywhere.

[Muwhahaha]

Thunderer duology by Felix Gilman

Acts of Caine by Stover

the Heroes by Abercrombie

Lamb by Christopher Moore

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Discworld by Terry Pratchett (I can't pick a single one but if I had to narrow it down I'd say Small Gods, Moving Pictures, Witches Abroad, Night Watch, Mort)

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway (Mimes and Ninjas just do it for me)

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Bas Lag series by China Mieville

the Troupe or American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Honorable mention goes to Hyperion, Chasm City, Use of Weapons, Malazan series, aSoIaF, Best Served Cold, and Name of the Wind.

 

 

[SeanF]

In no particular order Nero's Heirs by Allan Massie, A Storm of Swords by George Martin, The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien, Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Little Nugget by PG Wodehouse (honestly, lots of Wodehouse could make the top ten), The Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb (treating the trilogy as one book), The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell (again, treating the trilogy as one book), Flashman at the Charge, by George Macdonald Fraser, and The Miller's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer.

[HexMachina]

1) Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series (yes, i just included 12, soon to be 13 books, as a single entry on a top 10 list). I have so much love for these books, very well developed characters, interesting plot, intriguing mysteries, wonderful world building.

2) Howards End by EM Foster. 

3) Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Possibly the first book i've ever really laughed aloud at. Brilliant.

4) Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell. Arthurian legends are always appealing for me, and this offered a great spin on it.

5) The Alchemy Wars by Ian Tregillis. The first two books in the trilogy have been brilliant and I'm already impatient for the next.

6) Bleak House by Charles Dickens. A long book and it took me a long time to get through it, but well worth the effort.

7) The Silmarillion, Hobbit, LotR. Needs no real explanation, kicked off my love of fantasy at a young age. 

8) The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. Wonderful opening to a new trilogy, unique style of narration and sets up tons of questions. 

9) Lord of the Flies. I read this as part of my GCSE but it was definitely one of my favourite books. 

10) Shardlake series by CJ Sansom. Love a good historical fiction, and these fill that niche for me and I especially enjoy the religious turmoil throughout the books.

 

Some of these would likely change around, though a few are firmly on that list. Oh, and they are not listed in order of preference either

[Miss CS]

1. The Jotunheim Girl
2. Bloody Rose Grotto
3. Berry Blue
4. Lolita
5. The Secret Garden

I'm struggling to think of 10 worthy of my list. Oh, that's a tragic reflection on modern literature. I wouldn't put any A Song of Ice and Fire on it, because, truly, they aren't very well written, despite being entertaining.

[LongRider]

Here's a list;

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Bambi by Felix Slaten

Going Postal by Sir Terry Prattchet

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing

A Storm of Swords by G.R.R. Martin

 

Oh well, that's enough. 

 

[Crowjack]

Dune --- Frank Herbert (Tragic that his son polluted the series with the series of crappy books he vomited forth)

Armor --- John Steakley (Riffing on Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Combining unending interstellar war, a wayward emperor, a rogue of epic proportions, a double cross and a triple cross. And somehow tying it all together. A really good book. I knew John. He was working on another Jack Crow book before he died)

Dreadnaught --- Robert K Massey (I'm a sucker for the pre-World War I world. I almost included Tuchman's THE PROUD TOWER)

A Distant Mirror --- Barbara K. Tuchman

The Last Lion: Volume 1: Winston Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932  --- William Manchester

The Winds of War --- Herman Wouk (I must have read this 5 or six times since 1978)

Band of Brothers --- Stephen E. Ambrose

Lord of the Rings --- JRR Tolkein (i prefer to view it as one book in three volumes)

Caine Black Knife/Caine's Law (Act of Atonement, Book One and Book Two) --- Matt Stover (Stover has become one of my all time favorites)

The Grass Crown --- Colleen McCullough (The MASTERS OF ROME series is a guilty pleasure of mine)

 

[Crowjack]

3 hours ago, Miss CS said:

. I wouldn't put any A Song of Ice and Fire on it, because, truly, they aren't very well written, despite being entertaining.

QFT

[polishgenius]

The Scar by China Mieville
Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson
The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Look to Windward by Ian M Banks
The Master and Margharita by Bulgakhov
Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman (yes, I'm putting a comic in, sue me).
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Caine's Law by Matthew Stover.


In no particular order though The Scar is top. Like others, some of it could likely change, although a lot of them are on my regular re-read list - but for example I haven't re-read LotR for ages and am planning one soon, that could put it in.

[James Arryn]

Limiting to fiction in novel form, top of my head, further cheating by compounding and stretching to top 20, no real order:

 

*The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco.

*The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

*The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

*The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

*The Warlord Chronicles, Bernard Cornwell

*Thank You Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse 

*Post Captain/HMS Surprise, Patrick O'Brian

*Shogun, James Clavell

*L.A. Confidential, James Elroy

*One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

*The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien 

*Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, A. Conan Doyle

*King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett

*Dune, Frank Herbert

*Flashman at the Charge/Great Game/Lady, George MacDonald Fraser

*The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie

*I, Claudius/the God, Rogert Graves

*The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Asshat Hemingway

*The Daughter of Time, Joephine Tey

*the Karla novels, John LeCarre

 

 

 

 

 

[sologdin]

32 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

*The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Asshat Hemingway

there was a hat manufacturer, no shit, that ran an ad years ago in the US for a "hemingway hat" with straps "so it won't blow off your head."  stay classy, upper middle market segment milliners!