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What are your top 5 books?
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:05 pm
by Crystal Meth
For Jax
Let's show her that the books we pick aren't a) all the same "boring, depressing" thing, and b) that we don't all have the same tastes and she's not the Great Freak.
Top 5, can be any genre, but you had to find them really engrossing.
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:12 pm
by chickenlittle
I don't keep a running top-5 list, but these are the first five that come to mind. In no particular order....
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic - John DeGraaf et al.
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Song for the Blue Ocean - Carl Safina
Jax, I'm with you in not being into the typical 'book club' variety of books
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 3:27 pm
by Crystal Meth
No particular order, and I really can't pick only five:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker
How To Be Canadian by Will Ferguson
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
cathy, I found
Zen painfully boring. Painful!
See Jax? Now *I'm* the odd duck, LOL
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 5:02 pm
by Sílvia
Not the top 5 of all time, but the ones that come to mind:
The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende - yeah, pretty horrible and depressing things happen in this one (including torture scenes that made me put the book down for a few minutes), but I was hooked from page 1.
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Of Human Bondage and The Razor's Edge - Somerset Maugham
Oracle Night - Paul Auster
What I loved - Siri Hustvedt
Ok, I guess that's 7.
Yeah, they're all pretty depressing, but I loved them all.
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 5:20 pm
by Spudd
My first 5 that come to mind:
Ender's Game & Speaker for the Dead (it's a series, so i can count them as one book, right?) - by Orson Scott Card
The Kite Runner- by Khalid Husseini (sp?)
Anne of Green Gables - by LM Montgomery
The Caves of Steel - by Isaac Asimov
Stranger in a Strange Land - by Robert A Heinlein
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 6:40 pm
by mellenhead
Here are mine:
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
The Weight of Water - Anita Shreve
Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
FWIW, I also got a huge kick out of The Devil Wears Prada! It is my favorite "fun" book.
Well, that's 6 but whatever!
EDIT: I had to come back and add The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2005 6:58 pm
by Sílvia
Oh, how could I forget The Poisonwood Bible?!
I bought Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor months ago and still haven't read it. I'll try to do it now that I'm on semi-vacation.
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 5:19 am
by Jax
mellenhead wrote:
FWIW, I also got a huge kick out of The Devil Wears Prada! It is my favorite "fun" book.
Okay, I've read that, and really liked it.
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:41 am
by aly
In no particular order...
1. Ender's Game
2. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus - Mary Shelley
3. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
4. Matilda - Roald Dahl (loved these 2 when I was younger, still do!)
5. Jurassic Park series and several others by Michael Crichton
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:15 am
by Lady Bug
Hmmm . . . let's see . . .
- Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- When I Was Puerto Rican/Almost a Woman/The Turkish Lover by Esmeralda Santiago (three book autobiography)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 2:20 pm
by Malanee
Enders Game, Orson Scott Card
A Girl Named Zippy (very happy!)
The Sparrow and Children of God (I know it is two - but it's the same story!)
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepok Chopra
All of the Dark Tower books, Stephen King (now I'm really cheating)
I also love the Laurie R. King mystery novels about Mary Russel, Sherlock Holmes' companion.
Posted: Tue Dec 27, 2005 3:44 pm
by Beverly
Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown ... PLEASE, someone, read this book!!
Just about anything by Anne Tyler
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Southern Discomfort by Rita Mae Brown
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
Posted: Wed Dec 28, 2005 12:11 am
by Blush
Here are some that come to mind, although I don't know that they're technically my top five:
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay--about a South African kid who becomes a boxer. Way better than the movie.
Nora Nora by Anne Rivers Siddons
The Family by Anita Burgh
A Heartbreaking work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers--hilarious and uplifting
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett