My top 11 novels what are yours?

[gmw]

Thanks DiapDealer and kennyc. Irving was always one of those authors I'd keep my eye out for, and just when I was starting to think he'd given up writing out would come another. Okay, so they haven't all be great, but I could not have created a top 11 list without something of his on it.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by gmw

Thanks DiapDealer and kennyc. Irving was always one of those authors I'd keep my eye out for, and just when I was starting to think he'd given up writing out would come another. Okay, so they haven't all be great, but I could not have created a top 11 list without something of his on it.

I agree completely

...um...wait...I better go look at what I listed.

Whew! - A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

[januaryman]

Good to see some sci-fi here. Asimov is still amazing to me. You read his Foundation novels and wonder if he wasn't a soothsayer ... I was fortunate enough to have met and chatted with him before he died. At a conference about the future of Smart Cards, of all things!

Heinlein's pretty good, but a bit dry for my tastes. But how about Clarke, and Childhood's End?

[gmw]

Originally Posted by januaryman

... Asimov is still amazing to me. ... I was fortunate enough to have met and chatted with him before he died. ...

And did you just want tug on his sideburns? Every time I see a photo of him that's what I want to do.

Originally Posted by januaryman

Heinlein's pretty good, but a bit dry for my tastes. But how about Clarke, and Childhood's End?

I think 1953 was a particularly good year for Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood's End and Against the Fall of Night are, I think, some of his most inspired work (let's not discuss G.Benford's follow-on). Also in that year was his famous short-story The Nine Billion Names of God - I still love that one. When I was younger I liked more of Clarke, but more recently I have found his work less appealing, whereas Asimov - to my taste - has lasted much better.

Robert Heinlein I found a strange one. Quite a lot of his stuff I quite liked the first time through, but few suffer a second. Some of his shorter novels are quite good yarns but when you get to his longer stuff ... well they have moments of brilliance but he can't seem to stay the distance.

[Billi]

Some of my favourites:

Dee Brown: Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee
Leslie Marmon Silko: Almanac of the Dead
Kiana Davenport: Shark Dialogues
Isabel Allende: Paula
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera
Jane Austen: Persuasion
Jimmy Mc Donough: Shakey
Andre Agassi: Open
Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo
Erich Maria Remarque: his exile novels
Dick Francis: all

[Belfaborac]

Singling out just 11 books or series from 2.5-3k volumes read is pretty much impossible, but here are some of the ones I've re-read the most:

The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Three Musketeers (all nine books) - Alexandre Dumas
The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
A Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Heliconia Trilogy - Brian Aldiss
The Night's Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton
1984 - George Orwell
Any of two dozen books by... - Jules Verne
One Thousand and One Nights (in Richard Burton's translation, which remains superior till this day) - anon/folk tales
The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Lyev Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Germinal - Emile Zola
The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century - Stendhal ( Marie-Henri Beyle)
Diary of Samuel Pepys - Samuel Pepys
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

Ok, that would seem to be 18, not 11. Could as easily have been 180 though.

[Jonimeesermann]

Mine would be (in no particular order):

The Sum of all Fears - Tom Clancy

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie

The Firm - John Grisham

Sphere - Michael Crichton

The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling (my favorite in the series)

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Stand - Stephen King

1984 - George Orwell

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

[JeremyZ]

• The Lord of the Rings
• The Hobbit
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Sherlock Holmes
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• A Tale of Two Cities
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Dracula
• Iliad/Odyssey
• The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo trilogy
• Don Quixote

Never thought I'd be the type to love The Classics. Here I am.