[a list] Name your top 15 books all-time

"its my favourite!"


Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear
How years ago in days of old when magic filled the air
'twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair
but Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her

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ive seen several mentions of cormac mccarthy books, but only two mentions of 'blood meridian'? WTF?

 

The movie bore no resemblance to the book whatsoever, and if you read the whole thing, I doubt you would say that. But whatever, no it's not a joke. People have different tastes, which is fine.

 

yeah i gotcha on the bolded. just giving you a hard time since this would be on my worst 15 books of all-time.

but yeah, i suffered through that entire book about two weeks before the movie came out. i think i dragged major to see that crap. and the first thing i said to him after was "you thought that was bad, try reading 900 pages of it!"

i can't order the 15 off the top of my head, but these will definitely be on it:

lamb: the gospel according to biff, christ's childhood pal - christopher moore
boys of summer - roger kahn
the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald
high fidelity - nick hornby
about a boy - nick hornby
american pastoral - philip roth
the faithful spy - alex berenson
alas, babylon - pat frank

 

Lots of good books here (and some that suck, but to each his own), but I don't know how I could rank the best. I just wanted to bring attention to a lesser-known book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that was one of the most engrossing books I ever read -- Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

 

Captain Underpants - Attack of the Talking Toilets

 

This is hard to do. I think I would have to break it up by time in my life for what was important to me.

Elementary and middle school:
La Mort D'Arthur
Barsoom/Mars series, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Lord of the Rings

High School:
Anna Karenina
Kafka short stories - mostly "The Judgment"

College and grad:
Notes from Underground and Brothers K
lust for Life (dumb book but it helped me at a time of need)
Cat's Cradle
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
The Immoralist and The Counterfeiters

Beyond:
I am blanking. I have read a lot of good or enjoyable books but can't think of the 3-5 that stand out.

Maybe Hyperion because one of the chapters really registered as a parent.

 

Thanks, I'll check that out. I haven't read it yet, and I'll start with that one on vacation next week.

 

Lord of the Rings (including the Hobbit and the Silmarillion)
Nostromo - Conrad
The Remains of the Day - Ishiguro
Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Crime & Punishment - Dostoyevsky
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway
The Trial - Kafka
1984/Animal Farm- Orwell
Catch 22 - Heller
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire series
Stephen King's Dark Tower series

 

I might have to try that one. Marquez has such high universal acclaim, but I had the most difficult time getting through Love in the Time of Cholera. Who knows? I might have just been in the mood for something different to read or strung out from lack of sleep with two small kids. I've been eying Chronicle of a Death Foretold and One Hundred Years of Solitude for a while.

It's nice to see Nick Hornby get some serious love in this thread. I love his early works, and the film adaptations of About a Boy and High Fidelity are pretty faithful and also happen to be some of my all-time favorite films.