diedan Posted December 21, 2010 Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 Self-explanatory, really. I feel like graphic novels should probably go in the comics thread, unless someone feels strongly otherwise. Anyhow, here's my top 5, roughly in order: 1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce 2. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon 3. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carrol (yeah, I'm kind of cheating by putting them both in there.) 4. House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski 5. Little, Big - John Crowley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c hoertjes Posted December 21, 2010 Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 1. East of Eden - John Steinbeck 2. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 3. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 4. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger 5. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald There are many more I could list but I feel confident with that top 5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheForgetfulBrain Posted December 21, 2010 Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 Whoah, I'm surprised we didn't have a thread for this yet, now that I think about it. Also, diedan, my mom's been after me to read Little Big for yeeeears. 1. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence (ignore the lame title, this is a masterwork) 2. The Dispossessed by Urula K. Leguin 3. The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia 4. The Translator by John Crowley 5. The Soloist by Mark Salzman Ha... I just realized 4 out of 5 of my books start with 'The' - with the 'lame title' being the only unique one. Wild. I might be forgetting a few of my favorites, but the first three are certainly at the top for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diedan Posted December 21, 2010 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 Also, diedan, my mom's been after me to read Little Big for yeeeears. It's because it's such a great book! I haven't read it in years, but it's stuck with me ever since. Also, crazy! The only people I've ever met who have actually read John Crowley were people who I told to read John Crowley. I really love The Deep, Engine Summer, The Solitudes, and Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land. I still need to finish the Ægypt tetralogy, read The Translator, and finish Four Freedoms.) Also, I really thought about doing a top 10, because there are so many that I feel like I'm leaving out, but I like the pressure of whittling it down to 5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheForgetfulBrain Posted December 21, 2010 Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 Also, diedan, my mom's been after me to read Little Big for yeeeears. It's because it's such a great book! I haven't read it in years, but it's stuck with me ever since. Also, crazy! The only people I've ever met who have actually read John Crowley were people who I told to read John Crowley. I really love The Deep, Engine Summer, The Solitudes, and Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land. I still need to finish the Ægypt tetralogy, read The Translator, and finish Four Freedoms.) Also, I really thought about doing a top 10, because there are so many that I feel like I'm leaving out, but I like the pressure of whittling it down to 5. Yeah, my mom's a huge Crowley fan. She's the biggest book worm I know - it's kind of ridiculous how much she's read and how widely. I do very much recommend the Translator - it's much different than his other work because it's realistic (and slightly historical) fiction, but oh man, is that a powerful novel. His collection of short stories is also very excellent. I'll read Little Big one of these days but urg, my list of books I own and need to read is even longer than my list of games I need to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diedan Posted December 21, 2010 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 ...my list of books I own and need to read is even longer than my list of games I need to play. This. Not to mention the TV shows/movies I want to watch. Yet I keep spending all my time on the internets... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheForgetfulBrain Posted December 21, 2010 Report Share Posted December 21, 2010 This. Not to mention the TV shows/movies I want to watch. Yet I keep spending all my time on the internets... Hahaha... yeah. With the amount of time I spend procrastinating on the internet, I could spend that time doing something useful, like reading. But then, that's one of the really, really hard parts I've found about this whole 'work at home on the internet' thing. My attention span has gotten truly horrid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slithy toves Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 1. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carrol (they're in the same book most of the time, not cheating putting them both. oh, and for me? duh...) 2. The Mound by HP Lovecraft (yes, it's a novella, but it's so good) 3. 1984 by George Orwell 4. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 5. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain i'm a weird reader, i'm not picky at all. i'll read anything from trashy romance novels to obtuse tomes on history or other perceived boring stuff, so coming up with favorites i usually end up listing stuff that i've been reading since i was younger because it's some of the only stuff i read and reread a zillion times. i like to go to library tag sales and pick up older books, like from the early 1900s, about science and stuff and read how crazy and racist and just sometimes outright bizarre stuff they took as absolute "fact" are today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brida Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 not about to rank them but -Anything Borges -Most of Ayn Rand -The Picture of Dorian Gray, probs the most influential book on my philosophy/outlook on everything -Anything Jonathan Safran Foer -Anything Jhumpa Lahiri -The Fortunate Pilgrim, Mario Puzo (who wrote the godfather, btw) -High Fidelity -House of Leaves There are a couple of others but they slip my mind right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diedan Posted December 22, 2010 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 @slithy toves: I love old crazy books. The best I had was a 1909 biography of John Dee, the 16th century Queen's court magician who went on some ridiculous trek for the philosopher's stone, helped "discover" the Enochian script, basically had an insane life. Sadly, the dog I had at the time got a hold of it and completely tore it apart... Edit: Oh, and a few weeks ago I was out in Santa Monica, so some of my family and I went out to The Huntington where they had this library exhibit with TONS of old science books, stuff from Kepler, Brahe, old 13th century texts that were translations of Euclid, etc. It was absolutely incredible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strangelove Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 Positively the most unintelligent list of books ever. 1. Love is a Mixtape - Rob Sheffield 2. Chronicles Vol. 1 - Bob Dylan 3. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess 4. An Incomplete Education - Judy Jones & William Wilson 5. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand I only put one "classic" up there. I dont want to fill a list up with shit 95% of people know about and probably were forced to read in school. I also never but the Beatles in any music favorites list. Neither do I use the Godfather for a film favorite, despite loving both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagicMagicPony Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 Hmm off the top of my head I think it's : Abhorsen Trilogy - Garth Nix Post Office - Bukowski Diary - Chuck Palahnuik Hunger Games trilogy - Suzanne Collins A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett and I am totes gay for any YA novels by Tamora Pierce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slithy toves Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 Oh, and a few weeks ago I was out in Santa Monica, so some of my family and I went out to The Huntington where they had this library exhibit with TONS of old science books, stuff from Kepler, Brahe, old 13th century texts that were translations of Euclid, etc. It was absolutely incredible. i'm always amused at how some of the older stuff that's just explained in a really nutty way is completely more sensical in the end than some of the things they came out with when they started really getting into science, and taking apart cadavers to learn about the human body and mixing chemicals together and whatnot. there are definitely some cases where you'd have been better off with someone treating you by the four humors than some of the things they did in the 19th century. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c hoertjes Posted December 22, 2010 Report Share Posted December 22, 2010 -The Picture of Dorian Gray, probs the most influential book on my philosophy/outlook on everything I'm reading this right now. I like it so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
staySICK Posted December 23, 2010 Report Share Posted December 23, 2010 fuck I can't rank or choose just five. Dragonlance. The Main 7 at least. American Gods, Neil Gaiman Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis Lord of the Flies, William Golding lately been catching up on "required reading" I somehow missed in school. Read On the Road, really good stuff there. Was reading Slaughterhouse Five, been pressed for reading time, need to pick it back up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nexus Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 I am a proper child when it comes to reading. My favourite books are: 1. Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb 2. A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin 3. Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer 4. Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix 5. Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. Like I said. A child. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MagicMagicPony Posted January 7, 2011 Report Share Posted January 7, 2011 Abhorsen trilogy hell. yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toshi Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 I don't have favorites, but there are ones I really liked in no particular order Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky The Giver - Lois Lowry Harry Potter books 1984 & Animal Farm - George Orwell The whole Narnia series Stephen King books Not sure but after I read Sadako and the thousand cranes as a kid I started making a shitload of cranes but gave up after maybe 50 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slithy toves Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl. pretty much anything by roald dahl could be seen in the dictionary under a definitive definition of "the shit" "Have you read Matilda?" "Yeah, man, that book is the shit" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dee Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 (edited) I put more than 5: The Giver - Lois Lowry Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury The Ambassadors - Henry James American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis Strangers - Dean Koontz Youth and Revolt - C.D. Payne Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes The Tennants - Bernard Malamund Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not - Sedaris, Dinello, Colbert The Big Friendly Giant - Roald Dahl Edited January 8, 2011 by Dee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
superfrogsavestokyo Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 I can't list just five books. So here's a not so ranked list of the works and authors I like: -Anything by Haruki Murakami -Stephen King short stories -Elantris and the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson -Borges -1984 -Jane Austen -Charles Dickens -Mark Twain Graphic Novels -Tarot Cafe -The Wallflower Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SixTwoSixFour Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 I make no excuses for me list, they're really great books. -Night Watch (Terry Pratchett) -The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) -Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson) -Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman) -Animal Farm (George Orwell) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrainHurtBoy...2 Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 Anthem by Ayn Rand Chronicles Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nexus Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 I make no excuses for me list, they're really great books. -Night Watch (Terry Pratchett) -The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) -Snow Crash (Neil Stephenson) -Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman) -Animal Farm (George Orwell) Yes. This is an amazing book. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted January 9, 2011 Report Share Posted January 9, 2011 Only 5? - Terry Pratchetts Discworld series - Ian Irvines 3 Worlds Trilogy/Quadrology - Douglas Adams H2G2 Trilogy - Lord of the Rings/Hobbit - Darwin Awards There that's a list of 5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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