What you LIKE to read says A LOT about you...
All FUCKING ABOUT ASIDE, here are my TOP FIVE best novels I've ever read...
The Collector - John Fowles
Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse - Patrick Hamilton
Caper - Lawrence Sanders
Goshawk Squadron - Derek Robinson
Alone In Berlin - Hans Fallada
xx SF
(YOUR TURN!!!)
Years ago I sent around an email for the favorite 10 books of people, and put it in Excel for easy sorting and counting. 170 responses. Allowing for ties, there were 15 (my five have an asterisk, but Curvy is right, 5 isn't enough):
To Kill A Mockingbird (the clear favorite)
*Beloved
*Cathedral (the Raymond Carver short stories one, not in the top 15, but on my list)
One Hundred Years of Solitude
*The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
The Killer Angels
*The Things They Carried
The Old Man and the Sea
The Milagro Beanfield War
The House of the Spirits
A Prayer for Owen Meany
*All the Pretty Horses
*Lonesome Dove
Song of Soloman
A Confederacy of Dunces
5 A:
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Candide - Voltaire
The Fox - D.H. Lawrence
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
5 B:
The Tomorrow File - Lawrence Sanders
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Young Lions - Irwin Shaw
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
The Dead - James Joyce
Catch22 is a great novel; To Kill A Mockingbird is pap
All the Light we Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
The Nightengale - Kristen Hannah
Orphan Train - Christina Baker Kline.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler.
Note - i actually chose these with Steph in mind - Steph? Read these.
You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.
God is a Bullet by Boston Teran
The Gypsy's Curse by Harry Crews
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy
Angels by Denis Johnson
The Bean Tress by Barbara Kingsolver
Group Portrait with Lady by Heinrich Boll
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
The Dwarf by Par Lagerkvist
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
(Novellas count, yes?)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (or Slaughterhouse Five, or Mother Night)
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Honorable mention:
The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
Come tomorrow my list might look a little different, but at the moment:
High-Rise – J.G. Ballard
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
American Tabloid – James Ellroy
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline (A very recent novel, but I absolutely loved it.)
catcher in the rye ..jd salinger
the Grinch that stole Christmas ...dr suess
I don't have top five. I can't remember all my favorites and I've read them more than once.
The Razor's Edge - Somerset Maugham
The Dogs Of War - Frederick Forsyth
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marques
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Several books of Agatha Christie, Harold Robbins, Robin Cook, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King etc.
Watchers - Dean R Koontz
River God - Wilbur Smith
The 7th Scroll - Wilbur Smith
Power of the Sword - Wilbur Smith
Golden Fox - Wilbur Smith
I agree that five isn't nearly enough and the list changes the more I remember or forget.
Tonight these are the ones I pick. Tomorrow it will probably be completely different.
The Modern Prometheus (Frankenstein) by Mary Shelley
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King (although technically a novella)
Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
Hard to pick only five, but here is today's list...
The Magus - John Fowles
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
Islands in the Stream - Ernest Hemingway
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
1. Hunchback of Notre Dame
2. The Hobbit
3. Moby Dick
4. The Bourne Trilogy
5. Les Miserable
I'll bite.
The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Dracula - Bram Stoker
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller, Jr. (best post-apoc ever)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carre
The chamber John Grisham
To kill a mockingbird Harper Lee
Twilight Stephanie Meyer's
Lord of the rings
Chronicles of Narnia cs lewis
Shogun - James Clavell
Earth Abides - George R. Stewart (A book a reader will either love or hate. )
The entire Honor Harrington series. 13 books by David Weber
The Combined works of Edger Allen Poe. (The Black Cat is a little know story that will chill you to the bones)
Foundation and its sequels - Asimov.
The first 3 books of Dune by Frank Herbert.
ANOTHER FIVE!!!
King Rat - James Clavell
Bomber - Len Deighton
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
Room -Emma O'Donohue
Judith's Kiss - Me (Unpublished)
xx SF
(SILLY THREAD since, LIKE SONGS, your favourites change EVERYDAY!!!)
But you LOVE them like remembered LOVERS!!! (And you can ALWAYS go BACK to A BOOK!)
