Registered: Aug 2000
Location: denv3r
Posts: 5232

List your top 5 favorite and least favorite books. If you're like me, you're 26 and have just found that books are good, so you'll have only read like 4 books in your entire life. That's okay, some of us are slow. I just got done reading The Sparrow (which is awesome). Give me something good!

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Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 11908

sirens of titan
illusions: adventures of a reluctant messiah
the stranger
the electric koolaid acid test
the wind and the willows

pride and prejudice
macbeth (do plays count?)
a farewell to arms
beloved, or anything by toni morrisson
as i lay dying, or anything by faulkner

i'll let you decide which are which.

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Oakland-ish
Posts: 6046

shouldn't this be in the sports forum?

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Iceland
Posts: 974

The ultimade spiderman 1 - 5

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: denv3r
Posts: 5232

mmmtravis, It's the top ones you like! Or I can't tell.

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Registered: May 2002
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quote:

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Originally posted by memdink
mmmtravis, It's the top ones you like!

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

GOOD
1. The Book of the SubGenius
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein
3. Hitchhiker's Trilogy, Douglas Adams (1-3 only)
4. Game of Thrones/Clash of Kings/Storm of Swords, G.R.R. Martin
5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson
6. Wigfield, Sedaris/Colbert
7. How Few Remain (and ensuing sequels), Turtledove
8. Catch-22, Heller
9. 1632, Flint
10. Have a Nice Day, Mick Foley

BAD
1. The Illuminati, Burkett (not the Wilson version, which is fine)
2. The Celestine Prophecy
3. All books in the "Left Behind" series after the first
4. Closing Time, Heller
5. All books written by pro wrestlers other than "Have a Nice Day"

Last edited by CHiPsJr on 05-27-2004 at 01:08 AM

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: denv3r
Posts: 5232

The Celestine Prophecy had quite an effect on a lot of my friends. It was cool, but never really dug in and the ridiculous short-cut ending made me laugh.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: denv3r
Posts: 5232

Anyone have input on Clan of the Cave Bear?

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Celestine Prophecy is the second-worst book I've ever read. If your friends allowed it to affect their world view, you need new friends.

Talarohk reviewed Clan of the Cave Bear in the "Guilty Pleasures" thread in the culture forum. I agree with his assessment--it's a very good book, well researched and cleverly imagined, even though its sequels are pretty much cover-to-cover smut. Seldom has it been more clear that an author had exactly one good book in her.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: denv3r
Posts: 5232

The SubGenius is your favorite book? I trust your opinion, although I'm pretty sure I don't need new friends. Thanks.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: East Bay
Posts: 3495

GOOD
1. The Grapes of Wrath--Steinbeck
2. The Stranger--Camus
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--Kesey
4. To Kill a Mockingbird--Lee
5. Notes from the Underground--Dostoevsky

BAD
1. Pride and Prejudice--Austen
2. The Great Gatsby--Fitzgerald
3. Mumbo Jumbo--Reed
4. Go Down, Moses--Faulkner
5. Anything by Dave Pelzer...if I have to read another goddamned book report on A Child Called It or A Boy Named Dave, I'm going to kill...someone.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

quote:

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Originally posted by flocat

5. Anything by Dave Pelzer...if I have to read another goddamned book report on A Child Called It or A Boy Named Dave, I'm going to kill...someone.

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Registered: Jan 2003
Location: mediocre apartment
Posts: 2716

-The World According to Garp - Irving
-On The Road - Kerouac
-Rabbit Run (and the ensuing 3 Rabbit novels) - Updike
-The Great Gatsby (Sorry flocat)
-Short stories are worth a look too, I like them better than novels, personally. Go to the bookstore and get some anthologies, I like the "Best American Short Stories [insert year here]" because they have a lot variety. Another really good bet would be to go to a college bookstore and get one of the short story books used by a fiction class. Those usually have cool notes in the margin, too, and can enhance the reading sometimes.

-Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
-Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
-Others, I don't dwell on the stuff I didn't like.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: gone
Posts: 9951

In no specific order:
Slaughterhouse-5 ~ Kurt Vonnegut
1984 ~ George Orwell
Stranger In a Strange Land ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Lolita ~ Vladimir Nabokov
A Canticle For Leibowitz ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.
Moby Dick ~ Herman Melville
Of Mice and Men ~ John Steinbeck
Catch-22 ~ Joseph Heller
Snow Crash ~ Neal Stephenson
Catcher In the Rye ~ J.D. Salinger

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: deep in the heart of...
Posts: 517

Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins
The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker
The Cosmic Serpent, Jeremy Narby
The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

those are my favorites, although there is a helluva lot of good reading out there.

the worst ones i've blocked from memory.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: ObamaNation
Posts: 19252

Dune - Frank Herbert
Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Azimov (they really count as one book)
The Nazi Doctors - Robert Jay Lifton
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer
Hamlet - William Shakespeare (a play, I know, but still a great read)

There's too many bad ones to list.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 10035

i'll list the ones i read most often
ulysses, by james joyce
naked lunch, by william s. burroughs
the sound and the fury, by william faulkner
catch-22, by joseph heller
and something by vonnegut. i'm reading player piano again now, but god bless you mr rosewater or timequake could be in the top 5 as well. the grapes of wrath gets honourable mention because i would have read it a million times if i owned it. there are others as well that should be mentioned, but i won't.
also, i have read on the road and the dharma bums a lot, but i like them less every time. in fact, i read the dharma bums for the express purpose of irritating myself.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: East Bay
Posts: 3495

quote:

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Originally posted by willimo
-The Great Gatsby (Sorry flocat)

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Good grief. Am I the only one on this forum who enjoys crap as opposed to quality literature?

I mean, here are people tossing Vonnegut and Fitzgerald and JAMES FRICKING JOYCE up on their lists of favorites, and I'm countering with Hunter S. Thompson and dime-store fantasy and MICK FREAKING FOLEY. Clearly I am teh dum.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: The Wetlands
Posts: 13591

Nobody listed the Zippy the Pinhead comix anthology series. this I do not understand.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: East Bay
Posts: 3495

I really liked Fight Club as a book. I even liked Choke, though the ending was somewhat disappointing. My ex gave me some Hiaasen, which I wouldn't say is high-brow and that I found entertaining.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: The Wetlands
Posts: 13591

I liked Invisible Monsters, speaking of Palahniuk, but it wasn't one of my favorites. As for Hiaasen, Skin Tight and Naked Tongue were my favorites.

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Registered: Apr 2004
Location: gone
Posts: 9951

quote:

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Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Good grief. Am I the only one on this forum who enjoys crap as opposed to quality literature?

I mean, here are people tossing Vonnegut and Fitzgerald and JAMES FRICKING JOYCE up on their lists of favorites, and I'm countering with Hunter S. Thompson and dime-store fantasy and MICK FREAKING FOLEY. Clearly I am teh dum.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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The last few lines of Gatsby are some of the most beautiful in all of American lit.

I've never yet read Ulysses.

And Richard Bach is shit. I liked Wolfe's book about the Pranksters though.

1) Moby Dick, Melville - I've read it five or six times and may read it again soon.

2) Goodbye To A River, John Graves - personal favorite and a regional book, really.

3) The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann - I was very affected by a couple of passages in this, and I spent a good many days reading it and just soaking in it.

4) The Ides Of March, Thornton Wilder - This one just popped into my head as I made this list, and I remember reading everything he wrote in one stretch and loving it all with this one being the best of the lot. Really interesting and well-written book.

5) The Red And The Black, Stendhal - You can switch this with Charterhouse of Parma if you like. I enjoyed both of them about the same. My copy is held together by rubber bands now. I use books very roughly when I read them, especially if I read them more than once.

fuck you, I can't list just five

6) Thomas Hardy - take yer pic. I liked several of them equally well. I guess I'd have to pic The Woodlanders, Return Of The Native or Jude The Obscure. No, wait. Mayor Of Casterbridge was goo...oh fuckit. He's one of my favorite authors, and I don't know why I like that dried up 19th century English writing. With a name like Eustacia Vye, it's gotta be good.

7) Graham Greene - same as with Hardy. I've read a TON of Greene, and I don't think I've found one yet that I didn't absolutely love.

8) Ambrose Bierce's short stories - I always thought he was close to being Twain's equal, and he was just as big a character. He was killed by Pancho Villa in 1914. His Civil War stories are truly haunting. If you liked the film Jacob's Ladder, you should read Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, from which it derived.

9) The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky - The Grand Inquisitor passage in this novel is another of those pieces of literature that I was profoundly affected by, but the entire book was worth a couple of re-reads. I also liked The Idiot.

10) The Gay Place, Billy Bramer - this book got Bramer's White House press credentials revoked. It was also about the only thing of substance that he ever wrote before he began a pathetic downhill slide.

11) Death Comes For The Archbishop, Willa Cather - Cather was an interesting character, and this may be one of the best books of the last century.

12) Caesar And Christ, Will Durant - Durant and his wife produced an incredible amount of writing in their lifetime, and most of it is very good. Very readable and fun.

As a kid I read a ton of Robert Howard (before the movies came out; I'm very old). It's pulpy crap, but I ate it up. And at seven or eight, anything that's read is worth reading. As an adult I picked up Cornwell's "Sharpe's..." series and looked on it in much the same fashion. Great light reading.

13) The Civil War, Shelby Foote - I've read this trilogy three times and may read it again soon, if I start reading at all again. Better than Catton by far.

14) Lee's Lieutenants, Freeman - This is another trilogy that was a truly fascinating study of Lee's command structure during the War and worth reading to anyone even remotely interested in the subject.

15) Shrouds Of Glory, Winston Groom - This is the book that got me interested in the Civil War to begin with. Groom is the guy who wrote Forrest Gump, but this is a really good read about Hood's campaign into Tennessee at the end of the war.

So there. you got three times what you wanted, and I'm havin to make myself stop.

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