Ten Favorite Novels

[HMac]

Hello, I'm new here and also recently renewed my interest in literature. I would love to hear some recommendations from you pros on the classics. List ten that you think everyone in world should read.

[nothingman87]

My Top 10

Jude the Obscure and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
:banana: :banana: :banana:

[subterranean]

Well I cant really tell, the list may be change in times..cause it can happen that when i read it at the first time i dont really like it, but when i read it again it may happen that i'm beginning to like it..
so no list for me

[Tabac]

Ferber: Giant
Camus: The Stranger
Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Dickens: Tale of Two Cities
Mishima: Forbidden Colors
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Kingsolver: Poisonwood Bible
St.-Exupery: The Little Prince
Salinger: Catcher In the Rye
Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath
Maugham: Of Human Bondage
Boyle: Tortilla Curtain

Not a Top Ten list, but some books that I have greatly enjoyed which come to mind.

[HMac]

I appreciate the lists and look forward to discussing them with you.

HMac

[Dunpeal]

well... here goes: stuff I think people should read (I'll try and stick to what are classics as much as possible)

- The Island of Dr. Moreau (H.G. Wells)
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Dune (Frank Herbert) (it's a sci-fi classic, hehe)
- Rurouni Kenshin vol. 1 (Nobuhiro Watsuki)
- The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

[zheng89120]

Here are 10 mainstream classics:

- The Catcher in the Rye
- 1984
- Great Expectations
- Wuthering Heights
- Crime and Punishment
- Heart of Darkness
- The Republic
- The Great Gatsby
- War and Peace
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

[atreides]

hm..I just didnt get hte Grapes of Wrath, all that anger growing at their maltreatment, throughout the entire book, and you think, yes! now they will finally rebel, and do they? no, its ends like that. lame.

My top 5 (cant remember enough)

Gone with the Wind
Catcher in the Rye
I am David
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness

[den]

I'm really enjoying this topic, and while I agree with most, I'll add a few more classics that haven't been included yet.

French lit:

by Jean Jacques Rousseau:
The Social Contract
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

by Albert Camus:
Caligula
The Fall
The Myth of Sisyphus

by Jean-Paul Sartre:
Nausea

English lit:

by Aldous Leonard Huxley:
Antic Hay
The Perennial Philosophy

Canadian lit:

by Margaret Laurence:
The Stone Angel
The Diviners

by Michael Ondaatje:
The English Patient

by Leonard Cohen:
Beautiful Losers

American lit:

by Paul Bowles:
The Sheltering Sky

by Hunter S. Thompson:
Hell's Angels
Generation of Swine
(ok maybe not `classic' yet but great contemporary American stuff)

[den]

Oh jeeze, and forgot to add:

Japanese lit:

by Yukio Mishima:
The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Chinese lit:
by Lao-tzu
The Art of War

and:

English lit:

the poetry of Ted Hughes (husband of Sylvia Plath)

and

by Sylvia Plath:
The Bell Jar

[Capnplank]

Uhm, everyone in the world? I'll try to spread the experience of my wee bit of reading out as well-roundedly as I can then. Haven't read as much from around the world as I'd have liked, nor as much from any given genre or style, so here goes...



Chinua Achebe; Things Fall Apart
African life was not "simple" or "savage" before stumbled upon by the rest of the world, and its rich heritage was irreparably strangled by those trying to "help".

Ralph Ellison; Invisible Man
If you're black and someone's paying attention to you, then you're probably in trouble.

Josepeh Heller; Catch-22
War is ridiculous, life is ridiculous. Have to match the number of missions to get out of there anyways. Oops, it went up again.

Aldous Huxley; Brave New World
The efficient future is loveless; removal of the low points of life make the highs that much less defined.

George Orwell; 1984
The government's a wee bit out of control. Free will was only holding you back, anyways.

Erich Maria Remarque; All Quiet on the Western Front
From the German side of WWI, war wasn't any better, nor were the reasons that the soldiers were fighting it.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Ivan's in a Russian work camp in Siberia, which may or may not be worse than being outside of the work camp.

John Steinbeck; The Moon is Down
A town surrendering to you doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy going from thereon in.

J.R.R. Tolkien; The Lord of the Rings
If you're going to dip into the world of fantasy, you may as well start here. Plus you'd be the only one that hadn't...

Elie Wiesel; Night
A son recounts he and his father's struggle to survive concentration camps in WWII.

[simon]

Oooh Capnplank, good choice on The Moon is Down, I don't think most people know that Steinbeck wrote a war novel, but it ranks up there with All Quiet... Have you ever read A Midnight Clear? This is also a good work about war in which two sides stage a surrender that goes terribly wrong.Steinbeck also wrote one political farce of types, in which a lowly man in france, I beleive, is momentarily in power of the country.

[ben]

Gogol - Dead Souls
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita & Pale Fire
Turgenev - Fathers and sons
Zola - Germinal
Zola - The Earth
Kafka - The Trial

[Monica]

my suggestions:

1. The Catcher in the Rye
2. Foucault's Pendulum by Eco
3. Clockwork Orange
4. stories by EA Poe
5. The Master and Margarita
6. 1984
7. Crime and Punishment
8. Ulisses by Joyce (at least one third of the book if you can't stand it)
9. The Trial
10. Lord Jim

[faith]

I can only say that I agree on that I agree on that Catcher in the Rye has to be on that list. I have hardly read any of the other books reguested. Guess I should. Well, but a classic I HAVE read and which is nor yet reguested is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. That I think every1 should read atleas once in a life time. Oh, and Lord of the Rings is also woth getting trooth (I havent yet finnished it. I have like 100 pages left and have been reading it ever since the first movie was out, and I have problems making myself finnish it, but I think I should.)

[Tabac]

Ferber: Giant
Camus: The Stranger
Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Dickens: Tale of Two Cities
Mishima: Forbidden Colors
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Kingsolver: Poisonwood Bible
St.-Exupery: The Little Prince
Salinger: Catcher In the Rye
Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath
Maugham: Of Human Bondage
Boyle: Tortilla Curtain

Not a Top Ten list, but some books that I have greatly enjoyed which come to mind.

I should also have suggested Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country, which hasn't made any of the other lists either.

[EAP]

Ten Classic books

1. Earth Abides by George Stewart
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
4. Heidi by Jonathan Sypri
5. I am Legend by Richard Matheson
6. Tess of D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
8. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
9. Animal Farm by George Orwell
10. The Silmarillion by Professor Tolkien

[severian]

My Top 10

Jude the Obscure and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
:banana: :banana: :banana:


I love every book in your list (that I have read) except for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. For some reason I HATED that book. I cant even put my finger on why I hated it. I like most of Joyce's other works.

It did have a section or two that I really enjoyed, but overall it was a dissapointment for me.

[eflo]

I'm going to list a few books that are by no means a best of the best list, but just books that I have grown to appreciate for what they are. Most of you probably have never heard of the first three!

1. The Book of Daniel, by E.L. Doctorow
2. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
3. Foe, by J.M. Coetzee
4. Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
5. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
6. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

[WingedSpirit]

The Lover, by MARGUERITE DURAS
The Izu Dancer,by Kawabata Yasunari
Dr. Zhivago, by BORIS PASTERNAK

[hugo_fan24601]

david copper feild by chales dickens
les miserables by victor hugo
hunch back of notra dame by victor hugo
phantom of the opera(forgot the authers name)
come to greif by dick frances
without remorse by tom clancy
rainbow six by tom clancey
jungle book by rudyard kipling
venum factor by diana duan
any of the diskworld novels by terry pratchard ar also good

[simon]

Anyone heard of The Fire of Origins, where the life of one man sums up the entire history of Uganda. I recommend it, definetly on my top ten.

[hugo_fan24601]

my top reads at the moment are les miserables and david copperfeild
les miserables:- this is set in the great setting of the french revolition it has a main plot of jean valjean prisnor 24601 starting a new life after fleaing from parrolle he becomes maror of a town and calls him self monsueire madeline there are also subplots in thsi book my favorate of which is police inspector javert's persuite of 24601

david copperfeild: i have only just starting reading this book but it is a good book as it is writin as if it where an autobiography the first chapter explanes david's early years

[trismegistus]

Books for the whole world to read? In no particular order of importance:

The Odyssey
The Bible
Tao-te Ching
The Koran
Paradise Lost
Transformations of Myth Through Time
"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" - assuming essays count as books
King Lear
Cry, The Beloved Country
Ramayana

[atiguhya padma]

1) 1984 - Orwell

The book that killed Orwell. Writing away on the island of Jura, a gloom falls upon both Orwell's world and the world of 1984.

2) Brave New World - Huxley

Huxley's portrayal of modern society is arguably more prophetic than Orwell's. This is the world of meaningless consumerism and self-centered hedonism that seems far nearer to what we have now than Orwell's dystopia in my opinion.

3) Jude the Obscure - Hardy

Its hard to believe that this book caused enough storm, for Hardy to vow never to publish a novel again. The finale is distressing and a massive critique of the Victorian moral social system that some would, unbelievably, like to see us return to.

4) Regeneration Trilogy - Barker

For those not familiar with Pat Barker's work, this trilogy is a great unweaving of arguments for the futility of war. I think all three books won prizes, including the Booker.

5) History of Bombing - Lindqvist

Sven Lindqvist is a brilliant writer of history. This book is truly eye-opening. The passages on the bombing of Hamburg are just simply harrowing.

6) Philosophical Works of George Berkeley

Berkeley is a profound critic of common sense reality. His arguments are easy to follow and he has a knack of uncovering the real problems. His greatest failing is the solution he provides to the problem of perception and epistemology.

7) On the Natural History of Destruction - Sebald

Like Lindqvist's book, completely engaging and heart-rending. A testament of man's inhumanity to man, often perpetrated by people who thought they were doing what was right.

8) An Intimate History of Humanity - Zeldin

A great work of social anthropology by the Oxford don, that manages to be both a history of women and a history of modern France at the same time. I loved its conversational style.

9) Reasons and Persons - Parfit

Extremely difficult read, but well worth persevering with. One of the first intelligent attempts to show that we do not have a 'soul' or a 'self' and that the idea of personal identity is misguided. Parfit claims we continuously make our selves up.

10) Straw Dogs - Gray

Much easier to read than Parfit, and similar direction of argument. Gray and Parfit are surely right: there is no special quality about human beings, we just have more complex brains.

[mono]

You all ought to feel ashamed for forgetting The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. I highly recommend it.

[atiguhya padma]

I guess we'll all burn in hell for that.:)

[simon]

Bring on the fire.

[trismegistus]

You all ought to feel ashamed for forgetting The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.
Who forgot it? I simply wouldn't put it on a list of ten works that every person in the world should read.

[EAP]

I didnt like Cry, the beloved Country at all. So much so that I didn't even bother finishing it after reading 40-50 pages.

[trismegistus]

I didnt like Cry, the beloved Country at all. So much so that I didn't even bother finishing it after reading 40-50 pages.
The story isn't all that great, but Paton's prose in that novel is absolutely gorgeous. There are parts of that novel that make me weep. :thumbs_up

[Tabac]

The story isn't all that great, but Paton's prose in that novel is absolutely gorgeous. There are parts of that novel that make me weep. :thumbs_up

I've read the book several times. I can't get past the first page without having tears form.

I thought the story was all that great. The passion of the two men who must have compassion for each other because of the ironic situation in which they find themselves is riveting.

[5Parker]

This isn't a top ten because, frankly, how could on epossibly read all the books eligible for the best ever? With my knowledge, here are some ones I've gotten a lot out of.

RAND -- The Fountainhead
MAUGHAM -- Of Human Bondage
FITZGERALD -- This Side of Paradise
BURGESS -- A Clockwork Orange
BRADBURY -- Fahrenheit 451
CHOBSKY -- Perks of Being a Walflower
THOMAS -- Rats Saw God
TOLSTOY -- Anna Karenina
JOYCE -- Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
MOORE -- Lamb
FAULKNER -- As I Lay Dying
DICKENS -- Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities
SHAKESPEARE -- Macbeth
ORWELL -- 1981

[atiguhya padma]

Geez, didn't know 1984 was part of a quartet!:)

[ajoe]

Geez, didn't know 1984 was part of a quartet!:)

It's actually a quintet. In 1985, ajoe was born.

[Hummingbirdtat2]

I just finished reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm too stunned right now to be able to list ANY book I've ever read, much less 9 more of them; but this one definitely has to make the list. All my lofty college-educated vocabulary has deserted me, and about the best I can do right now is just sit and stare and say "wow" over and over again. Maybe after I've recovered a little I can do better.

Wow.

[EAP]

Ms. Jackson does that to many people, including Stephen King.

[Hummingbirdtat2]

Good to know I'm not alone! Sheeeesh!

[simon]

Haha glad you liked it, rereading may bring back some of your literary analysis skills and vocabulary prowess.

[Hummingbirdtat2]

Do I detect a tone of smugness? lol.

I'm not entirely sure "liked" would be an appropriate word. Somehow, "wow" still seems to fit the best.

I just got finished watching "The Haunting" again as well. It is an interesting movie when taken separately, but does not have the power or mastery of Jackson by any stretch of the imagination.

Wow!

[nocturnus]

'Chinese lit:
by Lao-tzu
The Art of War'

Sorry to be pedantic here, and it was probably just a typing mistake...

Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Jing whereas Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. Both great reads, and depending on your inclination (pacifist or military/now business strategist), good food for thought.

Anyway's, back to the topic. Thought I'd add some classic Beat Gen stuff: On the Road-Kerouac (Dharma Bums also great)
Junky-Burroughs (Naked Lunch aswell)

[Kirsty]

Moby Dick.

[ajoe]

You've gotta be kidding! I hate Moby Dick.

[Kirsty]

You've gotta be kidding! I hate Moby Dick.

I'm sure that others agree with you on this, but I thought it was great!!
I felt many of the passages spoke straight to my soul, it is so honest, melancholy yet self-depricating and yes, I actually thought it was quite funny as well, and a pretty good adventure story.

I know you are not going to read this but I found a kind of recognition and magic these kinds of passages.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such the upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can." :brickwall

[vango]

glad there is one guy who meantioned a chinese book in the list of top ten must read books. and glad there is one are so careful about those chinese ancient authors. and by the way, we chinese often do not take either The Art of War or Tao Te Jing as literary books. one is about military (yes, now business strategy), and the other philosophy.

thanks for all of your suggestions. they will be my literary (esp. english literary) guide.

about chinese literatue, i think two are the best: Dream of the Red Chamber (ancient) and Fortress Besieged (modern)


'Chinese lit:
by Lao-tzu
The Art of War'

Sorry to be pedantic here, and it was probably just a typing mistake...

Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Jing whereas Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. Both great reads, and depending on your inclination (pacifist or military/now business strategist), good food for thought.

Anyway's, back to the topic. Thought I'd add some classic Beat Gen stuff: On the Road-Kerouac (Dharma Bums also great)
Junky-Burroughs (Naked Lunch aswell)

[capricorngurl]

Here are my top 11 (too hard to pick 10) books (there's variety of types :D ) :

Little by Little- Jean Little (most people think it's a children's author or whatever but read it i cried, it's an autobiography of her life in a story format and it's really touching on what she went through)
To kill a mocking bird- Lee
A time to kill- Grisham
The Lady in the Tower- Jean Plaidy
A Painted House- Grisham
Anne of Green Gables- Montgomery
Rilla of Ingleside- Montgomery
Outsiders- S. E. Hinton
1985- Orwell
The Chrysalids - John Wyndham
Bridge to Terabithia- Paterson

*note that some of "children's" books but even as I grow older (I'm still in school ;) ) these books continue to touch my heart and well... they're amazing

[jesse sutton]

Since all the standards have been mentioned i'll bring up more asian lit

Hagakure (Book Of The Samurai) - Tsunemoto
Go Rin No Sho (Book Of Five Rings) - Mushashi Miyamoto
Bushido - Inazo Nitobe
The Art Of War - Sun Tzu
The Art Of Peace - Morihei Ueshiba
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
The Analects - Confucius
The Dhammapada

[BSturdy]

Some very accessible and enjoyable classics and others, in no particular order and obviously in no way exclusive of the above suggestions. I am no professional but I know a good read:-

Stamboul Train - Graham Greene
20,000 Leauges Under The Sea - Jules Verne
Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Island - Aldous Huxley
The First Circle - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Arthur Daley 'Straight Up' - Paul Ableman
The Periodic Table - Primo Levi
My Place - Sally Morgan
A Clergymans Daughter - George Orwell
Hello America - J G Ballard
Nadja - Andre Breton
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Persig

In my view it is facile and inappropriate to attempt a top ten of books - Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, for example, cannot be compared. The former is mainly aesthetic while the latter is a venture in knowledge.

[Jester]

Things fall apart was one of the better books I had to read for class, but also I would recommend Fugitive Pieces by Anne Micheals, the chronicles of Narnia, of course... all short books but really good by C. S. Lewis and if your into short stories, The Pearl by John Steinback (spelling ????)

[Deep Space Bass]

- Ulysses James Joyce: Because if you pay attention, it's a wonderful book. Portrait was good, Dubliners was fun, and Finnegan's Wake was cool, but Ulysses was amazing.
-The Stranger Albert Camus: Probably read this one in high school, but it's certainly worthy.
-Being and Nothingness or Nausea Jean-Paul Sartre: The literary and philosophical pinnacles of a really great French existentialist (Unless you count plays, where No Exit has to be the epitome of his writing).
-The Idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky: Some say Crime and Punishment was his best, while others demand The Brothers Karamozov was his superlative, but I personally found the character of Prince Myshkin to be far too fascinating.
-The Last and First Men Olaf Stapeldon: Yeah, yeah, it's not a classic, but this book was just so amazing in its scope and depth.
-Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant: This isn't literature at all, but straight up philosophy. That being said, I think everyone should read it, because it's truly an amazing treatise on metaphysics.
-Stages on Life's Way or Repetition or Diary of the Seducer Søren Kierkegaard: Kierkegaard was a wonderful author, and since I'm Danish, I needn't bother with dodgy translations. ^_^
-The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick: Dick was an amazing author, but this was among his best works, and probably his best novel.
-Les Miserables Victor Hugo: If you don't know why you someone should read this, you obviously have not read it.
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams: Not a classic, but it's so good. Worth multiple reads.

[imthefoolonthehill]

All the Kings Men
1984
Brave New World
Catcher in the Rye
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
A Clockwork Orange
Catch-22
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Great Gatsby
Frankenstein

[rocksea]

Some of the books which have influenced me and
which possess the potential to influence you too,,

Jonathan Livingston Seagull ~ Richard Bach and other books by him
Toto-chan ~ Tetsuko Kuroyanagi
Narcissus and Goldmund ~ Herman Hesse and other books by him
A brief history of time ~ Stephen Hawkings
The Prophet ~ Kahlil Gibran
My family and other animals ~ Gerald Durrell and other books by him
Love in the time of Cholera ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez and "
The Alchemist ~ Paul Coehlo
Elephant Song ~ Wilbur Smith
Self ~ Yann Martel

hmmm.. there are only few female authors in the list we've mentioned.. like mary shelly, margaret mitchell, testuko kurayonagi, jean little..

are there some great books by lady authors we have missed??

[mono]

Indeed, rocksea; any of the Brontë and Jane Austen most definitely belong on the list, to name the first few who come to my mind.

[foggy notion]

i'd like to endorse a few already mentioned namely 1984, animal farm, and franz kafka's the trail. and i'd also like to add "the fixer" by bernard malamud as agreat read aswell, "homeage to catalonia" by orwell is also worth a read.

[subterranean]

Some of the books which have influenced me and
which possess the potential to influence you too,,


Toto-chan ~ Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

I noticed that there are lots of appraisal given to this book and in my country it also become a best seller. Can you please write a little review about it ? :)..I mean i read some reviews but most of them (IMO) aim to sell..:)

[Aloysius]

Gulliver's Travels
David Copperfield
Crime and Punishment
Karamazovy's Brothers
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Magic Mountain
Absalom, Absalom
A Passage to India
Pastoral Symphony
1984

I don't like Tom Jones so much, though it is chosen in Maugham's Ten Best Novels of the World.

[subterranean]

Ok, my list is (in no particular order):

- Jude the Obscure: Thomas Hardy
- Catch 22: Joseph Heller (O yeah :nod:)
- Sophie's World: Jostein Gardner
- Siddharta: Herman Hesse
- 1984: George Orwell
- Animal Farm: George Orwell
- Existentialism is Humanism: Jean Paul Sartre (well I consider this as a book ;) )
- Ecce Homo: Nietzsche
- Metamorphoses - Ovid
- Stories: Edgar Allan Poe

Note: List is subject to change with/without prior notice :D

[shortysweetp]

brontes
Austen
George Orwell
Thomas Hardy
The Secret Garden
Gulliver's Travels
Canterbury Tales

Beat-
Bukowski
Vonnegut
William Burroughs

I mainly stick to english lit but i also like some american lit. i think i would like to try some french, german, or asian lit.

[subterranean]

You should posted book titlles..not the authors...It is afterall a "top ten must read books" thread ;)

[shortysweetp]

its more than ten but some of them tie
Bronte- Jane Eyre
Villette
Austen-Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Mansfield Park
Emma
Persuasion
George Orwell-1984
Animal Farm
Thomas Hardy-Return of the Native
The Secret Garden
Gulliver's Travels-Jonathan Swift
Canterbury Tales-Chaucer

[Molko]

The idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
A clockwork orange - Anthony Burgess
1984 - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Koran
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

[Hope`]

My top 10:

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Tess d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
8. A Pair Of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy
9. The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Paradise Lost by John Milton

[mandy_pal]

My top 10:

1) The Wars by Timothy Findley
Absolutely breath-takingly stunning. So emotionally powerful that it'll leave you gasping for air at the end. A must-read for everyone. The story is set in WWI, but it's so much more than a typical war story. As obvious from the title, there's more than one "war" going on.

2) 1984 by George Orwell
3) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
4) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5) The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
6) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
7) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Henriette Beecher-Stowe
8) Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
9) To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolfe
10) The Outsider by Albert Camus

[JadedMinx]

My top 10 "classics" that ppl should read..

The outsider (or anything by camus)
After Rain:- William Trevor
Eugene Onegin
The Women In White :- Wilkie Colines
Great Expectations:- Charles Dickens
Anything by Edgar Allen Poe or Beaudelaire
Les Miserables
Phantom of the Opera - Kay and Leroux
The Three Musketeers
The Count of Monte Cristo

Also "Scissions" by Tim Winton its about Australian identity, so yeah, not one for everyone but i like it..

[Rachy]

I know some of these aren't classics but these are my favourites and some reasons why:
1) Papillon by Henri Charriere because it's an amazing true story that brought me to tears most of the time reading it.
2) Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo due to the love story and although some chapters seemed to inturrupt the story, it was a fantastic read.
3) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson because I thought the whole concept was great.
4) The Iliad by Homer. I love Greek mythology and thought this was so magical with a great story behind it.
5) Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. My dad got me into this book, I think it's so amazing and one of those books that I've read 4 times and still find stuff in it that I didn't notice the time before.
6) Tale of Two Cities by Dickens was so good and the ending so emotional.
7) Jane Eyre by Bronte. It's not like normal classics and gave you a real sense of the past behind this woman and how she grew to be a woman.
8) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I was forced to read this at school and found it so good. The way things were described you could really picture it in your head and the change of narrative was great.
9)Pride and Prejudice by Austen was a great love story that was hard to follow in some parts but I could not read again but a book that will stay with me.
10) Catcher in the Rye by Salinger was really good, it was a quick read for me but it had a lot of hidden meaning and when he's describing his brothers glove it's the only time that you really see emotion, but it really keeps you hooked.

[-Io-]

One hundred years of solitude - Marquez
Kassandra - Christa Wolf
Wellen - Eduard von Keyserling
Malina - Ingeborg Bachmann
Dr. Faustus - Thomas Mann
Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Der Prozess - Franz Kafka
Mutter Courage - Bertolt Brecht
Demian - Hermann Hesse

[PeterL]

The Enuma Elish (The Gilgamesh Epic), Anon
The Odyssey, Homer
Ulysses, Joyce
Lolita, Nabokov
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream, Edmondson
Monkey, Wu Cheng en
The Lord of Light, Zelazny
Boat of a Million Years, Anderson
Bored of the Rings, Beard & Kinney

[lavendar1]

Don't get me started -- just 10? I'll try:

Don Quixote de la Mancha - Cervantes
The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
Portrait of a Lady - James
Ulysses - Joyce
The Bible


Some of the best classics are collections of short stories:

In Our Time - Hemingway
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Carver (ok, maybe more of a contemporary classic?)

Jane Eyre - Bronte
Middlemarch - Eliot
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Chabon (another 'not-yet' classic, at least by definition, but I bet it will be one day)

That's 10 so I'll quit.

[Bandini]

Excellent! Just registered and put in search term 'Bukowski'. Very impressed with the calibre of books chosen here. My ten could be made up of many of those, but I'll go for:
Post Office - Bukowski
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
Cannery Row OR Tortilla Flat - Steinbeck (the ultimate feel good books!)
Ask the Dust - John Fante
Love is a Dog from Hell - Bukowski (Poetry - just about any of his collections are mint)
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe (but steel yourself- V. sad)
The Outsider (or L'Etranger) - Camus
Portrait of an Artist... - Joyce (Everyone says Ullyses, but beautiful as it is, its a toughy!)
Homeboy - Seth Morgan
1984 - George Orwell
;)

Though if we can have plays it's a whole new ball game! Anything by the the bard, obviously. If you haven't ever got into Shakespeare, or had it destroyed for you at school, take the time to read some. Magic. Can I swear on this site? It's sort of part of my idiolect, but hey, don't want to get hossed off.

[blp]

Vanity Fair - William Thackeray
Blood and Guts in Highschool - Kathy Acker
Lolita - Nabokov
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Summer Rain - Marguerite Duras
On the Suffering in the World - Arthur Schopenhauer
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
Molloy - Samuel Beckett
The Story of the Eye - George Bataille

[and number 1 with a bullet]
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol

[rodanho]

my recommendation:
shakespeare:hamlet
charles dickens:great expectation& oliver twist
jane austen :pride and prejudice
agatha christie: death on nile & murder on the orient express
thomas hardy:tess
mark twain: tom sauyer
o.henry:short stories

[Scheherazade]

In no particular order:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

3. The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway

4. Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck

5. Lord of the Flies and/or Free Fall by Golding

6. The Crucible by Miller

7. Decameron by Boccaccio

8. The Plague by Camus

9. The Trial by Kafka

10. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde


Here are some other books in contension (for me):

The Stranger by Camus, Pygmalion by Shaw, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Pride and Prejudice by Austen, Brave New World by Huxley, Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

[atiguhya padma]

1. Atomised by Michel Houllebecq
2. History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist
3. Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam
4. Last Orders by Graham Swift
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan
6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
7. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman
8. The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks
9. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
10. Austerlitz by W G Sebald

Not in any particular order. Liable to change.

[Mark F.]

Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
The Lord of the Rings by J. R R. Tolkien
One discworld novel by Terry Pratchett

[Mistress Babs]

Here are my favorite reads (some I've delved into numerous times), in no particular order:
War and Peace - Leon Tolstoi
His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
Bleak House - Chas. Dickens
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

[MaskedBeauty]

My top ten reccomendations:

1: Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
2: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
3: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4: Anything by William Shakespear
5: Dracula by Bram Stoker
6: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7: Phantom by Susan Kay
8: Wicked by Gregory MaGuire
9: The Iliad by Homer
10: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

[hotfuss]

suggestions:
the odyssey
the big sleep
birdsong :thumbs_up
trainspotting (nothing to do with trainspotting!!)
1984
lord of the rings
fight club
medea (euripides' version)
cider with rosie
mrs dalloway
macbeth
the witches/charlie and the chocolate factory :p
wuthering heights

[Pendragon]

Well, everyone should read The Bible.
Now for a top ten list in no particular order:

1.) Mark Twain--The Innocents Abroad
2.) Oscar Wilde--Portrait of Dorian Grey
3.) Edgar Alan Poe--Complete Stories and Poems
4.) H.P. Lovecraft--Shadows Over Innsmouth
5.) H.G. Wells--War of the Worlds
6.) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--The Sherlock Holmes Cannon
7.) J.R.R. Tolkien--The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
8.) Mark Twain--The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
9.) Lewis Carroll--Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass
10.) Roger Zelzany--The Amber Series

The above list reflects my own views not those of, etc. etc. :lol: :lol: :lol:

[sir]

ten interesting books...no top though...they're all great stuff:

1-o. wilde...the portret of d.g.
2-e. cioran...on the hights of dispair
3-f.m.dostoiewsky...crime and punishment
4-f.m.dostoiewsky...the brothers karamazov
5-l. tolstoy...war and peace
6-homer... the iliad
7-j.w.goethe...faust
8-v.hugo...les miserables
9-g.flaubert... madame bovary
10-v.nabokov... lolita

...i can't believe i didn't mention shakespeare... and many others...well, "alea jacta est!"

[PeterL]

10.) Roger Zelzany--The Amber Series

The above list reflects my own views not those of, etc. etc. :lol: :lol: :lol:

The Lord of Light by Zelzany is vastly better; I would even classify it as great literature.

[subterranean]

Add to list:
Crime and Punishment: Fyodor Dostoevsky
To Kill A Mocking Bird: Harper E. Lee

[Aurora Ariel]

(in no particular order)

The Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath(I first read this about a year ago and it's one of my absolute favourite books I've read as a teenager-but it's dark and disturbing-so you have been warned-lol:))

1984-George Orwell

Animal Farm-George Orwell

Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert

War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy

The Odyssey-Homer

Prometheus Bound and Other Plays-Aeschylus

Frankenstein-Mary Shelley(include also her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley's-Collected Works)

Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte

Great Expectations-Charles Dickens

[strategos]

There are far too many good books that I've read that I couldn't possibly come up with a top 10 list that would satisfy me. These are the most readily that spring to mind, ordered by authors' last names:

1. Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
2. Arthur Conan Doyle - The Complete Sherlock Holmes
3. Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
4. Guy Gavriel Kay - The Lions of Al-Rassan
5. William Golding - Lord of the Flies
6. Daniel Keyes - Flowers For Algernon
7. James A. Michener - Chesapeake
8. J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
9. Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
10. Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

[Lady19thC]

If I had to make a top ten, these would be my recommendations:

1. Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
2. Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
3. Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
4. Middlemarch-George Eliot
5. Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen
6. Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
7. Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
8. Dracula-Bram Stoker
9. Frankenstein-Mary Shelley
10.Tess of the D'Urbervilles-Thomas Hardy

But I would rather make a top 20 list!! ;)

[hellodolly]

A CAPOTE READER by Truman Capote, DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather are my faves

[Sarah's_Chanson]

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen
3. Vanity Fair by Wlliam Thackery
4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (A 1930's book)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. Tess of d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy


That's all I think think of for now!

[Edmond]

the future- "Brave New World"
how the world came to be "Ismael"
Emotional "great expectations"
Thrills "Count of Monti Cristo"
Something about math "Golden Ratio"

[Jay T]

1. Finnegans Wake - James Joyce
2. Woman in the Dunes - Kobe Abe
3. Confession of a Mask - Mishima Yukio
4. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
5. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino
6. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
7. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life - Thomas Wolfe
8. Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
9. Ulysses - James Joyce
10. New Arabian Nights - Robert Louis Stevenson

[Themis]

1. Ödön von Horvath „Youth without God“
2. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach „The Child of the Parish“
3. Oscar Wilde „Lord Arthur Savile‘s Crime“
4. Goethe „Faust“
5. Umberto Eco „The Name of the Rose“
6. Alexandre Dumas „Camille“
7. Shakespeare „Hamlet“
8. Aldous Huxley „Brave New World“
9. Agatha Christie „Ten little indians“
10. Emil Strauß "Freund Hein"

[Pensive]

My Top Ten
1:Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2:Harry Potter by JK Rowling
3:The mill on the floss by George Eliot
4:Bridge to Terabithia by......(I have forogtten then author's name but the story was very good as I remember)
5:Heidi by Jonathan Sypri
6:The hobbit by JRK Tolikien
7:Rebecca by Dephne Du Maurier
8:Vanity Fair
9:Ann of the Green Gables (I love Anne Shirley's character. She is such a lovely and a cute girl)
10:Roots by Alex Halley

I love these books and I will always recommend everyone to read these novels. These are great.....atleast in my opinion :)

[mono]

4:Bridge to Terabithia by......(I have forogtten then author's name but the story was very good as I remember)
Katherine Paterson wrote this novel, if I remember correctly - one of my favorite fiction stories from childhood. :)

[B-Mental]

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - ahhh, the possibilities
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - the definition of patience
The Death of Ivan Illyich by Leo Tolstoy - is it too late to change
Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes - return to chivalry or insanity...to live
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo - when are you free from your past
The Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn - what you didn't learn in school

[chatnoir1311]

1. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ...........
i dont think i must explain why it is a 'must read book'
2. The Anti-christ - Nietzsche .........one of the best critics about the christian religion
3. Anything by E.A.Poe ...........one of the world's best narrators
4. The picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde...........
a timeless study about the youth maniac
5. Les liaisons dangereuses - C. de Laclos..........the best and importanced book of the french literature
6. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ..... entertaining and funny
7. MacBeth - Shakespeare.........very tragically
8. Julie or the new Heloise - Rousseau .......after 7 months i haven't finished it yet , but i think its a big achievement to write such a boring book !
9. Les jeux sont faits - Sartre ..........a great love story, i love this book !
10. The glow - Sandor Marai............poetic and also a little bit sad

[PistisSophia]

The Tanakh/The Holy Scriptures
The Koran
Evangeline
A Tale of Two Cities
Pilgrims Progress
Shakespeare - at least a few.....
The Illiad/The Odyssey
The Travels of Marco Polo
The Merck Manual
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

[ArcherSnake]

In no particular order:

-I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb ( a must read especially if you are of Italian descendency)
-One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingsolver
-Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-The Knight Of Masion Rouge by Alexandre Dumas
-East Of Eden by John Steinbeck
-1984 by George Orwell
-Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
-Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve

And my all-time favorite, an honest-to-gosh modern epic that's got it all...

-The Stand by Stephen King

Another must read for Italians is The Birth Of Venus by Sarah Dunant.

[Levenbreech Vor]

Science Fiction
Rank # Book title Author Other information
1 Dune Frank Herbert $
2 Foundation Isaac Asimov $
3 Rendezvous with Rama Arthur C. Clarke $
4 Speaker of the Dead Orson Scott Card
5 Ender’s Game Orson Scott Card $
6 Otherland Tad Williams !
7 Neuromancer William Gibson
8 Hyperion Dan Simmons
9 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke $
10 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams $
11 Fountains of Paradise Arthur C. Clarke
12 Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
13 Illustrated Man Ray Bradbury
14 Light of the Other Days Arthur C. Clarke
15 Starship Troopers Robert A Heinlein


Fantasy
Rank # Book title Author Other information
1 Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien $
2 A Song of Ice and Fire George R. Martin $
3 The Mists of Avalon Marion Z. Bradley !
4 The Once and Future King T.H. White !
5 The Ancient One T.A. Barron
6 Crystal Cave Mary Stewart $
7 Watership Down Richard Adams


Other (Trashy Thrillers)
Rank Book title Author
1 The Simple Truth David Baldacci
2 The Firm John Grisham
3 Inca Gold Clive Cussler
4 The Pelican Brief John Grisham
5 Atlantis Found Clive Cussler


Historical Fiction
Rank # Book title Author Other information
0 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
1 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
2 A Separate Peace John Knowles
3 Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes
4 Number the Stars Lois Lowry
5 Exodus Leon Uris
6 Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
7 Moby Dick Herman Melville
8 Call of the Wild Jack London
9 Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11 As the Crow Flies Jeffrey Archer !
12 Wish you Well David Baldacci
13 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott


Key
! - Very long
$ - Has a series which is good and worth reading

[IrishCanadian]

In no particular order:
The old man and the sea -Hemingway
The Dubliners -James Joyce
Death of a salesman -i forgot but i'm sure someone knows who wrote this
Brave new world -Huxley
The Anead -Homer
Poems by W.B Yeats (does this count? I mean his later poems, that is, if this counts)
Kidnapped -Stevenson
Rebecca -Du Morier
The adventures of Sherlock Holmes - I can't remeber anything tonight
Viper's Tangle - Mauriac

This list will probably change for me month by month as I read more... but I love the stuff thats here... I should go back and re-read some of it.

[el01ks]

Pride and Prejudice
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series (favourite fantasy - prefered the films of lord of the rings to the books, as in parts it read as some kind of boys' own thing)
The Three Musketeers
The Black Magician Trilogy
Nicholas Nickleby
Richard III
Hamlet
Frankenstein
Paradise Lost
The Faerie Queene

[Matilda]

wich is a must-read dickens book?
I've only read oliver twist, and think i shoulf read another one.



4:Bridge to Terabithia by......(I have forogtten then author's name but the story was very good as I remember)


The authors name is Katherine Paterson.
I liked the book as well. I've heard that it has been banned by some groups in america, but i don't understande why, 'cause i dont find it provocative.

[Charles Darnay]

1. Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
2. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
3. Candide - Voltaire
4. Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
5. The Three Musketeers - Alexander Dumas
6. The Belgarid/Malloreon - David Eddings
7. Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
8. Cireno de Bergerac - Rostand (I think, too lazy to check)
9. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
10. Cosette - Laura Kalpakian

[deepishan]

Anybody reading "the order of things" by- m.Foucoult

[Aurora Ariel]

I thought already did a list like this a few months ago.Yes, I checked and it's actually on page six.It's pretty much the same.But there are so many great books I could add, and keep going on and on, till the list becomes more like a top 50 or more!So I'll just add another a few for you which I've read over the last couple of years.I would suggest you try and read a few of these at least once.


I read my previous list again:

(In no particular order)

The Bell Jar-Sylvia Plath

1984-George Orwell

Animal Farm-George Orwell

Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert

War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy

The Odyssey-Homer *also add The Illiad (I actually read that a few months after The Odyssey)

Prometheus Bound and Other Plays-Aeschylus ( must also attempt to read Prometheus Unbound, the lyrical drama, in Four Acts, by Shelley as well, which is actually where my signature comes from).

Frankenstein-Mary Shelley ( also try reading her other later novels such as The Last Man) and Percy Bysshe Shelley's ( my favourite Romantic poet) complete poems.

Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte

Great Expectations-Charles Dickens


More additions you can add, which missed before:

(In no particular order)

Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy

Ulysses- James Joyce

The Waves, Mrs.Dalloway, and Orlando- Virginia Woolf

The Aspern Papers, and Washington Square- Henry James

Pride And Prejudice, and Mansfield Park- Jane Austen

Jane Eyre, and The Professor- Charlotte Bronte

Dracula- Bram Stocker

Paradise Lost- John Milton

The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde

The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde- Robert Louis Stevenson

Robinson Crusoe and The Journel of the Plague Year- Daniel Defoe

Oedipus Rex and other plays- Sophocles

Medea and other plays- Euripides

Metamorphoses- Ovid

All works of Shakespeare.My favourites include: The Tempest, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, A Midsummers Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet.


....I could continue all day;).

*I also really like Edmund Spenser's The Faery Queene which is already mentioned above.

[Aurora Ariel]

Matilda, for Dickens I would recommend Great Expectations ( my personal favourite), Nicholas Nickleby ( I was surprised how much I enjoyed this), A Tale of Two Cities ( read it at least once, and especially if you have studied the French Revolution or interested in those times); others include David Copperfield ( worth reading as the main character is partially modelled on Dickens himself ), and also The Old Curiosity Shop, which is quite a nice, sweet, thrilling, and intriguing read, though often accused of too much sentimentality ( which I kind of agree, in certain parts), but interestingly it was apparently the most popular work by him during his own era.I would suggest you start with The Pickwick Papers ( 1836-37), move on to Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39), which he considered his first real attempt at the novel, and then The Old Curiosity Shop ( 1840-41).After this try A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations ( 1860-61).Finally, if you enjoyed any of those you may wish to further extend your Dickens library and include Hard Times (1854), Our Mutal Friend ( 1864-65), Little Dorrit (1855-57), Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), Bleak House ( 1851-53), and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1869-70), though this last one was left unfinished due to his passing.The well known Christmas Books may also be appropriate for this time of the year.Enjoy reading!;)

[lit_fan!]

Hmm...I have to say the other posters made excellent choices, here's my list:

1. Mourning Becomes Electra-Eugene O'Neill
2. 1984-George Orwell
3. A Lost Lady-Willa Cather
4. The Great Gatsby-F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Bridges of Madison County-James Waller
6. Animal Farm-George Orwell
7. The Pearl-John Steinbeck
8. Of Mice and Men-John Steinbeck
9. The Joy-Luck Club-Amy Tan
10. at least one of Moliere's many plays, as old as they are they still seem culturally relevant and very comedic.

[mingdamerciless]

well i dont kno if anyone has already said these because i couldnt be bothered to read all the posts (he he) but . . .

Captain Corelli's mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Fantastic novel, most people say the first 100 pages are incredibly boring but in my opinion they are the best bit. actually very funny

All Jane Austen - im a sucker for a romance, he he just cant resist.

and Hardy is just an incredible writer, amazing descriptions. Tess is probably my favourite

The picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Wilde is at his best here, really makes you think. I found it fascinating

Also a good play to read is Lysistrata -Aristophanes just make sure you find a decent translation.

[simon mason]

the myth of Gilgimesh
Siddartha
the complete works of Shakespeare
the poems of Sappho
waiting for Godot
the brothers karamazov
chop wood carry water
the way of Tao
news from nowhere
Dune

[IrishCanadian]

My old list revisited, in no particular order:
King Lear --Shakespear
The Old Man and the Sea --Hemingway
Brave New World --Huxley
The Anead --Homer
Viper's Tangle --Mauriac
The Prince --Machiavelli (don't agree with everything here, but its a vital read i think)
A Grief Observed --Lewis
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
Great Expectations --Dickens
The Dumbwaiter --Pinter

... the list will continue to change for me

[rachel]

very good choice and spectrum of books Irish. There are some I have not read but will find copies as soon as I can and give them a whirl.
Hope you have a happy day.

[Charles Darnay]

[QUOTE=IrishCanadian]My old list revisited, in no particular order:
The Anead --Homer

Virgil...... not Homer.

[Charles Darnay]

My Choices would have to be:

1. Les Miserables - Hugo
2. A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
3. Sirens of Titen - Vonnegut
4. Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
5. The Inferno - Dante
6. Toilers on the Sea - Hugo
7. Don Quixote - Cervantes
8. The Idiot - Dostoevsky
9. Barnaby Rudge - Dickens
10. Any one of Shakespeare's tragedies (mainly Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear)

[bookgeek]

In no particular order:
1. The Great Gatsby -F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Jane Eyre -Charlotte Bronte
3. Dombey and Son -Charles Dickens
4. Brave New World -Aldous Huxley
5. Catcher in the Rye -J.D. Salinger
6. A Good Man is Hard to Find -Flannery O'Connor
7. Madame Bovary -Gustave Flaubert
8. Crime and Punishment -Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. Of Mice and Men -John Steinbeck
10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -Ken Kesey

there's tens more...it's so hard to choose!

[Pensive]

Siddartha

I also found "Siddharta" quite fascinating. :D

[malwethien]

Just 10? Gee..that's tough! Ok lemme try...

Catch-22
Catcher in the Rye
Pride and Prejudice
Clockwork Orange
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell
One Hundred Years of Solitude
An Unbearable Lightness of Being
Like Water for Chocolate
The Harry Potter series (hahahaha)
Sophie's World

just to name a few...

[non sum]

although varied, i find that my list is a bit on the romantic side...

1.the idiot-dostoevsky
2.posession-byatt
3.the complete works of edgar allan poe
4.dracula-stoker
5.the republic-plato
6.childe harold's pilgrimage, don juan,manfred-byron
7.the inferno-dante
8.the picture of dorian gray-wilde
9.great expectations-dickens
10.the count of monte cristo-dumas

and of course, macbeth, hamlet, othello...where would we be without the great bard?

[rachel]

I really love your selection with the exception of The Idiot. I felt like banging my head into the wall nine times and then actually HURTING myself going thru that one.

[Erna]

I really love your selection with the exception of The Idiot. I felt like banging my head into the wall nine times and then actually HURTING myself going thru that one.
I'm happy to hear this, because it doesn't seem to depend on me. I'm also fighting to finish this book, but I don't know when I will reach the end...

[rachel]

here is a hug for you and a ticket to a really good show for when you have made it!

[hera-on-earth]

I think Hardy's "Tess of the d'urbervilles" can make good reading if u have tht kind of patience!

[sdr4jc]

Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities
All the Pretty Horses
Phantom of the Opera


Just to name a few :thumbs_up

[TodHackett]

These are a few of my personal favorites. But I go in for modern/contemporary lit, so these are not "time tested":

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
-Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
-David James Duncan, The Brothers K
-Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves
-Daniel Boorstin, The Image
-Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night (if I can pick only one by Vonnegut)
-Dante, Inferno
-Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
-Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

[Vedrana]

These are some of my favourites, but of course there are others. I don't know if plays count, but I put down three.

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall- Anne Bronte
The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger
The Importance of Being Ernest- Oscar Wilde
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
A Doll's House- Henrik Ibsen
Northanger Abbey- Jane Austen
The Crucible- Arthur Miller
The Mayor of Casterbridge- Thomas Hardy
Sons and Lovers- DH Lawrence

[Night Stalker]

Well my top ten change every day. Today its probably (in no order):

Othello-Shakespeare
Mort-Terry Pratchett
The Hobbit- Tolkien
Death of a Salesman (play)- Arther Miller
Great Expectations- Dickens
The Nightingale and the Rose (short story)- Oscar Wilde
Wuthering Heights- Emily (?) Bronte
anything by Edgar Allen Poe
Private Peaceful- Micheal Morpurgo (excellent if you like war books)
Les Miserables- Hugo (the musical of this is also absolutly amazing!)

[davoarid]

1. The Catcher in the Rye -Salinger
2. 1984 -Orwell
3. All Quiet on the Western Front -Remarque
4. We the Living -Rand
5. The Winter of Our Discontent -Steinbeck (which is, strangely, my favorite of all his novels)
6. The Stranger -Camus
7. Candide -Voltaire
8. The Trial -Kafka
9. The Fountainhead -Rand
10. The Man Who Was Thursday -G.K. Chesterton

My favorite plays are Othello, King Lear, and Ibsen's "A Doll's House."

If we included shorter stories, I'd have "Heart of Darkness," "The Time Machine," "Anthem," and "The Old Man and the Sea."

Oh, and if we included super-short stories, I'd have to put J.D. Salingner's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," simply because it contains my favorite sentence in all of literature. But you have to find it for yourself!

[classicsgirl]

1. Anne of Green Gables
2. Little House on the praire
3. Little Women
4. Pride & Prejudice
5. Emily of New Moon
6. The Secret Garden
7. The Lion The Witch & the Wardrobe
8. Geisha
9. The Root Cellar
10. Double Spell

:banana:

[Pensive]

Anne Of Green Gables and Pride And Prejudice, both of them are great novels.

[ElizabethSewall]

Classicsgirl hello and welcome!
I have read most of your favourite books and liked them a lot either. :nod:
I just finished Memoirs of a Geisha and found it exceptional!!! :banana:

[classicsgirl]

ElizabethSewall Hi! Yes Geisha was beautifully written, i think the book was alot better then the movie. have u seen the movie?

Pensive i see you share my Liking for Anne of Green Gables! have you read the other Anne novels in the series? :P

[Pensive]

I read the second and third one but then I found Anne's lively character was changing as she was getting older. I would not say that it had gone but I liked her better when she was a child.

[ajaxon]

Well, I don't consider myself a pro by any means, but here are my top ten books.

Life on the Mississippi-Twain
To Kill A Maocking Bird-Lee
Nick Adams Stories-Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls-Hemingway
Jungle Books-Kipling
Dune-Herbert
Brave New World-Huxley
East of Eden-Steinbeck
O Pioneers-Cather
Atlas Shrugged-Rand

Just my two cent's worth

[Moandor]

Just teen books... OK, this is my Top 10:

Master and Margarita - Mihaił Bułhakow
Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Wuthering Heihgts - Emily Bronte
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Count of Monte Christo - Aleksander Dumas
Faraon (Pharaoh) - Bolesław Prus (Prus was the polish writer)
Don Kichote (I can't remember original title) - Miguel the Cervantes Saaverda
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Quo Vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz (also polish writer)

[ElizabethSewall]

ElizabethSewall Hi! Yes Geisha was beautifully written, i think the book was alot better then the movie. have u seen the movie?
Hi!! How are you?
Yes I have but I preferred the book, even though the movie was beautiful. But there were too many things left aside. What did you thought?

[elpidi26]

Mark Twain-Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn (I consider these as one book though the
latter is more important in my opinion)
Aldous Huxley-Brave New World
Fyodor Dostoevsky-The Brothers Karamazov
Mary Shelley-Frankenstein
John Steinbeck-Grapes of Wrath
Harriet Beecher Stowe-Uncle Tom's Cabin
Elie Wiesel-Night (unbelievable)
Homer-Iliad/Odyssey (I know I know. But they're both good)
Oscar Wilde-All his plays, esp., The Importance of Being Earnest
Denis Diderot-Rameau's Nephew

[Boris239]

If we are talking about ten classic works:

1) Dostoevsky "Crime and Pinishment", "Idiot", "Brothers Karamazov"
2)Tolstoy "War and Peace"
3) Shakespeare "Hamlet" and "Macbeth"
4) Goethe "Faust"
5) Gugo "Les Miserables"
6) Kamu "Stranger"
7) Wilde "Portret of Dorian Grey"
8) Bulgakov "Master and Margarita"
9) Greene "Power and Glory"
10) Orwell "1984"

[Theshizznigg]

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Desiree - Anne Marie Selinko
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Lorna Doone - R.D Blackmoore
Tess D'ubervilles - Thomas Hardy
The Monk - Charles Lewis
That Enchantress - Doris Leslie
Me, and Mr. Jeeves - PG Woodehouse
Book of Brave Deeds - Various Authors
The Bible - Various Authors

[Ryduce]

No particular order.....

The Great Gatsby-Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath-Steinbeck
The Sirens of Titan or Cat's Cradle(I couldn't make up my mind)-Vonnegut
Ulysses-Joyce(to ground you in reality)
Light in August-Faulkner
The Old Man and the Sea-Hemingway
The Portrait of Dorian Gray-Wilde
Crime and Punishment-Dostoevsky
To the Lighthouse-Woolf
To Kill a Mockingbird-Lee

[virtus]

I've seen a lot of great lists, but personally I missed Thomas Paine's works, Musil's Mann ohne Eigenshaften and some more of Umberto Eco's works :D

[Bookworm Cris]

I´ve just realized how many good books I must read! Thanks for the sugestions!

Some of my favourites (don´t know if they´re all classics, but I hope you enjoy them):
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- East of Eden - John Steinbeck
- Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
- Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
- Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
- Exodus - Leon Uris
- The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- Illusions - Richard Bach
- The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

I´ve noticed no one mentioned any brazilian author... We have very good authors, and very good books. I have some suggestions of good books I have read and found out that have translations in english:
- The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas) and Dom Casmurro - Machado de Assis (his best novels, and, if available, read his short stories, they are really good and full of fine social irony)
- A Time to Meet (Encontro Marcado) - Fernando Sabino
- Captains of the Sands (Capitães da Areia) and Sea of Death (Mar Morto) - Jorge Amado (stories of stray-kids and sailors in Bahia, very touching)
- Family Ties (Laços de Família) and Revelations of one world (A descoberta do mundo) - Clarice Lispector (both are short stories, very good - she´s got some good novels, too)
- Time and the Wind (O Tempo e o Vento) and Incident in Antares (Incidente em Antares) - Erico Veríssimo (the first is a trilogy telling a family´s story in the south of Brasil through two centuries, and the second is a very funny story about a strike of the grave-diggers and the awakening of seven recently dead people in protest... imagine...;D)

And, from Portuguese literature, my suggestion is the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, especially with the heteronymous Alberto Caeiro, very good!

Well, you will find out that brazilian literature has not only Paulo Coelho...

[the appletree]

As you'll notice, I am real big on the classics

no order...

steinbeck-of mice and men
stevenson-treasure island
wilde-portait of dorian gray
faulkner-the sound an the fury
dumas-the count of monte cristo

[Jarndyce]

My top 15, in order:
1) Bleak House, Dickens
2) Invisible Man, Ellison
3) Crime and Punishment, Dostoyesvsky
4) Moby Dick, Melville
5) Great Expectations, Dickens
6) For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
7) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez
8) A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
9) Of Human Bondage, Maughm
10) Love in the Time of Cholera, Garcia Marquez
11) Swann's Way, Proust
12) The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
13) All Quiet on the Western Front, Remarque
14) Hard Times, Dickens
15) Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, Murokami

[ShoutGrace]

As you'll notice, I am real big on the classics

Hey, theres nothing wrong with that! The books are classics for a reason. This is an avenue of life in which I believe conformity is most justified.

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyesvsky

The Idiot - Dostoyevsky

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky

The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk (thats just sentamentalism)

King Lear - William Shakespeare (it can be considered a book? Thats how I read it)

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Mark Twain

Magister Ludi - Herman Hess

The Zork Chronicles - George Effinger (in all seriousness)

The Confessions of Saint Augustine

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

(The list must be composed of books we've read, right?)

[Beubeu78]

Some of my favourites :

Proust - In Search of Lost Time
Kafka - The Trial
Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
Borges - Collected Fictions
Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises
Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Amado - Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Céline - Journey To The End Of The Night
Gide - The Counterfeiters

[SmokeBellew]

My list is short but anyway...

1. Samuel Langorne Clemens (M.T) - Roughing It
2. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
3. Jack London - Seawolf/Martin Eden/Smoke Bellew
4. Oscar Wilde - The Picture Of Dorian Gray/The Ballad Of Reading Gaol (poetry)
5. Valerio Massimo Manfredi - ALEXANDER The Ends Of Earth
6. Bruce Lee The Warrior Within (sorry, I forgot the author's name)
7. Yaroslav Gashek - The Adventures Of The Courageous Soldier Shveik (a must read!)
8. Dostoevsky - The Gambler

-------------------------------
Of course tastes are different, some may hate my list.

[Bookworm Cris]

Some of my favourites :
Amado - Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands


I´ve read it too, and it´s very good and funny, full of recipes, but it´s not one of my favourites. I prefer Sea of Death (Mar Morto), it made me cry...


García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Fantastic literature is not what I prefer, but that was good.

Well, it´s better start to read some suggestions of this thread, they are very good indeed...

[Melskim86]

here some of my favourites

a summer - william shakespeare
one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez
the ghost - danielle steel
the da vinci code - dan brown
ana karenina - leo tolstoy
les miserables - victor hugo
safo biography - alexander krislov
life is a dream - pedro calderon de la barca
Wuthering Heights - emily bronte
the impostor - jane feather
perfume - patrick suskind
the eight - katherine neville (this one is great)

ummmm and some more i think....

[Cormeister37]

A FAREWEL TO ARMS Ernest Hemingway
WAR AND PEACE Leo Tolstoy
ULYSSES James Joyce
THE PAINTED BIRD Jerzy Kosinski
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Ken Kesey
A SEPARATE PEACE John Knowles
THE HOBBIT J.R.R. Tolkien
THE BELL JAR Sylvia Plath
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE J.D. Salinger
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS Ernest Hemingway

[Mitopeia]

Hi!! In your opinion wich is the 10 "u have to have" list?? This will really help me to complete my libary... Thanks!! Take care

[grace86]

Hola Mitopeia! Bienvenidos a LitNet! I think there is a thread around here somewhere with "must have classics" You might want to look that one up. But I can help out a little bit here if you want...just some suggestions:

1. Don Quixote - Cervantes (I have heard a lot of good things about this one, but have yet to read it myself...it is sitting on the shelf saying read me!!)

2. War and Peace - Tolstoy

3. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

4. Dr. Zhivago - the author eludes me right now

5. Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

6. The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

7. The Sotweed Factory - James Barth

8. The Hamlet - William Faulkner (I think LitNet book club reads a lot of his stuff)

9. On the Road - Jack Kerouac

10. Ulysses - James Joyce


This is all I can think of at the moment...provided you can get through these books...they are very rewarding...my daddy helped me with this list. Hope this helps.

[Mark F.]

1 "A Farewell to Arms" by Hemingway
2 "Crime & Punishment" by Dostoevsky
3 "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce
4 "Light in August" by Faulkner
5 "1984" by Orwell
6 "The Grapes of Wrath" by Steinbeck
7 "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter S. Thompson
8 "The Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger
9 "Factotum" by Bukowski
10 "Metamorphosis" by Kafka

[bazarov]

1. Don Quixote - Cervantes (I have heard a lot of good things about this one, but have yet to read it myself...it is sitting on the shelf saying read me!!)

2. War and Peace - Tolstoy

3. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

4. Dr. Zhivago - the author eludes me right now





Don Quixote is definitly one of the best book I've ever read!!! Boris Pasternak wrote Dr. Zhivago. Nobody said nothing about Brothers Karamazov :lol: :lol: :lol: (see July book), for me a much better then CiP, actually the best ever!

[johnnybgoode]

here's a few,To Kill A Mockingbird the author wrote only one book and retired pity,superb plot,Tom Sawyer,I'm still a bit of this boy no matter how hard I try to grow up,The Bible of course and I most reccomend Ecclesiastes,Les Miserables,The Hunchback of Notre Dame,The Old Man and The Sea,Gullivers Travels

[grace86]

Bazarov -

I posted my top ten somewhere else didn't I? I was going to post it here also, but you beat me to it on the first four when quoting me!!

Oh well...if I already posted it here...here I am posting it:

Don Quixote
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Dr. Zhivago
Gravity's Rainbow
The Fountainhead
The Sotweed Factory
The Hamlet
On the Road
Ulysses

I know I posted it somewhere else...cant seem to find the thread at the moment...oh, by the way Bazarov...your enthusiam for Don Quixote made it jump to number one on my books to read for summer list.

[tennis2622]

The Idiot by Dostoevsky
Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Prince by Nicoolo Machiavelli

[bazarov]

The Idiot by Dostoevsky
Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
The Prince by Nicoolo Machiavelli
Realism and Russians are your favorites??? Dostoevsky fan???Very good :lol: :lol: , you're on my buudy list!! :lol:


Bazarov -

I posted my top ten somewhere else didn't I? I was going to post it here also, but you beat me to it on the first four when quoting me!!

Oh well...if I already posted it here...here I am posting it:

Don Quixote
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
Dr. Zhivago
Gravity's Rainbow
The Fountainhead
The Sotweed Factory
The Hamlet
On the Road
Ulysses

I know I posted it somewhere else...cant seem to find the thread at the moment...oh, by the way Bazarov...your enthusiam for Don Quixote made it jump to number one on my books to read for summer list.
Page 10, post #150 on this thread. About Don Quixote, you won't regret, either you'll laugh to his acts or will be thinking about his great minds and thoughts.

[Eufrosyne]

Jane Eyre- C Bronte
Brave new world- A Huxley
Madame Bovary- G Flaubert
Vanity Fair- W M Thackeray
Farenheit 451- R Bradbury
L´assommoir- E Zola
Waiting for Godot- S Beckett
Sophies world- J Gaarder
Tess of the Durbervilles- T Hardy
The hunchback of Notre Dame- V Hugo

[Manfred]

I've loved some of these selections, despised a few, and agreed with others. Here is my top 10, for better or worse, in no particular order.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
2. 1984, by George Orwell
3. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
4. Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis
5. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
6. The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope
7. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
8. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle
9. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
10. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

[Madhuri]

Hi, I would recommend some books by Indian authors.

1. Suitable Boy -- Vikram Seth
2. A Fine Balance -- Rohinton Mistry
3. The Crow Eaters -- Bapsi Sidhwa (Pakistani writer)
4. Difficult Daughters -- Manju Kapur
5. Chokher Bali -- Rabindranath Tagore

-madhuri :thumbs_up

[Manfred]

Just a side note here:
As a general rule, I read novels for entertainment--even the classics. If there is social commentary, or educational import, or spiritual enlightenment contained therein, excellent; all of these things are important, and may be readily soaked in along with the story.
But if it's not entertaining then I feel that it has somehow failed on some level. Without an engaging story, one might as well read a history or philosophy tome.

[papillon123]

I've really enjoyed seeing what others have on their top ten lists.
Although I agree with many of the posted suggestions, I now have
a ton of "must reads" !!! Here are a few more that may or may not have
been posted before.
Journey to the East - Hermann Hesse
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
The Keys of the Kingdom - A.J. Cronin
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Rememberance of Things Past (seven volumes or parts) - Marcel Proust
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
The Virginian - Owen Wistar
Poetry of WB Yeats and ee cummings

[literaturerocks]

i would highly recommend edgar allen poe's work
the iliad
the odyssey both homer
dante's divine comdey dante alighieri
things by hemingway and dickens

even though thats not ten thats just what iwould recommend .. i have not read much yet but im on my way! :banana: :D :nod:

[grace86]

Ahah, someone must have moved my post that is on page 10. I posted that when Mitopeia started (her?) introduction thread and asked about 10 must read classics. Hmm, that makes sense. Okie dokie, thought I was going crazy for a minute...no, I do not like to repeat myself :D

[Mitopeia]

Thanks for answering!! I will consider alot your lists to make mypersonal "library"!! If u want to discuss about books, poems, or anything else mi e-mail is: [email protected]
Thanks take care!! :)

[_JadeRain_]

Some of my favorite books

1. Alice in Wonderland
2. The Crucible
3. Frankenstein
4. Robinson Crusoe
5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
6. Les Misérables
7. The Jungle Book
8. A Midsummer Night's Dream
9. Catcher in the Rye
10. Jurassic Park

[Behemoth]

Only 10?? Tricky, there's so many books out there which have influenced me. Well, here goes:

1. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) - without doubt one of the most powerful novels I have ever read, filled with beautiful imagery and language, but also the most horrific acts committed by man's inhumanity to man, and how the bonds we make between friends, lovers etc can be as destructive as they are constructive.

2. The Diary of Anne Frank

3. Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin) - one of Pushkin's finest, a tale of friendship and betrayal which results in pain and the realisation that our actions cannot always be put right, no matter if we repent.

4. The Odyssey (Homer)

5. Paradise Lost (John Milton)

6. Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto) - a beautiful little book which deals with people and emotion, specifically grief following the loss of a loved one. Yoshimoto's writing is sensitive and will connect with anyone who has ever suffered the loss of a loved one or friend.

7. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

8. Dr Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)

9. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - more to be a part of the experience than for anything else, it's a good novel but maybe not in the same league as the other novels mentioned above.

10. The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) - Pure brilliance.

[alshadai]

You will not find many European/Russian classics here... I do not really read or study those even though I have tried.
In no particular order!

1.Blindness, Jose Saramago
2.Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
3.A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe
4.One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
5.The Divine Comedy, Dante.
6.Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
7.A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
8.Don Quixote, Cervantes
9.The Iliad, Homer
10.The Bible. (I am not a Christian but I still recommend this because it is a basis for so much literature!)

[Scheherazade]

Recently I have read Watership Down by Adams and it took my breath away so I would like to update my list to add this book as well.
In no particular order:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

3. Watership Down by Richard Adams

4. Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck

5. Lord of the Flies and/or Free Fall by Golding

6. The Crucible by Miller

7. Decameron by Boccaccio

8. The Plague by Camus

9. The Trial by Kafka

10. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde


Here are some other books in contension (for me):

The Stranger by Camus, Pygmalion by Shaw, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Pride and Prejudice by Austen, Brave New World by Huxley, Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes, The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway
.

[Charles Darnay]

I just finished East of Eden and it has just made my list of essential reads.

[ElizabethBennet]

Ten is so small, there's so many to choose from, but I'll try:
(in no particular order)
Pride and Prejudice ~ Jane Austen
Nicholas Nickleby ~ Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities ~ Charles Dickens
King Lear ~ Shakespeare
Animal Farm ~ George Orwell
Anne of Green Gables series ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
Little Women ~ Louisa May Alcott ( by the way, ever noticed how Montgomery and Alcott have the same first two initials: L.M. ?)
Ivanhoe ~ Sir Walter Scott (I'm surprised I haven't seen that one here yet)
Le Tour du Monde en 80 jours (Around the world in 80 days) ~ Jules Verne
The Bible

[Pensive]

East Of Eden and The Long Walk added to my list!

[Mary Sue]

Wuthering Heights
David Copperfield
The Brothers Karamazov
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Madame Bovary
Dr. Zhivago
The Great Gatsby
Absalom, Absalom!
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Rebecca

[anne1987]

1. rebecca-du maurier
2. gone with the wind-margaret mitchell
3.jane eyre-charlotte bronte
4.wuthering heights-emily bronte
5.great expectations-dickens
6.heart of darkness-joseph conrad
7.far from the madding crowd-hardy
8.the razor's edge-somerset maugham
9.of human bondage-''
10.pride and prejudice- jane austen

this list chiefly consists of romantic books because i am a romantic at heart and may not be completely based on logic.

[underground]

just as the title says.

[Charles Darnay]

Five is hard, there are sooo many.... there's a thread "10 must read books", you should check that out. Off the top of my head I would say:

Illiad/Odysey - Homer
Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Something by a Victorian author
Something by Stienbeck
Something by Faulkner

I know that's more then five,

[stlukesguild]

Well... there's already a top-ten books thread and a desert island ten thread. It was hard enough for me to cut it down to just that:

1. Dante Allighieri- The Divine Comedy
2. William Shakespeare- Collected Plays
3. John Milton- Paradise Lost
4. Cervantes- Don Quixote
5. The Bible (King James Translation)
6. William Blake- Collected Poetic Works
7. J.L. Borges- Collected Fictions
8. Kafka- Collected Short Stories
9. Italo Calvino- Invisible Cities
10. Proust- In Search of Lost Time (as I'll have found all the time I'll ever need
I'll finally be able to complete this one:brow:.

I don't know that I could pick which 5 of these to cut. Of course... I might add that while Dante has a ring in hell for just about everything, I don't know if there is a space for those who haven't read the great classics (of course there should be :D ... perhaps a small, dingy room where you would be consigned to reading Jackie Collins novels while watching re-runs of "Oprah" and "Hee-Haw". :lol:

[grace86]

Of course... I might add that while Dante has a ring in hell for just about everything, I don't know if there is a space for those who haven't read the great classics (of course there should be :D ... perhaps a small, dingy room where you would be consigned to reading Jackie Collins novels while watching re-runs of "Oprah" and "Hee-Haw". :lol:


Eeeww...Oprah, dingy room, and Hee-Haw...I do not want to picture that.

[subterranean]

7. J.L. Borges- Collected Fictions

Ah Borges, my unfulfilled wish until now

[Comrade Ahab]

so i really doubt anyone is even still reading this thread, and i'm sure that all of mine have been mentioned 50 times over, but i feel like adding a list as well.

in no particular order:

Moby-Dick Herman Melville
The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
Dead Souls Nikolai Gogol
A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
Complete Short Stories Flannery O'Connor
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Richard III William Shakespeare


so that's 9, i should probably put the Bible or Ulysses or something like that up there too, but i've never finished either so...

[EAP]

Lotr
Asoiaf
Mbotf
Kotab
Pon
Coa
Mog
Mst
Bt
Aolad

[Adolescent09]

Ok first of all George Orwell's Animal Farm is just in a league of its own. There isn't a book that tops its candid explicitness, but blatant message in only 100 or so pages and the ending is just magnificent. The pigs and the humans are the same was just a stroke of pure brilliance. I will always respect George Orwell for Animal Farm; It's kind of like Mario Puzo's The Godfather (the cinematic version), that is to say, completely flawless. Not a foible anywhere.

Since Animal Farm is in a league of its own here is my list of other highly recommended books (mostly classics).

My top ten...

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beacher Stowe
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Anna Karenina - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Iliad - Homer

and most recently... State of Denial - Bob Woodward... pure integrity and brilliance.

[Woland]

Cant be bothered with 10 but here's three

Things Fall Apart - Achebe
Lolita - Nabokov
The Tempest - Shakesy

[higley]

I recommend these not for their renown or cultural significance, or because they are classics (and some of them aren't), but because I consider them to be the ten most highly enjoyable, inspiring, or poignant books I know, for whatever respective reasons why. It would take far too long for me to express the reasoning for each of these in just this post (I'd only end up rambling), so I'll just have to list them:

Life of Pi- Yann Martel
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay- Michael Chabon
Life Expectancy- Dean Koontz
The Killer Angels- Michael Shaara
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury (and any of his short stories)
Kidnapped- Robert Louis Stevenson
The Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis (also his illuminating book The Screwtape Letters, which is undervalued in my opinion)
My Brother Sam is Dead- James and Chris Collier
The Pilgrim's Progress- John Bunyan

[Adudaewen]

I'm not sure if I can come up with 10, but here goes, my top favorite books I think everyone should read. (I guess I'm narcissistic) ;)

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
4. Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
5. Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
6. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
7. Beowulf unknown
8. Iliad and Oddysey by Homer (I'm acutally in the process of reading these now)
9. Republic by Plato (I haven't read this one yet, however my sister said it was one of the greatest books she ever read)
10. The Illustrated Book of Signs and Symbols by Miranda Bruce-Mitford

Why look at that, I did manage to dredge up ten.

[livelaughlove]

Adolescent- Actually, Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina. It's wonderful, but I don't know if I would put it on a "must read" list... but that's just my opinion!

Has anyone read The Mysterious Stranger by Twain? I found it very twisted but oh so fabulous!

[grace86]

The Pilgrim's Progress- John Bunyan

I just received this book from a pastor I know. So you liked it very much then Higley? It's not that long, maybe I can squeeze it in before Christmas break is over.

[higley]

I just received this book from a pastor I know. So you liked it very much then Higley? It's not that long, maybe I can squeeze it in before Christmas break is over.

Oh yes it's lovely. :) Very much enjoyed it; reads like a dream.

[Tasartir]

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Carcía Márquez
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
1984 by George Orwell
Night by Elie Wiesel
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Mrs.Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

[Whifflingpin]

Giles Goat-Boy - John Barth
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Lord Jim - Conrad
Tulku - Peter Dickinson
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Gibbon
God Knows - Joseph Heller
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
The Other Wind - Ursula le Guin
The Road Back - Erich Maria Remarque
Candide - Voltaire

.

[THX-1138]

1984 by George Orwell
Beowulf
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
brave new world by Aldous Huxly
the kite runner by Khaled Hosseini
the heart is a lonely hunter by Carson Mccullers
the catcher in the rye by J.D Salinger
great expectations by Charles Dickens
the trial by Franz Kafka

[bouquin]

my recommendations:

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann)
Ten Little Indians (Sherman Alexie)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

[Shakira]

1] Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen.
2] Her Mother’s Daughter – Marilyn French.
3] 1984 – George Orwell.
4] Beloved – Toni Morrison.
5] Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy.
6] Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov.
7] 100 Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
8] Mill on the Floss – George Eliot.
9] Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte.
10] The Diary of Anne Frank.

[Niamh]

1. Persuasion- Jane Austen
2. Hellfire- Mia Gallagher
3. The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
4. East of Eden- John Stienbeck
5. Utterly Monkey- Nick Laird
6. Merlin Trilogy- Mary Stewart
7. Artemis Fowl- Eoin Colfer
8. His Dark materials- Philip Pulman
9. Deirdre of the Sorrows- J.M.Synge
10. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte

[Adolescent09]

Adolescent- Actually, Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina. It's wonderful, but I don't know if I would put it on a "must read" list... but that's just my opinion!

Has anyone read The Mysterious Stranger by Twain? I found it very twisted but oh so fabulous!

Yes, sorry I meant Tolstoy ;), ever cared to read War and Peace? I'm hacking through that right now.

[andave_ya]

I'm an adolescent too...
Anyway, these books aren't all classics, but they are must-reads:
(in random order)

Any of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam (Persian poetry)
The Pickwick Papers by Dickens
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Any of Emily Dickinson's poems
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
and, of course, the Illiad and the Odyssey by Homer

[SaGe]

Adolescent- Actually, Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina. It's wonderful, but I don't know if I would put it on a "must read" list... but that's just my opinion!

Has anyone read The Mysterious Stranger by Twain? I found it very twisted but oh so fabulous!
I love Anna Karenina but agree that it's not top 10 (though War and Peace may very well be).

And yes, The Mysterious Stranger is great.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
1984 (and Animal Farm for that matter) by George Orwell
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) by Marcel Proust
The Odyssey by Homer
The Trial by Franz Kafka

Somewhat of a Generic list, but what can you do...

[rocket_pilot]

1. Brothers Karamazov
2. Mary Called Magdalene
3. White Nights
4. The Trail
5. Padre Pio
6. The Count of Monte Cristo
7. A Tale of Two Cities
8. The Autobiography of a Yogi
9. The Adolescent
10. The Idiot

[zigzig20s]

ten is definitely not enough...i would think you should start with the bible and the odyssey and the illiad...then shakespeare...those things are very often echoed in later literature, so if uve not read them u won't understand things fully. then things like dickens, austen, thoreau...as for contemporary literature, have a look at the nobel prize winners for lit.

[Adolescent09]

1. Brothers Karamazov
2. Mary Called Magdalene
3. White Nights
4. The Trail
5. Padre Pio
6. The Count of Monte Cristo
7. A Tale of Two Cities
8. The Autobiography of a Yogi
9. The Adolescent
10. The Idiot

I only got through half of Dostoevsky's The Adolescent. I loved Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov though. Nice list.

[Tasartir]

Hmm, top ten to read. I'd agree that JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are definitely top tens, but I would add The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner to some of you people's lists, as well as War and Peace by Tolstoy, also Don Quixote by Cervantes, and Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais.

[Adolescent09]

Wow you've read War and Peace ^^^? I only got through half of it... then got half way through Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (which I plan on finishing soon). After that I finished Anna Karenina. It's great you've read it.

[grace86]

Hmm, top ten to read. I'd agree that JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are definitely top tens, but I would add The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner to some of you people's lists, as well as War and Peace by Tolstoy, also Don Quixote by Cervantes, and Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais.

I love Gargantua and Pantagruel! Perfect satire.

[SaGe]

Wow you've read War and Peace ^^^? I only got through half of it... then got half way through Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville (which I plan on finishing soon). After that I finished Anna Karenina. It's great you've read it.
War and Peace is great, you should give it another shot :) It's probably good that you read Anna Karenina first.

[Idril]

I only got through half of Dostoevsky's The Adolescent. I loved Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov though. Nice list.

I just finished The Adolescent and while I wouldn't consider it Dostoevsky's greatest work or anything, I rather enjoyed it. I even liked it better than Brothers Karamozov.

[Adolescent09]

What would you consider Dostoevsky's greatest work? Crime and Punishment?

[Idril]

What would you consider Dostoevsky's greatest work? Crime and Punishment?

Well, that's a tough one. First of all, it would just be a personal opinion, I'm not making any sort of professional-type critique, I like what I like and that's about as technical as I get. :p Secondly, I know which ones I would omit, The Adolescent and Brothers Karamazov but that leaves Crime and Punishment, Demons and The Idiot all of which I loved, although I don't know if I could really say I loved the The Idiot, I'm not sure you can love something that completely devastates you but it was an incredibly powerful book unlike anything I've ever read. It's such a close race between those 3, they are each brilliant for their own reasons and evoke such different but equally as strong emotional responses....I don't know which I would choose, do I have to answer that question? :p

[Adolescent09]

You do have a valid point and I have yet to read The Idiot and Demons (I never even knew he had written a book by the name of Demons) but if by your standards they exceed Brothers Karamazov then they must be exceptionally good, because to me Brothers Karamazov is one of the most powerful books I've ever read.

[Idril]

You do have a valid point and I have yet to read The Idiot and Demons (I never even knew he had written a book by the name of Demons) but if by your standards they exceed Brothers Karamazov then they must be exceptionally good, because to me Brothers Karamazov is one of the most powerful books I've ever read.

Demons goes by a couple different names, The Posessed and Devils so if you go looking for it, be warned that it comes in different guises.

And I didn't really care for Brothers Karamazov and I know that puts me in a very significant minority. There were aspects to the story that I found fascinating, there were characters that I liked, particularly Ivan, but overall, it didn't really impact me on the same level as Dostoevsky's other novels so my standards are not going to be the same as yours. You may read the others and decide I'm out of my mind not to put Brothers at the top. :p

[Mark F.]

How dare you forget "Noets From the Underground"? It's short, simple and brilliant. I'd definitely stick it in with the other three you mentioned.

[Idril]

How dare you forget "Noets From the Underground"? It's short, simple and brilliant. I'd definitely stick it in with the other three you mentioned.

I didn't really care for that one either. :lol: I have some of the same issues with that one as I do with Brothers but as I was careful to point out, this is a personal list, not some kind of definitive ranking of books for the masses. ;)

[CindyBo]

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Swan Song, Robert MacCammon
3. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
4. The Time Machine, HG Wells
5. Dark Tower series, Stephen King
6. Once An Eagle, Anton Myrer
7. Bone Collector, Jeffrey Deaver
8. From the Corner of his Eye, Dean Koontz
9. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
10. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

Not necessarily in that order though.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

1. Lord of the Rings: Tolkien
2. Crime & Punishment: Dostoesvskii
3. The Castle: Kafka
4. Brothers Karamazov: Dostoevskii
5. 100 Years of Solitute: Marquez
6. History: Morante
7. Hunger: Hamsun
8. Master & Margarita: Bulgakov
9. Don Quixote: Cervantes
10. Pride and Prejudice: Austen

Other novels which came close to top 10 were-"Red and the Black" by Stendahl, "Madame Bovary" by Flaubert, "Lolita" by Nabakov, "The Silmarillion" by Tolkien and "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Marquez.

[FemaleQuixote]

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. The Illiad by Homer
3. A Tale of Two Cities
4. Julius Caeser by Shakespeare
5. Le Morte de Arthur
6. Dracula
7. Jane Eyre
8. The Count of Monte Cristo
9. The Mabinogion
10. The House of Mirth

[Lyn]

1. Paradise Lost
2. Wuthering Heights
3. Marabu Stork Nightmares - Irvine Welsh
4. 1984
5. Emma - Austen
6. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg
7. The House with the Green Shutters - George douglas Brown
8. Lanark - Alasdair Gray
9. Consider the Lilies - Iain Chrichton Smith
10. The Restraint of Beasts - Magnus Mills

This to not be a definitive list, merely what I decided on while looked round at my bookshelf and thought, omg I loved that book... I cant usually decide. Given enough time I think my list would end up twenty pages long.

[romantic1117]

I LOVE the Golden Compass. Really wonderful book. The rest of the series is great, too.

[Redzeppelin]

1. Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
2. Hamlet
3. King Lear
4. The Sound & the Fury
5. Mere Christianity
6. Crime & Punishment
7. The Grapes of Wrath
8. The Great Gatsby
9. Moby Dick
10. The Nicomachean Ethics

[Gibran]

Why lots of you enjoy 1984? I think it's hardly called a classic,it's a boring book anyway.

[Behemoth]

1. The Iliad, Homer
2. Paradise Lost, John Milton
3. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
4. Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
5. The Aeneid, Virgil
6. The Divine Comedy, Dante
7. The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
8. Dracula, Bram Stoker
9. The Time-Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
10. Sleepyhead, Mark Billingham

A somewhat eclectic mix, and by no means definitive, but still a little glimpse into my reading-psyche all the same :D P.S. I didn't think that 1984 was great, but I didn't think it was boring. Profoundly depressing, maybe.

[Inderjit Sanghe]

[QUOTE][/Why lots of you enjoy 1984? I think it's hardly called a classic,it's a boring book anyway.QUOTE]

It is perhaps the most important political novel of the 20th century!

[Mugwump101]

1. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
2. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
3. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
4. Notre Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo
5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
6. The Complete Works of HG Wells
7. The Complete Works of Jules Verne
8. Inherit the Wind by Robert E. Lee and someone else
9. The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
10. The Metamorphosis by kafka

[wratchild]

1.-The pillars of the earth (Ken Follett)
2.-1984 (George Orswell)
3.-Alice in wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
4.-Don Quixote (Cervantes)
5.-I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
6.-Dune (Frank Herbert)
7.-Edgar Alan Poe's tales and poems
8.-Papillon (Henri Charriere)
9.-Lord of the rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
10.-The hound of the varkervilles (Arthur Conan Doyle)

[LucyBeth]

The top ten books I've read are...

The Lord of the Rings (we'll count that as one ;-) by J.R.R.Tolkien
The Silmarillian by Tolkien
The Hobbit by Tolkien
The Chronicles of Narnia (we'll call that one too :-D) by C.S.Lewis
The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff
The Eagle of the Ninth by Sutcliff
The Lantern Bearers by Sutcliff
The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

[ennison]

Here are a few books which I don't think that I have mentioned elsewhere. I am not making claims for them as great literature (although some are) but they are major reading experiences and alter how you look at other novels afterwards. I have stuck to novels.

'Hermanos' by William Herrick. He was a cantankerous but likeable American radical. 'Hermanos' is based on his Spanish Civil War experiences.

'The Fox in The Attic' by Richard Hughes. This was the first in a trilogy but he only completed two. A mixture of roman a clef and clever psychological analysis.

'The Green Isle of The Great Deep' by Neil Gunn. This is a novel about totalitarianism thinly disguised as a fairy tale-like odyssey in a Celtic otherworld.

'A Kind of Loving' by Stan Barstow. He described himself as a fourth rate writer and I can forgive a man so self deprecating a great deal. This is from the social realist school and every page rings true.

'Pincher Martin' One of Golding's odder books but worth reading just to see the range of what literature can try to do.

'Life and Fate' A massive multi dimensional novel by a journalist who followed The Red Army in their pursuit of Hitler's legions.

'August 1914' Not my personal favourite amongst his work but the start of a sequence which as far as I know he has not yet concluded - perhaps never will. But it is a novel wide in scope and understanding.

'The Tomorrow File' by Lawrence Sanders. Just one of those iconoclastic novel which is highly disturbing and once read is not likely to be forgotten.

'The Tin Drum'. One of Grass' responses to the cataclysmic period in which he was young. A tremendous imaginative response to militant nationalism.

'The Unforgotten Prisoner' by R C Hutchinson. Now this is a really great piece of literature. Although there are chronological infelicities it is a profound and moving book - a pivotal reading experience

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' by Robert Tressel. Although this is spoiled by a gullible acceptance of socialism as a panacea for the woes of the workers it is probably the best book in English (Patrick MacGill not excepted) of the proletarian experience.

'Gormenghast' Mervyn Peake. Fantastic story-telling gifts and imagination.

‘The Power and The Glory’ Graham Greene .The quintessential Catholic writer and his exploration of the battle between atheism and faith during the so-called Mexican revolution.

‘The Informer’ by Liam O Flaherty. Sardonic. Barbaric occasionally poetic. A writer who was best on the small scale canvas but this though definitely not great literature could only have been written from the point of view of an ex-British army/IRA point of view. It punches well above its weight..

‘The Taste of Too Much’ by Cliff Hanley A minor comic Scottish masterpiece.

‘The Islander’ by A C Maclean. This is a masterpiece too but sadly out-of-print. If any Scottish publisher reads this, then take it as a plea to get this wonderful novel back into bookshops.

‘The Road’ Cormac McCarthy. There aren’t many American writers better than this fellow on form. Set in a post nuclear holocaust USA.

‘The Channering Worm’ J P McConndach. Morbid Calvinistic Gothic. You would either love it or hate it. More of a linguistic tour de force than a straightforward novel.

OOps forgot to mention that Grossman was the author of 'Life and Fate'

Just noticed that 'Enemy At The Gates' was on television yesterday. It's not a very good film but it is based on real events - the sniper that Jude Law plays was a real person. Grossman's novel deals with similar things but on a huge canvas.... what the best Russian writers have always seemed good at. The best Stalingrad text I've read though was Nekrasov's and he was there as a front line soldier. No novel or film can do anything but give a tiny impression of what massive cruel battles like these really involved. Grossman tries to deal with the big issues and that's why I feel his novel is both ambitious and worth reading. He was one of the most accurate and best of the Soviet era journalists during the war that Stalin and his cronies found necessary to call The Great Patriotic War, acknowledging that the Russians were not fighting for the vision of Marxist atheism that the Bolsheviks had imposed.

[ennison]

PS I should have said that 'The Islander' is the best of Macleans books. He was a highly successful childrens author. He wrote fairly dense traditional adventure stories. He described himself as a 'scribbler'. 'The Islander' is an adult book but any literate teenager would like it. I am always irritated when I discover good books are out-of-print.

[Jetxa]

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which is on quite a few lists. Read this book years and years ago and it still stays with me.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, a book I hound everyone to read.
Practical Solitary Magic by Nancy B. Watson, on self-empowerment.
The Pagan Bible by M. Gorham, a book my son found at his college library. I could kiss him a thousand times for checking it out for me.
Just about anything by Taylor Caldwell and Pearl Buck, who know human nature beyond anyone I've ever read.
Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, novels of Alexander the Great.
Ishmael, My Ishmael, Beyond Civilization, and The Story of B by Daniel Quinn, more referals from my son. (kissy, kissy)
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, (and a fantastic movie) about the "prison" of poverty.
The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, extremely interesting story of the written word.
The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur, based on the writings of Alvin Boyd Kuhn.
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls and The Voice of Bugle Ann by MacKinlay Kantor, two adolescent books I still remember after many long years.

[starbuck]

1. Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
2. Clockwork Orange by Burgess
3. Beowulf
4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Lee
5. Pride and Prejudice by Austen
6. Jane Eyre by Bronte
7. Hamlet
8. The Odyssey
9. "Nature and other essays" by Emerson
10. The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne

Some others that didnt make my top ten: The Bell Jar, Twelfth Night, Richard III, Wuthering Heights, The Rise of Silas Lapham, LOTR, and many more:bawling:

[McGrain]

Takes all sorts i guess!

Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
The Gunslinger, King
Salinger, The Catcher In the Rye
Ulysses, Joyce
The Illiad, Homer
The Satanic Verses, Rushdie
Midnight's Children, Rushdie
The Moor's Last Sigh, Rushdie

These are the extraordinary books i've read. Going to be cheeky and sneak in an autobiography, Lucky Man by Micheal J Fox:blush:

[Adolescent09]

I surprised no one has Ken Kessey's beautiful One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on their list :(

[McGrain]

There are a few with that novel on their list. I like it, but sometimes feel it was "overtaken" by the movie?

[rielgenius1688]

My favorites
The Once and Future King by TH White,
The Brother's Karamazov by Dostoevsky,
Crime and Punishment, also by Dostoevsky,
Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory,
Candide, by Voltaire,
Light in August, by William Faulkner

[DavePatron]

Hi, my name is Dave and I'm new here(registered 5 minutes ago). I'm 28(yesterday) and I'm a student living in Michigan. The reason for my post is that I have a project for school that I need a little help with. I won't bore you with all the details but the idea is to poll several hundred people and come up with a list of the top 100 novels ever written. My approach is to ask as many people as possible for their favorite 10 novels and to score 1-2 with 3 points, 3-5 with 2 points, and 6-10 with 1 point. Then I plan to simply add up the points of every book and put them in order. The problem I've found is that when walking around a college campus, more often than not, people can't even name 10 books. Thats why I've decided to take my quest to the internet. At least I know people here have read 10 books lol. When my study is complete I will surely post the results here if anyone is interested in seeing them. And if this post is inappropriate I apologize. Mods feel free to delete/modify/or move to a more appropriate forum if needed. Thanks everyone. Here is a sample list of my favorites thus far.

1. The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
2. Ulysses - James Joyce
3. War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy
4. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
5. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
8. The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
9. Watership Down - Richard Adams
10. Angels And Demons - Dan Brown

Thanks in advance for your help

-DP

[andave_ya]

1. Lord of the Rings
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
4. The Chronicles of Narnia
5. Pickwick Papers
6. Anything by Moliere
7. The Odyssey
8. Anything by Edgar Allan Poe
9. Anne of Green Gables series
10. Silmarillion

[Moira]

1. The Magus - J. Fowels
2. The Demons - Dostoievsky
3. Lord of the Flies - W. Golding
4. Perhaps an island - M. Houllebeque
5. Middlesex - J. Eugenides
6. The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
7.The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
8. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
9. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
10. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I hope it helps.

[THX-1138]

Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit-J.R.R. Tolkien
1984-George Orwell
Animal farm-George Orwell
the kite runner-Khaled Hosseini
Brave New world-Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 -Ray Bradbury
The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
Dark tower-Stephen King
Robinson Crusoe-Daniel Defoe

[cuppajoe_9]

1. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
2. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevski
3. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
4. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
5. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway
6. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
7. Animal Farm - George Orwell
8. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
9. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
10. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (RIP)

[DavePatron]

Thx Scheherazade,

That is actually VERY helpful. Nice list. Its gonna take me a bit of time to get through it lol but I guess thats a good thing. Thx again.

-DP

[HannibalBarca]

*Note: This list includes chiefly history and science fiction. If you are interested in either, you have to read the books listed.

1. The Art of War Sun Tzu - History
2. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck - The Tough Life
3. Time Machine H. G. Wells - Classic Science Fiction
4. Conquest of Gaul Julius Caesar - History
5. The Island of Dr. Moreau H. G. Wells - Classic Science Fiction
6. Hannibal Theodore Ayrault Dodge - History
7. Plutarch's Lives Plutarch - History
8. Alexander T A Dodge - History
9. First Men In The Moon - Classic Science Fiction
10. Outline Of History - H. G. Wells

[DavePatron]

Ok so I went through this entire thread and entered all the top 10 lists into a database. I got rid of the books that were not novels. I also polled hundreds of live people along with a partner and came up with a list. We polled ~500-600 people and came up with a top 100 novels list. Anyone who is interested the list can be found at Top 100 Novels (http://www.best100novels.com). If linking is against the rules I apologize. Mods feel free to delete the link if it is against the rules. Thanks to everyone who listed their favorite books. This thread was a huge help in the project.

DP

[andave_ya]

Nice job. I must say I'm glad LOTR was number 2, and it was really thoughtful of you to add that other top books section.

[bazarov]

Nice, but not objective. Actually, very nonobjective.

[DavePatron]

Nice, but not objective. Actually, very nonobjective.

I Don't understand......

[drunkenKOALA]

Personal Top Ten:

1. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
2. The Idiot by (Dostoevsky, Modern Library edition translated by Anna Brailovsky)
3. Great Expectations (Dickens)
4. White Fang (London)
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain)
6. The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)
7. The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey)
9. Butterfield 8 (O'Hara)
10. Treasure Island (Stevenson); or any other adventure novels will do, Three Musketeers (Dumas), The Scarlet Pimpernel (Orcszy), etc

[Moandor]

1. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
2. The Lord of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
4. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
5. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
6. The Count of Monte Christo - Alexander Dumas
7. The Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
8. The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
9. The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (one of the best stories for children)
10. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

[bazarov]

I Don't understand......

You have done a great job, now I know which books I should read, thank you!:thumbs_up
But list is based on readers picks, some novels are definitely much higher then they really should be. I understand that if 10 people say that book A is better then B, then A is probably better than B, but some books are really overrated.

[livelaughlove]

Wow, thanks very much DavePatron. I was just about to jet off to the B&N, so this list comes in handy. Are you in desperate need of book reviewers? I've read a good dozen or so on the list already, and I can review some of them if you would like. Just let me know. I'm very surprised that the Scarlet Letter isn't there -- or is it? -- I might have missed it.

[grace86]

That is a very good list. A few of them I would have moved, but I like it a lot. What types of reviews are you looking for, because I've read quite a bit of them. Thanks for putting that list together and sharing your results with us.

[Dante Wodehouse]

hm..I just didnt get hte Grapes of Wrath, all that anger growing at their maltreatment, throughout the entire book, and you think, yes! now they will finally rebel, and do they? no, its ends like that. lame.

It was about what people did at the time. It didn't make sense, but it wasn't poor creativity on Steinbeck's part.

[chaplin]

I firmly believe in the supremacy of the Russian writer, for whatever mysterious reason that is so. It is interesting to note that the Russian novel developed really 200+ years after the English novel, and yet, perhaps because of geography or history, the Russian novel quickly surpassed the English novel in its first century, not to mention decade. I am not a big fan of Victorian literature which was the beneficiary of 200 years of opportunity to improve but nonetheless failed to better itself. The ten best novels or works of fiction are hard to pinpoint, but I think that at least 6 would have to be russian.

e.g
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
Any collection of Chekhov stories
Any collection of Gogol stories
Fathers and Sons
The much underrated A Hero of Our Time
Anything by Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov
And even though I'm not a big fan of Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov, because I still believe he's a unique contribution to Russian fiction.

One must realize that Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Dickens and the Brontes etc. are all good writers but they are really just weak similes to what the Russian masters have mastered. The whole of life is there in the immediate summit of Russian literature.

[JaneB]

All my top ten have already been listed except one which is Johnny Mad Dog by Emmanuel Dongala

[Aiculík]

Awww... most of my favourite books didn't even make it in Top 100. :bawling: Oh well. I always knew I was weird. :D

Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
A Chronicle of Death Foretold by G.G. Marquez
Lord of the Flies by Wiliam Golding
1984 by George Orwell
The Scaffold by Chingiz Aitmatov
The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello
The Education of *H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N* by Leo Rosten
Life of Pi by Yan Martel

Pirandello and Bernanos are recent discoveries, which moved The Name of the Rose and One Hundred Years of Solitude to position 11 and 12, though these positions are not "fixed" (except first two:D), and what was one day on the 5th position, may be on the 9th next day and vice versa.

[Nossa]

What are the 'must-read' books for you, on both English and American Lit.? Or any other kinds of literature for that matter. What are the books that you think everyone should read/have on thier to-read list?!

[JuLe]

Amm.. there are plenty, my list is really long. During this summer I wish to read everything that James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Nabukov have ever written.

[Mortis Anarchy]

Amm.. there are plenty, my list is really long. During this summer I wish to read everything that James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Nabukov have ever written.

I love Nabukov...he is amazing. I have been compiling a list for the past year...its indecently long...