In no order and likely to change in the next half hour.
Herzog - Saul Bellow
Independence Day - Richard Ford
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
The Information - Martin Amis
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Disgrace - JM Coetzee
Last edited by sixsmith; 01-02-2009 at 02:08 AM.
Probably my favourite ten classics would be, in no particular order: Hamlet, the Illiad, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, A Christmas Carol, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth
What makes you think we're pros? I don't sell my body on this forumOriginally Posted by HMac
My recommendation - try reading some recommendations from real pros - like Harold Bloom, John Carey, Clifford Fadiman, and James Wood. They don't just produce another boring list, they actually say, at book length, what might be worth reading and why.
Interesting, I really liked the latter of these two but I didn't get into the former. Did you feel Virgin was Eugenides's best book? Maybe I should read another one by him.
Fiction
______
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Native Son by Richard Wright
Gone With the Wind (I'm currently reading this but already I can tell it will be on my top 10 list)
Roots (although it's debatable as to how fictitious this actually is)
Queen (also based on the life of an actual woman but I'll add it as fiction)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (not a classic but I'll add it to make a round 10)
Camoflauge by Joe Haldeman (also not a classic but very interesting)
Non-Fiction
--------------
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Speciesism by Joan Dunayer
Finding Fish by Antwone Fisher
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Assata by Assata Shakur
Left To Tell by Imaculee Ilibagiza
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
Wonders of the African World by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Last edited by African_Love; 10-08-2009 at 12:44 PM.
1. David Copperfield- Dickens
2. East of Eden- Steinbeck
3. The Return of the Native- Thomas Hardy
4. Absalom! Absalom!- Faulkner
5. Don Quixote- Cervantes
6. The Mill on the Floss- Eliot
7. Fortunata y Jacinta- Galdós
8. Jane Eyre- Bronte
9. The Brothers Karamazov- Doestovesky
10. The Last of the Mohicans- Cooper
These are some of my favorites!
The writer of The Art of War is Sun Tzu,not Lao Tzu.I am Chinese,and read this book before.Trust me
~ The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
~ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
~ Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
~ Cannery Row (John Stienbeck)
~ Of Mice and Men (John Stienbeck)
~ Damian (Herman Hesse)
~ Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
Plays:
~ Death of a Salesman
~ Hamlet
~ Cyrano De Bergerac
Almost classics:
~ Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
~ The Wizard of Earthsea (Ersula K Leguin)
Last edited by Chabonist; 10-15-2009 at 01:29 PM.
Right now, as I think about my ten best list, these are the books that come to mind.
It’s a mixed bunch including some poetry and non-fiction.
The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
Coming up for Air, George Orwell
Cancer Ward, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Quite Early One Morning, Dylan Thomas
Resolution and Independence, William Wordsworth
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence
"I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept." Dylan Thomas
Outside of The Psalms which I read daily I'd say "Uttermost Part of the Earth" by Lucas Bridges is my favourite book and after that there are too too many.
This is probably a poor list really, I haven't read enough to really pick and choose yet, and they're all very mainstream, but here goes anyway (in no particular order, sorry):
1. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky (not finished it yet)
2. Animal Farm - Orwell (mostly because Russian history fascinates me)
3. Catch 22 - Heller
4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson (not a novel obviously but I couldn't omit it, it's far too good)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
6. LOTR - Tolkien
7. Brave New World - Huxley
8. Island - Huxley
9. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
10. The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Hardly a revolutionary list, but then I haven't read that much. It's very Western as well.
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
Lists -endless lists.
Instead of lists, I have piles...
1. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
4. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
5. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
8. The Brother Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell
10. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
Der Steppenwolf
Narcissus and Goldmund
Don Quixote
Portrait of Artist as a Young Man
Jude the Obscure
Sons and Lovers
Lolita
Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable
Why only ten? Some more:
Notes from Underground
The Idiot
The Stranger
The Plague
Siddhartha
Nausea
The Master And Margarita
Of Human Bondage
War and Peace
Faust
Great Expectations
Tess Of The D'urbervilles
The Count of Monte Cristo
As I Lay Dying
The Great Gatsby
Mill on the Floss
Journey to the end of the Night
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Madame Bovary
The English Patient
Hunger
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Catcher in the Rye
Pale Fire
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
Some of us do read these lists, Mal. If I see a list with books on I have also rated very highly then I'm interested to see what's on the list that I have not read because the poster seems to have similar tastes to me. That does in this way make at least as much sense as believing the opinion of a critic whose tastes I know nothing about at all.What makes you think we're pros? I don't sell my body on this forum
Making lists can be quite fun too. I'm not going to be critical of it.
What are regrets? Just lessons we haven't learned yet - Beth Orton
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