10 to read before the apocalypse?

Redbhoy · 02-09-2004 1:39pm

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel!
Basically how socialism could work in a novel form!!

embee · 10-09-2004 5:43pm

My top ten, in no particular order.

1. The Alchemist : Paolo Coehlo
2. The Grapes of Wrath : John Steinbeck
3. Mary Mary : Julie Parsons
4. Animal Farm : George Orwell
5. The Bell Jar : Sylvia Plath
6. Catcher in the Rye : J.D. Salinger
7. Lord of the Flies : William Golding
8. Lovely Bones : Alice Sebold
9. Finnegans Wake : James Joyce
10. Memoirs of a Geisha : Arthur Golden

kaiphas · 10-09-2004 5:49pm

Enders Game and 9 others

elbee · 11-10-2004 9:41am

Hi, I be new. And I came to the lit forum first. . .such a nerd

My ten are
1. Catch 22, by Joseph Heller
2. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
3. American Pastoral, by Phillip Roth
4. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
5. All of the 'Wit' books, compiled by Des McHale (just for fun)
6. Santa Evita, by Tomas Eloy Martinez
7. Death and the Penguin, by Andrey Kurkov
8. The Collected Dorothy Parker
9. The Complete Tales of the Unexpected, by Roald Dahl
10. Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley.

toblerone · 11-10-2004 8:13pm

magician - raymond fiest
the long dark tea time of the soul - douglas adams
the chronicles of druss (especially the last few chapters on this occasion) - david gemmell
the life of Pi - yann martel
the redemption of althalus - david and leigh eddings
any of the dark tower series books - stephen king
a wizard of earthsea - ursula le guin
the shannara trilogy - terry brookes
any of terry goodkinds books

by the time ye finish allo them it WILL be the end o the world! :>

RE*AC*TOR · 11-10-2004 8:16pm

embee wrote:

9. Finnegans Wake : James Joyce

Before the apocalypse??
That's optimism for you!

lacuna · 20-11-2004 3:53pm

Fiesta : The Sun Also Rises
- Hemingway

Sysiphus · 22-11-2004 1:45am

It's too difficult to list ten, and most of the ten I'd list have been taken,

Grapes of Wrath, Wasp Factory, The Pearl, Selfish Gene, Animal Farm, 1984. So I'll have to list some others that I don't think have appeared yet, but are well worth reading, the authors may be same as some others above - some titles I've missed as well, I'm sure!

1) If This is a Man / The Truce - Primo Levi - Jewish Chemists account of his life in Bruckhaneur (?) and his journey home, very moving.

2) Crime and Punishment - Fydor Dostoevsky - Excellent view of guilt / paranoia and the punishment you can cause yourself.

3) Schopenhauer's Telescope - Gerard Donovan - Very interesting power play.

4) This Demon Hanted World - Carl Sagan - Brilliant series of could be talks on the simplicity of taking the scientific approach to life and not accepting unbelievable claims.

5) Don Quixote - Cervantes - Hillarious

6) The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervin Peake - well only the first two, very good small world satire in the best tradition of Johnathan swift.

7) The Trial - Franz Kafka - The book written about Guantanemo style arrest and detention, before the protaginists were born - seems Blunckett read it too!

8) The Lottery and Other Stories - Shirley Jackson - Misstress of the macbre, she is the author that King wishes he used to be! Very human, but dark stories, kind o the Alan Bennett of dark tales

9) Talking Heads - Alan Bennett - indeed anything by this wry observer of humanity, these are all monologues, with interesting twists and turns in thier tellins.

10) The Myth of Sisyphus

- Albert Camus - a tretise on the futility os suicide.

There are hundreds more, nay thousands, but who has time!

Sysiphus · 22-11-2004 2:04am

Archvillain wrote:

3) Foucaults Pendulum - Umberto Eco

Just couldn't get through this, need to keep my copy of Occult by Colin Wilson beside me for all the name dropping that he was doing. Also his explanation of the pendulum left me confused and made no sense, and I used to know what it was before I read his explanation! :rolleyes:

Sysiphus · 22-11-2004 1:28pm

I suppose the proper answer to the thread should be the following :-

1) Genesis
2) Exodous
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers........

:cool:

Hydrosylator · 25-11-2004 12:18am

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
GEB (Douglas R Hoffstadter)
Staw Dogs (John Grey)
Night Watch (Terry Pratchett)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
The Hair in the Little Worms Dirt (Gary Larson)
Catch 22 and Closing Time (Joseph Heller)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson)
100 Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Puckoon (Spike Milligan)

elivsvonchiaing · 25-11-2004 12:58am

Just read "The Alchemist" - Paulo Coelho; would have to add this to previous list... Will probably change this to "Paulo Coelho - Complete works" when I finish reading him.

violent*sky · 29-11-2004 11:51pm

Necroscope Series
Books 1-5 of the saga

Necroscope
Necroscope II: Vamphyri!
Necroscope III: The Source
Necroscope IV: Deadspeak
Necroscope V: Deadspawn

Vampire World Series
Books 6-8 of the saga

Vampire World I: Blood Brothers
Vampire World II: The Last Aerie
Vampire World III: Bloodwars

The Lost Years Series
Books 9-10 of the saga

Necroscope: The Lost Years Volume I
Necroscope: Resurgence The Lost years Volume II

E-Branch Series
Books 11-13 of the saga

Necroscope: Invaders
Necroscope: Defilers
Necroscope: Avengers

Author - Brian Lumley

Gonzorex · 01-12-2004 6:11pm

A few to lighten the mood before the 4 horsemen ride in:
The Catcher in The Rye (J.D Salinger): cynically witty and relevant - plenty of 'phonies' around these days
The Butcher Boy (Pat McCabe): extremely grim and shocking at times but hilariously captures the subleties of rural irish black humour
London Fields (Martin Amis): Perfect depiction of a scummy London pub and its seedy inhabitants. "Darts Keith!", hilarious
The Corrections (Jonathan Frantzen): a few very amusing tragi-comic falls from grace
I had more in mind but Westlife just came on the radio explaining how they can match the phrasing of Frank Sinatra on their 'new' album because of the similarity between the Sligo accent and his . . . Jebus Christ!

bcKay · 15-12-2004 7:38am

*Coelho...anything..."Alchemist" is one of his best but his writing is like no one else alive today

*Findley, Timothy..."The Pilgram" is one of his best...but anything he writes is worth the read

*Wyndham, John..."The Chrysalids"

*Tartt, Donna..."A Secret History" I've never met someone who read this and was disappointed

*Wilde, Oscar...anything...but most importantly "The Picture of Dorion Gray"

*O'Conner, Joseph..."Star of the Sea"...wasn't too impressed with the "Salesman", though I did enjoy it

and for bubble gum reading...Harry Potter ... but that's a secret... shhhh....

Baby · 20-12-2004 12:43pm

The Little Drummer Girl, By John LeCarre
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart
Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
The Hyperion series, by Dan Simmons
The Liveship Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
Moving Mars, by Greg Bear

Drakon · 28-12-2004 1:05am

Hmm Difficult. There are a lot of them

LOTR + Hobbit by Tolkien
The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
A Song of Fire and ICe by George R.R. Martin
A Tale of the Malazan, Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
The Iliad + Odyssey by Homer
Beowulf by Seamus Heaney
Ilium by Dan Simmons

rorygbluz · 10-01-2005 9:15pm

One flew over the cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey

tSubh Dearg · 10-01-2005 10:26pm

hmmm this is tough....

in no particular order

LOTR + Hobbit - Tolkein
Catch 22 - Heller
Nineteen Eighty Four - Orwell
Brave New World - Huckley
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Robbins
A Short History of Everything - Bryson
Pride and Prejudice - Austin
Lord of the Flies - Golding
The Belagariad and Mallorian Series - Eddings

Deadwing · 10-01-2005 11:43pm

Id have to say...
LOTR trilogy
Clockwork orange
The wasp factory
Mr. Vertigo
IT

err..cant think of any more

jimmy rodgers · 13-01-2005 2:01pm

FAVOURITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME

Fire and hemlock – Diana Wynne Jones

Howls moving castle – Diana Wynne Jones

GOOD READS

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
To the lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Women in love – DH Laurence
In the skin of a lion + the English patient – Michael Oondatjje
Little women – Louisa May Alcott
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Frankenstein – May Shelley
Jude the obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Oresteia - Aeschylus
Captain Corellis mandolin - Louis de Bernières

Deadwing · 13-01-2005 6:54pm

jimmy rodgers wrote:

Women in love – DH Laurence

I think i saw the movie version of that.....

pixiechix · 13-01-2005 8:45pm

memoirs of a geisha is mthe must-read for the moment, and alice in wonderland is a hell of a lot deeper than youd think in a crazy story!

tSubh Dearg · 14-01-2005 1:01am

Actually I've changed my mind I'd like to put Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H Lawrence instead of my last entry. It's a wonderful book.

Anton17 · 02-02-2005 4:18pm

In no particular order,

Glamorama - Bret Easton Ellis
On the road - Jack Kerouac
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Cider House Rules - John Irving
Bright Lights. Big City - Jay McInerney
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D Sallinger
Sophies World - Jostein Gaarder
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter s. Thompson
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

It was a toss up between Glamorama and Less than Zero, I prefer the later but I would recommend Glamorama before it.

passive · 04-02-2005 1:24am

this is really hard... i'm ripping stuff from everybodies lists for future library trips but in no particular order, that i can think of

fight club
lolita
a clockwork orange
trainspotting
hitchhiker's guide
Oscar wild, the ballad of reading gaol (haven't read all his works..but...liked that as part of a best of Oscar Wilde book)
Night watch -terry pratchett (maybe having read the entire discworld series first?)

hmm... that'll do... I need to read ore.

p.s: regarding "the perks of being a wallflower", has anybody got this for sale/loan? i remember trying to find it before and having no luck. I would also accept tips on where i can buy it..thanks

cousin_borat · 16-02-2005 5:06pm

It's so nice to be able to read decent books again after 6 years of Comp Sci and degree and Masters.

again this would change each time asked, in no particular order

Harlots Ghost - Mailer
Veronika Decides to Die - Paolo Coelho
LOTR
War and Peace
Amongst Women - John McGahern
Goodbye Bafana - James Gregory (Prison Warder of Nelson Mandela)
The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - Adams
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Lolita - Nabakov
Catch 22 - Hellor

haircut100 · 23-02-2005 3:32pm

In no particular order: except the first is my favourite of all time.

The Grapes of Wrath

Veronika decides to die

The five people you meet in heaven

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

To Kill a Mockingbird

Alice in Wonderland

1984

East of Eden

Catch 22

Catcher in the Rye

Thanks to all of you, that have given me so many more entries on my must read list.

Humblebee · 12-03-2005 8:04pm

East of Eden--Steinbeck
anything/everything by PG Wodehouse
Frannie and Zooey (way better than Catcher in the Rye)--Salinger
The Changeover (way better than Harry Pisser)--Margaret Mahy
Far from the Madding Crowd--Hardy
The Last Unicorn (nothing like the cartoon film)--Peter S Beagle
The Pickwick Papers--Dickens
Don Quixote--Cervantes
The Old and New Testaments and the Koran (you must have a great and forgiving sense of humor to read these) (as literature...not great; but as examples of superb marketing...they don't don't make 'em like this anymore...at least not recently)--authors: some very crazy, strange men

The Time Machine--Wells
Crime and Punishment--Dostoevsky

oops...that's 11...hopefully the apocalypse will hold out long enough...

SmileyOReardon · 16-03-2005 6:09pm

Watership Down (Adams)
Notes from the Underground (Dostoevsky)
Steppenwolf (Hesse)
On the Road (Kerouac)
Cather in the Rye (Sallinger)

Eddie

Velvet Vocals · 01-04-2005 11:56am

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 · 07-04-2005 8:37pm

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 · 08-04-2005 7:04pm

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 · 09-04-2005 5:02am

This post has been deleted.

Lucy in the Sky · 15-04-2005 9:51pm

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 · 20-04-2005 5:13pm

"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 · 22-04-2005 2:39am

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 · 28-04-2005 5:56pm

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

Velvet Vocals · 29-04-2005 9:05am

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 · 01-05-2005 6:19pm

This post has been deleted.

shane0312 · 05-05-2005 7:39pm

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 · 12-05-2005 4:26pm

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 · 18-05-2005 7:07pm

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 · 22-05-2005 11:48am

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 · 01-06-2005 10:19am

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 · 11-06-2005 1:57pm

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.

29-06-2005 1:50am

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

Tar.Aldarion · 29-06-2005 2:11am

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 · 02-07-2005 9:36pm

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 · 09-07-2005 7:23pm

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

10 to read before the apocalypse?

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