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So a friend of a friend heard through the grapevine that I'm a book junkie, and she recently emailed me to ask for my top 3 books of all time, because she wanted to read some new stuff. So I gave her mine after some heart-wrenching decisions...so I thought I'd ask you ladies what yours are! Here's my list:
1) The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham
2) Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger
3) The Thurber Carnival, by James Thurber
The list is by no means exhaustive, but I did the best I could. Come on, bees, hit me! I'm home sick today, and spent a great portion of last night sleeping next to the toilet, so this is going to be the highlight of my day!
This is a tough one since I love so many books.
I can tell you that my #1 favorite book of all time is Stephen King's The Stand. I have read all 1200 pages of it over and over again.
King Lear.
As I Lay Dying, because Faulkner is a genius.
The Wild Iris, by Louise Gluck, a fantastic collection of contemporary poetry
I could write about king lear for the rest of my life and still hardly scratch the surface.
In no particular order:
The Stranger by Camus (existentialist... dark and detached. it's a really quick read)
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (also kind of existentialist. deals with a lot of the same themes but in a totally different way... much more uplifting about human nature and much longer.)
A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin (longer still... about 100 awesome major characters and a really detailed plot. bad part is it's unfinished and George is a little slow with the sequels. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes high fantasy, though. It's really fantastic - start with A Game of Thrones)
Honorable mentions -
Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky - kind of an intermediate between The Stranger and Crime and Punishment. this book affected me more than anything I've ever read, but wasn't a great read because I had a terrible, terrible translation. Definitely worth seeking out a better translator.
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard - not a book. But if you like reading plays, it's seriously my favorite ever. Really detailed with information on quantum physics, Lord Byron, and god knows what else. dflajkdfhls so good!
Hm. The second and third ones are hard, but #1 is a no brainer for me: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I've read it over 20 times. I just love it. Maybe Pride and Prejudice and Catcher in the Rye? Those were definitely my favorites growing up, and I've read them a bunch of times too.
I doubt I could do that...can I post my top three of the moment?
Last Child in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods
(Not of the moment, but it's one I remember from when I was little and am antsy to reread) Wind in the Willows
AHH! This thread is making me so happy! And lengthening my Amazon wish list! Keep 'em coming!
I will recommend Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. It’s AMAZING. It’s about Thomas Cromwell, and Henry the 8th…..but it’s not at all a boring historical text. She is an amazing writer, and apparently very well researched on her history. Her characters are all three dimensional…you can see them, hear them, etc. It’s certainly leaps and bounds above the Philippa Gregory books. (No offense to those who like Philippa Gregory, but she doesn’t have much meat in her writing or her history, IMHO).
It is easily in my top 3 books ever read - not sure which books would fill the remaining spots....
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The first two are recent favorites, I totally recommend them, The Glass Castle is a memoir. SOOO GOOD.
I am a huge fan of Salinger. That book has been my fav since HS.
One of my favorites is Drowning Ruth. And 13 Reasons Why (its a YA, but really good!) I of course love Twilight and really like the Harry Potters!
Janet Evanovich has a series, starts with One For The Money, and they are SO good. Like, laugh out loud funny!
Oh, man, this one is tough.
This could change at any moment, but right now the top three are:
Ooohhhhh, man, I can't narrow down a third one yet. I'll come back later.
@danadelphia - I LOVE "The Shadow of the Wind"!! Have you Read "The Angel's Game" by Zafon? If not, I won't give anything away, except to say that it also features the Sempere & Sons bookshop :)
@ Boston Bee: We had to read Ender's Game in high school and it was soooo good that I read it all in one night and then had to rack my brain to remember what had happened in each chapter for class discussions!
my top three:
The Collected Works of Lewis Carroll (so obsessed that I own a first edition)
The Great Gatsby (so obsessed that I own a second edition)
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (although all of his are so tantalizing I can read them in a few hours, The Tipping Point and Outliers)
other top picks:
Naked or Dress Your Family in Cordouroy and Denim both by David Sedaris
Clapton by Eric Clapton
Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick
Angela's Ashes, Teacher Man or 'Tis all by Frank McCourt
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
Is it bad that I vote for Harry Potter? I loved the whole series. I also loved The Host by Stephanie Myer.
@Ms. Caniche, there's no "bad", we're just sharing! And I LOVE Harry Potter!
@lizabeth lou: I LOVED The Glass Castle, That was the 1st book read by my bookclub. You know she has another? Its called "Half-Broken Horses" (its about the grandmother) I haven't read it yet. I also liked "Water for Elephants"
My all time favorite is "Pride and Prejudice" & any of the Jane Austen books
I have also read all the Nora Roberts books I could get my hands on.
I just love reading!!
A few others I would highly recommend (I know I'm past 3 now, but hey teehee)
The Continental Op (collection of short stores) – Dashell Hammett
His Dark Materials collection – Philip Pullman
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (anything by Chabon, really)
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Road – Cormac McCarthy (very sad though, it made both me and FH cry!)
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
Unless - Carol Shields
Sorry -- couldn't stop at three!
@gabrielle - Kavalier and Clay is a good one!
Here are some of my other recommendations:
@ms caniche - completely loved the HP series too! haha
i dont know what my top 3 would be...i dont think i could stop at 3! but "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult is one of my all time favorites.
Attention!
For all you book lovers, we're voting for april's book in the weddingbee book club if youre interested :)
With or Without You by Carole Matthews is my fave! Its such an easy read and got me through a tough breakup...
A thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
and The girl who loved Tom Gordon..not sure why I just LOVE it!
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I also really liked The Secret Life of Bees. The book was much better than the movie.
Beautiful Boy and Tweak were good too. Make sure you read Beautiful Boy first because it's less graphic, and gives you a bit of a backstory before reading Tweak.
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
#1. The Bible
#2. Redeeming Love - by Francine Rivers
#3. The Twentieth Wife - by Indu Sundaresan
As of right now.. but there is lots more reading to do! :)
But I don't see #'s 1&2 changing
1) Dragonsong/Dragon Singer - Anne McCaffery
2.) The City of Dreaming Books- Walter Moers
3.) 1984- George Orwell
My List is ever changing but those are constant. I love books but these are 3 that I could read over and over again.
Just three?! How about a top twenty?
OK OK. For sentimental reasons, I adore Little Women, Ella Enchanted, and My Antonia. I'm all about women protagonists, haha. I also love East of Eden, Frankensten, The Three Musketeers, Love in the Time of Cholera, Tess of the d'Urbevilles, and Don Quixote for their combination literary and entertainment value.
Oh, and basically anything by C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, Robin McKinley, Garth Nix...
Gah. I give up!
I am almost surprised by how many votes for Catcher in the Rye there are... almost.
I don't have a top three because as an English major, I simply could not pick, so here is a list of (just some of) my favorites:
The Secret Life of Bees
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Outsiders
:)
Awesome thread! I'm surprised how many of you ladies love "Catcher in the Rye"! I just never did...I thought maybe it was more for the boys.
In high school my list probably would have been:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Wuthering Heights (Charlotte Bronte)
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner
In College:
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins)
The Divine Comedy (Dante)
And now:
To Kill a Mockingbird - Love it (and appreciate it) more every time I teach it.
Harry Potter - Can't help it. He and I have the same birthday ; )
Nothing really modern I guess...but I can't wait to pick up a few of your suggestions before I leave on my Spring Break trip tomorrow!
Gawd, I want to be best friends with a bunch of you.
If I had to pick only three..um...probably:
- Live in the Time of Cholera
- War and Peace
- The Winter of Our Discontent
But I could also repeat exactly SanDiegoAli and Entangled's lists while in a different mindset.
And it really bugs me there are no female writers on my list.
And I could really just list authors. Once I find one I love, I tend to read everything by that person.
And I also didn't chose any non-literary books. I am a giant sucker for medieval and tudor historical fiction. If anyone is looking for a whole new genre to explore, pm me.
Finally (I love talking about books), to bring it to wedding stuff, FI and I met on the internet. Did you know The Onion has a personals? Anyways, he emailed me because it asked what was the last book you read, and I said The Bell Jar, and he thought, "hmm, crazy chicks are fun."
@monitajb - I'm a sucker for medieval and Tudor historical fiction too! Right now I'm on a 14th century kick, but I go through historical periods like some people eat potato chips. For a while I was really into the early 19th century....then Wars of the Roses....now I've gone back a little earlier than normal. Usually I'll read as much non-fiction about the period as I can get my hands on, then I'll start in on the fiction by my favorite authors. Glad I'm not the only one that loves this stuff!
In no particular order but these are the books I end up reading over and over again
Harry Potter the whole series but the first book is probably my favorite followed by the 7th.
His Dark Materials . . . again the first book is my favorite
The Life of Pi
I could go on and on but I will tell you this, cover me in paper cuts on every crack and crevice of my body then lower me into a vat of lemon juice and the pain it would cause doesn't even begin to equate to the amount of loathing I have for the Twilight series. I can appreciate what Stephanie Meyer did with Twilight but really when you're writing a Mormon metaphor for abstinence and premarital sex the sexual tension is going to be big indeed and I think that's exactly how she baited everyone and caught her big fish!
So...this is tough, but not as tough as it may be for some because I'm strangely picky. I wasn't as a kid, I just read anything and everything, but now I can't make it through a lot of books without getting annoyed and putting them down. I think it's just because I've turned into a general curmudgeon in my old age.
But I really love:
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Crime and Punishment (and most everything else by Dostoyevsky)
Crónica de una muerte anunciada (this was the first book I ever successfully read in Spanish, which I was so excited about haha, and it's still my favorite work by García Márquez)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Harry Potter- any of them/all of them
Gosh, I'm an English major so I have read many of these but I really can't pick! Not a huge fan of The Razor's Edge though...I still haven't brought myself to finish it and turn in a late assignment. Who knows, outside of school, I may have liked it though..and also if I didn't see the movie! Eeeek!
Amaryllis- Impressive! I can't get at Paradise Lost so KUDOS to you! Nice to see another English major :)
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