10 to read before the apocalypse?

Velvet Vocals

My list is in the order of first reading, I started love affair with books at a very young age....

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
Matilda - Roald Dahl
To Kill a MockingBird - Harper Lee's
Echoes - Maeve Binchy
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Hounds of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
Five Quarters Of The Orange - Joanne Harris
Anything by Kinky Friedman - one of my favorite authors!
The Alchemist - Paulo Coehlo
All of the Harry Potter's

Le Rack

A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer : True story about a young boy in America who was brutally abused by his mother. He was the third worst abused child in the history of the US. Its impossible to believe that a mother could do this to another human let alone her own child. Heart rendering and tear jerking, impossible to belive, impossible to put down. (and its trilogy so read all three)

The Hannibal Lector Trilogy by Thomas Harris : The man is a genius to be able to create a genius such as Dr. Hannibal Lector. The three books Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal do follow each other but can very easily be read as singles. The best of the three is Hannibal. Longest one too! But definately the best. For those of you who have only seen the movies the books are so much better. The movies are nothing like the books, so much is left out of the movies, the story is the same, and some of the dialogue is taken straight from the novels but there is so much more to the books, a much more twisted, sadistic and tangled story. Absolutely brilliant!

Dracula by Bram Stoker : Very good book. Extremely difficult to get into with the old English and big complicated words, (seriously wicked complicated English even for accomplished Englishy people) (as I am obviously not!) but once you do get into it its really good. And its not half as pornographic as the film!!!! Its more about Johnathon Hark's relationship with Drac and the relationship Drac developed with Hark's wife.

Fixed 1, 2, & 3 from Today FM (Ray D'arcy) : Funny and educational! What more can I say!!??

thats eight books for ya! cant think of any more at the mo! Enjoy!

americanCat

10. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
9. Any of the Lord of the Rings
8. Heart of Darkness by Josef Conrad
7. Song of Ice and Fire
6. Eragon
5. Jurassic Park
4. Life of Pi
3. The Princess Bride
2. A Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
1. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Greg(?) Maguire

o Fiac

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Lucy in the Sky

Catch 22 - Heller
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - kundera
East of Eden - Steinbeck
The Handmaids Tale - Atwood
The Virgin Suicides - Eugeneides
Crime & Punishment - Dostoevsky
Collected short prose of Samuel Beckett
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez

guest31

"Dracula by Bram Stoker : Very good book. Extremely difficult to get into with the old English and big complicated words, (seriously wicked complicated English even for accomplished Englishy people) (as I am obviously not!) but once you do get into it its really good. And its not half as pornographic as the film!!!! Its more about Johnathon Hark's relationship with Drac and the relationship Drac developed with Hark's wife."


Hi Le Rack, have you read Frankenstein .. in my opinion it's a much better book than Dracula (which I felt died a bit ... excuse the pun .. in the middle).

Frankenstein is an absolute classic ... I'll never forget reading it for the first time, I nearly jumped out of my skin, and the tragedy, woah ... Mary Shelley was only nineteen when she wrote it ... wow, a masterpiece.

powerslidesrus

its a tough one to name ten, id say just pick any book from these ten writers and your sorted

1. terry pratchett
2. steven king
3. tom clancy
4. jeremy clarkson
5. isaak asimov (i know i spelt that wrong)
6. Micheal Crichton
7. Douglas Adams
8. jrr tolkien
9. Arthur C Clarke
10.a for dummies book on how to survive the apoclapse

lofto

i dont think anyone mentioned Twelve bar blues, which i recently read and found quite good. i think it one the whitbread.

Velvet Vocals

lofto wrote:

i dont think anyone mentioned Twelve bar blues, which i recently read and found quite good. i think it one the whitbread.

Don't think I've read it... but I did hear that it "WON" the whitbread

o Fiac

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shane0312

1: 1984-George Orwell
2: LOTR- Tolkien
3: Animal farm- Orwell
4: The wheel of time series- Robert Jordan (although can be a bit long)
5: A brief history of time-Stephen hawkings
6: Down and out in Paris and London-Orwell
7: A vanished man- Jeffery Deaver
8: The Dante Club-Matthew Pearl
9: Life of Pi-Yann Martel
10: Incompetence-Rob Grant

Imp7

In no particular order:

The Godfather - the quintessential Mafia novel imho
The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons - thought provoking...Dan Brown's other two books, not so much
Catcher in the Rye - a must read, no other words necessary
MacBeth - the very best of Shakespeare, awe inspiring psychological study and all in iambic pentameter, fair play!
The Hannibal Lecter trilogy - name another series of books with a strangely likeable cultured cannibal
Life of Pi - innovative
The Magician - had forgotten about this book until i read it on other lists, fab story
The Bell Jar - depressing but beautiful

Duras

1. From the Corner of his Eye - Dean Koontz
2. The Greek Legends - by whoever translated them
3. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. King Rat by James Clavell
5. Ender's Game by Orson Scott
6. The Empire of Ants by Bernard Werber [all the series]
7. Brain Wave by Poul Anderson
8. It by Stephen King
9. The Taking by Stephen King
10. Winnetou by Karl May [all the series]

If you have time for more I recommend all the books of Koontz, Clavell or King

Octavianus

Anyone reading any of the classics these days? the Aeneid by Virgil is a great book and fits in nicely as a great piece of history. It's like a sequel to the Trojan War and the start of Roman history. Either way, it was written about 2000 years ago, and its a great adventure story. I love the gods, they are CRAZY, like characters from a modern soap!

ionapaul

The classics are great alright, the Greek and Roman gods were wonderful characters, sly, sneaky, stupid, just like regular humans but with superpowers!

What is amazing to me (reading these lists and thinking back on the novels I have enjoyed the most over the years) is what an amazing body of work has come from the Russian authors. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Turgenev and so many more. Nothing beats a good Russian classic!

lacuna

1. Nausea - Sartre
2. The Great Gatsby - Scott Fitzgerald
3. Fiesta, The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
4. QED - Feynmann (Incredibly helpful for physics!)
5. East West - Rushdie (Short stories, some excellent ones in it)
6. Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow - Hoeg (I have no idea why this book is always in my head apart from the excellent way in which it was written)
7. A Brave New World - Huxley (I don't think the film did it justice really)
8. The Plague - Camus
9. The Faraway Tree - Blyton
10. Tales of Narnia - Lewis

It's hard picking 10. These were some of my favourites throughout my last 15 years of reading.

006

Jane Eyre
The Stand
Lolita
Crime and Punishment
1984
A secret History
Illiad
American Pyscho
David Copperfield
It

Tar.Aldarion

lotr trilogy-tolkien
His dark materials trilogy-phillip pullman
disc world series-terry pratchett
the lost tales-tolkien
the unfinished tales-tolkien
the hobbit-tolkien
the silmarillion-tolkien
dracula-bram stoker
a brief history of time-hawking
the bible(or all the holy doctines!)-matthew,mark,luke,john :P

doctor evil

Ben Okre(sp?) The Famished Road, read it years ago and I still think about it.
Can`t remember the author, The Catcher in the Rhye
Terry Pratchett anything especially the early stuff.
Douglas Adams anything.
Can`t remember the author, The Lovely Bones
J.R. Tolkien The Hobbit, LOFTR
Can`t think of anything else

Wheely

gotta say Harry Potter(no. 4 best)
All the Presidents Men (woodward & Bernstein)
1984 (orwell)
Animal Farm (orwell)
Catcher in the rye (Salinger)
It/The STand (King)
King Lear (shakespere)
Bright Shining Lie (sheehan)
Belgariad/malloreann (eddings)
tragedy & hope (Quigley)

Jesus, i wanna change them already....ah well

tim3115

What do the people here make of American Psycho? Oh and by not spoiling it etc

shacko

American Pysco are u fvuckin crazy. A decent read but not exactly a must read before the apocolypse. Heathens and Plebs. Three essential books that not one person has metioned has mentioned. That mournfull gloom for there Celestial Light

The Aneaid

The Odessey

Paradice Lost

motrocco

siddhartra (check spelling again) Herman Hess. Brilliant.

o Fiac

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The Lopper

1. The Man in the High Castle.....................Philip K Dick
2. The Da Vinci Code.................................Dan Brown
3. Lord of the Rings..................................J.R.R Tolkien
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.......Philip K. Dick
5. Benny & Omar......................................Eoin Colfer
6. Dead Air..............................................Iain Banks
7. The whole Harry Potter collection.............J.K. Rowling
8. The Lost Continent................................Bill Bryson
9. Solaris............................................... Stanislev Yem
10. Life At The Limit (Formula 1.....hilarious!) Sid Watkins

supersheep

I'm only going to put books that I have read, and no cheating by putting in trilogies or collected works... And in no particular order:

1. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Amazing book. Desribes life in the Gulags. People talk about Chekov and Dostoyevsky as amazing Russian authors - I don't see it, although maybe I've just read bad translations. Solzhenitsyn, however, is undoubtedly an amazing Russian author.

2. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
THE anti-war novel. Hilarious, bitter, satirical, funny, disjointed, crazy - everything.

3. Slaugterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Just pipped to the post as THE anti-war novel, but still an amazing book. Perhaps even more darkly comic than Catch-22.

4. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Don't know why, but this is just an amazing book.

5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
So funny and insane I can describe. I love the list of drugs on the second page, enough narcotics to floor a platoon of marines. I find it hilarious for some reason.

6. To Kill a Mocking-Bird - Harper Lee
A classic, true, but an amazing book. A great portrayal of racism and injustice.

7. Animal Farm - George Orwell
Wrote many good books, but this one beats out Nineteen Eighty-Four and Homage to Catalonia, barely. Very very powerful satire, in my opinion.

8. One More River - Lynne Reid Banks
Haven't read this in ages, but it's a powerful picture of life in the Middle East, and the line between Israelis and Palestinians.

9. Shake Hands With the Devil - Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire
Probably not the most powerful book written on Rwanda, but the best I have read, and from the position of he guy who everyone blamed for it...

10. War Junkie - Jon Steele
Here because I wanna be a war correspondent, and because of its black humour. Like them listening to reports of an airport being shelled on BBC World Sevice, while being shelled at the airport...

lacuna

supersheep wrote:

I'm only going to put books that I have read, and no cheating by putting in trilogies or collected works... And in no particular order:

1. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Amazing book. Desribes life in the Gulags. People talk about Chekov and Dostoyevsky as amazing Russian authors - I don't see it, although maybe I've just read bad translations. Solzhenitsyn, however, is undoubtedly an amazing Russian author.

I had completely forgotten that I'd ever read this book till I saw it mentioned here. I thought it was excellent. Very well written and I loved the characters.

supersheep

lacuna wrote:

I had completely forgotten that I'd ever read this book till I saw it mentioned here. I thought it was excellent. Very well written and I loved the characters.

Probably my favourite book. And I love the end. <runs upstairs to check>

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote:

There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail.
The three extra days were for leap years.

eclectichoney

moon palace - paul auster : my favouritest book ever!
100 years of solitude - marquez : extremely funny
a million little pieces - james frey : changed my perspective a lot
a problem from hell, america and the age of genocide : damn good synthesis of recent disasters
engineer of human souls - josef skvorecky
so the wind won't blow it all away - richard brautigan : why don't more people read him?
the seagull - chekhov : "why do you always wear black? / i am in mourning for my life. i am unhappy"
underworld - don de lillo : the first 200 pages.... possibly the best ever written
bonjour tristesse - francoise sagan
globalizaion and its discontents - stiglitz - one of the most accurate and objective accounts of the imf and world bank

mayordenis

hughchal wrote:

The Third Policeman: Flann O'Brien

yes, yes, a thousand times yes!