All time favourites;
O.k. you knew someone was going to ask this...what are your all time top 10 books - either fiction or non fiction or a combination. A brief reason why would be interesting too.
My own top 10 in fiction would be something like...
Top 10 novels/short story collections
1) All the Pretty Horses Cormac McCarthy
2) The English Patient Michael Ondaatje
3) Beloved Toni Morrison
4) The Crossing Cormac McCarthy
5) One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6) As I lay Dying William Faulkner
7) The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (The Finca Vigia Collection)
8 )The Bone People Keri Hulme
9) Crime and Punishment Feodor Dostoyevski
10) In the Skin of a Lion Michael Ondaatje
Edited by: Sanduleak at: 1/6/02 3:45:35 pm
1) War and Peace
2) Winds of War
3) War and Remberance
4) To Kill a Mockingbird
5) Captains and Kings
6) The Complete Works of Mark Twain
7) Crime and Punishment Women who run with the Wolves
9) The Peaceful Warrior
10) All Jane Heller's books (comedy)
Looks like (by your top 3) you've got that whole 'war thing' goin' on. Wuz you an army brat?
(Would keep you in good stead for your er...battles with 'The Blessed Eric' at Bravenet.)
I have read items 1, 4, 7 from your list. I might have read 'The Peaceful Warrior' if you're referring to the book where the dude picks up the wise man named 'Socrates' at a gas station. Is that the one?
Edited by: Sanduleak at: 1/7/02 9:53:28 am
Re: All time favourites;
Btw; it cracks me up when we key in 8 ) in all seriousness and the sunglasses dude comes up. Edited by: Sanduleak at: 1/6/02 3:43:25 pm
Re: All time favourites;
Not in any particular order . . .
1. Grapes of Wrath : Steinbeck
2. The Lover: Duras
3. Dracula : Stoker
4. Don Quixote : Acker
5. The Bluest Eye : Morrison
6. Lolita : Nabokov
7. The Brothers Karamazov: Dostoyevsky
8. Anna Karenina : Tolstoy
9. Sons and Lovers : Lawrence
10. Sense and Sensibility : Austen
"A thinking woman sleeps with monsters" A. Rich
http://pub66.ezboard.com/bthemelancholymuse
Re: All time favourites;
There's a great quote attributed to Marguerite Duras;
Quote: Writing is like returning from a wild country.
I believe I know what she speaks of.
andyarmi Leeds United Supporter
Posts: 6
(3/11/02 8:18 pm) Reply
Re: All time favourites;
Here's my top-ten.
1. Lolita - Nabakov :
Challenging notions of an ordered desire. The narrator poet Humbert Humbert is hilariously articulate and savagely honest in his self-criticism and his cruel treatment of the other characters. Beautifully written - poetic prose and an intellectual treat.
2. Great Expectations - Dickens:
We get what we wish for. About our notions and needs of success. Miss Havisham is a particularly engaging tragic figure probably Dicken's best. Then there's Pip, Estelle, Magwitch, and Jaggers. Great STORY too! Flawless novel. Page turner originally published in periodical.
3. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte:
Passionate love story set in Yorkshire Dales, a wild country with wild characters. Heathcliffe - the ultimate villain that I cannot help but feel for, whose jealousy and rage destroy everyone and everything, including himself - though unrepentant to the end.
4. Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie:
For me a myth of modernity. A celebration of childhood and humanity before we become "civilised" adults and realise that life is rather crap and boring in doing so. Only criticism is the way he portrays all decent females as mothers the savage Tiger Lily being the exception.
5. Slaughterhouse 5- Kurt Vonnegut:
The allied bombing of Dresden in WW2 killed more people than Hiroshima but it has been written out of the history books. Billy Pilgrim was there a young hopeless American POW. Billy might be insane or he might have really been contacted by aliens who showed him the secrets of the universe, either way, he was at Dresden as a POW and he had to make sense of it somehow. Hilarious black comedy.
6. Dubliners - J Joyce
Yeah, I know - a collection of short stories. Disturbing and resonating well after they've been read. Snapshots of life and its big questions posited in everyday situations.
7. The Buddha of Suburbia - Hanif Kureshi
A search for identity for a teenage half Indian/Englishman bisexual in 60's England. Disarming and criticising racism though comedy and satire. Also raises a lot of questions about values and the idea of a fixed and valid identity.
8. Run for Your Life - David Line (1965)
This is a personal favourite and took me ages to find. I was read this at primary school. It's about some teenagers who unwittingly witness a murder and are forced to flee their homes cross-country. Re-reading it last year I figured that the attraction of the novel (apart from it being an adventure) was that the teenage narrator is a tough English equivalent of Marlowe from Chandler's novels.
9. Black Dogs - Ian McEwan
Life and history are written and interpreted subjectively. This is a dark novel that looks at relationships, disillusionment with the past and humanity in a post holocaust / post Berlin wall world without an ideology.
10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick:
Becomes more and more relevant as science progresses and moral debates arise that Mary Shelly anticipated. Sophisticated yet simply imbibed novel questioning humanity's position within the universe and its arrogance. Nicely disguised as a futuristic detective story. The book that spurred the film Blade Runner.
Women who run with the Wolves
Wuz you an army brat? 
at Bravenet.)
Re: All time favourites;
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