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Top 10 favorite books (any genre)


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Nongenre&genre:

In Search of Lost Time by Prousr

Infinite Jest by DFW

Moby Dick by Melville

Norwegian Wood by Murakami

Collected Stories by Hemingway

Book of New Sun by Wolfe

Baroque Cycle by Stephenson

Dresden Files by Butcher

Malazan etc. by Erikson

Song of Ice and Fire by God

 

 

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21 hours ago, sologdin said:

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!

Lol!

Hemingway would appreciate the concision, at least.

 

(edit: unless/until the copywriter got good reviews, at which point he'd decide they were dilettantes with small penii, and/or female.)

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On 4/13/2016 at 2:56 PM, Cas Stark said:

 

I claudius

 

Robert Graves managed to produce three of the most audacious novels I have ever read. (I, Claudius; Claudius the god ; and King Jesus.

 

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  1. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. Mina Drömmars Stad - Per Anders Fogelström
  3. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
  4. Sunnanäng - Astrid Lindgren
  5. Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
  6. Agnes Cecilia - Maria Gripe
  7. Skuggan Över Stenbänken / ...Och De Vita Skuggorna i Skogen / Skuggornas Barn / Skugg-Gömman - Maria Gripe
  8. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
  9. The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis
  10. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
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The Brothers Karamazov/ The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky;

Master and Margharita - Mikhail Bulgakov;

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller;

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera;

Weiser Dawidek - Paweł Huelle;

The Slaughterhouse no 5/ The Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut;

The Prayer for Owen Meany/ The World According to Garp - John Irving;

Night Watch - Terry Pratchett;

American Gods - Neil Gaiman;

Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson;

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On Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at 5:06 PM, James Arryn said:

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

 

 

 

 

 

Nice list! But not perfect as there is no Delaney or Zelazny on it.

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Lost Horizon - James Hilton

Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

The Bicentennial Man - Issac Asimov

Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson

Harry Potter - JK Rowling

 

Will finish this later...

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1. The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( 1866 )
2. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( 1847 )
3. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens ( 1864-65 )
4. The Idiot - Fydor Dostoyevsky ( 1869 )
5. Niels Klim`s Underground Travels - Ludvig Holberg ( 1741 )
6. The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann ( 1924 )
7. The Brothers Karamasov - Fydor Dostoyevsky ( 1880 )
8. War with the Newts - Karel Čapek ( 1936 )
9. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( 1869 )
10. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ( 1811 )

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In no particular order are some of the books I remember the best and that have stuck with me for whatever reason.

The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Star Beast by Robert Heinlein

Godel, Escher and Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

Dhalgren  by Samuel Delaney

A Rose For Ecclesiastes  and other Stories by Roger Zelazny

Treasure Island by R.L. Stevenson

Uncle Tom's Cabin by H.B.Stowe

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Red Orc's Rage by Phil Farmer

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These I have read at least twice and/or plan to read again some time:

Homer: Odyssey

Dante: Divine Comedy

Hugo: Les Miserables

Dostoevsky: Brothers Karamazov (standing for Idiot, Crime and Punishment, Gambler, Demons as well)

Mann: The Magic Mountain

Bulgakov: Master and Margarita

 

Sentimental or other favorites I have read several times and may have to read again for comfort

Stevenson: Treasure Island

Ransom: Swallows and Amazons

Wodehouse: Jeeves and Wooster

Tolkien: Lord of the Rings

 

Great books I started but to my shame never finished and should try again (take them to the island)

Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

Fielding: Tom Jones

 

Great Books I never even tried but want to read some time:

Milton: Paradise Lost

Cervantes: Don Quixote

Musil: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

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As of right now (changes all the time).

Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick

Shutter Island - Dennis Lehane

LA Confidential / White Jazz (can't choose between the two) - James Elroy

Devil All The Time - Donald Ray Pollock

Out of Sight - Elmore Leonard

Raylan - Elmore Leonard

The Stand - Stephen King

Generation Kill - Evan Wright

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On April 22, 2016 at 10:19 AM, Eric Cartman said:

Lost Horizon - James Hilton

Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan

Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

The Bicentennial Man - Issac Asimov

Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Malazan Book of the Fallen - Steven Erikson

Harry Potter - JK Rowling

 

Will finish this later...

Yeah I don't think you understand what the difference between a series and a single book is.

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This might take a while... no specific order, just listing them as the names pop into mind.

The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman

The Kiterunner, Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

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

The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien

A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Little Bee, Chris Cleave

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot (ed.)

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In ascending order:

Catcher In The Rye

Old Custer

Crafting With Cat Hair

Space Raptor Butt Invasion

The O'Reilly Factor For Kids

The Case of the Disappearing Robo-Hilters on the Moon (A Hardy Boys Mystery)

Vacuuming for Dummies

A Night Time Smoke

The Fart That Killed Everyone 2

The Fart That Killed Everyone

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Wolfe's Solar Cycle (New and Short Sun especially)

Tristram Shandy

Lord of Light

Brothers Karamazov

Temple of the Golden Pavillion

Absalom, Absalom

Fifth Head of Cerberus

The Devil is Dead

Complete stories of Flannery O'Connor

Pale Fire

 

I would have also included Wolfe's Peace and short story collections on there, but I didn't want to supersaturate the list with them. Also, the stories of Lafferty, Zelazny, Borges, Cordwainer Smith, and Sturgeon are some of my favorites, as with Faulkner's and Nabokov's collected short works. If we have to take off the stories of O'Connor, then Moby Dick will slide up there. My single favorite Wolfe novel in that sequence is On Blue's Waters, followed by Shadow of the Torturer.

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  • 1 year later...

 

Moby Dick  by Herman Melville  

The Star Rover by Jack London 

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

Jurgen by James Branch Cabell

Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo 

Night Has a Thousand Eyes  by Cornell Woolrich 

Deathbird Stories  by Harlan Ellison. 

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 

A Tale of Two Cities   by Charles Dickens 

Gullivers Travels by Johnathan Swift 

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Watership Down (my favorite book)

Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag (This is more a pick of sentiment than of quality.  As an assignment in 8th grade history, it sparked my love for reading, and I haven't stopped reading since.)

The Hedge Knight (This was my entry point into the never ending journey that is ASOIAF, my favorite series.)

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (I loved reading this in the papers every day back in the 90s.  I even read it to my daughter a couple years ago, and we still reminisce about its humor.)

Stillness and Speed (a biography about my favorite footballer Dennis Bergkamp)

Catch Me If You Can (Frank Abagnale is endlessly fascinating.)

Happy Potter and the Goblet of Fire (my 2nd favorite series and for me this is the best book in that series)

It (This is King at his best, just wish that one scene could be redacted.)

The Inferior (the best book I have read this year)

Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks (Mick Foley also is endlessly entertaining; bonus points for not being ghost written.)

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Nice necro, anyway:

  • The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
  • Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allan Poe (don't know if this applies here)
  • Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
  • Dune, Frank Herbert
  • The Machine Stops, E.M. Foster
  • Excession, Iain M. Banks
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
  • Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
  • NOS4R2, Joe Hill
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In no order:

 

1. The Second Apocalypse--R Scott Bakker (I'm going to be running my mouth about this one for years).

2. Lord of the Rings--JRR Tolkein

3. The Sun also Rises--Ernest Hemingway 

4. Night--Elli Wiesel

5. Imperial Lady--Andre Norton and Susan Shwartz

6. Dune--Frank Herbert

7. The Dark Tower--Stephen King

8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame --Victor Hugo

9. Berserk--Kentaro Miura

10. Spring Moon--Betty Bao Lord

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