10 to read before the apocalypse?

Locamon

I think most of the greats have been covered and I certainly agree with 'Catch 22' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' among many but some I have read in the last year or so worth a late entry would be

Everyman Philip Roth
Slow Man J.M. Coetzee -Disgrace is by far the better book but while a bit out there this is certainly more fun
The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster
Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson

Just in case you have read all the oldies..

It wasn't me!

dh2007 wrote:

Not sure if this has been posted before but does anyone else try to discern whether a poster is male or female based on their favourite books?

Guess my gender:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
2. The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
3. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
4. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy)
5. The Harry Potter series (JK Rowling)
6. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
7. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres)
8. Jane Eyre - (Charlotte Bronte)
9. About the Author (John Colapinto)
10. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

Woman/gay man?

Hmm, not definitive, but a list I'd certainly recommend everyone read would be as follows:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
A Brief History of Time - Steven Hawking
Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
The Discworld Series - Terry Pratchett

Several there involve multiple books, but there's a lot to be gotten from everything there.

silvine

The Discworld series?

Yes they are very good but I'm not convinced if they are for everyone. Firstly the fantasy element would put a lot of people off and the books can get a little repititive after a while.

There are one or two real gems in Pratchet's collection though e.g. Small Gods.

It wasn't me!

You think? I found Small Gods a little too... thinky, perhaps. I'm a big fan of all the city watch books though. Also, apparently the next one will be focused on Moist von Lipwig.

unknownlegend

I found Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to be a strikingly well written and disturbing book. The man has a great mastery over the written word, and I'd recommend it highly as a must-read.

It wasn't me!

unknownlegend wrote:

I found Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to be a strikingly well written and disturbing book. The man has a great mastery over the written word, and I'd recommend it highly as a must-read.

Agree completely.

friend and foe

has anyone mentioned Shantaram yet??

quite literally the most incredible book i've read in a long time... really makes you think twice about people

Deirdre Maguire

This is an odd one, I know, and I don't know if it would fit into the top ten books ever category, but I just finished Sean Moncrieff's novel, 'The History of Things' (I think it was only published this week), and it was really, really good - which surprised me greatly because I never liked him on television. He should write full time.

SureThisIsIt

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
1984 - Orwell
Love in the Time of Cholera - Garcia Marquez
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Verne
Frankentstein - Mary Shelley
The Heart of the Matter - Greene
The Pearl - Steinbeck
The Prince - Machiavelli
Dubliners - Joyce

Like all of these a lot. All very interesting. More recently; "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is good and "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell.

Anyone else got any suggestions for me?

slinky

SureThisIsIt wrote:

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev

Turgenev is one of my favourite writers, First Love especially.

Reg'stoy

In no particular order as they say,

Dune by Frank Herbert
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Others by James Herbert (simply wonderful)
The Stand By Stephen King
Memnoch -The Devil- by Anne Rice
The Far Side Gallery (any of them) by Gary Larson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick
An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan
2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I picked my ten because I return to them many many times, I've even bought audio versions of Dune and 2001 so I can listen to them when I exercise.
I was going to include The Famous Five, Biggles and Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series because I loved them as a child (I still remember that knothole in the fence).

slipss

To read before the apocalypse....

Most of mine have been said many times over in the thread, only one missing.

Good Omens - Terry Pratchet & Niel Gaimann
Seeing as it's the apocalypse and all, I'm thiniing you'd want something lighthearted but appropriate, this fits the bill to a letter. "Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home."

(from the book sleave)
"According to the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter -- the world's only totally reliable guide to the future -- the world will end on a Saturday.
Next Saturday, in fact. Just after tea.
Which means that Armageddon will happen on a Saturday night. There will be seas of fire, rains of fish, the moon turning to blood and the massed armies of Heaven and Hell will sort it out once and for all.
Which is a major problem for Crowley, Hell's most approachable demon and former serpent, and his opposite number and old friend Aziraphale, genuine angel and Soho bookshop owner.
They like it down here (or, in Crowley's case, up here).
So they've got no alternative but to stop the Four Motorcyclists of the Apocalypse, defeat the marching ranks of the Witchfinder's army (all two of them) and -- somehow -- stop it all happening.
Above all (or, in Aziraphale's case, below all), they need to find and kill the Antichrist, currently the most powerful creature on Earth.
This is a shame.
Because he's eleven years old, loves his dog (even though it's really a Satanic hellhound under all that hair), really cares about the environment, and is the sort of boy anyone would be proud to have as a son. He's also totally invulnerable, and a nice kid."

And if that isn't enough, they've still got Sunday to deal with..

This is genuinly my favourite book of all time, I have never laughed so much in my life than in the three days I spent reading it morning noon and night, except maybe the second time I read it. It's filled with instantly classic and endearing characters from the slick, sophisticated demon Crowley who tries to carry out the evil whims of hell while looking cool and without actually hurting anyone, to the four horseman of the apocalypse trying to come to terms with the modern world and the changes it brings to thier profession. Touching on various subjects from American globalisation to the nesting habits of Gorrilas and from modern pop culture to religious conservatism your bound to have some affinity to it.

But it's not only an immensly funny send up of the Omen, it also has some very tangible things to say about human nature and the whole concepts of good and evil. I read War and Peace, I read Crime and Punishment, neither come close to analysing or summing up the human condition as well as Good Omens in my opinion, largely because it does so with an evil sense of humour which is a large part f humanity, but thats probably just me.

I was trying to find a quote to sum up what I mean but instead I ended up spending 30 mins just laughing myself silly reading them all, so this one will do.

"Most of the members of the covent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow"

Hivemind187

1984 (George Orwell)

Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

The Selfish Gene, The Ancestors Tale & The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins)

The Tomb (Probably the absolute pinnacle of pulp-horror by F. Paul Wilson)

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)

I am Legend (Richard Matheson)

The Brothers Karamasov (Dostoyevsky)

Mr. Bones

Amongst Women - John McGahern
Timbuktu - Paul Auster
1984 - George Orwell
The Trial - Franz Kafka
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

buck65

Falconer John Cheever ,
all of Kafka really.

monkey9

Crime and Punishment for definate.

KIVES

I would love to bore people with my ten favourite books but I won't...ALL I WILL SAY IS,until 2 years ago I considered myself well read and fairly knowlegeable about Irish Literature, that is, until I stumbled upon Flann O'Brien's 'AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS'...twas like listening to The Clash for the first time,maybe better...If I die tonight I'll die happier if not altogether painlessly knowing I have read one of 'the' books of the Twentieth Century...

remus808

Dune
LOTR: Two Towers
Moby Dick
1984
Animal Farm
To Kill A Mockingbird
Memoirs Of A Geisha

Flymask

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (In fact most books by her, but especially this one)
The Magus - John Fowles (or The French Lieutenant's Woman)
Smiley's People - John Le Carre
The Alchemist - Paolo Coelho
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill
The Story of the Night - Colm Toibin
Another Country - James Baldwin
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Despite the above, 40+ years later and for sheer 'comfort' reading, I can still be tempted to delve into my collection of 'William' books by Richmal Crompton - unbeatable!!

MizzLolly

Memoirs of a Geisha
By far the best I've read, I cried at the end. Don't let the film put u off, I heard it is only average! The book is unreal!!

To Kill A Mockingbird
So moving. It really opens your eyes up, makes you feel proud of humanity and yet so disgusted at the same time.

The Da Vinci Code
Not for all that publicity jazz but for the way he manages to keep your breath held throughout every chapter.

Angela's Ashes
It will make a huge impact on you, avoid if you're partuclarily sensitive. Pretty heavy emotions here but very fulfilling.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
It's just so Irish. You actually become protective of the young characters.

Romeo and Juliet
Not coz I'm a girl and it's a love story. The opposite actually, the way it ends in a so-called tragedy. The language Shakespeare uses... just everything about it!!

The Canterbury Tales
Ok so Chaucer isn't exactly light reading but I really think it is very rewarding to read. You'd be amazed at how much we haven't changed since Medieval times.

Hmmm.... only three to go. I have to consider these carefully! I'm only half way through an interesting book at the moment. I'll finish this when I finish the book to see if it fits into my top ten!!

longshanks

has anyone mentioned charles bukowski yet? i've only read women, and post office, but i've gone back to them a few times since first reading them.
also a lot of the same books are being mentioned over and over, but does anyone find that these books often dont live up to the hype? 1984 and catch 22 being two i didn't even bother finishing

markw999

You Shall Know Our Velocity - Dave Eggers
Martian Time-Slip - Philip K Dick
My Idea of Fun - Will Self
Beautiful Losers - Leonard Cohen (not an easy read, but one of my top three)
The Married Man - Edmund White
The Cerebus comic books , collected in 16 phonesize books spanning 300 issues and 25 years by Dave Sim (and Gerhard) - The best comic book ever. Bar none.
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Mathilda - Roald Dahl
Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel

more to follow...

QueenFunkatron

Sophie's World by Jostein Gardner
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
Complete Works of Ted Hughes
Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Oscar Wilde's Complete Stories for Children
Bloomsbury's Dictionary
Straw Dogs by John Gray
Crime & Punishment by Dostoevsky
The Bible
Simpsons Scripts (doesn't exist as book, but should)

Lands Leaving

QueenFunkatron wrote: »

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Of all his books that I've read thats the last I'd put on the list. Still decent, but no choke or fight club.

Ok:

Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
American Psycho - Easton Ellis
An American Dream - Mailer
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Vile Bodies - Waugh
Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut

This is harder than I thought to decide on, I'll come back later!

AngryHippie

Its an impossible task, as so many have different merits, in no order:

1. Papillion - Henry Chattiere
Well written, eye opening, Tragedy of wasted life & time, heartening message of persistece

2 The Meaning Of Lif - Douglas Adams
A book to keep beside the Jax, A Witty mind has a go at the names we call stuff and places

3 The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara & Whoever wrote the last paragraph

4 Shantaram - Gregory David RobertsGreat read, epic life, I hope it's all as true as is it is convincing

5 Animal Farm - George Orwell
19th & 20th Century History, without naming names. Its tough bein a sheep, but very satisfying if pointless being a goat

6 Shake hands with the Devil - Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire
A heart rending explanation of why the UN failed in Rwanda & ever since, The hardest book ever written by one man, He deserves a Nobel prize for staying, and another for being able to write that book. A god among men.

7 Wild Swans - Jung Chang
3 generations of the formation of what we have come to know as modern China. Essential reading for the 21st Century, They just might have that apocalypse tucked away there somewhere.

8 One World - Peter Singer
Globalization, The problems and approaches to solutions that the entire world must confront if the Western way of life has any chances of surviving the next 50 years, cautiosly optimistic, which I admire in Singer, Its easy to be bleak.

9 Pick a Terry Pratchett bookHe's a cunning satirist, good stories well written, Thief of time my personal favorite.

10 The Hitchhikers 5ology - Douglas Adams
You'll understand by page 5, appreciate by 6 and love by the end. Love it

I don't count The Bible, The Q'aran, or any other compilations of religious works by long deceased semi-anonymous Authors , While they have a relevance in a moral sense, I've read Dawkins and I get the point that Religion is used as an excuse for bad more than an inspiration for good.
Aside from the point that much of the Bible has been edited and translated and mucked about enough to lose the point. Good stories in old testament, New testament largely muck. Haven't read the Q'aran yet, but its on the list

Toilet Paper:
Patricia Cornwell
John Grisham
Enid Blyton
A large portion of Dickens
Mills & Boone
A Million Little Pieces (what a towel)
The Hardy Boys
I know its a little fascist, but anything by the above Authors is a serious candidate for thermal recycling

Thanks to everyone who was put up their top 10, I started at page one, and now have a list of 42 that I haven't read, that I really want to....


To Chapters.....


I'll be the hippie with the list haha

AngryHippie

Its an impossible task, as so many have different merits, in no order:

1. Papillion - Henry Chattiere
Well written, eye opening, Tragedy of wasted life & time, heartening message of persistece

2 The Meaning Of Lif - Douglas Adams
A book to keep beside the Jax, A Witty mind has a go at the names we call stuff and places

3 The Motorcycle Diaries - Che Guevara & Whoever wrote the last paragraph

4 Shantaram - Gregory David RobertsGreat read, epic life, I hope it's all as true as is it is convincing

5 Animal Farm - George Orwell
19th & 20th Century History, without naming names. Its tough bein a sheep, but very satisfying if pointless being a goat

6 Shake hands with the Devil - Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire
A heart rending explanation of why the UN failed in Rwanda & ever since, The hardest book ever written by one man, He deserves a Nobel prize for staying, and another for being able to write that book. A god among men.

7 Wild Swans - Jung Chang
3 generations of the formation of what we have come to know as modern China. Essential reading for the 21st Century, They just might have that apocalypse tucked away there somewhere.

8 One World - Peter Singer
Globalization, The problems and approaches to solutions that the entire world must confront if the Western way of life has any chances of surviving the next 50 years, cautiosly optimistic, which I admire in Singer, Its easy to be bleak.

9 Pick a Terry Pratchett bookHe's a cunning satirist, good stories well written, Thief of time my personal favorite.

10 The Hitchhikers 5ology - Douglas Adams
You'll understand by page 5, appreciate by 6 and love by the end. Love it

I don't count The Bible, The Q'aran, or any other compilations of religious works by long deceased semi-anonymous Authors , While they have a relevance in a moral sense, I've read Dawkins and I get the point that Religion is used as an excuse for bad more than an inspiration for good.
Aside from the point that much of the Bible has been edited and translated and mucked about enough to lose the point. Good stories in old testament, New testament largely muck. Haven't read the Q'aran yet, but its on the list

Toilet Paper:
Patricia Cornwell
John Grisham
Enid Blyton
A large portion of Dickens
Mills & Boone
A Million Little Pieces (what a towel)
The Hardy Boys
I know its a little fascist, but anything by the above Authors is a serious candidate for thermal recycling

Thanks to everyone who was put up their top 10, I started at page one, and now have a list of 42 that I haven't read, that I really want to....


To Chapters.....

REPSOC1916

1. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
2. Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. Language, Truth and Logic - A.J. Ayer
4. Ulysses - James Joyce
5. 1984 - George Orwell
6. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstory
7. Silas Marner - George Eliot
8. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
9. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus - Ludwig Wittgenstein
10. On Natural Selection - Charles Darwin

I loved Les Mis. I find it strange that Hugo isnt liked today by a lot of Literary critics. I don't care if he was extravagant - its beautiful prose. He influenced many writers such as Dostoevsky and Camus.

Also AngryHippie I personally do not consider anything by Dickens to be toilet paper. What writings are exactly a large portion?

pretty-in-pink

In no particular order:
Animal Farm-
The Lord Of The Flies
Pride & Prejudice
Memoirs Of a Geisha (the movie is rubbish though)
Romeo & Juliet
Helter Skelter (disturbing, but a good insight. Manson family were way more messed up then you'd think)
Go Ask Alice
Misery
The Da Vinci Code
The 5 People You Meet In Heaven

There are many more books I love,
PJ Tracy, Ian Rankin, Jodi Piccoult, True Crime ones,
I like Ross O Carroll Kelly, funny books
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors
Anne Of Green Gables
To kill a mockingbird

Heck, I'll read most anything.

I've to get my hands on 1984

I guess clockwork orange should be read- but I didn't like it, at all

dvega

Magician (Raymond E Fiest)
I am Legend (Robert Matta
Enders Game (Orson Scott Card)
1984 (George Orwell)
The Damage Done (Warren Fellows)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K Dick)
Perfect Day (Ira Levin)
Gotrek & Felix (William King) 'Dam fine adventure reading'
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
Marching Powder (Rusty Young)

Maybe not so much in that order but all Fine Reading!

jmcguire

Before the acpoalypse (which is undoubtedly coming soon when you consider the amount of rum, sodomy and the lash about the place) are as follows;

1. oh the places you'll go - Dr.Seus
2. The Bible - God
3. Atonement - Ian McEwan
4.

I have to go and pray now before the apocalypse comes...sorry. But I think that should keep everyone going until its all over - the first is only short.

bullpost

No particular order:
A confederacy of Dunces -John Kennedy Toole
Dubliners - james Joyce
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Neon rain - James Lee Burke
Ironweed - William kennedy
Homage To Catalonia - George Orwell
Colin Wilson -The Occult
The Magus of Strovolos - Kyriacos C. Markides
Meetingswith Remarkable Men - G.I Gurdieff
The spirit-wrestlers - Philip Marsden

thusspakeblixa

Das Kapital - Karl Marx
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzche
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Whisperer in Darkness - H.P. Lovecraft
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
As You Like It - William Shakespeare
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett

and.... ehhh.....
A Sylvia Plath poetry anthology???

Abaddon

There are too many books that I haven't yet read for me to dare suggest 10 books that should definitely be read before you die, but I will recommend 10 books (in no particular order) that have lived within me ever since I read them...
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
The Farewell Party - Milan Kundera
Franny and Zoey - JD Salinger
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Foundation series - Isaac Asimov
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Kingdom of the Wicked - Anthony Burgess
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley

What do you think?

Honky McCool

Money - Martin Amis
Forty Stories - Donald Barthelme
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
The Demon - Hubert Selby Jr.
Gertrude and Claudius - John Updike

bluefinger

George Orwell-1984
James Joyce-Dubliners
Plato-The Republic
Shakespeare-Hamlet
Joseph Heller-Catch 22
JD Sallinger-Cather in the rye
Aldous Huxley-Brave New World
Ray Bradbury-Farenheit 451
EH Gombrich-A little history of the world
Homer-The odyssey

East of Eden - Steinbeck
Cannery Row - Steinbeck
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
Candide - Voltaire
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
As I Walked Out One Summer Morning - Laurie Lee
Norweigan Wood - Marukami
Underworld - De Lillo
Saturday - Ian Mc Ewan

skybluejay

glasso wrote: »

East of Eden - Steinbeck
Cannery Row - Steinbeck
Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
Candide - Voltaire
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
As I Walked Out One Summer Morning - Laurie Lee
Norweigan Wood - Marukami
Underworld - De Lillo
Saturday - Ian Mc Ewan

I've read seven out of those ten, and it looks like I'll have to read the others now - all seven are in my 'favourite books ever' list. Just finished the Laurie Lee one, and... wow. Amazing stuff.

emkey

I decided to keep here only books I've read before but I'd love to read again before the world collapses. No particular order.

M. Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita - amazing thing, probably the best book ever written!
M. Puzo - The Godfather
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings - for the child in me
J. Irving - The World According to Garp
G.G. Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
P.K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
G. Orwell - 1984
N. Gaiman - American Gods
J.G. Ballard - Empire of the Sun
Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
B. Hrabal - Closely Watched Trains

Lizzykins

Jane Eyre -Charlotte Bronte
Little Women-Louisa M Alcott
Star of the Sea- Joseph O'Connor
Hatter's Castle-AJ Cronin
Harry Potter 1-7 - JK Rowling
Lord of the Rings-JRR Tolkien
Timeline- Michael Crichton
Fatherland- Robert Harris
Taken- Dean Koontz
Heidi-Johanna Spyri

Lorna7

East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Harry Potter - J.K Rowling
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Middlemarch - George Eliot
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Sconsey

Ten books I've really enjoyed in no particular order....

Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
the Foundation series (all of 'em) - Isaac Asimov
Dune - Frank Herbert
Vernon God Little - ???
It - Stephen King
The Magician - Raymond E Feist
Live From Golgotha - Gore Vidal
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (sp?)
Imperium - Robert Harris
...and all the 'Culture' books by Iain M Banks were a godd read.

inverted_world

This is really difficult to narrow it down to just ten. Here are mine:

60 Stories - Donald Barthelme (kudos to the guy who mentioned him earlier! Wonderful, quirky stories!)
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Trilogy - Samuel Beckett
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Under Milk Wood nearly made it, but then I decided to leave it out because it really needs to be heard and not read to appreciate it. I had Joyce in there too, but he's been mentioned so often that I figured the others deserve a chance. It was also a little painful not including Poe. But there you are.

navin.r.johnson

1-Slaughterhouse 5 (Vonnegut)
2-On The Road (Kerouac)
3-Norweigen Wood (Murakami)
4-The Road (McCarthy)
5-Middlesex (Eugenedies)
6-I Am Legend (Matheson)
7-Naked Pictures of Famous People (Stewart)
8-In Cold Blood (Capote)
9-Catcher in The Rye (Salinger)
10-Old Man And The Sea (Hemmingway)

Fursey

A list of great 10 great War Novels:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Year of the French by Thomas Flanagan

The Emperor of Ice Cream, by Brian Moore

Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh

An Ice Cream War by William Boyd

Bomber by Len Deighton

Shogun, by James Clavell

Sand in the Wind, by Robert Roth

Troubles by J.G. Farrell

yermandan

The monk who sold his ferrari - Robin S. Sharma

AmieeHeartsKeak

I have recently purchased some Umberto Eco and F. Scott Fitzgerald in order to prepare myself for intelligent conversation with other bookish-types, but if I really knew the world was going to end I would advise people to read these 5, because they are books I've read at least 3 times each with the exception of Middlesex, which is kinda long to read over and over....

1. Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat - she is a Haitian writer and this might be the most intense book I've ever read.
2. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, because I couldn't put it down.
3. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbin, another one that I couldn't put down.
4. The Way Forward Is With A Broken Heart by Alice Walker, because the older I get (ah so wise at 23) the more her writing makes sense to me, this book in particular.
5. Huis Clos by Sartre, because it's pretentious AND enjoyable to read.


This is a really weird cluster of books but they are ones I can re-read and still enjoy. I'm a big fan of poetry as well...

emkey

never heard about any of them, but after the recommendation i'll check them at least.

AmieeHeartsKeak

they're all over the place, so hope at least one suits your taste!

crotalus667

AmieeHeartsKeak wrote: »

2. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, because I couldn't put it down.

I just baught this one on the recomedation of oprah , it got praise from her show but mixed reviews form amazon , to be honest most of the negitive stuff on amazon seemed petty and bitter :rolleyes: I cant wait to read it (im about 100 pages into the golden compas at the moment (sorry for the bad spelling)

AmieeHeartsKeak

! I hope you like it - its sort of a history lesson and a life story all in one. Read Krik?Krak! as well, I think Oprah might be a fan of Edwidge Danticat... (oh Oprah, such an outrageous lady but great book recommendations sometimes).

P.S. I like fellow readers-who-are-bad-spellers!