The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
Inter Ice Age 4 - Kobo Abe
The Drowned World - J G Ballard

Also (sorry, I can't pick just three):

The Cry of the Owl - Patricia Highsmith
Outer Dark - Cormac McCarthy
Bleak House - Dickens
The Horse's Mouth - Joyce Cary
The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Philip Dick
Leviathan - Thomas Hobbes
Metaphysics as a Guide to Morality - Iris Murdoch
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanislaw Lem
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman
The Complete Poems - William Blake
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammet
No Happy Ending - Paco Ignacio Taibo II
Pop. 1280 - Jim Thompson
The Trial - Kafka
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
An American Tragedy - Dreiser
La Bete Humain - Zola
McTeague - Frank Norris
Mockingbird - Walter Tevis

and lots more, but these are the ones that have shaped me!

1. The Fountainhead
2. Dune
3. The Stand

1. The Stand - Stephen King
2. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
3. The Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn


Honorable mentions The Green Mile & Dark Tower Series - Stephen King.

#1. The Gospel of the Nazirenes--edited by Alan Wauters & Rick Van Wyhe (my "bible")

#2. Healing with the Angels--Doreen Virtue

#3. Angel Therapy--Doreen Virtue

What a great book! I still reread the chapter titled "The Frisbees of Dreamland" from time to time.

sorry dudes, but its all about the Harry Potter Books!!

Sorcerer’s Stone
Chamber of Secrets
Prisoner of Azcaban
Goblet of Fire
&
Order of the Phoenix

Oh yEa! best books in the World-O

On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

Way late, but:

Just a dick...:D ;)

I don't get annoyed at all. It is a very excellent book and is "overrated" for a very good reason. It's a damn fine character study of an everyday boy who is unique in so many ways.


It was so good that I finished it in like an hour and a half. I have also reread it three times since first reading it.

Shannara definitely, nothing else in world like.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and Anthem and We The Living (so I cheated)- Ayn Rand
Pain God - Harlan Ellison
The Stand - Stephen King

To Kill A Mockingbird
Enders Game

Tie: Dune or Don Quixote

1st Three:
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Where I'm Calling From - Carver
White Noise - Don Delillo

2nd Three:
Steppenwolf - Hesse
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Beloved - Morrison

Sentimental, "right read at the right time" favorites:
Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
On the Road - Kerouac

Tuf Voyaging - George R R Martin
A Storm of Swords - George R R Martin
Lord of the Rings

Lord of the flies
catcher in the rye

and I guess my third is:
the lost world

The Phantom Tollbooth
Catcher in the Rye
About a Boy

I haven't seen this one mentioned yet:

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

It was an assignment at the time, which made it the last thing I wanted to read, but once the pages were opened I couldn't put it down. I even remember being in the ER waiting room and hoping for a long wait time so I could finish more chapters.

Try "Loon Lake" by E.L. Doctorow. It is a far richer book than "Ragtime". A little harder to sink your teeth into but much, much more rewarding in the end.

Catch 22
Shogun
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

I can't narrow it down to three, but here are the ones that I dearly love:

Lonesome Dove
Raintree County
A Confederacy of Dunces
Geronimo Rex
House of Leaves
We Have Always Lived in The Castle
The Sundial
The Executioners Song
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Dune
And Then There Were None
Remains of the Day

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Talisman by Stephen King/Peter Straub
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

My top 10 (I was a lit. major...can't narrow down to just three):

1. 102 Minutes by Kevin Flynn (should be required reading for every American, IMO)
2. Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden
3. The Princess Bride by William Golding
4. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
5. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
6. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
7. A Hearthbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
8. Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
9. The Stand by Stephen King
10. Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy

Runners up: The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks; Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley; I Am Legend by Richard Matheson; Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides; The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty; In Harm's Way by Doug Stanton; Lord of the Flies by William Golding; Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee; Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Best sci-fi series: David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series