Ten Favorite Novels

[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.

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 ... perhaps a small, dingy room where you would be consigned to reading Jackie Collins novels while watching re-runs of "Oprah" and "Hee-Haw".

[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 ... perhaps a small, dingy room where you would be consigned to reading Jackie Collins novels while watching re-runs of "Oprah" and "Hee-Haw".

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