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10 to read before the apocalypse?

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  • Hosted Moderators Posts: 3,290 ✭✭✭TomTom


    Hitchhikers guide
    to kill amocking bird
    high fidelity
    are the only three I can think of at the moment

    Would not put the brief history of time in there tbh, its a bit of a head wreacker. I had 24 hours on a train in vietnam to kill, twas the only reason i read it (once i started had to finish, like all books).


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 355 ✭✭SCULLY


    Silas Mariner (G. Elliot)
    Complete Oscar Wilde
    Godfather (M. Puzo)
    Last Juror (J. Grisham)
    Belgarion (D. Eddings)
    A Christmas Carol (C. Dickens)
    Tale of 2 cities (C. Dickens)
    Great Expectations (C. Dickens)
    LotR (J.R.R. Tokein)
    Pride & prejudice (J. Austen)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 355 ✭✭Aurther Hugh


    The Lion, the Witch......
    100 Years of Solitude
    The Secret History
    Catch 22
    The Hitchikers Guide
    Danny the Champion of the World
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    Captain Correlli's Mandolin
    The Alchemist
    .....and finally my ultimate favorite
    The Great Gatsby.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,107 ✭✭✭adonis


    siddharta - hesse
    bonfire of the vanities - thomas wolfe
    anything by primo levi -
    grapes of wrath - steinbeck
    the immoralist - andres gides
    lord of the rings - tolkein
    catch 22 - joseph heller
    1984 - orwell
    long walk to freedom - mandella
    anything raymond chandler also...

    robert hughes is good to for an understanding of art...

    i dispute the pompous paulo coelho claims...
    hes rubbish, read hesse


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,090 ✭✭✭jill_valentine


    Jesus, I was getting really worried there. Then I saw To Kill a Mockingbird, so its all okay. F**k the other 9, read it ten times...

    If you insist...Wuthering Heights is worth reading but its pretty intense... Haunting of Hill House isn't just great horror, its a piece of art from a writers point of view, and its a masterclass in tipping the audience over. On the very last page, it skews the whole book, and the second reading is more interesting than the first...

    Yeah, other than that just read TKAMB a lot.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 2,886 ✭✭✭Marq


    I've always loved Generation X by Douglas Copeland


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 316 ✭✭callmescratch


    the catcher in the rye - j. d. sallinger
    junky - william s burroughs
    100 years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez
    1984 - george orwell
    last exit to brooklyn - hubert selby jr.
    the outsider - albert camus
    hitchikers guide to the galaxy - douglas adams
    a clockwork orange - anthony burgess
    salems lot - stephen king
    the butcher boy - patrick mccabe

    i should give catch 22 another try, i just got really bored and stopped a third way in when i tried to read it.

    dataisgood wrote
    i see a lot of people recommending this (the catcher in the rye - j. d. sallinger) and i have to ask why? i read it recently and thought it was nothing special perhaps it just went over my head but he was a whiny fecker.
    i see what you mean and can't really explain why i like it, but it's one of my faveourite books. maybe i'm destined to kill:)


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,560 ✭✭✭Woden


    yeah i've recently discussed this book with someone and i have more time for the book since.

    What the person i discussed it with mainly took from the book what that the main character chap hated phoneyness as he frequently states in the book, but realises or we realise that to generally survive in society we constantly exhibit such fakeness. Everyone does it, some to a larger degree than others.

    Some thoughts of such fakeness have occupied me a little of late. Nothing major just makes you think where does the fakeness end and the real you beging i you have presently a facade to certain people for so long. i have another friend who pretty much abhors any fakeness which i think is idealistic, for example i think its fine if something is bothering you and for you to say i'm fine when somebody asks are you might not feel comfortable discussing it with them or you just don't want to

    Imo its only with a small number of people that we are intimately familiar with when most, and i still say most and not all, of the pretense drops and we are who we are

    meh i'll stop my waffling now

    data


  • Hosted Moderators Posts: 5,945 ✭✭✭BEAT


    The Divine Comedy. Dante
    The Republic. Plato
    On The Road. Jack Kerouac
    Lord of the rings trilogy
    Borstal Boy. Brendan Behan
    Care Of The Soul. Thomas Moore
    The Diary of Ann Frank
    To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee
    Complete works of Poetry. Allen Ginsberg
    Dharma Bums. Jack Kerouac
    Harry Potter series
    The Outsiders
    Dracula. Stoker
    Biography of Jack Kerouac. Ann Chambers
    Angela's Ashes, & 'Tis . Frank Mccourt
    A Monk Drowning. Malachi Mccourt

    Oh so many more classics but these are my favorites :)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 19 murt


    Some masterpieces not already mentioned which would probably make my top 10:

    The Cat in the Hat - Dr. Seuss. (Sheer brilliance for the child in everyone)
    The First man – Camus (Vivid autobiography - unfinished at his untimely death in a car accident - with colourful characters and excellent writing)
    Don Quixote – Cervantes (Wonderfully bizarre stories written in beautiful language about a nutter on a horse)
    The Plague – Camus (A splendid experiment on human nature)
    In Cold Blood – Truman Capote (Chilling murder story - true story)

    Already mentioned which I would readily recommend:

    The First Circle - Solzhenitsyn
    One Day in the Life if Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn
    Ulysses - Joyce (confession - didn't manage to finish it but loved what I read)
    The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
    100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    1984 – Orwell
    Crime and Punishment – Dostoevsky
    The Communist Manifesto - Marx


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  • Registered Users Posts: 6,560 ✭✭✭Woden


    Originally posted by BEAT

    The Outsiders
    wow didn't think i'd see this here. presuming its the one i read this was my junior cert book. the outsiders by S.E Hinton? with pony boy and all that jazz

    /me gets nostalgic


  • Hosted Moderators Posts: 5,945 ✭✭✭BEAT


    YEP That's the one ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,561 ✭✭✭quad_red


    The essential two would be 'Wuthering Heights' (bronte) and 'I am Legend' (matheson).

    I am Legend is a stunning stunning read but DO NOT read ANY reviews of it cos any review i have read gives away way too much. Its a terrifying, uplifting & heart breaking read. highly recommended.

    and in no particular order:
    Cryptonomicon, Stephenson
    Look to Windward, banks
    Paradise Lost, milton
    Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
    No Logo, Naomi Klein
    1984, orwell
    lord of the flies, Golding
    Dark Continent: Europes Twentieth Century , Mark Mazower


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 56 ✭✭Envy


    The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. ("He had what no American man I've ever met has had, and that's intuition.")
    Lord of the Flies, William Golding.
    1984, George Orwell.
    The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
    To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.
    The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices, Xinran.
    His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman.
    The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis.
    A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess.
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey.
    wow didn't think i'd see this here. presuming its the one i read this was my junior cert book. the outsiders by S.E Hinton? with pony boy and all that jazz

    Ah, I remember that. I didn't do it for Junior Cert., though I recall reading it. I loved that book.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 69 ✭✭Dancing duck


    Read Lolita
    Read Wuthering Heights
    Read The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
    Read The Virgin Suicides...

    And with a bit of luck you'll survive the apocalypse now.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 57 ✭✭Frankie Smith


    does anyone think that louis de bernieres trilogy, senor vivo and the coca lords etc. is better than captain corelli and his mandolin?

    which wodehouse would people choose? i presume you all like him as much as me, right?

    and why is tom sharpe so under-rated?

    and why doesn't that crime bookshop on dawson st. sell raymond chandler books?

    and why are books so damn expensive?

    and why do people like dbc pierre's or paul murray's début novels?


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,112 ✭✭✭Dacelonid


    If I could only read 10 books and assuming that the 10 of them will be finished by the time of the Apocalypse I would read The Malazan Book Of The Fallen by Steven Erikson. He has only published up as far as book 5 so far but they are amazing. The copies I have a destroyed because I have read them so often. In my opinion that are way aboce The Wheel Of Time and slightly better than the Black Company(Glen Cook) or A Song Of Ice And Fire books (George R. R. Martin).
    The names of all the books are/will be:
    1 Gardens of the Moon
    2 Deadhouse Gates
    3 Memories of Ice
    4 House of Chains
    5 Midnight Tides
    6 The Bonehunters
    7 Reaper's Gale
    8 Toll the Hounds
    9 Dust of Dreams
    10 The Crippled God

    It would take too long to give a synopsis of all the books written so far, but I can honestly say that if you go out and buy these books you will not be disappointed.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,575 ✭✭✭elivsvonchiaing


    I would have to cheat and count trilogies & complete works etc as one book.

    Mine would be:

    The Borstal Boy (Behan)
    Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
    The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
    Arthur C. Clarke - the complete works
    The Diceman (Rhinehardt)
    Hitch-Hiker's guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
    Carlos Casteneda - the complete works
    The Satanic Verses (Rushdie)
    Hesse - the complete works
    Enid Blyton - the complete works for supply of toilet paper - so this doesn't count
    Catch 22 (Heller)
    The God of small things (Roy)

    This is still 10 items as Clarke an Adams fit on the same CD (might need to compress them)


  • Registered Users Posts: 5,292 ✭✭✭ionapaul


    Can I include series as one entry?
    In no order:

    1) The Dune collection (Herbert)
    2) Crime & Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
    3) A Confederacy of Dunces (hmm, forget his name)
    4) Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak)
    5) Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
    6) Neverending Story (only read this once but I remember so much joy reading it as a child)
    7) Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
    8) The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky)
    9) Something by Tad Williams
    10) The Collected Works (Arthur C. Clarke)


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,592 ✭✭✭Ancient1


    Neverending Story (only read this once but I remember so much joy reading it as a child)

    Same here :D

    Must make an effort to read it again now that you reminded me of its existence!


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 7,458 Mod ✭✭✭✭CathyMoran


    What are the best books and the ones that should be read are not necessarily the same. Here goes:

    Should be read:
    1) Bible
    2) Love in the time of cholera (Marquez)
    3) Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
    4) Forever War (Hadelman)
    5) Stranger in a Strange land (Heinlin)
    6) LOTR (Tolkein)
    7) Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
    8) Ulysses (Joyce)
    9) Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
    10) Complete works of Shakesphere
    + The Prince (Machiavelli) and Sherlock Holmes (Doyle)

    Favorites:
    1) Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
    2) Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
    3) The City and the Stars (Clarke)
    4) Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
    5) Dune (Herbert)
    6) Contact (Sagan)
    7) Mapping Mars (Morton)
    8) Forever War (Hadelman)
    9) Love in the time of cholera (Marquez)
    10) Bible
    + The Illustrated Man (Bradbery) and A fall of Moondust (Clarke)

    That was harder than I thought!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 225 ✭✭Rredwell


    1. Pride and Prejudiece by Jane Austen.
    2. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
    3. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
    4. Ulysses by James Joyce
    5. Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte.
    6. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
    7. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
    8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
    9. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.
    10. Silas Marner by George Eliot.

    I have only read nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9 and (unfortunately and in school) 10. I have attempted Tolstoy's and Joyce's gargantuan works, but I presume they're great when you follow them through. As for no. 10 ... well, either it kills you with boredom, or you'll wish yourself dead while reading it. ;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 225 ✭✭Rredwell


    Hey! That's cheating! Shakespeare's Complete Works don't count as a single book!


  • Registered Users Posts: 7,482 ✭✭✭RE*AC*TOR


    Rredwell wrote:
    As for no. 10 ... well, either it kills you with boredom, or you'll wish yourself dead while reading it. ;)

    i dunno - I really enjoyed it I have to say.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    In no particular Order -

    About a Boy - Nick Hornby
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
    The Hotzone - Richard Preston
    Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
    The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
    The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    The Princess Bride - S. Morgenstern
    The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
    A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
    The Hobbit - JR Tolkien


  • Registered Users Posts: 455 ✭✭penguinbloke


    The Ender Saga and if it's not including series just Ender's Game: Orson Scott Card
    The Shadow Saga: Orson Scott Card(can be replaced with Dune: Herbert if see above)

    Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy: Douglas Adams
    The Pearl: John Steinbeck
    1984: George Orwell
    LOTR: JRR Tolkien
    Death and the Penguin: Andrey Kurkov
    Trainspotting: Irvine Welsh
    High Fidelity: Nick Hornby
    Catch 22: Joseph Heller

    That should cover it


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,512 ✭✭✭savemejebus


    wow i'd totally forgotten the pearl, that is a great book, first read it when i was seven (was really bored) and the scorpion bit really freaked me out.


  • Registered Users Posts: 80 ✭✭3-D Preacher


    1)Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
    2)At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O' Brien
    3)The Third Policeman by Flann O' Brien
    4)The Gunslinger by Stephen King
    5)The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams
    6)The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
    7)The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
    8)Dubliners by James Joyce
    9)Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
    10)Skin and Other Stories by Roald Dahl

    Nuff said.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1 Sevor


    I like to read. :p

    There is no book that I have read that has made me want to read it a second time. ;)

    Except for one. :)

    The Bible ! :cool:


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,575 ✭✭✭elivsvonchiaing


    Sevor wrote:
    I like to read. :p

    There is no book that I have read that has made me want to read it a second time. ;)

    Except for one. :)

    The Bible ! :cool:
    I would quite like to do this too - but have yet to learn Hebrew. Can't see the point otherwise.

    A helluva lot get lost in the translation imho. Maybe not so true of the new testament but definitely the old.

    Ps. if you want to keep your faith just don't look at my previous posts! :(

    However I can evangelise you with my opinions if you want - your call!


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