10 to read before the apocalypse?

galactus

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

(snip)
L'Etranger - Albert Camus
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A great choice imho: "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man...". I found this book quite hilarious and frightening. Not sure if that's supposed to be the case.

Can't agree with your choice of Camus though. Over-rated methinks.

ZorbaTehZ

Absolutely; I felt the same way.
Parts at the beginning were incredibly funny, but at the same time, very depressing. After I read it for the first time, I couldn't decide whether I actually liked it or not.

As for that comment about Camus - I disagree, to say the least.

Corruptedmorals

1. Chinese Cinderella- Adeline Yen Mah
2. Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
3. My Sister's Keeper- Jodi Picoult (AND the rest of her books)
4. Malka- Mirjam Pressler
5. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
6. 1984- George Orwell
7. Geisha of Gion- Mineko Iwasaki (used to love Memoirs..but learning about geisha spoiled it)
8. St Clares- Enid Blyton (She IS a brilliant author. I re-read the school books every so often)
9. The His Dark Materials trilogy- Philip Pullman. Subtle Knife probably.
10. Echoes- Danielle Steele- for the sheer hilarity.

Yeah...I'm 18, but I've read lots of classics, this list looks ridiculous..

kashi

I can't believe no one mentioned any Mills & Boon!!! Only joking hehe.

Well as tough and all as this is, I have to pick:

LOTR

Anything by Anne Rice, esp The Vampire Lestat (even the porn she wrote was fab.........but a word of advice read it alone;) )

Dracula

Harry Potter

Pride and Prejudice

Any of the Horrible Histories........absolutely hysterical!!

The Story of O - Pauline Réage - amazingly explicit for the 50s and very interesting!

Roald Dahl.........I especially loved Horrible Rhymes.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure I'll think of more later!

kashi

SamHamilton

1. Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
2. Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
3. Macbeth - Shakespeare
4. The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
6. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

I'll have to think about the rest...

lecomte

At Swim Two Birds- Flann O'Brien.

Anything of Salinger's novellas on the Glass Family.

Kafka on the Shore- Haruki Murakami

Everything is Illuminated- Jonathon San Fran Foer

Emerson's Essays

Moby Dick- Melville

Leaves of Grass- Whitman

Blake, any collection.

100 Years of Solitude.

The Odyssey- Homer

Collected Works of Shakespeare

Could be a different list tomorrow. Those are the ones that occurred to me there. (They're looking at me from my bookshelf).

anthonyk

ENCHANTED WOOD enid blyton
1984 george orwell
HITCHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY douglas adams
TALE OF TWO CITIES charles dickens
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN james joyce
PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY oscar wilde
GRAPES OF WRATH john steinbeck
LAUGHABLE LOVES milan kundera
THE LOONEY spike milligan
HAMLET shakespeare

silvine

There's lots of great book mentioned above but I didn't see Audrey Niffenburg's The Time Traveller's Wife on anyone's list. And don't forget John Boyne's The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas. Roddy Doyle's The Snapper is great too.

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is a cracking read as is Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

Now if you can excuse me I'll be in the book shop with my credit card.

AJG

This is an interesting one, although a little cruel. How can you condense a lifetime of reading into 10 choices. Well if you haven't read any of the following try and seek them out I would hope they wouldn't dissapoint.

1. The Process - Brion Gysin (This one may be a little harder to track down but its worth it. He was mainly known for his association with Burroughs and only produced a few works.)

2. Death on the Installment Plan - Louis Ferdinand Celine (Chronicles his early years and they were none too pretty.)

3. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles (I'd also reccomend his shorter fiction too, his wife Jane was a pretty good writer herself.)

4. The Aleph - Jorge Luis Borges (A short story writer whose work stands on its own I doubt you will come across anything like it.)

5. The Immoralist - Andre Gide (Strange but compelling story. I haven't read anything else by him though. Any suggestions?)

6. The Bandini Quartet- John Fante (Technically 4 books but if you read one you'll be compelled to read them all.)

7. Trilogy - Samuel Beckett (Again 3 books but worth it. No one ever mentions his sense of humour.)

8.The Obelisk Trilogy - Henry Miller (Comprises the 'Tropics' and 'Black Spring' but for quality of writing he can't be beat. I've probably read more of Miller than anyone else.)

9. Dubliners - James Joyce (I feel he never really lived up to this one. I've read Ulysses but I felt it didn't really pick up pace until Molly Bloom's monologue at the end.)

10. Seraphita - Honore De Balzac (One of his lesser known works. Another strange tale but it left its mark on me so it makes the list.)

11. Siddartha - Hermann Hesse (Sorry, I couldn't let this one go. Extra special bonus choice. Another touching tale and one that will linger with you.)

Technically a choice of 17 and I barely scratched the surface.

SuperSean11

thedrowner wrote:

james joyce-ullyses



catcher in the rye (cant remember who its by...im a poet and i know it!)

Its by J.D.Salinger. A great read

Procasinator

Could name plenty of books but would just be repeating everyone else. A book I enjoyed was The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.

Sir Graball

In no particular order

Dickens 'Hard Times'
Capote 'In Cold Blood'
Plath 'Ariel'
Orwell 'The Road to Wigan Pier'
Joyce 'Dubliners'
Durcan 'Selected Poems'
Hemingway 'The Old Man and the Sea'
Dostoyevsky 'Crime and Punishment'
Camus 'The Outsider'
Thomas' Under Milkwood'
I just keep going back to these as they are timeless.:D

ZorbaTehZ

Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea is definitely a great one. That, and Fiesta are his best imo.

stolenwine

I know I have alot more to discover so I wouldn't laminate this.

In no particular order-

1. JD Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye"
2. Camus "The Outsider"
3. Philip K. Dick "A Scanner Darkly"
4. Plato "The Symposium"
5.Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Love in the Time of Cholera"
6. Oscar Wilde " The Picture of Dorian Gray"
7. Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"
8. J.R Tolkien "Lord of the Rings"
9. Patrick Suskind "Perfume"
10. Colm Toibin "The Master"

stolenwine

Glad to see someone added the english dictionary (Oxford)

jarmstrong001

1. Len Deighton - Bomber
2. Graham Greene - Our Man in Havana
3. Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward
4. Dickens - Pickwick Papers
5. Vonnegut - Galapagos
6. Daphne DuMaurier - My Cousin Rachel
7. Tolstoy - Death of Ivan Illych
8. Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman
9. Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
10. John Steinbeck - In Dubious Battle

Lynibeth

Would have to say Stephen Hawking - A brief history of time is excellent

Zoodlebop

Gotta be:

Foundation (Asimov)
Dune (Herbert)
Alice in Wonderland (Carrol)
Hitchhikers Guide .... (Adams)
Hamlet (Bardy Boy)
1984 (Orwell)
The Illiad (Homer)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo [Best. Romance. Ever. Sniff.])
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
War and Peace (Tolstoy)

Zoodlebop

I really don't think that LOTR is a "must read before the apocalypse". I personally can do without it. It's a great work of imagination, but I didn't really make me resonate with any emotions, except courage maybe. Perhaps I recant...

dh2007

Not sure if this has been posted before but does anyone else try to discern whether a poster is male or female based on their favourite books?

Guess my gender:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
2. The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
3. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
4. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy)
5. The Harry Potter series (JK Rowling)
6. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
7. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres)
8. Jane Eyre - (Charlotte Bronte)
9. About the Author (John Colapinto)
10. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

Locamon

I think most of the greats have been covered and I certainly agree with 'Catch 22' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' among many but some I have read in the last year or so worth a late entry would be

Everyman Philip Roth
Slow Man J.M. Coetzee -Disgrace is by far the better book but while a bit out there this is certainly more fun
The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster
Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson

Just in case you have read all the oldies..

It wasn't me!

dh2007 wrote:

Not sure if this has been posted before but does anyone else try to discern whether a poster is male or female based on their favourite books?

Guess my gender:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexander Dumas)
2. The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
3. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
4. The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy)
5. The Harry Potter series (JK Rowling)
6. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks)
7. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres)
8. Jane Eyre - (Charlotte Bronte)
9. About the Author (John Colapinto)
10. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

Woman/gay man?

Hmm, not definitive, but a list I'd certainly recommend everyone read would be as follows:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Use of Weapons - Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
A Brief History of Time - Steven Hawking
Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
The Discworld Series - Terry Pratchett

Several there involve multiple books, but there's a lot to be gotten from everything there.

silvine

The Discworld series?

Yes they are very good but I'm not convinced if they are for everyone. Firstly the fantasy element would put a lot of people off and the books can get a little repititive after a while.

There are one or two real gems in Pratchet's collection though e.g. Small Gods.

It wasn't me!

You think? I found Small Gods a little too... thinky, perhaps. I'm a big fan of all the city watch books though. Also, apparently the next one will be focused on Moist von Lipwig.

unknownlegend

I found Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to be a strikingly well written and disturbing book. The man has a great mastery over the written word, and I'd recommend it highly as a must-read.

It wasn't me!

unknownlegend wrote:

I found Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita to be a strikingly well written and disturbing book. The man has a great mastery over the written word, and I'd recommend it highly as a must-read.

Agree completely.

friend and foe

has anyone mentioned Shantaram yet??

quite literally the most incredible book i've read in a long time... really makes you think twice about people

Deirdre Maguire

This is an odd one, I know, and I don't know if it would fit into the top ten books ever category, but I just finished Sean Moncrieff's novel, 'The History of Things' (I think it was only published this week), and it was really, really good - which surprised me greatly because I never liked him on television. He should write full time.

SureThisIsIt

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev
1984 - Orwell
Love in the Time of Cholera - Garcia Marquez
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Verne
Frankentstein - Mary Shelley
The Heart of the Matter - Greene
The Pearl - Steinbeck
The Prince - Machiavelli
Dubliners - Joyce

Like all of these a lot. All very interesting. More recently; "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy is good and "Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell.

Anyone else got any suggestions for me?

slinky

SureThisIsIt wrote:

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev

Turgenev is one of my favourite writers, First Love especially.