Books that have stayed with you

Valmont

Threads like this are ripe with great recommendations! However, I've had to impose a ban on amazon.co.uk and any bookshops; if my unread book pile gets any bigger, I'm going to need a separate room for them.

Eliot Rosewater

Fragglefur wrote: »

Times Arrow Martin Amis, 1984 George Orwell and Slaughterhouse 5 Kurt Vonnegut

All fairly grim I suppose

I don't think Slaughterhouse 5 is necessarily grim. In a way it creates an ethical doctrine which makes it easier to deal with the horrid events of life. If a close relative dies, for instance, there is nothing you can do to bring them back. Literally, So it goes. Bad things happen in life, and it's best to take them in your stride instead of obsessing over them, I suppose.

Easier said than done, of course.

Dudess

Both Margaret Atwood's frightening visions of the future - The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx & Crake. I'm about to read her new scary future novel The Year Of The Flood - can't wait!

sudzs

Dudess wrote: »

Both Margaret Atwood's frightening visions of the future - The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx & Crake. I'm about to read her new scary future novel The Year Of The Flood - can't wait!

Well that is uncanny because I haven't been around thie part of boards before but just went straight to the last post on this thread and I could have written your post myself Dudess!

I loved The Handmaids Tale, scary. Also Oryx and Crake, loved it, not so scary though! And have The Year of the Flood lined up for reading soon!

Dudess

Bizarre!

Can't believe I forgot We Need To Talk About Kevin - although the author seems to have a serious anti-children agenda going on. The book blew me away though - that ending... Jesus Christ, I was actually numb...

And obviously Nineteen Eighty Four - I read that when I was 15 and it absolutely haunted me.

Black Swan

Just a few that popped into my head when reading the OP:

• Dune, by Frank Herbert (favourite sci fi novel of future worlds in conflict)
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (period novel captured by the title)
• Sand and Foam, by Kahlil Gibran (refreshing poety and stories about life)
• Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by TE Lawrence (Hemingway style history of early 20th Century Arabia)
• The Lessons of History, by Will and Ariel Durant (powerful summary)
• The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald (poetic philosophy of life enjoyment)
• Walden, by Henry David Thoreau (thought provoking poetry about life and meaning)

Callan57

Dudess wrote: »

Bizarre!

Can't believe I forgot We Need To Talk About Kevin - although the author seems to have a serious anti-children agenda going on. The book blew me away though - that ending... Jesus Christ, I was actually numb...

And obviously Nineteen Eighty Four - I read that when I was 15 and it absolutely haunted me.

We Need To Talk About Kevin .... amazing book & very disturbing

herosa

we need to talk about kevin. If you read it you will never forget it.

epgc3fyqirnbsx

herosa wrote: »

we need to talk about kevin. If you read it you will never forget it.

About a quater of the way through this now, beginning to wonder about d'mammy
Left it in my friends house and wont see it for another fortnight, just when i was really getting into it

Grievous

I finished William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying a few weeks back and the book is still vivid in my head.
An brilliaint book, both experimental and expertly constructed.

The shortest chapter in the book and one of the best ever written if you can understand the Psychology and reasoning behind it is:

"My mother is a fish"

This chapter is narrated by the young Vardaman.

I won't spoil anything in the novel as I always like to see people check stuff out and discover and appreciate things for themselves.

spottybananna

I've read hundreds of books over the years. Nothing has stuck with me like The Road.
Often find myself thinking, what if...

Tesco Massacre

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Quality

It has to be

The Road..

Oh I read that book when I was heavily pregnant and I remember crying and the fear in me of it!!

Also, a thousand splendid suns and Amongst Women, I still think of the father in that book with such pity.

SuperInfinity

1984, Frankenstein, An Evil Cradling.

Enkidu

Sergeant wrote: »

JohnDee wrote:

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk.

A truly disgusting book.

Definitely one of the most gut-wrenching books I've ever read, in fact humorously so at times.

The swimming pool!

For me:
Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
It doubles as a fantastic exposition of evolutionary theory and chaos theory and a novel about the dangerous power of science.

Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanely Robinson
The future. A really hard scientific look at what life in space would actually be like. Truly opened my mind.

Epic of Gilgamesh (Akkadian Version), Sin-liqe-unninni
Anything great about the style of language in the Bible is done much better here. I feel it is the most "human" story ever written.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Juice Terry

Anything by Chuck Palahniuk has stayed with me - he's a truly magnificent writer.

A Clockwork Orange.
The End of the World News.
To Kill A Mockingbird.
American Tabloid.
The Big Nowhere.
Filth.
Silas Marner.
The Informers.
The Road.
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors.
The Dalkey Archive (funniest book ever!).
Moby Dick.

useurename

Tom Crean -An Unsung Hero. A very inspiring story of an Irish hero. Not the best read ever but the stories in it are amazing.

dolliemix

Just seconding some that were already mentioned

Wuthering Heights - Emile Bronte....I love it!
An Evil Cradling _ Brian Keenan about his four years as a hostage in the Lebanon - Very haunting
An Trial - Mairéad Ní Ghráda I teach Irish and I've taught that drama nine or ten times at this stage. Every time I teach it I see things from a different perspective. I empathise with different characters that I previously would have believed were 100% guilty. Its an amazing play that is worth reading at different stages in your life.

Two that haven't been mentioned that I loved

The Star of the Sea - Joseph O Connor ...I couldn't put this book down when I read it
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ...I read this book when I was in India seven years ago. I got so immersed in it that I felt like I was in two different countries at the one time. India during the day and Japan at night before I went to sleep. I finally got to visit Japan this summer and it all came flooding back. It made me remember things about India as well as details from the book as I was travelling around!

Fizman

First time on this forum lads. One of my NY resolutions was to start improving my sleep pattern, and by doing so I intend on jumping into bed much earlier with a good book. It has been too long since I've given a book any actual time necessary to enjoy it.

From reading through some posts here, I was thinking of ordering 1984, Animal Farm and To Kill A Mocking Bird. Would these be wise choices for getting back into reading, or would they be perceived as maybe a little too deep and too hard hitting to start with? As in should I just start with some modern best selling fictional fluff to get my book count off to a start?

Edit: Maybe add Catch 22 to that as well.

sponsoredwalk

Fizman wrote: »

One of my NY resolutions was to start improving my sleep pattern

That was the dream

Fizman wrote: »

From reading through some posts here, I was thinking of ordering 1984, Animal Farm and To Kill A Mocking Bird.

Animal Farm is not heavy reading it's just a great story & although the
historical context is very important, Both Russian:

Orwell wrote:

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an
uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Every-one knows this, nearly
everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any
disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep
hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to
flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of
genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticize
the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticize our
own.

and British:

Orwell wrote:

The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have
swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be
quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several
earlier occasions.
...
It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the
English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and
the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups.
link

you can read this book with no historical context & still enjoy it immensely.
1984 is similar, these books are layered, you can come back every time
& get a lot of new things from them.

SuperInfinity

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

you can read this book with no historical context & still enjoy it immensely.
1984 is similar, these books are layered, you can come back every time
& get a lot of new things from them.

And Frankenstein. I rarely re-read books, but I've read Frankenstein four times and am going to re-read it again soon.

It is so wholesome in its message. Emotion and passion, direction in life, the hazards of messing with nature, friendships, love/loneliness, life/death, appearances/what's in a person's heart. One of the best books ever.

Dibble

Books that have stayed with me are:

1984
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Book Thief
The Go-Between

jackie1974

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell,
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton,
Kane and Abel by Jeffery Archer
The God Squad by Paddy Doyle
Signals by Joel Rothschild
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte.
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Room by Emma Donoghue

And from childhood Heidi

jackie1974

.

Procasinator

Fizman wrote: »

First time on this forum lads. One of my NY resolutions was to start improving my sleep pattern, and by doing so I intend on jumping into bed much earlier with a good book. It has been too long since I've given a book any actual time necessary to enjoy it.

From reading through some posts here, I was thinking of ordering 1984, Animal Farm and To Kill A Mocking Bird. Would these be wise choices for getting back into reading, or would they be perceived as maybe a little too deep and too hard hitting to start with? As in should I just start with some modern best selling fictional fluff to get my book count off to a start?

Edit: Maybe add Catch 22 to that as well.

Catch 22, I find, is a hard read. Not because of language, but rather I found when I begun reading it I became impatient. It felt like the same gag over and over. The characters became annoying. I got 1/4 or so through, and put it down for a long time.

I later came back to it, finished it, and now I love it. But I would recommend tackling one of the other books, as they are shorter, and it's nice to have something small and easily finished to get back into it.

SuperInfinity

Fizman wrote: »

First time on this forum lads. One of my NY resolutions was to start improving my sleep pattern, and by doing so I intend on jumping into bed much earlier with a good book. It has been too long since I've given a book any actual time necessary to enjoy it.

From reading through some posts here, I was thinking of ordering 1984, Animal Farm and To Kill A Mocking Bird. Would these be wise choices for getting back into reading, or would they be perceived as maybe a little too deep and too hard hitting to start with? As in should I just start with some modern best selling fictional fluff to get my book count off to a start?

Edit: Maybe add Catch 22 to that as well.

Don't bother with To Kill A Mocking Bird for now. It's a bit too preachy for my tastes.

Sabscababs

A few repeated suggestions here, but I guess that'll just help ya get the popular choices:

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

And for a quick read, owing to its style of narration, Room by Emma Donoghue.

Yoda

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.

edolan

The Lord of The Rings trilogy are timeless classics.

To Kill A Mockingbird is truely inspirational.

Paul McGrath's autobiography best sports book you'll ever read.

But my personal favourites are the Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan books, especially Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October.

cameilla13

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro