Five Favorite Books

[sunvalleylaw]

Facebook had another top 5 thing going on and I saw that one of our other fretters had answered it. So I did too. These are the ones I listed off the top of my head.

The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey
The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury, and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain/Clemens

I am enjoying the Dark Tower series, but I am not ready to say it supplants one of the above yet. What are your five?

[R_of_G]

Good thread Steve. I will limit myself to one each from Tolkien and King.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
It - Stephen King
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

[Rocket]

"The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", "A Separate Reality", "Journey to Ixtlan", et al. - by Carlos Casteneda
Colossus Trilogy ["Colossus: The Forbin Project", "The Fall of Colossus", "Colossus and the Crab"] - by D.F. Jones
"Shadowland" - by Peter Straub

http://www.thefret.net/showpost.php?...3&postcount=37

[Suhnton]

"The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", "A Separate Reality", "Journey to Ixtlan", et al. - by Carlos Casteneda
Colossus Trilogy ["Colossus: The Forbin Project", "The Fall of Colossus", "Colossus and the Crab"] - by D.F. Jones
"Shadowland" - by Peter Straub

I might have to check those out, they look good.

Of the books I've read in the last few years:

Guns, Germs and Steel / The Third Chimpanzee - Jared Diamond
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Short Stories - Shiga Naoya
Moomin series books (Japanese translated version) - Tove Jansson
The Moomin novels are essentially for kids, but they're highly imaginative, a good read.

[mechanic]

1 Hop on pop
2 Green eggs and ham
3 Cat in the hat
4 One fish two fish red fish blue fish
5 There's a wocket in my pocket

[Jimi75]

Too many books to choose the top 5 really. As I am going to work by train, I read - constantly!
Two outstanding books among the last two years were:

Il Gattopardo - Tomasi Di Lampedusa (I have read this in its original Italian version)

The year of living biblically - A.J. Jacobs - a fantastic adventure, a real story

The other topps change from time to time, such as Dan Brown's and Simon Beckett's novels.

[Geraint Jones]

I read a lot and try to balance the pulp with the more intellectually stimulating to slow down my brain turning to mush .

Catch 22 by Joeseph Heller
Foucault`s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Hitler My Part In His Downfall by Spike Milligan.

Maybe you should start a thread on books you`ve read but failed to understand and finish .

[bigG]

There are too many to list a Top 5, but my all-time favorite is a short read called:

Illusions, by Richard Bach

If you haven't read it, I highly suggest it. I've never read another book like it. Might be life changing - will certainly open up a new way of looking at life. :

[Childbride]

i simply can't do that, i've read too much. i was a communications/journalism major, then an english lit major, before i went to law school.

same if you asked me my five favorite movies.

so i thought really hard and came up with some authors.

tolkien

stephen king [specifically lisey's story, the stand, the dark tower series, and the talisman, which was written with straub]

steinbeck... [grapes of wrath, of mice and men] [faulkner always gave me a headache]

c.s. lewis

the works of e e cummings... as a poet, he spoke to me. i know that's not a book, but i'm treating this topic openly.

[Steve206]

For me, and keeping in mind that these were major books in subtle ways, that ended up teaching me things about life and myself.

Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand

Shogun - James Clavel

In his own write - John Lennon

Cities in Flight - James Blish

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance,,,,,

Steve

[sunvalleylaw]

Good ones Steve! Ok folks, keep 'em coming. They don't have to be strictly all time favorites or anything, just 5 you really like. Seems a good way to get some good summer reading ideas.

[Ro3b]

Here's some good stuff I've read in the last couple of years. I'll do a music-related list and a general one.

Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad
Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain
Guitar: An American Life by Tim Brookes
Guitar Man: A Six-String Odyssey, or, You Love that Guitar More than You Love Me by Will Hodgkinson


Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

[tot_Ou_tard]

"The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge", "A Separate Reality", "Journey to Ixtlan", et al. - by Carlos Casteneda

et al. ? Man, I stopped after the first three: great stories but I never did get my Jr Shaman badge.

Foucault`s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Nice to see Eco on the list. Have you read The Island of the Day Before?

It's nothing like Foucault's Pendulum, but I think that it's a great book.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Kavalier & Clay is a great story. Are any of his others any good? I've only read this one.

I found Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a fun read, but somehow forgettable.

[R_of_G]

Kavalier & Clay is a great story. Are any of his others any good? I've only read this one.

I read Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union a couple of years ago and thought it was quite good.

[tot_Ou_tard]

I read Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union a couple of years ago and thought it was quite good.

Thankee sai.

[Ro3b]

+1. You might not think a detective story set in a Jewish exile community in Alaska would keep you up at night reading, but it definitely will.

[Geraint Jones]

Nice to see Eco on the list. Have you read The Island of the Day Before?

It's nothing like Foucault's Pendulum, but I think that it's a great book.

Thirteen years ago I took a year off work and went off on an extended holiday around Australia,NZ and a chunk of SE Asia , in my rucksack for the trip I packed The Island of the Day Before . I lugged that book around for the whole trip , now that should go on my list of failed to understand/finish , I did try but it was to much for me .I was too tight to throw the book away in fact its in my book case now as a reminder of my failure .

[sunvalleylaw]

I lugged "Anna Karenina" around on a senior year college vacation in the US Virgin Islands. I even used it as a pillow when we had to sleep in the FLA airport on a layover at the end of the trip because we did not save enough money for a hotel room. I still have that copy, and though I was able to write an excellent paper that got me a good grade based on the lectures without even finishing the book, I will re-read it one of these days. The short story Master and Man remains my favorite Tolstoy, although I very much enjoyed all I learned from my study of, if not complete reading of, Anna Karenina

Thirteen years ago I took a year off work and went off on an extended holiday around Australia,NZ and a chunk of SE Asia , in my rucksack for the trip I packed The Island of the Day Before . I lugged that book around for the whole trip , now that should go on my list of failed to understand/finish , I did try but it was to much for me .I was too tight to throw the book away in fact its in my book case now as a reminder of my failure .

[aeolian]

I used to read much more. In the last 20 years or so, with a wife and kids I've really slacked off.

This is just a jumble of different things. Some were actually my favorites, although I've forgotten many of them over the years. Some I read fairly recently and so still remember that I enjoyed them.

Revenge of the Lawn - Richard Brautigan
- I must have read this short book more than 50 times from 1970 to 1990. But if you know this book you will know it is a very quick read

In a sunburned country - Bill Bryson
- Funny as hell and informative

Something like an autobiography - Akira Kurosawa
- I read it many years ago, and recently picked it off my bookshelf and read it again