My top ten favorite books which I read ever (so far) - Page 3

w1k0 · 12-11-2013, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I've responded to a number of similar threads and I have no doubt this response will differ from my previous ones

That’s the purpose of such threads. We develop ourselves over the years. If my thread will survive a few years, someone else, you, and me – we could publish here our revised lists once and once again. Or someone will open the other similar though not the same thread giving us a new opportunity.

Merischino · 12-11-2013, 10:47 PM

I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about what to put here and finally i'm going to just... let her rip.

no preferential order given...
also prone here to list series rather than single books...
also as others have including a mix of short story and novel. didn't think of any nonfiction at least tonight, but I did include some juvenile literature that came to mind.

1. The Great Brain (entire series), John D. Fitzgerald (now i want to read it all again)
2. Anne of Green Gables (entire series, but the first novel is the fave), LM
Montgomery
3. Little House on the Prairie (entire series, but the first novel is still my favorite), Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
5. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
6. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
7. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
8. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
9. DragonFlight (and all associated series), Anne McCaffrey
10.(short story) The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Ernest Hemingway

11. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
12. Dracula, Bram Stoker
13. Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
14. Hawkmistress! plus every other book basically in the entire Darkover universe
15. Battle Circle!, (trilogized: Sos the Rope, Var the Stick, Neq the Sword, a compelling post armageddon setting) Piers Anthony
16. The Incarnations of Immortality series (favorite is the first, On a Pale Horse), also by Piers Anthony
17. Earth's Children series, favorite is the 2nd Valley of the Horses but the best known is probably the first, The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel

----
prompted by other users to be included because i loved these, too
Exodus, Leon Uris (and Trinity, plus, all his other books!)
The Belgariad, David Eddings

barutanseijin · 12-12-2013, 03:02 AM

Books that have changed me, affected my language or way of thinking, or that i return to over the years:

1. Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu

2. 100 Years of Solitude, Marquez

3. Labyrinths, Borges

4. The Nick Adams Stories, Hemingway

5. Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald

6. Heart of Darkness, Conrad

7. Das Kapital

8. Snow Country, Kawabata

9. Setting Sun, Dazai

10. 10/18 collection of Cornelius Castoriadis' writings

so large works of political economy/sociology and brief fiction

Penforhire · 12-12-2013, 04:17 PM

I do find it interesting to see other peoples' lists. Sometimes I'm nodding my head, "ooh, good one!" and other times I'm shaking my head, "really?" But I like the idea of not openly criticizing each other here.

I intend on checking out some books I never read in lists that otherwise have me nodding my head.

BelleZora · 12-12-2013, 04:58 PM

These are the first ten that come to mind in this moment (some because I remembered how much I loved them when others listed them):

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck (also Sweet Thursday)

Walden - Henry David Thoreau

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (just read for first time and loved it)

All Jeeves and Wooster books by Wodehouse which I've read multiple times

The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara

The Stand - Stephen King

Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler

Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes

Zorro - Isabel Allende (actually, pretty much any book featuring Zorro)

Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Oh dear, and then there are Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mysteries and James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books (most of them).

Edit: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles can probably replace the Chandler. Or Dumas. An endless loop can ensue. (Then there is Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck...and The Grapes of Wrath)

Rizla · 12-12-2013, 09:08 PM

In no particular order:

Hamlet.
The Tripod trilogy by John Christopher.
Coming through Slaughter and In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondatje.
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke.
Confessions of a Good Arab by Yoram Kaniuk.
Roadside Picnic and Hard to be a God by Strugatsky.
The Great Gatsby.
Watership Down.
The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks.
Yes, Minister.

bcumyns · 12-13-2013, 01:21 AM

The first I thought of . .

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

The Things They Carried - Tiim O'Brien

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

The Liberation Trilogy - (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, The Guns at Last Light) - Rick Atkinson

The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy

The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx

Washington's Crossing - David Hackett Fischer

Diplomacy - Henry Kissinger

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

Yapyap · 12-13-2013, 02:15 AM

This is ... incredibly difficult.

Keeping to favourite books (which don't necessarily overlap with books I've appreciated or books I consider important or books I really should mention because they're more high-brow than those I am actually going to list but I won't because, well, they're just not truly my favourites), this is probably the best I can currently come up with.

The Skulduggery Pleasant series - Derek Landy
The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later - Alexandre Dumas
Harry Potter - JK Rowling
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne
The Silver Metal Lover - Tanith Lee
The Bartimaeus Sequence - Jonathan Stroud
Leatherstocking Tales - James Fenimore Cooper
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Oddly enough, my love for practically everything on this list either dates from my childhood and teenage years or from the last decade or so. Other than Harry Potter, I cannot even remember anything I read between, say, 1994 and 2004, and I'm pretty sure I read quite a few books.

kennyc · 12-13-2013, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yapyap

This is ... incredibly difficult.

....
Oddly enough, my love for practically everything on this list either dates from my childhood and teenage years or from the last decade or so. Other than Harry Potter, I cannot even remember anything I read between, say, 1994 and 2004, and I'm pretty sure I read quite a few books.

The Lost Years.....

soulfuldog · 12-13-2013, 07:55 AM

I don't have a complete list of ten, plenty of books that I really liked, but the two books that stand out for me are both books I read when I was young. One I go back and read from time to time and am probably well into double figures in the amount of times I've re-read it (and I rarely re-read anything), the other I read a few times as a kid, but I've not read it since as I always remember crying so much.....

1. Watership Down
2. This Perfect Day - Ira Levin

mcrow · 12-13-2013, 12:26 PM

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Old Man's War by John Scalzi
Forever War by Joe Haldeman
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Return of the King by by J.R.R. Tolkien

Rumble Fish and My Side of the Mountain were the first two books I ever read and that I can thank for making want to read as a kid.

BelleZora · 12-13-2013, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcumyns

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

Lonesome Dove was one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read, but I forgot about it when jotting down my list. Endless loop...

Pablo · 12-13-2013, 12:59 PM

My (of course) completely unfair but representative lists:

Non fiction

Cosmos - Carl Sagan
The Code Book - Simon Singh
Science - A history - John Gribbin
Big Bang - Simon Singh
A brief history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson
A brief history of time - Stephen Hawking
In search of Schrodinger's cat - John Gribbin
Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre
The end of science - John Horgan
Just six numbers - Martin Rees

Fiction

The day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Childhood's end - Arthur Clarke
Absolute Friends - John Le Carré
Sobre Héroes y Tumbas - Ernesto Sábato
The master of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson
Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
The three musketeers - Alenxandre Dumas
La carta esférica - Arturo Pérez-Reverte
La reina del sur - Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Sentence of Marriage - Shayne Parkinson

spellbanisher · 12-13-2013, 01:21 PM

Fiction

The Dispossessed-Ursula Leguin
Of Human Bondage-W. Somerset Maugham
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
Sister Carrie-Theodore Dreiser
On the Road-Jack Kerouac
I, Iago-Nicole Galland
The Red and the Black-Stendhal
Fathers and Sons-Ivan Turgenev
1984-George Orwell
O Pioneers!-Willa Cather

Nonfiction

The Omnivore's Dilemma-Michael Pollan
Predictably Irrational-Dan Ariely
Debt: the First 5000 Years-David Graeber
Financing the American Dream-Lendol Calder
The Great Cat Massacre-Robert Darnton
The Forbidden Bestsellers of Prerevolutionary France-Robert Darnton
The Literary Underground of the Old Regime-Robert Darnton
The Great Divergence-Ken Pomeranz
The Murder of Helen Jewett-Patricia Cline Cohen
Fables of Abundance-Jackson Lears

usuallee · 12-13-2013, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Istvan diVega

Same here. However, I can maybe do a "Top Ten books right at this moment", with the provisio that a) I get to include whole series and that b) the selection will likely be slightly different in a couple of hours and significantly so by tomorrow.

This. Heavily weighted towards book I've read or re-read recently (last five years or so)

Fiction:

The Magus - John Fowles
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Beach - Alex Garland
Harry Potter Series - J.K. Rowling
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Watership Down - Richard Adams
Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
The Prydain Chronicles - Lloyd Alexander
Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
Lady Oracle - Margaret Atwood
In the Woods - Tana French
Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo- Steig Larsson
The Snowman - Jo Nesbo
Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained - Peter F. Hamilton

Nonfiction:
1491 - Charles Mann
Inferno: The World At War 1939-1945 - Max Hastings
Mayflower - Nathaniel Philbrick
The Monster of Florence - Preston & Spezi

Apologies for more than 10. I looked at my five star rated books on goodreads and included all books that truly stood out.

12-12-2013, 04:58 PM	#35
BelleZora Wizard Posts: 1,432 Karma: 25151986 Join Date: May 2012 Location: Seattle, US Device: Kindle Oasis 3, Kobo Libra 2	These are the first ten that come to mind in this moment (some because I remembered how much I loved them when others listed them): Cannery Row - John Steinbeck (also Sweet Thursday) Walden - Henry David Thoreau The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (just read for first time and loved it) All Jeeves and Wooster books by Wodehouse which I've read multiple times The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara The Stand - Stephen King Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes Zorro - Isabel Allende (actually, pretty much any book featuring Zorro) Mila 18 - Leon Uris Oh dear, and then there are Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mysteries and James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux books (most of them). Edit: The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles can probably replace the Chandler. Or Dumas. An endless loop can ensue. (Then there is Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck...and The Grapes of Wrath) Last edited by BelleZora; 12-12-2013 at 05:09 PM.

12-13-2013, 01:21 AM	#37
bcumyns Member Posts: 12 Karma: 276964 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: North Carolina Device: Sony 300	Top Ten Books The first I thought of . . Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace The Things They Carried - Tiim O'Brien Moby Dick - Herman Melville The Liberation Trilogy - (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, The Guns at Last Light) - Rick Atkinson The Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx Washington's Crossing - David Hackett Fischer Diplomacy - Henry Kissinger Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

12-13-2013, 02:15 AM	#38
Yapyap Guru Posts: 861 Karma: 3543721 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Estonia Device: Kindle Paperwhite, iPad 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge	This is ... incredibly difficult. Keeping to favourite books (which don't necessarily overlap with books I've appreciated or books I consider important or books I really should mention because they're more high-brow than those I am actually going to list but I won't because, well, they're just not truly my favourites), this is probably the best I can currently come up with. The Skulduggery Pleasant series - Derek Landy The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later - Alexandre Dumas Harry Potter - JK Rowling Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne The Silver Metal Lover - Tanith Lee The Bartimaeus Sequence - Jonathan Stroud Leatherstocking Tales - James Fenimore Cooper Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Oddly enough, my love for practically everything on this list either dates from my childhood and teenage years or from the last decade or so. Other than Harry Potter, I cannot even remember anything I read between, say, 1994 and 2004, and I'm pretty sure I read quite a few books.

12-13-2013, 12:59 PM	#43
Pablo Guru Posts: 970 Karma: 4999999 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Rosario, Argentina Device: SONY PRS-505, PRS-T2	My (of course) completely unfair but representative lists: Non fiction Cosmos - Carl Sagan The Code Book - Simon Singh Science - A history - John Gribbin Big Bang - Simon Singh A brief history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson A brief history of time - Stephen Hawking In search of Schrodinger's cat - John Gribbin Operation Mincemeat - Ben Macintyre The end of science - John Horgan Just six numbers - Martin Rees Fiction The day of the Triffids - John Wyndham Childhood's end - Arthur Clarke Absolute Friends - John Le Carré Sobre Héroes y Tumbas - Ernesto Sábato The master of Ballantrae - Robert Louis Stevenson Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain The three musketeers - Alenxandre Dumas La carta esférica - Arturo Pérez-Reverte La reina del sur - Arturo Pérez-Reverte Sentence of Marriage - Shayne Parkinson

12-13-2013, 01:21 PM	#44
spellbanisher Guru Posts: 826 Karma: 6566849 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Bay Area Device: kindle keyboard, kindle fire hd, S4, Nook hd+	Fiction The Dispossessed-Ursula Leguin Of Human Bondage-W. Somerset Maugham Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte Sister Carrie-Theodore Dreiser On the Road-Jack Kerouac I, Iago-Nicole Galland The Red and the Black-Stendhal Fathers and Sons-Ivan Turgenev 1984-George Orwell O Pioneers!-Willa Cather Nonfiction The Omnivore's Dilemma-Michael Pollan Predictably Irrational-Dan Ariely Debt: the First 5000 Years-David Graeber Financing the American Dream-Lendol Calder The Great Cat Massacre-Robert Darnton The Forbidden Bestsellers of Prerevolutionary France-Robert Darnton The Literary Underground of the Old Regime-Robert Darnton The Great Divergence-Ken Pomeranz The Murder of Helen Jewett-Patricia Cline Cohen Fables of Abundance-Jackson Lears Last edited by spellbanisher; 12-13-2013 at 01:25 PM.

12-11-2013, 10:47 PM	#32
Merischino Groupie Posts: 192 Karma: 436584 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: the beautiful Pacific Northwest Device: Kindle Oasis, Pixel 2, Kindle Fire HD 8	I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about what to put here and finally i'm going to just... let her rip. no preferential order given... also prone here to list series rather than single books... also as others have including a mix of short story and novel. didn't think of any nonfiction at least tonight, but I did include some juvenile literature that came to mind. 1. The Great Brain (entire series), John D. Fitzgerald (now i want to read it all again) 2. Anne of Green Gables (entire series, but the first novel is the fave), LM Montgomery 3. Little House on the Prairie (entire series, but the first novel is still my favorite), Laura Ingalls Wilder 4. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett 5. Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling 6. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein 7. The King Must Die, Mary Renault 8. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 9. DragonFlight (and all associated series), Anne McCaffrey 10.(short story) The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, Ernest Hemingway 11. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier 12. Dracula, Bram Stoker 13. Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley 14. Hawkmistress! plus every other book basically in the entire Darkover universe 15. Battle Circle!, (trilogized: Sos the Rope, Var the Stick, Neq the Sword, a compelling post armageddon setting) Piers Anthony 16. The Incarnations of Immortality series (favorite is the first, On a Pale Horse), also by Piers Anthony 17. Earth's Children series, favorite is the 2nd Valley of the Horses but the best known is probably the first, The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel ---- prompted by other users to be included because i loved these, too Exodus, Leon Uris (and Trinity, plus, all his other books!) The Belgariad, David Eddings

12-12-2013, 03:02 AM	#33
barutanseijin Nxfgrrjks Posts: 99 Karma: 925422 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: New York, NY Device: aura hd	Books that have changed me, affected my language or way of thinking, or that i return to over the years: 1. Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu 2. 100 Years of Solitude, Marquez 3. Labyrinths, Borges 4. The Nick Adams Stories, Hemingway 5. Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald 6. Heart of Darkness, Conrad 7. Das Kapital 8. Snow Country, Kawabata 9. Setting Sun, Dazai 10. 10/18 collection of Cornelius Castoriadis' writings so large works of political economy/sociology and brief fiction

12-12-2013, 04:17 PM	#34
Penforhire Wizard Posts: 2,230 Karma: 7145404 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Southern California Device: Kindle Voyage & iPhone 7+	I do find it interesting to see other peoples' lists. Sometimes I'm nodding my head, "ooh, good one!" and other times I'm shaking my head, "really?" But I like the idea of not openly criticizing each other here. I intend on checking out some books I never read in lists that otherwise have me nodding my head.

12-12-2013, 09:08 PM	#36
Rizla Member Retired Posts: 3,183 Karma: 11721895 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Nook STR (rooted) & Sony T2	In no particular order: Hamlet. The Tripod trilogy by John Christopher. Coming through Slaughter and In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondatje. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg. The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. Confessions of a Good Arab by Yoram Kaniuk. Roadside Picnic and Hard to be a God by Strugatsky. The Great Gatsby. Watership Down. The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks. Yes, Minister.

12-13-2013, 07:55 AM	#40
soulfuldog I ♥ Calibre Posts: 2,073 Karma: 5678911 Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis, Voyage, Sony PRS-350, Hudl2	I don't have a complete list of ten, plenty of books that I really liked, but the two books that stand out for me are both books I read when I was young. One I go back and read from time to time and am probably well into double figures in the amount of times I've re-read it (and I rarely re-read anything), the other I read a few times as a kid, but I've not read it since as I always remember crying so much..... 1. Watership Down 2. This Perfect Day - Ira Levin

12-13-2013, 12:26 PM	#41
mcrow Zealot Posts: 145 Karma: 1486256 Join Date: Mar 2010 Device: Kindle 4/Kindle Fire HD/Kindle Fire HDX 7"	Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George Old Man's War by John Scalzi Forever War by Joe Haldeman The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien Return of the King by by J.R.R. Tolkien Rumble Fish and My Side of the Mountain were the first two books I ever read and that I can thank for making want to read as a kid.

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