your favourite books

[Phteven]

Following on from my favourite authors thread...
What are your top ten favourite books?
In no particular order (and subject to change according to whim)....
1. Persuasion (Jane Austen) I know that most prefer Pride and Predjudice but I think that Persuasion is a much more mature book and it's more cynical flavour appeals to me a little more.
2.The Harry Potter books - OK this is a cop-out because I can't pick a favourite amongst them lol. They're all great!!
3.The Future Eaters (Tim Flannery)
4. Vanity Fair - Thackery. I love Becky Sharp
5. Ecstacy - Irvine Walsh
6. A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
7. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
8. Stark - Ben Elton
9. House of the Spirits
10. The Joy Luck Club (now I'm wondering if I should have Amy Tan in my top 10 authors lol).

[Pandora]

The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Magician - Raymond E Feist
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson
Harry Potter and the half blood prince - by far my favourite
Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally
The Alchemist - Paul Coehlo
To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Crucible - Arthur Miller
Candide - Voltaire

[Jaycee]

My fav book would have to be The Davinci Code, although I change my mind on books from day to day

Can anyone recommend a good crime / thriller book or author?
Something that's realistic and not anything supernatural...

[sushee]

adkins_81,

I mainly read crime so check out my list of favourite authors. Not Richard Laymon though, he's more horror. If you like something intelligent and not too trashy, Val McDermid's good. I recommend that you start with 'Wire in the Blood', the first of the Tony Hill series.

My favourite books are:

Wire in the Blood - Val McDermid
Red Dragon - Thomas Harris
Triptych - Karin Slaughter
The Treatment - Mo Hayder (this book requires a strong stomache)

I have lots of ones I liked but those are the ones I've loved.

[MantaRay]

Here goes - I'm sure I will think of others that I like more, but anyway:

The Time Traveller's Wife
The DaVinci Code
The Chrysalids
Watership Down
A Town Like Alice
Lord of the Rings

OK, crying baby - bbl.

[Tobily]

Oh gee where to start!! I'll give it a go (in no particular order because that's just TOO hard!).

Skinny Legs n All - Tom Robbins
The Bride Stripped Bare - Nicky Gemmell
The Alchemist - Paulo Cohelo
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
The Famished Road - Ben Okri
And my all time favourite book ever....drumroll....
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
You can't go past the classics

[Ambah]

Shantaram
Candy
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Bride Stripped Bare
The Redemption of Althalus
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Tully

These are the single books I can think of... everything else I love belongs to a series, such as David Eddings - the Belgariad & Mallorean, or Isobelle Carmody - the Obernewtyn chronicle & the Darkfall trilogy, and Harry Potter of course.

[Beckibee]

Anything by Cecilia Ahern, especially 'PS I love you' (which is being brought out at the movies at the end of this year!!!), John Marsden's 'Tomorrow' and 'Ellie' series and yes, I love the Harry Potter series too.

Never been a fan of Fantasy type books, left that to Ambah and my other 'sisters'. *L*

[Danni]

I dont really read much...but I remember as a teenager I read "Tully" by Paulina Simons and read it again and again. It was the first "thick" book I read.

I loved Looking for Alibrandi as well at school, as my family is JUST like that

These days I am lucky if I get time to read my bills!

[MantaRay]

Ok, to finish my list:

Memoirs of a Geisha
February Dragon - Colin Thiele - this is one I loved as a kid
All Ann Tyler novels - yep, I know, cop out
All Maeve Binchy novels - yeah, you already know I'm a cop out, one more won't hurt LOL

[paradise lost]

Memoirs of a Geisha
The Day The World Screamed
anything Discworld
Brave New World
After Many a Summer
1984
Lord of the Rings (all of it)
The Hobbit
Norwegian Wood
The Raven (not a book i know...)
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy in Four Parts
The Long Dark Teatime Of the Soul
Of Mice and Men/The Red Pony - i won't choose, you can't make me.
The Wasp Factory
Life of Pi (though i don't like the author's other stuff much)

My most precious books are actually my Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus. They're not the biggest size, but the next one down. DP bought me them last Christmas. I love the language.

The only book i ever *hated* was America Psycho. My sister asked to borrow it after i'd read it and i was so disgusted by it that i put it into a public waste bin (throwing books away is almost like murder to me - a BIG no no, which shows how much i disliked it) and told her i'd lost it. It is a revolting example of post-modern pseudo-intellectual pornographic trash. Brett Easton Ellis should be ashamed of himself. In attempting to reveal the dangerous shallowness of society he has shown only the pitiful degradation of his own Self.

Bx

[Pandora]

oh Bec!
I asked DH for the complete Oxford English Dictionary, the largest one, he thought I was joking!

[paradise lost]

DP offered. I declined given it wouldn't fit in the book case. The next one down is BRILLIANT! I think the 2 together cost the best part of 100quid ($300? Bit less?) but SO worth it!

You must actuate, advise, affect, allure, argue into, assure, blandish, brainwash, bring around, cajole, coax, convert, counsel, draw, enlist, entice, exhort, impel, impress, incite, incline, induce, influence, inveigle, lead, move, prevail upon, prompt, propagandize, proselyte, proselytize, reason, satisfy, seduce, sway, talk into, urge, wear down, wheedle, win over, woo him until he agrees...

Bx

[ivyleaf3]

Mmmm...I don't think I can put them in order, but I will do my best at thinking of my favs

The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials Trilogy - Phillip Pullman
Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
The Book of Lost Things - John Connelly
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

As you have probably noticed, there is a heavy slant there towards children's lit, as that is what I love most and what I studied at uni. There are others I would include for those who have children:

-anything by Madeleine L'Engle
-The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
- The Harry Potter books (duh)
- the Ramona and Fudge books (for younger readers)
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgsen Burnett
- Tom's Midnight Garden (best read after previous listing, as SG is a huge influence on this text) by Phillipa Pearce
- The NIMH books
- Charlotte's Web - E.B. White - an absolutely beautiful and poetic book that I would even recommend to highly literate adults as it is flawlessly written and stunning in every way...probably should be in my top list - woops!!

Fave Picture Storybooks
Where the Wild Things Are
Diary of a Wombat
The Giving Tree

Fav Poetry for Children
Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky

Fav Poetry for Adults
William Blake, Christina Rossetti, Walt Whitman, and especially, Robert Frost

Fav Essayists/Philosophers
You can't go past Emerson and Thoreau!!

Fav Short Stories

#1 is definitely An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - Ambrose Bierce (has been my favourite since I first read it in year 9)

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
The Rememberer - Aimee Bender (From The Girl in the Flammable Skirt)
Rain - Steven Millhauser (from The Barnum Museum)
To Build a Fire - Jack London
The Rocking-Horse Winner - DH Lawrence
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
The Hitchhiking Game - Milan Kundera
The Sea Lovers - Valerie Martin (from The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories)


Happy reading!!

[S'rose]

Ok I am sad but my favourite enduring all time favourite is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

I have read that book several hundred times since I was a pre-teen to now!!

[Chalalan]

This is so hard.. this is like asking you to name which of your children you love more! Of the thousands and thousands of books I have ever read coming up with just a few hurts!

okay, I'll try....
*The Seventh Swordsman Series - Dave Duncan
*The Prince of Tides - Pat Conelly
*Anne of Green Gables - how bad is that I can't remember who wrote it....L.M. Montgomery - thankyou Google.
*Tomorrow series - John Marsden
*Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
*A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
*The Servant of the Empire series - Raymond E Feist
*Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
*The Tenent of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte
*1984 - George Orwell
*The Chimney Sweeps Boy - Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell's nom de plume)
*The Time Travellers Wife - just finished it - I loved how human Henry was and even how unlikable at times.

I can't think...my books have been packed up in storage for almost 3 years, but I have that many comfort books that I read again every year or so, just can't think of them all...

Hoobley, I liked American Pyscho, extremely graphic, but how is it any different to all these Patrica Cornwell, Karin Slaughter, et al How-To guides that are out there? At least he is trying to say something, anything. I find the rest of these murder by numbers books are just gross & indulgent profiteering off the "glamour" of crime. I refuse to buy or read any of that trashy genre that raises mentally deficient criminals to the level of serial killer "master minds" and can be bought by the wanna-be deviant on any street corner. At least American Pyscho is 18+ and held behind the counter at most Aussie bookstores.

[AJC]

I'm not much of a reader, however, my sister bought me a copy of 'Marley & Me' by John Grogan and I read it in a week - couldn't put it down.

[New Dawn]

Memoirs of a geisha- Arthur Golden
Joy luck club- Amy Tan
The good women of China-Xinran
harry potter ( all of them )
Sister's Keeper- Jodi Picoult

I really like reading about women who triumph (sp?) over there situations

Atm my fav Authors are Jodi Picoult and Amy Tan