5 favorite books of all time

[junglesgal]

Daniel Keyes - Fowers For Algernon
Jack Canfield - The Success Principles
Julia Cameron - The Artist's Way
Bill Harris - Thresholds of the Mind
Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

[wayspooled]

This is a fun thread Seeing some stuff I've never heard of before that is someones favorite book - which means it's probably worth taking a look hehe.. Most excellent..

[jenieliser]

Hmmm... so far five of my keepers are:
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. A Room with a View
3. Ender's Game
4. Villette
5. Miss Marple books
Its hard to pick 5 and I know I will change my mind as soon as I finsih reading a few more books.

[Katiesue]

1. Les Miserables
2. Count of Monte Christo
3. Pride and Prejudice
4. David Copperfield
5. Crime and Punishment

Straight from the roster of classic British Lit isn't it? I love these
books that explore human nature and motivations... The timelessness
of the human condition amazes me.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Young Miles by Lois McMaster Bujold

If you like 'Young Miles' I'm sure you'll like the 'Five Gods' series: The Curse of Challion, The Paladin of Souls, and the Hallowed Hunt, and the 'Sharing Knife' series: Beguilement, Legacy, Passage, and Horizon. I have them all permanently on my Cybook and have read them several times.

Regards, Alex

[tneken]

Well i like sf and fantacy a lot so my top 5 is:
Lord of the rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Pandoras star + Judas unchained - Peter F. Hamilton
Debt of honor - Tom Clancy
Otherland series - Tad Williams
Ringworld series - Larry Niven

[iunknown]

Of human bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
J.D. Salinger - Catcher In The Rye
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Wild at Heart - John Eldredge
The little prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's

Favorite text ever written:

"As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern... It was merely something that he did for his own pleasure...Out of the manifold events of his life, his deeds, his feelings, his thoughts, he might make a design, regular, elaborate, complicated, or beautiful..There was one pattern, the most obvious, perfect and beautiful, in which a man was born, grew to manhood, married, produced children, toiled for his bread, and died; but there were others..."

[Mnementh]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Go here: http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/books/search

Thanks for this I'd never heard of this site looks good.

My 5 in no particular order:

Belgarath the Sorcerer: David Eddings
Wizards First Rule: Terry Goodkind
The Elfstones of Shannara: Terry Brooks (very very hard to just pick one book by Terry Brooks as I've liked everything he's written but if I had to choose one over all it would be that one).
Dragonsong: Anne McCaffrey (Again I like all of her books but this was the first one I ever read and got me hooked and I've re-read it countless times).
Spellsinger: Alan Dean Foster (For exactly the same reason as I picked Dragonsong for Anne McCaffrey)

Can anybody see a pattern there lol...

[Idoine]

Originally Posted by Mnementh

My 5 in no particular order:

Belgarath the Sorcerer: David Eddings
Wizards First Rule: Terry Goodkind
The Elfstones of Shannara: Terry Brooks (very very hard to just pick one book by Terry Brooks as I've liked everything he's written but if I had to choose one over all it would be that one).
Dragonsong: Anne McCaffrey (Again I like all of her books but this was the first one I ever read and got me hooked and I've re-read it countless times).
Spellsinger: Alan Dean Foster (For exactly the same reason as I picked Dragonsong for Anne McCaffrey)

Can anybody see a pattern there lol...

One of my favorites too ! Can't say how much times I read this one !
... And I know for sure now from where your alias comes !

[Mnementh]

Originally Posted by Idoine

... And I know for sure now from where your alias comes !

Heh yeah I've used it for years since I was a kid (made more sense then) so it's kind of stuck with me now

[A4-]

I like fantasy and sci-fi most, and the longer the better. So in no particular order here is my list:

W.J. Maryson - Master Magician (Dutch author)
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - Deathgate Cycle
Terry Goodkind - Laws of magic/Sword of truth series
Garth Nix - Abhorsen Series
Larry Niven - Ringworld series

[Strether]

Originally Posted by Strether

I couldn't warm up to the Lymond Chronicles at all but loved The House of Niccolo series; have all of those. Neither series is available on Kindle, alas. They're big books and it would nice to have them neatly contained on your e-reader.

Jim

Dunnett's books are now all available for the Kindle. Decent price, too, considering that even in paperback, her books were not inexpensive. I haven't bought one yet, so don't know what the proofreading is like.

[foreverjuly]

I'll give you five:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Golden Compass by Phil Pullman

[ATDrake]

Limiting myself to just one book per author*, and going by most enjoyed/re-read rather than overall quality (though I like to think my personal picks are pretty decent), after a good deal of juggling, I think this would be my 5:

The Borders of Infinity, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, Barry Hughart†
Dragonsbane, Barbara Hambly
The Seven Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard P. Feynman

That was a harder decision than I thought it would be and I'm grateful for e-readers, because they undercut some of those "limited space; you can only take #" scenarios. Now if only they'd make a hand-cranked version with a user-replaceable repair kit for desert island use…

* Consider them stand-ins for "all this author's works and the complete works of his/her neighbours on my shelves, too!"

† Republished a couple of times as an omnibus, therefore I get to count it as one big book. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[edbro]

1. The Clan of the Cave Bear
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. The Travis McGee Series (I know, that's more than one book!)
4. The Stand
5. Chesapeake by Michener