Top 10 favorite books

[sao95]

Since threads are popping up about books we like, I thought this would be an interesting thread. Kind of difficult to pick ten, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Mine are in no particular order

1) East of Eden - Steinbeck
2) Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
3) Winter of our Discontent - Steinbeck
4) Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters - Salinger
5) Brave New World - Huxley
6) The Transcendentalist - Collected works of Emerson
7) The Snows of Kilimanjaro - Short stories by Hemingway
8) The Fountainhead - Rand
9) The Virtue of Selfishness - Essays by Rand
10) The Bell Jar - Plath (I'm surprising myself by putting this in the top ten)

[zoesdad]

This is sad to say, but I don't think I can name ten books. Not a huge reader. So I'll list the last two books I've read, both by Cormac McCarthy.

The Road
No Country for Old Men

On my favoirte list I would have to put:

Walden and Other Writings--Henry David Thoreau
One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish--Dr. Seuss
The Runaway Bunny--Margaret Wise Brown

* I'm not kidding about Suess or Brown. Those guys were absolute genius! And Clement Hurd (the illustrator in Runaway Bunny) is a personal favorite.

[North Country Dad]

Great idea, but man, is it tough to narrow it down...so I won't O:)

in no order...

Middlemarch - George Eliot
Off for the Sweet Hereafter - T. R. Pearson
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Love Medicine - Louise Erdrich
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard

also...

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Segu - Maryse Conde
Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson

[DarthDaddy]

In No Real Order...


The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit
Jurassic Park
The Relic
Harry Potter (all 7 as 1)
The Old Man and The Sea
Of Mice and Men
Disc World Books
The Iliad
The Odyssey

[Zag]

I can't narrow down to 10 without spending way more time thinking about it than I'm going to right now, but 2 that I know will be in the top 10 no matter what are

1) Human, All Too Human - Friedrich Nietzsche
2) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

After that would come more than 8 great books that I need to think about a lot more.

[kmedlin]

Christopher Paul Curtis- The Watsons Move to Burmingham, 1963. (Children's book, but one of the best books I have ever read.

Jane Austen-Emma, Sense and Sensibility

Shakespeare-Othello, King Lear,

Tony Morrison-Song of Solomon

The Raven- Edgar Allan Poe

Elie Wiesel-Night

Malcom Gladwell- The Tipping Point

Thoreau and all of the other transendenlists (sp?) I hated!

No particular order, I could list more. To bad I don't have as much time to read anymore.

[silviomossa]

Just looking on the shelves, ten novels in no order:

Candide by Voltaire (probably my favorite)
Hard Times or Bleak House by Charles Dickens
All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
White Noise by Don DeLillo
A Grain Of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Ragtime by EL Doctrow
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Watership Down by Richard Adams

And a few plays:
The Piano Lesson (and all others in The Century Cycle) by August Wilson
Angels In America by Tony Kushner
Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare
The Miser or The Misanthrope by Moliere

[North Country Dad]

I'll add a few plays also:

Othello - Shakespeare
Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams
The Dumb Waiter - Harold Pinter
Anything Samuel Beckett ever wrote

[DarthDaddy]

I never really enjoyed Shakespeare... I have read tons of Greek Tragedies, but most of the Shakespeare plays drove me nuts with the "Shakespearian English"

[North Country Dad]

I never really enjoyed Shakespeare... I have read tons of Greek Tragedies, but most of the Shakespeare plays drove me nuts with the "Shakespearian English"

Oh, but it can be so nasty!

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe...

...Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

My students always get a kick out of those lines. O:)

And you could fill a book with the phrases he invented or made popular that are still common today.

[kmedlin]

Yeah, I guess the plays are not considered books. I always considered them book because they are so darn long!

[sao95]

I would consider the plays books. I've read a bit of Shakespeare, I think my favorite of his would be A Midsummer Nights Dream. Have also enjoyed Steinbeck's Burning Bright.

[Mark B.]

I never really enjoyed Shakespeare... I have read tons of Greek Tragedies, but most of the Shakespeare plays drove me nuts with the "Shakespearian English"

Thou art a more of a "Take me to your leader" kind of man.

[CTDon]

Agreed!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon

[CTDon]

I remember watching that as a kid. Strange stuff.

I believe I even have it on VHS still.



Watership Down by Richard Adams

[silviomossa]

I would consider the plays books.

I would too, I just split them up so that I could have more than ten. O:) The collected works of August Wilson or Tennessee Williams stand up to the best of any novelist in the 20th century.

[North Country Dad]

I would too, I just split them up so that I could have more than ten. O:) The collected works of August Wilson or Tennessee Williams stand up to the best of any novelist in the 20th century.

I have read and taught Williams' The Glass Menagerie a dozen times, and Tom's speech about the meek living in a world full of lightning still makes me weepy. Beautiful writing.

[jeffus]

1. McMaster-Carr Catalog (also know as the Bible, in some circles)
2. Grainger Catalog (if it's not in #1, it'll be in here)
3. MSC Tool
4. Machinery's Handbook - any edition
5. Reid Supply
6. Webster's New World Dictionary
7. Home Improvements 1-2-3
8. AutoCad for Dummies
9. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
10. So Long & Thanks for All the Fish!

;)

:jester:

[jerseydad]

I like to read biographies. Presidents, rock stars, whoever.

On the other section, I mentioned that I am currently reading "Punk Rock Dad"...its the #1 parenting book I have ever read. Its a fun and quick read.
Can't say that it is an all time classic though

[North Country Dad]

Hey, Jersey -- have you read "Everything I'm Cracked up to Be"? It's by Jen Trynin, a rising rock star from the mid-90s and her crazy ride to semi-fame and even quicker decline back into obscurity. She's one of my favorite songwriters and her biography is a lot of fun to read, especially for an inside look into the music business.

[jerseydad]

No, I haven't read it. I just looked it up because, to be honest, I never heard of her before. I was never really into the grundge/alternative music of the 90's, but the reviews of her book are fantastic. I'll check it out. Seems like it's funny and also gets into the dirtier side of the business. Before my career as a SAHD I was a lawyer (gasp) and I used to fool around with the idea of entertainment law or becoming a band manager. When I get a chance, I'll check out the book because I love hearing about the business from the musician's standpoint. I actually just finished reading "Slash" by, duh, Slash of Guns n Roses. I was surprised about his honesty and it was interesting to see his take on both the people in the business (promoters, record labels, managers, lawyers, etc.) and GNR as a legal entity rather than as a band. I also liked the fact that he didn't get too deep into the sensational lifestyle he has had. He tells just enough previously unheard of stories to whet your "appetite" (no pun intended)

[cloweman]

I'll give this a shot, but keep in mind this is severely skewed by what I've been reading lately. This is in no particular order.

1. LOTR Trilogy & the Hobbit by Tolkien
2. The Stand by Stephen King
3. The Hitchhikers trilogy (all 6 books) by Douglas Adams
4. The Gunslinger Series by King
5. Illusions: The adventures of a reluctant messiah by Richard Bach
6. Any book w/ Drizzt by R.A. Salvatore
7. Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff the childhood friend of Jesus Christ by Christopher Moore
8. A prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
9. Roots by Haley
10. Harry Potter series by Rowling

I'm sure if I think more this list will change.

[sao95]

Anyone read Frank Norris? In particular McTeague? I picked it up yesterday, never had heard of it before.

[PackerDad]

It is way too hard to boil it down to ten, so I am going for my top book.

My favorite book is The Hobbit. I have read it many times, have read it to my nieces as a bedtime story when they spent a week with us, and will start to read it to my daughter in the near future when she is able to listen to a story without needing to see pictures.

I have read too many other good books, in too many differing genres, to be able to rank them, but The Hobbit will always hold my #1 spot.

[Zag]

5. Illusions: The adventures of a reluctant messiah by Richard Bach



My wife lent that book to me when I was 15. To that point it was the most amazing thing I had ever read. Helped to cement the idea in my head that she was the most amazing girl I'd ever met (I believe she was dating my best friend at the time). It took her 12 more years to realize the same thing about me! laughing

I'm not sure if it would make my list now, but definitely a top 10 of most influential on my developing mind.

Zag

[stretch]

Don't have the bandwidth to do an ultimate favorites list, so I'll just list a few books I've reread recently and still liked as much as the first time around. No equivalence is implied.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love -- Oscar Hijuelos.
Disgrace -- J.M. Coetzee.
This is the Way the World Ends -- James Morrow.
Underworld -- Don DeLillo.
The Drawing of the Dark -- Tim Powers. (This combines alternate history, fantasy and beer lore and should be right up a few of you folks' streets.)

[Remington]

Top 10 but in no particular order.

1. To Build a Fire - Jack London
2. Watchers - Dean Koontz
3. The Gunslinger Series (7 books I think it was) - Stephen King
4. If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? - Bill Heavey
5. A Table in the Presence - Carey H. Cash
6. A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean
7. Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
8. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
9. Heartbreaker - Julie Garwood
10. The Green Mile - Stephen King

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