David Bowie Top 100 books

[xor_]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I'm a little disappointed they don't all begin with T, after your top 3, drofgnal.

I noticed that as well, even all of them starting with "Tol".

Reminds me of that guy in Sartre's Nausea who is trying to figure out the logic behind that other fellow's choice of books at the library. He keeps speculating, but nothing makes sense. Until one day he realizes that he reads them in the order in which they are shelved.

The horrors of the Parisian intellectual meeting the autodidact.

[kennyc]

Bowie's list is interesting, but I'm surprised at the books that are Not there...

Here's my list of various reading stuff...it's been a few years, should probably revisit and update this. i.e. there's no Anthony Doerr on it!!! Blasphemy!!!

Here's my favorite novels list:


The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov
Dune - Frank Herbert
Breathing Lessons - Anne Tyler
Lord of the Rings - J R R Tolkien
City - Clifford D. Simak
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Road - Cormac McCarthy


Top 10 SF:
In no particular order after the first two.

Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Foundation Trilogy - Issac Asimov
Dune - Frank Herbert
City - Clifford D. Simak
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert A. Heinlein
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Ringworld - Larry Niven
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. LeGuin
The Handmaids Tale - Margaret Atwood

My favorite Short Story Anthologies

"You Must Read This"
"The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970"
"The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories" edited by Tobias Wolff
"New American Short Stories" edited by Ben Marcus
"The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories" edited by Ben Marcus


And since you said books, not just fiction

The Immense Journey - Loren Eiseley
The Demon Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas

My Favorite Essays
(can be found in various books and collections)
Many in:
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction
Or -
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

The Brown Wasps - Lauren Eiseley
The Dream Animal - Lauren Eiseley
The Slit - Lauren Eiseley
The Judgment of the Birds - Lauren Eiseley
The Star Thrower - Lauren Eiseley
Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas
Suspended - Joy Harjo
The Deck - Yusef Komunyakaa
The Fourth State of Matter - Jo Ann Beard
Three Spheres - Lauren Slater
The White Album - Joan Didion
Moving Water, Tucson - Peggy Shumaker
Heaven and Nature - Edward Hoagland
Embalming Mom - Janet Burroway
Visitor - Michael W. Cox
Leap - Brian Doyle
Small Rooms in Time - Ted Kooser
Enough Jam for a Lifetime - Maxine Kumin
Remembering I was not there - Anne Panning
Fury and Grace - Pattiann Rogers
The Indian Dog - N. Scott Momaday
Dogged - Barrie Jean Borich
Work - Kim Barnes

and my current short story list (sort of in favorite order)
available in various collections, anthologies or single author books:


The Prophet from Jupiter - Tony Earley
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursala K LeGuin (Incredible Story)
The Story of Your Life - Ted Chiang (also Hell is the Absence of God...and others he is an excellent short story writer)
Wild Horses - Rick Bass
Frost and Fire - Ray Bradbury
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall - Katherine Anne Porter
Rescue Party - Arthur C Clarke
The Star - Issac Asimov
A Rose for Ecclesiastes - Roger Zelazny
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes.
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allen Poe
A Boy and His Dog - Harlan Ellison
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce
The Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
The End of Something - Ernest Hemingway
A Clean Well Lighted Place - Hemingway
A Rose for Emily - Faulkner
Chicxulub - T.C. Boyle
Bullet in the Brain - Tobias Wolff
Where Have you Been, Where are you Going - Joyce Carol Oates
The Ceiling - Kevin Brockmeier
Widow Water Frederick Busch
A worn Path Eudora Welty

[nana77]

*Thanks for those lists, will slowly check for them.
Can I put just a couple, also because didn't saw those authors listed yet?

Ancillary Justice - Ann Leckie
The Peripheral - William Gibson
Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Hard to be a God - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (recent translations)
Foundation Trilogy - Foundation's Edge - Foundation and Earth - Issac Asimov (I have to say had quite forgot the plot, as having read Asimov several years ago)
Dune - Frank Herbert
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

**as the list from Bowie included magazines and comics,

The Incal - Mœbius
Blame! - Tsutomu Nihei (didn't finished the later "Aposimz", from him, but liked the style that resembled Mœbius, and "Tower Dungeon" seems very nice too)
Corto Maltese - Hugo Pratt
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki
(I've liked a lot the first volumes of "Saga", written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples, but didn't read the whole serie).

As for non fiction, I'm all for Corrado Malanga, https://www.academia.edu/106207581/S...yramid_of_Giza

[Fbone]

These are my only five-star rated titles.

Way Station by Simak, Clifford D.
Cannery Row by Steinbeck, John
The Inverted World by Priest, Christopher
Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail by Chalker, Jack L.

[Quoth]

Way Station is a classic and makes more sense than Star Trek's Transporter.

[issybird]

OK, my fiction list. I know everyone's been waiting breathlessly.

First I want to note certain prolific authors of novels which are admittedly much of a muchness, making it impossible to choose just one. And yet they've given me as much enjoyment over the breadth of their work as any of the "bests". Ones that occur to me are P.G. Wodehouse, George MacDonald Fraser, Anthony Trollope, Patrick O'Brian. So no bests for them, but they're there in spirit.

Eleven again; no particular order:

Emma by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Kristin Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

[Hasdrubal_Lector]

I find trying to rank books in a particular order to be more trouble than it's probably worth. So a list in no particular order.

The Collected Short Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty
The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner
The Long Goodbye ( and the 6 other Philip Marlowe books) - Raymond Chandler
The Dain Curse ( and also Red Harvest, The Glass Key, The Maltese Falcon) - Dashiell Hammett
A Distant Mirror - Barbara Tuchman
The Face of Battle- John Keegan
City - Clifford Simak
Cien Anos de Soledad - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( I read it in the orginal Spanish, so I'm listing the Spanish title. Otherwise it is "100 years of Solitude.")

It is interesting to see which books appear repeatedly.

[Luffy]

Maybe David Bowie didn't read, but David Jones certainly did.

I have read only The Great Gatsby from Bowie's list. I DNFed Wonder Boys.

[BelleZora]

Here are ten favorite fiction books that immediately come to mind. My favorite authors I've read multiple times, but I can't choose just one are P.G. Wodehouse and E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Robin Buss translation)
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Way West by A. B. Guthrie
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Reivers by William Faulkner
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

[issybird]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

My favorite authors I've read multiple times, but I can't choose just one are P.G. Wodehouse and E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia books.

I thought of Benson who definitely would make a “ten funniest” list for me; I’d pick Lucia in London, but that’s just because it was the first I read, a serendipitous find on a remainder table. No such think as eremainders, more’s the pity!

As for Wodehouse, last night I finished my 86th book by him! I’m closing in on having read them all, at which point I suppose I start all over. Missing out The Swoop, Not George Washington and a few others.

[ableal]

Here's a couple of writers I've not seen mentioned, united by a penchant for reviews of imaginary books:

A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem
Ficciones (or Fictions) by Jorge Luis Borges