Jump to content

Top 10


Mosi Mynn

Recommended Posts

Some excellent choices here. I wouldn't know where to start but many of the ones mentioned here would factor in. 

Tricky thing for me are the books i read as a kid could easily take up the top 10 in terms of long lasting impact. So here are my favourites up to the age of 15

1)Salamandastron (from the redwall series)

2)Taran the wanderer/black cauldron

3)Some of the dr who adaptations were excellent at the time eg the last one to feature the second dr

4) Watership down 

5) legends of lone wolf. The novelisations of the rpg books

6) anything by colin dunn but "fox cub bold" from the farthing wood series stands out.

7) chronicles of Narnia. Maybe silver chair but it's a long time since I've read them.

8) weirdstone of brisingamen or anything else by garner

9) any of the douglas hill books. Great children's SFF. Blade of the poisoner was a stand out at the time.

10) Roald dahl. All of them are great. Maybe the witches the ending where the kid was cool with 9 years of life as a mouse as long as he spent them with his grandmother had a profound effect on me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In no particular order: 

Les Miserables

Lonesome Dove

Grapes of Wrath/East of Eden

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Watership Down

Duncton Wood

The Long Price Quartet (screw the thread rules)

Best Served Cold

Master & Margarita

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, red snow said:

Some excellent choices here. I wouldn't know where to start but many of the ones mentioned here would factor in. 

Tricky thing for me are the books i read as a kid could easily take up the top 10 in terms of long lasting impact. So here are my favourites up to the age of 15

1)Salamandastron (from the redwall series)

2)Taran the wanderer/black cauldron

3)Some of the dr who adaptations were excellent at the time eg the last one to feature the second dr

4) Watership down 

5) legends of lone wolf. The novelisations of the rpg books

6) anything by colin dunn but "fox cub bold" from the farthing wood series stands out.

7) chronicles of Narnia. Maybe silver chair but it's a long time since I've read them.

8) weirdstone of brisingamen or anything else by garner

9) any of the douglas hill books. Great children's SFF. Blade of the poisoner was a stand out at the time.

10) Roald dahl. All of them are great. Maybe the witches the ending where the kid was cool with 9 years of life as a mouse as long as he spent them with his grandmother had a profound effect on me.

Yes, I was thinking about if I was 13 or younger my books would be different, for me it would be...

1) The books containing the complete collected comic strips of Garfield - Jim Davis. (Yes, today I'm all about knowing Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes are the absolute best, but when I was a kid it was reading Garfield books over and over that in 3rd grade took me from the remedial reading group and skipped me straight to the advanced one.)

2) The Great Brain Series - John Fitzgerald (I loved these books! If I have to pick just one then it's The Great Brain at the Academy.)

3) I Want To Go Home - Gordon Korman (I thought this was the most hilarious thing I ever read as a kid.)

4) Bully of Barkham Street - Mary Stolz 

5) Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing - Judy Blume

6) The Wright Brothers - Quentin Reynolds

7) Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell

8) Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

9) Jelly Belly - Robert Kimmel Smith

10) Then Again, Maybe I Won't - Judy Blume

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, red snow said:

Tricky thing for me are the books i read as a kid could easily take up the top 10 in terms of long lasting impact. So here are my favourites up to the age of 15

1)Salamandastron (from the redwall series)

6) anything by colin dunn but "fox cub bold" from the farthing wood series stands out.

7) chronicles of Narnia. Maybe silver chair but it's a long time since I've read them.

10) Roald Dahl. All of them are great. Maybe the witches the ending where the kid was cool with 9 years of life as a mouse as long as he spent them with his grandmother had a profound effect on me.

Yeah - a top 10 of children/YA books would be good - a few of the series you've mentioned here would feature in mine. 

(Bold :crying:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mosi Mynn said:

Yeah - a top 10 of children/YA books would be good - a few of the series you've mentioned here would feature in mine. 

(Bold :crying:

It seems animals were my weak point be they anthroporphic or not. I forgot "rats of nimh" too!

I think it was the bleakness of farthing wood and the occasional redwall book that put me off fantasy until the "adult" stuff could match it with GRRM, Bakker, Hobb etc.

2 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

Yes, I was thinking about if I was 13 or younger my books would be different, for me it would be...

1) The books containing the complete collected comic strips of Garfield - Jim Davis. (Yes, today I'm all about knowing Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes are the absolute best, but when I was a kid it was reading Garfield books over and over that in 3rd grade took me from the remedial reading group and skipped me straight to the advanced one.)

2) The Great Brain Series - John Fitzgerald (I loved these books! If I have to pick just one then it's The Great Brain at the Academy.)

3) I Want To Go Home - Gordon Korman (I thought this was the most hilarious thing I ever read as a kid.)

4) Bully of Barkham Street - Mary Stolz 

5) Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing - Judy Blume

6) The Wright Brothers - Quentin Reynolds

7) Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell

8) Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls

9) Jelly Belly - Robert Kimmel Smith

10) Then Again, Maybe I Won't - Judy Blume

I haven't read anything as much as my favourites as a kid. Which is why they made such a mark and are easier to rank than books i read afterwards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, red snow said:

It seems animals were my weak point be they anthroporphic or not. I forgot "rats of nimh" too!

I think it was the bleakness of farthing wood and the occasional redwall book that put me off fantasy until the "adult" stuff could match it with GRRM, Bakker, Hobb etc.

I loved the animals too: Redwall, Farthing Wood, Watership Down, White Fang, The Silver Brumby, Narnia, Callanish etc.

I was well prepped for ASoIaF by obsessing over the Duncton books as a teenager. More than one "Red Wedding" in there!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/6/2019 at 10:27 AM, drawkcabi said:

 

2) The Great Brain Series - John Fitzgerald (I loved these books! If I have to pick just one then it's The Great Brain at the Academy.)

 

Spectacular choice.  I actually was looking to check these out on Audio recently just for fun.  Reread a couple of them last summer when trying to get Little Jax into differnt books...

 

My 10? These are favorites not considered greatest... no particular order:

A Ring of Endless Light - L'Engle

Storm of Swords - Martin

Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern - McCaffrey 

The Lions of Al-Rassan - Kay (newest entry into my top ten)

The First Man in Rome - McCullough 

Space - Michener

How Few Remain - Turtledove

The Lies of Locke Lamorra - Lynch

Lamentation - Scholes

Dragons of Winter Night - Weis/Hickman

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Top ten is difficult but in no particular order here goes:

Oh and this is fiction only.

1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

2. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

3. Storm of Swords by GRRM

4. The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

5. Dune by Frank Herbert

6. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

7. The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

8. Game of Thrones by GRRM

9. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

10. Paris by Edward Rutherford

Obviously I have some favorite authors that I keep going back to ;)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah this is difficult.  If I have to pick specific books within a series I will never finish a list.  So I will cheat 'a bit' and have a series represented by it's first book.

Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

Hunter's Oath - West

Eye of the World - Jordan

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez

Gardens of the Moon - Erikson

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Clarke

Thunderer - Gilman

Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Pessl

Fortress of Solitude - Lethem

Kavik the Wolf Dog - Morey (This is the book that I credit with getting me into reading books that weren't Sweet Pickles)

I'll probably need to do a top ten B list because too many are missing from this one. 

Chandler's The Big Sleep should be on this one so sadly Kavik has to go. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

- The Wizard Knight, Wolfe

- Mother London, Moorcock

- Collected Fictions, Borges

- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami

- The Spine of the World, Salvatore

- The Goldfinch, Tartt

- Blade of Tyshalle, Stover

- Cugel's Saga, Vance

- The Etched City, Bishop

- The Dark Glory War, Stackpole

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is by no means in order, but rather the first books that come off to my head, trying to limit myself to only one per author:

1984 (George Orwell)

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Machado de Assis)

Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (Mario Vargas Llosa)

The Trial (Franz Kafka)

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)

The Brothers Karamazov (Fiodor Dostoiévski)

Madame Bovary (Flaubert)

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

 

I'm sure I'm forgetting someone, but for now, this is it.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

no particular order..

 

Blood Meridian - McCarthy

Storm of Swords - GRRM

Prince of Nothing - Bakker

Collected Short Fiction 1-4 (penguin) - Somerset Maugham

Shogun - Clavell

Lost Illusions - Balzac

Foucault's Pendulum / Name of the Rose - Eco

From Hell - Alan Moore

V / Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon

Carl Barks Library

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Blood Meridian - McCarthy

Gears of the City - Gilman

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky 

Shardik - Adams

Debt: The First 5000 Years - Graeber

Mayombe - Pepetela

Les Miserables - Hugo

ASOIAF - GRRM

Prydain Chronicles - Alexander

The Book of Strange New Things - Faber

I think it would also be interesting to see a list of favorite books read in the past 5 years - the books themselves wouldn't have to be newly published or a first time read. It's hard to replace all time favorites with new books on a top 10 list. Actually, I can do mine right now, no particular order:

Florida - Groff

You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine - Kleeman

Borne - Vandermeer

House of Leaves - Danielewski

Gentleman Bastard Series - Lynch

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Clarke

The Gone-Away World - Harkaway

The Quantum Thief etc - Rajaniemi

The Empire of Ice Cream - Ford

Infinite Jest - Foster

What sticks out to me is that there are no female authors on my all time top 10, but a few on my last 5 years. Maybe some of them will get reshuffled with time.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/7/2019 at 6:50 AM, Darth Richard II said:

I miss Gilman :(

I saw his A Half-Made World at the bookstore yesterday and was really tempted to pick it up. Maybe I will tomorrow. I've never read anything by him and the synopsis sounded interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Astromech said:

I saw his A Half-Made World at the bookstore yesterday and was really tempted to pick it up. Maybe I will tomorrow. I've never read anything by him and the synopsis sounded interesting.

I love all his books. Dunno what happened to the guy, he seems to have quit writing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I love all his books. Dunno what happened to the guy, he seems to have quit writing.

I was going to ask if something happened to him. But it looks like he's active on Twitter. 

Thunderer/Gears of the City are my favorite fantasy books. Maybe my second favorite books of all time (Blood Meridian is first, hands down). With no disrespect intended, I believe he had one big, complex, emotional, inventive, fully-populated story to tell, maybe one that he'd been ruminating on for years before he wrote it down, dreaming about taking a break from his career as a lawyer to get it on paper (I'm hardcore speculating here). The Half-Made World had one idea (that got stretched a bit thin IMO), fewer characters, less world-building, but was still well-written. And The Revolutions... I don't know, it just felt smaller all the way around. Less of a plot, weaker characters, a half-formed idea. I hope he's sitting on another big story and will get the chance to write it. I don't believe he's the type of writer that has a full story ready to go every few years. 

(Thread hijack, I've also been looking for a Thunderer/Gears of the City tattoo idea, and since the book has fans in here, PM me if you have any suggestions. My first thought was The Bird with its power allowing the children to fly after it, but it struck me that it would come across as world's most basic tattoo + Peter Pan which is soooo not the look I'm going for, ugh ugh ugh! And if you haven't read the book, also not the tone of the story either. OTOH, I do have a Blood Meridian tattoo that really doesn't match the tone of the book quite, since "tree of dead babies" seemed a bit much...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Ought I persist? 

Probably not.

Hi Trisk. Was amazed to see how many people I knew were still here. Came by lit to see if there was anything new that was a must-read (there wasn't). Several people I've talked to have felt rather blah about the offerings of the past few years - not that absolutely everything sucks, there just hasn't really been anything that pulls everyone into a big discussion. What's new with you in the past 6 years?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...