10 to read before the apocalypse?

chrisc · 18-10-2006 09:42PM

Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Flies
To Kill A Mockingbird
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Anna Karenina
Heart of Darkness
The Giver (yes, it's geared towards children, but it's wonderful)
Anything by Phillipa Gregory
Anything by Chuck Klosterman
Either Dave Eggers book, but probably moreso the one about a trip and not his autobiography.

AnBealBocht · 20-10-2006 09:09PM

< http://groups-beta.google.com/group/listowelcokerryireland >

wow sierra · 29-10-2006 03:23AM

Desperados Joe OConnor(plus everything else he's written!!)
Son and Lovers DH Lawrence
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
Perfume Patrick Suskind(100s of pages just on scents, creepy,weird,beautiful)
Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy
Crock of Gold James Stephens
Amongst Women John McGahern
The Photograph Eamon Sweeney (great fictional telling of haughey era)
Not the end of the World Christopher Brookmyre(plus everything else he's written!!Really witty )

Jello · 01-11-2006 11:33PM

In no order:

Catch 22
Nineteen Eighty Four
Animal Farm
Lord Of The Flies
Fight Club
A Clockwork Orange
Lord Of The Rings (including The Hobbit

)
To Kill A Mockingbird
Catcher In The Rye
Trainspotting

davyjose · 22-11-2006 05:30AM

the dice man wrote:

Totally agree Solzhenitsyn books are amazing. if you haven't read his book of short stories you should try and get your hands on it.

i'm not going to bother repeating books that people have already put down so a couple of more that i didn't see here already and are worth a read are

women: bukowski
i served the king of england: hrabal
diary of a madman: gogol
a heart breaking work of straggering genuis: eggers
zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance: pirsig

Not to mention:

Old Man And The sea - Hemingway
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
I, Lucifer - Glen Duncan
Midnight's Children - Rushdie

All books I've read recently. It's been a good year

is_that_so · 03-12-2006 07:29PM

here are a few more in no order

Hunger - Knut Hamson
Don Quixote -Cervantes
Of Mice and Men
Hamlet
Far from the Madding Crowd - Hardy
Alice in Wonderland
Toraiocht Dhiarmuid agus Ghrainne
An Evil Cradling - Brian Keenan
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations

Psychedelic · 04-12-2006 11:26PM

1. lewis carroll - alice in wonderland & through the looking glass
2. j.d. salinger - the catcher in the rye
3. hunter s. thompson - fear & loathing in las vegas
4. john steinbeck - the grapes of wrath
5. joseph heller - catch 22
6. jostein gaarder - sophie's world
7. ken kesey - one flew over the cuckoo's nest
8. miguel de cervantes - don quixote
9. yann martel - life of pi
10. anthony burgess - a clockwork orange

BossArky · 05-12-2006 12:37AM

Psychedelic wrote:

1. lewis carroll - alice in wonderland & through the looking glass
2. j.d. salinger - the catcher in the rye
3. hunter s. thompson - fear & loathing in las vegas
4. john steinbeck - the grapes of wrath
5. joseph heller - catch 22
6. jostein gaarder - sophie's world
7. ken kesey - one flew over the cuckoo's nest
8. miguel de cervantes - don quixote
9. yann martel - life of pi
10. anthony burgess - a clockwork orange

Great list. Read all except for One flew over and Don Quixote which is in the to read pile.

Incidently I was in Madrid recently and clambered around the hindquarters of the statue of Don Quixote's horse. It is massive.

Psychedelic · 05-12-2006 11:34PM

don quixote is long, it's actually 2 books in one, but it's so funny you'll fly through it.

Kruk · 01-01-2007 09:33PM

A few books from me :-)

1. Anne Rice - Interview With A Vampire
2. Tolkien - Lord of The Rings
3. Mario Puzo - The Godfather
4. Orson Scott Card - Ender`s Game
5. Stephen King - The Shining
6. Johnathan Carroll - The Land of Laughs
7. Albert Camus - The Plague
8. Michail Bulhakow - Master and Margarita
9. John Irving - Hotel New Hampshire
10. George Jonas - Munich

FairyPrincess · 03-01-2007 11:10PM

I think I may be a bit damaged by all the chick lit, because I cannot read anything else these days.
Says she, who wants to become a librarian.
But books like Pride & Prejudice and Gone With The Wind are classics. Simple must-reads.

Backtoblack · 01-02-2007 10:17PM

1. No Logo, Naomi Klein (www.nologo.org)
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (one of my favs)
3. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (am 60 pages from the finish)
4. The Pearl, John Steinbeck (booful)
5. Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell (I couldn't put it down)
6. Animal Farm, George Orwell

7. The Dictionary, Often.
8. The Corporation, Joel Bakan (Amazing writer!)
9. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
10. Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre (Loved it)

:rolleyes: B'ah, only 10!!

Backtoblack · 01-02-2007 10:21PM

Kruk wrote:

A few books from me :-)

9. John Irving - Hotel New Hampshire

I really enjoyed John Irving "The Fourth Hand" too.. if you've read it?

ANOTHER POSTER wrote:

Jane Austin P&P

Such a great book, must get the film out.

maidofthemist · 10-02-2007 05:33PM

That depends on the object of the game and the moment in life when you put your list together, doesn't it? Today my list would include

On Green Dolphin Street (Sebastian Faulks) for memorable characters and a sense of time and place and the tragedies of life. Birsdong - same author - for very different characters and circumstances but equally memorable.

Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger) a great read, even better read aloud.

Jane Austen has to be on the list so I guess I'd opt for Pride & Prejudice

The Call of the Wild (Jack London) would make my list as a gesture to a friend who thought a lot of Jack London

Maybe Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights but I don't want to over do the 19th century

Harry Potter is of our time and worth thinking about but likely to get dropped from the final list.

The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon) like Harry Potter makes my list this week but I'm not sure if it is there for the long run

The Regeneration Trilogy (Pat Barker) ... does that count as three? If yes, then just pick one of them

Complete works of William Wordsworth

That's my list for today. Wordworth and Austen are possibly the only perennials on it though

loismustdie · 16-02-2007 10:11AM

i'd rrecomend the hobbit and lotr,
anything by paulo coelho and
terry pratchett.
if you haven't read or seen the da vinci code fon't bother but read dan browns book angel and demons
any of ann rice's true crime books
the diary of anne frank
harry potters (at least the first 4, i haven't read the rest)
david brinn - kill'n people
the dictionary!!!

Dante's Devise · 18-02-2007 06:14PM

Don't think I've at top ten to pick of the top of my head but some worth mentioning are:

The vampire L'estast - Anne rice truely magnificent can't wait to read the rest of the series

Harry Potter books have to be mentioned

The Alchemist Paulho Coelheo(is that how you spell it?) such a memerising book

Probably one no ones ever heard of it but Moonfleet - really emotional book can't rem who wrote it but I actually cried reading it

dubtom · 26-02-2007 02:57AM

Can't remeber 10 but here goes.
Lotr and the Hobbit.Tolkien

That they may face the rising son.Mcgeehan?
Most descriptive book I have ever read, honestly felt dissapointed when i finished it,becuase I had finished it.

Dracula.stoker

All the Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle.

The stand and a few more of Kings stuff, including the Tower's series.
Wonder if any of his recent stuff is any good?

Ulises, up to the chapter in the courtroom, stops me every time. Joyce.

Enjoyed all three of Dan browns books.

Looking for a good read at the moment,may check out some of the recomendations.
Forgot to mention, Secret history of the IRA, which is probably more a biography of Adams, but very interesting.

snb · 01-03-2007 02:54PM

Im not very up to date with the literary greats, so im just listing books I enjoyed that I would recommend :-

1. A Fine Balance By R. Mistry

2. The Notebook by N Sparks

3. Star of the Sea By J. O Connor

4. Wuthering Heights By E Bronte

5. To Kill a Mockingbird by H . Lee

6. Memoirs of a Geisha By A , Golden

7. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

8. On Beauty By Z. Smith

9. Shakespeare The Complete works of

10. Seamus Heaney

Im enjoying Anna Karenina, L. Tolstoy at the moment and I think it could be a contender for the top 5 !

My recommendation overall is A Fine Balance. The images conjured up by that story still make me think about the book regularly, one year after reading it.

WindSock · 07-03-2007 01:40AM

Pfff! Why read, when you can watch the film?

Killme00 · 13-03-2007 03:29PM

1. Midnight Cowboy - James Herlihy
2. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
3. The Man in the high Castle - Phillip Dick
4. I am legend - Richard Matheson
5. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
6. The Art of war - Sun Tzu
7. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
8. Angry White Pyjamas - Robert Twigger
9. Moby Dick - Melville
10. The Killing Kind - John Connolly

lilwyrdsis · 15-03-2007 12:45AM

1. The Lovely Bones
2. The Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett (cos if it's all over soon you will need a laugh)
3. Macbeth
4. 78 Degrees of Wisdom (Rachel Pollack - Tarot)
5. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood
6. Through a glass, darkly - Jostein Gardner
7. Piece By Piece - Tori Amos & Ann Powers
8. Frankenstein
9. Dracula
10 - Jane Eyre & Wide Sargasso Sea

loadabollocks · 16-03-2007 10:02AM

tale of two cities
1984
catch 22
remains of the day
count of monte cristo
sherlock holmes omnibus
the rubicon
dracula
third policeman
dr. jekyll and mr. hyde (very short but great none the less)

don.juanito · 19-03-2007 12:19PM

1. The Third Policeman - Flann O Brien
2. At Swim Two Birds - " "
3. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
4. The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
5. Melmoth the wanderer - Charles Maturin
6. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
8. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell
10. Murphy - Samuel Beckett

Mrs. MacGyver · 20-03-2007 10:19PM

1. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 133/4 - Sue Townsend.
2. A Place Of Stones - Deirdre Purcell
3. Broken Music- Sting
4. On the Road - Jack Kerouac.
5. All Creatures Great and Small- James Herriot.
6. The rise and fall of reginald perrin- David Nobbs
7. The Female Eunuch - Germaine Greer.
8. The Island - Victoria Hislop.
9. Salem Falls - Jodi Picoult.
10. Little Women - LM Alcott.

ashyle · 08-04-2007 04:53PM

These are my favourite books ...

1. Sophie's World- Jostein Gaarder. Basically, a novel about the history of philosophy. Breaks everything down into digestable chunks, each chapter is based on a different philospher. Great story too.

2. The Book Thief-Markus Zusak. Lovely long book, easy to read. Beautiful story about Nazi Germany. Made me cry-always a good sign

3. A Prayer For Owen Meany-John Irving. Poignant and hilarious, if there's one Irving novel I can reccommend it's this one. Owen Meany is the best character EVER invented.

4. The Outsiders-SE Hinton. tale about 50's America, featuring rumbles, Greasers, and Socs. I read this for Junior cert, brilliant book, lovely moral to the story too.

5. All of the Harry Potters- You must read these as I hate people who have only seen the movies. Pure escapism and good fun.

6. Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger. Just cos everyone else has read it. Heh. But really a great rambling story, an antihero everyone can identify with and the use of the word phonie cracks me up.

7. Number 9 Dream-David Mitchell. Picked this up randomly in a second hand book shop. Weird fantasy/adventure book with a really detailed knowledge of modern Tokyo. Love the main character: what a loser!! Quite funny and imaginative.

dan719 · 13-04-2007 02:20PM

George Orwell 1984
Plato's The Republic(read these one after the other, it will blow your mind)
History Of Western Philosophy By Bertrand Russel
The Unfolding Of Language by Guy D. Deutscher
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Unstoppable Brilliance(cannot remember who wrote it)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Waste Land by T.S Elliot
The Divine Comedy by Dante( I read it only because of 'Prufrock'- ignoble perhaps but at least he played some sort of a role 'intoduced a few scenes' as it were;) )

quarefellow · 12-05-2007 01:01PM

Ullysses
Ulysses?? I have TRIED at least 2 dozen times over the last 40 years, but never succeeded. Is there a human being on the planet who can put hand on heart and truthfully claim to have read it cover to cover?

brianthebard · 12-05-2007 02:10PM

Ulysses is fantastic, I haven't read it all because of other commitments but I'll finish it this summer.

ZorbaTehZ · 17-05-2007 09:19PM

wth, never noticed this thread before. . .

The Book Of The New Sun - Gene Wolf
The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton
L'Etranger - Albert Camus
La Peste - Albert Camus
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
The Call Of The Wild - Jack London
The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Zorba The Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tchocky · 17-05-2007 09:21PM

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

10 to read before the apocalypse?

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