10 to read before the apocalypse?

GunRunner · 19-07-2012 12:49am

I'm not as well read as all of ye but anyway...

All Quiet On The Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
H - Autobiography Of A Child Prostitute And Heroin Addict - Christiane F
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Guerilla Days In Ireland - Tom Barry
Borstal Boy - Brendan Behan
Confessions Of An Irish Rebel - Brendan Behan
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Go Ask Alice
The Manchester Martyrs - Joseph O'Neil

... I just listed eleven.

galactus · 19-07-2012 7:17pm

GunRunner wrote: »

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Great call. A disturbing (and funny) read.

"I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man."

Say it Aint So · 04-12-2012 12:02am

On the road -Jack Kerouac
The old man and the sea - Ernest Hemingway
Brave new world - Aldous Huxley

Zeek12 · 31-12-2012 11:16pm

Tender is the night - Fitzgerald
Catch 22 - Heller
The Outsider - Camus
The Heart is a lonely hunter - McCullers
The Old man and the sea - Hemmingway
Memoir - McGahern
As I lay dying - Faulkner
Appointment in Samarra - O'Hara
A Clockwork orange - Burgess

thefasteriwalk · 16-02-2013 6:23am

Great thread, OP. This is fairly off the cuff and I will, most probably, be back to do some trade mongering. Poetry, drama and graphic novels are included, because, well, I simply can't leave them out. Here goes:

The Man Without Qualities - Musil
Arcadia - Stoppard (or anything by Tom Stoppard really)
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Geek Love - Dunn
Brave New World - Huxley
Howl - Allen Ginsberg
The Impossibility of an Island - Houellebecq (again, anything by Houellebecq)
Maus - Spiegelman
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
1984 - Orwell
Sex in History - Tannahill (a tour de force - highly recommended)

Lector · 16-02-2013 7:32pm

As more than one previous poster said, 10 is too few but...
Here's a few off the top of my head

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould
A History of Warfare by John Keegan
Dune by Frank Herbert
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler

That's 10, but I could easily pick another 10 which would reward reading and re-reading..
Books, don't ya just love 'em!

Dirty Dingus McGee · 24-02-2013 2:15pm

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (or any one of his books)
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Salems Lot by Stephen King
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell

Thats 12 but I couldnt leave some of them out

Mindfulness · 01-03-2013 10:06pm

Brave new world - Aldous Huxley
1984 - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbitt - JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
The Stand - Stephen King
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
Rubicon - Tom Holland
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexendre Dumas

Please note, this list will change over the years - didn't add Ulysses or numerous others that I also love for a variety of reasons.

marina10 · 04-04-2013 7:35pm

Hi,
For me the most boring book is pride and prejude. It´s very slow this books, super naive.

I prefer books more deelply from authors such as tostoi or Dostoievsky.

Ormus · 05-04-2013 1:14pm

Mindfulness wrote: »

Brave new world - Aldous Huxley
1984 - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbitt - JRR Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
The Stand - Stephen King
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
Rubicon - Tom Holland
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexendre Dumas

Please note, this list will change over the years - didn't add Ulysses or numerous others that I also love for a variety of reasons.

Great choices!

UsedToWait · 14-04-2013 11:21am

Great thread - I think I have enough books in my Amazon basket to last till the Apocalypse, and I'm only on page 30..

Will come up with 10 of my own when I get to the end of the thread.

Just a suggestion though - could you please write a sentence or so on why you've chosen a particular book - I've just been skimming over the posts listing the names of ten books, but have really enjoyed people's justifications for the ten they've selected..

sweargen · 14-04-2013 6:04pm

Ten Books WOORRAAGH In no particular order.

A Clockwork Orange. Is it justifiable for the state to take away the only thing a man loves to make him acceptable to society.
Dantes Inferno. listen to it on audio book get the tune, the music of the language, read the book, it has everything, and no Tom Bombadill.
Blood Meridian. Echos of Dantes Inferno, a master at work with the English language and quite possibly the most violent book I have ever read.
Grapes of Wrath. Just the best story about ordinary people ever told. Another master of language.
In Dubious Battle. Another Steinbeck novel, about the early formation of unions and how people of belief are used and sacrificed.
Stalingrad. History book reads like a novel, the cruelty and sacrifice, of a pivotal time of history.hing
Raymond Chandler. Anything, disdainful, Honest, jaded, expects the worst and is seldom disappointed. The real joy is the narrative, pure poetry.
The Killer Inside me. (Jim Thompson) Sparse, Uncompromising, Violent The master of the unreliable first person narrative
The Wasp Factory. It is just very ****ed up.
The Lost City of Z. (David Grann) Non Fiction. This Geezer explored the Amazon Basin in the late 1800 early 1900s when it was still blank on the maps Stopped to fight in WW1 and then went back. an astounding man you never heard of. S

Thats it, off the top of my head, hope I inspired someone to read any of these books. S

MaggieNF · 14-04-2013 10:29pm

sweargen wrote: »

Ten Books WOORRAAGH In no particular order.

A Clockwork Orange. Is it justifiable for the state to take away the only thing a man loves to make him acceptable to society.
Dantes Inferno. listen to it on audio book get the tune, the music of the language, read the book, it has everything, and no Tom Bombadill.
Blood Meridian. Echos of Dantes Inferno, a master at work with the English language and quite possibly the most violent book I have ever read.
Grapes of Wrath. Just the best story about ordinary people ever told. Another master of language.
In Dubious Battle. Another Steinbeck novel, about the early formation of unions and how people of belief are used and sacrificed.
Stalingrad. History book reads like a novel, the cruelty and sacrifice, of a pivotal time of history.hing
Raymond Chandler. Anything, disdainful, Honest, jaded, expects the worst and is seldom disappointed. The real joy is the narrative, pure poetry.
The Killer Inside me. (Jim Thompson) Sparse, Uncompromising, Violent The master of the unreliable first person narrative
The Wasp Factory. It is just very ****ed up.
The Lost City of Z. (David Grann) Non Fiction. This Geezer explored the Amazon Basin in the late 1800 early 1900s when it was still blank on the maps Stopped to fight in WW1 and then went back. an astounding man you never heard of.o read any of these books. S

Thats it, off the top of my head, hope I inspired someone to read any of these books. S

Who's the author of the Stalingrad one? Interested in a book on it

sweargen · 15-04-2013 8:35pm

Stalingrad is written by Anthony Beevor. Good choice, don't be put off by the size. hope you enjoy it. S.

MaggieNF · 15-04-2013 9:05pm

sweargen wrote: »

Stalingrad is written by Anthony Beevor. Good choice, don't be put off by the size. hope you enjoy it. S.

Doesn't seem that long, will probably read soon, since I'm reading a lot of World War 2 books at the moment, thanks for telling me

sweargen · 15-04-2013 9:12pm

MaggieNF wrote: »

Doesn't seem that long, will probably read soon, since I'm reading a lot of World War 2 books at the moment, thanks for telling me

My pleasure

Paddy Samurai · 16-04-2013 1:57pm

Stalingrad. History book reads like a novel, the cruelty and sacrifice, of a pivotal time of history -sweargen

A book I always wanted to read.Sitting on my shelf a few years now. Hopefully I will manage it this year.Too many damn books.:(

Blood Meridian. Echos of Dantes Inferno, a master at work with the English language and quite possibly the most violent book I have ever read.-sweargen

Great Book,but "In the Rogue Blood" by Blake is my favourite of the two.Some say more violent,and I would probably agree.

The Stand - Stephen King-Mindfulness

A Top Notch post-apocalyptic read,only surpassed IMO, by Swan Song (McCammon).

Salems Lot by Stephen King-Dirty Dingus McGee

Great book,My favourite King book,I have reread it more times than I have any other.

sweargen · 17-04-2013 4:45pm

Great Book,but "In the Rogue Blood" by Blake is my favourite of the two.Some say more violent,and I would probably agree.

Is that by William Blake ? forgive my ignorance

Paddy Samurai · 17-04-2013 10:52pm

sweargen wrote: »

Great Book,but "In the Rogue Blood" by Blake is my favourite of the two.Some say more violent,and I would probably agree.

Is that by William Blake ? forgive my ignorance

James Carlos Blake (born May 26, 1947) is an American writer of novels, novellas, short stories, and essays. His work has received extensive critical favor and several notable awards. He has been called “one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life” [1] as well as “one of the most original writers in America today and … certainly one of the bravest.” [2] He is a recipient of the University of South Florida's Distinguished Humanities Alumnus Award and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.

If your interested there is an interview here where Blake talks about McCormack

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/books/201202/james-carlos-blake-friends-pancho-villa-johnny-depp-adaptation-country-bad-wolfes-book

sweargen · 18-04-2013 7:41pm

Thanks Paddy for the tip, my appetite is whetted. I read the interview, straightforward, succinct I like that.,

Neil McCauleys Cooler Brother · 31-08-2013 10:33pm

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller.
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.
Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon.
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B., J.P. Donleavy
From Hell, Alan Moore.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy.
American Tabloid, James Ellroy.
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy.
A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce.
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake.

beauf · 01-09-2013 12:26am

Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake. That one as always stuck in my head.

Monkeybonkers · 01-09-2013 12:30am

Neil McCauleys Cooler Brother wrote: »

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller.
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.
Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon.
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B., J.P. Donleavy
From Hell, Alan Moore.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy.
American Tabloid, James Ellroy.
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy.
A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce.
Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake.

I read this years ago and remember at the time thinking it was brilliant. Must give it another read. Thanks for the reminder

bellinter · 05-09-2013 1:58pm

The Stand - Stephen King
The Long Walk - Stephen King
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
All The Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
The Given Day - Dennis Lehane
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Open - Andre Agassi
Rough Ride - Paul Kimmage
Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

Gandalph · 08-09-2013 3:05pm

I'm going to have to read King's 'The Stand' due to all the mentions here and being a big post apocolyptic theme fan myself, although I really didn't enjoy McCarthy's 'The Road', with all the praise it got.

Some of my favourite books being;
World War Z - Max Brooks
Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan (Only read from 1-5)
Harry Potter (from no.4 onwards) - JK Rowling
The Wolf of Wallstreet - Jordan Belfort
Pathfinder - David Blakely

Whippersnapper · 12-09-2013 1:06pm

Off the top of my head:

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Master - Colm Toibin
The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield
All The President's Men - Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Perfume: The Story Of A Murder - Patrick Suskind
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance - RM Pirsig
Animal Farm - George Orwell
A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Comic Book Guy · 27-09-2013 9:49pm

Hi all,

Finished the Count of Monte Cristo last week after seeing it listed in a lot of peoples top 10.
Great read, really enjoyed it with the only drawback that the basic story is so well known now in popular culture that ya already know the main plot and are reading it as such.

Kazan · 04-10-2013 11:44pm

Mikhail Bulkagov: The Master and Margarita
Sofi Oksanen: The Purge
Bohumil Hrabal: Too Loud a Solitude
Bohumil Hrabal: I served the King of England
Michael Cunningham: The Hours

SilSil · 30-10-2013 10:29am

bellinter wrote: »

The Stand - Stephen King
The Long Walk - Stephen King

I vote for these two!

Monkeybonkers · 04-11-2013 9:41pm

After recently finishing it I would have to put Vanity Fair by William Thackeray in here.

onethreefive · 10-11-2013 12:17am

I'm new to reading book's for pleasure so I don't have 10 favourites yet but my top 3 would definitely be:

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky.

2. The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger.

3. Harry Potter book 4-7 - J. K. Rowling.

Up The Bare Stairs · 14-11-2013 2:33pm

Confining this list to fiction, with one exception, and thinking how do I limit it to ten:
1. The Sportswriter – Richard Ford
2. Foster – Claire Keegan (really a stretched out short story but exquisite)
3. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
4. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
5. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
6. That They Might Face The Rising Sun – John McGahern
7. The Iliad – Homer
8. Ulysses – James Joyce (much more accessible than people might think)
9. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
10. Mimesis – The Representation of Reality in Western Literature – Erich Auerbach (very, very heavy but one of the best works of literary criticism I’ve read)

Would include Dante's Inferno if I was allowed 11, but that's cheating

Banneret · 28-12-2013 1:05am

Nice

johnROSS · 03-03-2014 11:26pm

Dharma Bums- Jack Kerouac
Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell
Animal Farm- Orwell
Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Trainspotting- Irvine Welsh
Brave New World- Huxley
any of the Sherlock Holmes stuff
East Of Eden - John Steinbeck
The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
almost any Oscar Wilde

Kalimah · 10-05-2014 1:27am

Star of the Sea- Joseph O'Connor.
We need to talk about Kevin. Lionel Shriver.
Hatter's Castle. AJ Cronin
Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte
22.11.63. Stephen King
Stalingrad. Anthony Beevor
Berlin. Anthony Beevor.
Alone in Berlin. Hans Fallada .
The Eagle of the Ninth. Rosemary Sutcliffe
The last testament of Gideon Mack. James Robertson.
I could put in another 10 very easily!

Slattsy · 10-05-2014 7:27pm

Then they wouldn't make your top 10 :-)

megadodge · 13-05-2014 10:30pm

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
1984 – George Orwell
Perfume - Patrick Suskind
Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry
Star of The Sea – Joe O'Connor
The Sicilian – Mario Puza
Seabiscuit – Laura Hillenbrand
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle

A number of honourable mentions (there's loads more I just can't think of right now):

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – Robert M. Pirsig
A Star Called Henry – Roddy Doyle
Alone in Berlin – Hans Falada
Five Star Billionaire – Tash Aw
The World According to Garp - John Irving

Washington Irving · 15-05-2014 3:12am

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Odyssey - Homer
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
The Arabian Nights

And a sacred text of your choosing.

Kilgore__Trout · 07-08-2014 12:02am

The Postman - David Brin
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Flowers For Algernon - Daniel Keyes
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
Catch 22 - Joesph Heller
The Terror - Dan Simmons
Shutter Island - Denis Lehane
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

Not in any particular order.

mcsean2163 · 08-08-2014 11:46pm

"Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut"

Maybe I read this when I was too young but I thought it was pretty rubbish, deadpan, "so it goes". It don't understand how it has so many fans, it's like the emperor with no clothes.

Kilgore__Trout · 09-08-2014 12:08am

Preferred Cat's Cradle. Could make more sense of the message, which seemed to cover a lot more ground, and thought it was a weirder and more humorous tale.

Still thought Slaughterhouse was a fine read though. Enjoyed the dark humour, the portraits of humanity gone wrong, and the weird, offbeat nature of the story. Whether Vonnegut's experiences in WW2 and in Dresden adds something to the book is up for grabs, but for me it did.

Each to her/his own, I guess : )

Cedrus · 09-08-2014 2:45am

mcsean2163 wrote: »

"Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut"

Maybe I read this when I was too young but I thought it was pretty rubbish, deadpan, "so it goes". It don't understand how it has so many fans, it's like the emperor with no clothes.

May be you did, may be try again before you diss it. It's nominated with good reason.

fayvirtue · 05-11-2014 10:42pm

Tom Sawyer , Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the rye , 1984 , World according to Garp, Suttree , The Orchid Keeper , The Five people you meet in Heaven ,The Hands Maids Tale, For Whom The Bell Tolls

27-11-2014 10:27pm

I've read some really great books based on recommendations from this thread that I otherwise may have overlooked. Wish more people posted in it. I'll list ten now that haven't yet been mentioned yet or only mentioned a few times because we all know The count of Monte Cristo, Crime & Punishment etc are great books, its nice to stumble across lesser known greats.

Stoner - John Williams.
A forgotten masterpiece. It follows the life of a young farmer who goes to college and later becomes a professor, an inconsequential man who does the opposite of living life to the fullest. Its all very uneventful and yet its hard not to be captivated by it and feel so involved with William Stoner.

Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes.
A man with an IQ of 68 is chosen to partake in a medical experiment to increase his intelligence. His diary tracks the effects of the experiment on him and the lab mouse Algernon that was also experimented on. Astounding read.

The Magus - John Fowles.
A young English teacher moves to a remote Greek island to teach and becomes embroiled in a dark psychological game with one of the islands inhabitants, an eccentric elderly man. I thought about this novel for weeks after I finished it.

The New York trilogy - Paul Auster.
Three interconnected stories of detective fiction that blew me away. Its so much more than what it appears to be.

Wonder boys - Michael Chabon.
The story of a creative writing professor who can't finish his novel and spends most of the novel stoned and or drunk and generally making an ass of himself. I loved it.

The orphan masters son - Adam Johnson.
The story of a North Korean orphan who stumbles from a life of poverty to a job as a body double for a hero of the revolution during the reign of Kim Jong Il.

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace.
Its a struggle at times. Its gargantuan. I've never had to use a dictionary as much in my life as I had to when reading this book. And its bloody brilliant. I can't tell you what its about in a few words, just read it.

Times Arrow - Martin Amis
A novel in reverse. Amis is a great writer who doesn't always write great novels, this for me is definitely one of his best.

Wool omnibus - Hugh Howey
A post apocalyptic dystopian novel (yes another one) set in an underground silo hundreds of years after whatever event made life on the outside uninhabitable. It was originally released as one short novella and has exploded from there, I recommend reading the omnibus as it all slots together very well.

House of leaves - Mark Z Danielewski
First off, don't even try to read this in e-book format. It has to be read on paper. The formatting of this book is unique to say the least. It tells the story of a family who move into a small house where something is terribly wrong - the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. This book will get inside your head. At different stages while reading it I had to put it down just to process what was after happening. I hated this book. Then I loved it. Then I didn't want to read it anymore. Then I couldn't put it down. The more you put into this book the more you will get out of it. It is not an easy read.

2395dfys · 20-12-2014 7:28am

engineering the alpha 2.0 every male teenager/man should read it

FaulknersFav · 23-03-2015 8:26pm

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Stoner - John Williams
For Esme with Love and Squalor - J.D. Salinger
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Beware of Pity - Stefan Zweig
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
The Outsider - Albert Camus

sm213 · 30-08-2015 10:40pm

Tales of the unexpected- Dahl
Falling leaves - Adeline Yen Mah
Goodnight Mr.Tom
The talisman - king and straub
King Lear -Shakespeare
The Shadow of the Wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The demonata series by darren shan is super cool.
Harry potter series.
Ugly - constance Briscoe
I'm sure I'm missing some.

Thomas998 · 08-10-2015 12:38am

The Day of the Jackal.
11/22/63
The Green Mile
The Name of the Wind
Harry Potter series
Mistborn series
Stormlight Archive
Stalingrad
Red Alert
1984

Thomas998 · 08-10-2015 12:41am

Oh, forgot To Kill A Mockingbird - maybe not a popular choice these days, but powerful stuff nonetheless.

Keplar240B · 08-10-2015 12:46am

Your Survival
by Dr. Bob Arnot and Mark Cohen

How To Stay Alive In The Woods
Bradford Angier

Larry Dean Olsen’s Outdoor Survival Skills

The Survival Handbook, by Colin Towell

When All Hell Breaks Loose
from Cody Lundin

Naked Into The Wilderness
by John and Geri McPherson

Peterson’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants

Tom Brown’s Field Guide To Wilderness Survival

The Outward Bound Wilderness First-Aid Handbook
by Jeffrey Isaac

Northern Bushcraft, by Mors Kochanski,

10 to read before the apocalypse?

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