I'm reading Ender's Game at the moment and love it. Can't wait to go on to the other books in the series.

The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe

Dune - Frank Herbert

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

In no order...

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
(they don't have to be fiction books, right?)

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
(if it's cheating to list a 75+ issue comic book made into a 10+ volume graphic novel then I'm a cheater)

dune
1984
survivor by chuck palahnuik

Sula by toni morrison
Memoirs of a Geisha
The bonesetters daughter- Amy Tan

3. Neil Stephenson: Cryptonomicon (with the Baroque cycle a close second)
2. William Gibson: Neuromancer
1. Any PG Wodehouse, particularly Right Ho, Jeeves.

Can't believe no one else said this. Certainly one of the greatest ever written.

Black Hawk Down - Mark Bowden
Dark Tower IV Wizard and Glass - Stephen King
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

I have always been impressed with authors that use simple language in a powerful way. So instead of listing books I submit the collective works of these three writers.
E.B White
Joseph Conrad
William James ( yes William, not his brother Henry)

Lord of the Rings- JRR Tolkien
High Fidelity- Nick Hornby
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter S. Thompson

Hmmm.. lots that I still have to read.
But currently, my list would be:

Amber series - Roger Zelazny
Black Sun Rising(book 1 of the Coldfire Trilogy) - C. S. Friedman
A Game of Thrones (book 1 of the George R R Martin series) - George R R Martin

Honorable mention, since its tied with 2 of the above

Goblet of Fire (Book 4 of the Harry Potter series) - J K Rowling.

Lord of The Rings
The Dark Tower
Owl at Home

i can't do three.

fiction:

one hundred years of solitude
lolita
fahrenheit 451
the stranger

non-fiction:

guns, germs, and steel
a people's history of the united states

the ones i like are
 

the DA Vinci Code
Seabiscuit
John Grisham
and anybook buy tracy hickman and Margret weis and the dragon lance series

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker

I also like Crying of Lot 49. We did it for a college literature course. Pynchon has a very distinctive style. Haven't tried Gravity's Rainbow yet, though it's been recommended to me.

Have you read any of his other books?


My personal favorites, gleaned mostly from literature courses because I don't have much time to read other stuff besides assigned texts.

1) Of Human Bondage by William Somerset Maugham
2) Martin Eden by Jack London
3) Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

can't just do three, so:

4) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I did enjoy Faulkner's Light in August, but tried Sound and the Fury during a trans-pacific flight, and boy was that a bad idea. Gave me a terrible headache through the entire flight.

Actually, not yet. I once picked it up but never even opened the cover. Can't remember why, though. One day I"ll get back to it.

Haven't read any of the four on your list. What is "Martin Eden?" That's one that has never crossed my path before, and I love discovering mostly forgotten works by well known authors (a big fan of Twain's co-written "Gilded Age," for instance...a book on Washington politics that still rings true today in many respects...or Verne's "Off on a Comet").

BTW, really liked "Light in August" as well. Remember reading that for an American lit class some 18-odd years ago and being very impressed. Funny thing is that I was taking a minimester class on the works of Stephen King at the time and found them very similar in many ways.

1984
Night
Lord of the Rings

Glad to see Madame Bovary on here...Flaubert is truly great :)

Haven't read it in a few years, but it's a semi-autobiographical work. Set in the late 19th century in Oakland, CA, Eden is a sailor who tries to win the love of Ruth, a rich university student. The novel tracks his journey of self-education and his path to becoming a great writer.

But I can probably sum up the story as: Success is when you get what you want; happiness is when you want what you get.

Throughout the novel, Eden is never really happy.

The novel is actually a quick read at 400 pages. One I'll have to revisit when I have the time.


I was also just digging into my big dusty box of old novels I had to read for all my college English classes (7 of them for my minor). Never sold any one of them even when I was done with the class. I spent too much time thinking about each of them to exchange them for cash. Just flipping through Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, Madame Bovary, Moby Dick, and numerous others brought back a lot of memories...

My first Clancy novel is still my favorite - Clear and Present Danger

Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

1. Of Mice and Men
2. Fahrenheit 451
3. Catch 22

Ulysses
The Remains of the Day
Neuromancer

Walden by Thoreau
The Count of Monte Cristo
Stop-Time by Frank Conroy

and a big :up: to TScott for mentioning House of Leaves. That book is whacked!

Watership Down - Richard Adamns
Neuromancer - William Gibson
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge - Carlos Castaneda