Your five most favorite books!

[Calibandar]

Bumping this for comparison to the new and similar thread.

[add-on]

John Updike's Pigeon Feathers collection.

Kay's Lions of Al-Rassan.

Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys.

James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain.

and number five...we'll say the Silmarillion.

The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway

To the Lighthouse - Woolf

The Facts of Life - Graham Joyce

Smoking Poppy - Graham Joyce

ASOIAF

What Narcissism Means To Me - Tony Hoagland

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

The Winter of Our Discontent - Steinbeck

Wonder Boys - Chabon

Pigeon Feathers - Updike

ETA: honorable mentions:

The Dispossessed - Leguin

Lions of Al-Rassan - Kay

The Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy - Updike

Couples - Updike

The Wayward Bus - Steinbeck

All the Pretty Horses - McCarthy

Go Tell It on the Mountain - Baldwin

End of the Affair - Greene

Vellum - Duncan

The Last Hot Time - Ford

Donkey Gospel - Tony Hoagland

Ha. Only two of my previous five favorites remain in the top ten, while two more were pushed down into the 'honorable mentions'. And The Silmarillion was pushed out altogether. Strange.

[seastarr]

Since I already did my favorites somewhere else, I'm doing top 5 everyone should read. And why they should be read.

1) Shikasta- Doris Lessing (and the entire Canopus in Argos Series)--What are the implications of colonization, in space, on earth? Where is humanity going, and what does it mean? Is there life after death, and what does that look like? What is man, what is woman, can the two ever understand one another, and should they try? This ones tackles some big questions--and dissects them with thoughtful grace and precision. Elegant, difficult, but especially thought-provoking.

2)Magister Ludi- Herman Hesse--Heady, intense, yet accessible to anyone with a spiritual bent. The perfect book for the seeker in all of us.

3 & 4)The Things They Carried---Tim O'Brien and The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini-- Everyone should read these to know and remember the individual costs of war. War is political, war is national, but it is also personal. These books remind us of that, and show the way wars infects the spirit of those who fight them, and those who suffer from them.

5) The Color Purple-Alice Walker---It's older, and you might have had to read it in High School English class--I did. But we need to remember the stories of slavery. This story is a hard one, but beautiful.

[superkick]

1) The Fountainhead -Ayn Rand

2) On the Road - Jack Kerouac

3) The Eye of The World - Robert Jordan (the book that intriduced me to epic fantasy)

4) Catch 22 - Joseph

5) Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Runners up: ASOIAF and Malazan book of the fallen.

[Quarterman]

1. Dracula - Bram Stoker

2. The Shining - Stephen King

3. The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

4. The Ninth Configuration - William Peter Blatty

5. Conjure Wife - Fritz Leiber

6. 1984 - George Orwell

7. We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

8. The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells

9. I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

10. The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells

[Vrana]

I thought I had already posted here once, and I was looking forward to reading my old reply, but it seems not. Maybe I just thought of posting but never got around to it.

Arundhati Roy's God Of Small Things; this is one of the few books that always land on any of my top-something-lit-lists. I think Roy wrote a heartrending book without ever compromising the absolute brilliance of her prose and general style of writing, and never once does the book feel didactic or contrived, even though it deals with important human themes.

V.S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival, when I first read this book I probably wouldn't have placed it anywhere near my top 5, it moved in slow, leisurely pace, and while I never felt any gigantic pangs of my eyes wanting to melt from the sheer splendor of the plot, I suddenly sat up in bed a month later and had an ache for anything Naipaul. Wikipedia says this; He is widely considered to be one of the masters of modern English prose. of him, and, straightforwardly, there is not much more I can add to that. I just feel that you cannot possibly go wrong with a Naipaul novel in your hands.

Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown (Whoa, I'm going indian-fangirl on this list)

I have read both The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children and merely picked up Shalimar as a diversion, not having the slightest doubt in my mind that he could ever outdo M'sC. I was wrong, very wrong indeed. I remember sitting up the entire night after I had finished the book copying out passages from the book painstakingly in this little notebook I have. Pages covered in Rushdie goodness. The two novels I mentioned earlier on this list do not even have the tenth of Rushdie's wit, that's why I'm considering numbering this thing and putting it as no. 1.

(Little shameless promotion of favourite tidbits from Shalimar"...an idea so comical that it would have been endearing had she not erected steel walls of plate armour against the very concept of being endeared.")

Per Lagerkvist's The Dwarf, being a swedish author has made Lagerkvist somewhat obscure despite his Nobel Lit Prize. This was also a book that took me months to fully appreciate, as if it needed time to ripen in my head. Lagerkvist is a very ominous and pessimistic author, and not taking any pride in personal cynicism I do feel I can relate throughly with his dark and brooding novels and short stories. I cannot think of a better way to make this novel accessible to this board than by saying that think of The Dwarf somewhat as being a Tyrion novel from his POV alone.

Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, (the clock is getting dangerously close to me not being able to get up on time tomorrow, but I just want to sprinkle some love on Yates.) I love how he somehow simultaneously mocks the whole 'I'm better than all these other suburban-types' mentality and still seems to provoke this feeling of freedom and flight to the reader and making one feel that most everything is possible. Beautiful characterization.

[Thor85]

1) The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance (although the other Dying Earth books are equally good, this one has a special spot in my heart because it introduces Cugel).

2) Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe (all the volumes of the The Book of the New Sun are great but the first will always be the book through which I discovered Gene Wolfe).

3) Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe (two of the best historical fantasy novels in one volume!)

4) Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold (the most compellingly readable story I ever came across. I was basically forced to read it in one two day marathon. Like reading a literary pulp scifi novel, without all the guilt afterward. Never heard of Bujold or her Miles Vorkosigan character before this book but boy am I hooked now!)

5) Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake (fantasy poetry cleverly disguised as prose. Unique).

Ok so I cheated a little but omnibus volumes are like big books , no?

[Seanathin]

1: Dune, Frank Hubert: Still my favorite book to this day, one of the ones that made me want to start writing. Such a great book, clearly the best that Science fiction has ever produced mostly because there is so much science in it.

2: One hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez: A trippy magical book that I read for school and feel in love with. Also one of two dream projects to see a sprawling movie made from.

3: I Jedi, Michale A Stackpole: The Star Wars geek in me needed a plug.

4: Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein: Again my love of all things Sci-fi this was always a must read must love.

5: aSoIaF, GRRM: Brought me back into the world of reading after collage all but stamped it out. It used to take me about a mouth and a half to read a 400 page book, I finished CoK in less then a week.

[UndergroundMan]

1. "A Game of Thrones" -The book that rekindled my love for reading and fantasy literature. After reading Martin's series, I found this board which introduced me to a whole new world of fantasy books and literature in general.

2. "Notes from Underground" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. - Never before have I identified so much with a character in a novel. His struggles are mine. This book got me through a hard time in my life and made me realize that I am not alone. Also helped me to form my own philosophy and break away from my conservative Christian upbringing.

3. "Le Morte d'Arthur" by Sir Thomas Malory. - This book is magic. I was nearly in tears at the end of the novel. Lancelot and Guinevere's fates always cause me to tear up a little. It's a bit difficult to get through, but Malory's writing only becomes stronger and more focused as the plot proceeds.

4. "Atonement" by Ian McEwan. - His prose is beautiful and he's great with descriptions. A great love story, but Briony's quest for redemption provides the emotional heart of this tragedy.

5. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - Few books have made me want to both cry and laugh when I finished them. This book made me laugh out loud, but the ending hit me really hard. The battle between Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy is as epic as the duel between Achilles and Hector.

Honorable Mention: Gates of Fire, Jude the Obscure, The Last Unicorn, The Lord of the Rings, It, Different Seasons, The Dead Zone

[siemprepe]

It's hard to name my favourites since they change and depend on what I am reading or what I am in to.

Besides, there are so many books that I like and will always like and I don't like to play favourites

[Thor85]

It's hard to name my favourites since they change and depend on what I am reading or what I am in to.

Besides, there are so many books that I like and will always like and I don't like to play favourites

Thanks for nothing. But I believe this is "your 5 top book recommendations thread" and not "I love everything" thread . Don't you have 5 or 10 (if 5 is too hard) fave authors that you read over the years?

[Jon Sprunk]

In no particluar order:

Lord of the Rings

The Black Company

Stranger in a Strange Land

Anna Karenina

Dune

[Guest Raidne]

In what *I think* is ranked order:

1. The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson

2. A Song of Ice and Fire, naturally

3. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

4. The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

5. Anatham by Neal Stephenson

ETA: Thanks, wolverine for reminding me to displace Edith Wharton for Eco. Also, I decided to be honest with myself and admit that I liked Anathem better than anything by Kundera.

[wolverine]

1. Shogun, James Clavelle: The interplay of religion, political intrigue, samurai, European foreigner in Japan, etc. was awesome. I really like history and this was a book that felt like it put you in feudal Japan and told a very gripping story.

2. Song of Ice and Fire, Martin

3. The Walking Drum, Louis L'Amour: I read a lot of westerns when I was a kid and then picked up this book. It is the only book I have read more than twice and it is a great adventure from an awesome storyteller. It helped introduce me to historical fiction and even though his main characters are Gary Stu's this book is a lot of fun.

4. Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan: Got me back into reading in college and when I picked up the newest book it felt like encountering a long lost friend. I love the world Jordan has created and the details of the cultures that he developed.

(tough for me to pick one for my last choice)

5. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco: This book was tough to read (for me) but was extremely interesting. Eco really places the reader in the mind of medieval monks and reading this book makes you evaluate your world views.

[Quarterman]

It's hard to name my favourites since they change and depend on what I am reading or what I am in to.

Besides, there are so many books that I like and will always like and I don't like to play favourites

I get where you are coming from, I had a quandry about placing two H. G. Wells novels in my top ten. But The Island of Dr Moreau is great book with a terrific ending and The Invisible Man is a precursor to the modern "home under siege" thriller/horror novel. Both excellent stories. Btw, I didn't care for War of The Worlds or The Time Machine.