Your Top Five Fiction Books of All Time

[KYYX4ever]

[i]One Hundred Years of Solitude[/i] - Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.
My ultimate favorite book in the universe. Totally delicious, sensuous, and amazing.

[i]Angela's Ashes[/i] - Frank McCourt. Great story, it really affected me for some reason.

[i]The Fountainhead[/i] - Ayn Rand. Killer reading, great premise, love her philosophy and how it comes thru in her characters.

[i]The Handmaid's Tale[/i] - Margaret Atwood. Again, great story, intriguing suspense.

[i]1984[/i] - I teach this every year to my Seniors, and I am passionate about getting this message out about what a potential future world could be like if people stopped paying attention.


Some of the above books that you guys mentioned are amazing, too. I love [i]We Have Always Lived in the Castle[/i] and [i]Haunting[/i]. Very chilling and cool stories ! I also have to teach [i]Macbeth[/i] every year and I LOVE it more each time. Fantastic story, classic downfall downfall of a man due to pride. Ol' Shakespeare could really lay the smack down on human opprobrium. Wow !

[hexicon]

[quote][i]Originally posted by empyrean[/i]
<br>The Ananski Boys - Neil Gaiman

[/quote]

"American Gods," to which "Anansi Boys" is a semi-sequel, is great. I highly recommend, even for those who think they don't like fantasy.

As for me, my favorite books are suspense stories with historical elements and literary pretensions.

1. "The Secret History," by Donna Tartt. Amazing prose and page-turning story, though it falls apart toward the end. "Brideshead Revisited" meets "The Bacchae." I think her second novel "The Little Friend" is technically a better book, but I'm more drawn to the story in "TSH."

2. "Possession" by A.S. Byatt. (Disregard the crappy movie version.)

3. Jane Austen, toss-up between "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Persuasion." Unlike the heroine in that great movie "Metropolitan," I've always hated "Mansfield Park."

Note: Guys--trying to meet girls through a site like eharmony? List a Jane Austen book as last book read. Can't believe how my single-and-looking friends like that.

4. Edith Wharton, "The Age of Innocence."

5. The Harry Potter series [:I]

Hmm, all chick authors. But I also like Tim Powers, "Last Call" and "Declare," Nick Hornby, "High Fidelity," Robertson Davies anything, Tokien, etc. I'm always on the lookout for a good book.

[ben_at_work]

[quote][i]Originally posted by DonGately[/i]
<br>Ben, congrats on getting through and (I assume) enjoying Ulysses. I've enjoyed what parts I've read but still haven't been able to make it all the way through.

[/quote]

Yeah, it was a tough read. I read it throughout the 4 months of basic training. I remember being on firewatch at 1 in the morning, in the far part of the latrine reading it by the open window while i smoked. [:D]

Too many paragraphs I would read and then read again just to get the jist. [;)]

[birdmadgirl]

1. "Lonesome Dove"-Larry McMurtry
2. "Angela's Ashes"-Frank McCourt (not really fiction, but in my top five favorite books ever)
3. "Love in the Time of Cholera"-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. All 6 of the Harry Potter books-J.K. Rowling
5. "The Talisman"-Stephen King and Peter Straub

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[Mechi]

I'm really classic in terms of books.
But well...
1- Jane Eyre- Charlotte B.
2- Emma- Jane Austen
3- Wuthering Heights- Emily Brönte
4- Hamlet- William Shakespeare
5- There's a tie here: Umberto Eco's "The name of the rose" and Oscar Wilde's "The picture of Dorian Gray".

http://spaces.msn.com/members/mechigc
http://thesesensations.blogspot.com
http://devotionanddivision.blogspot.com

[plagiarism]

I spend more time lurking on message boards than doing "real" reading, but here goes.

1. [i]The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i] trilogy - Douglas Adams. I've never laughed harder in my life.

2. [i]Startide Rising[/i] - David Brin. I was assigned to read this space opera for a class in sociolinguistics, believe it or not. Gotta love dolphins being superb space pilots.

3. [i]The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle[/i] - Haruki Murakami. The protagonist's wife leaves, and lots of things happen, while at the same time, not much happens. A very unique novel.

4. [i]Catcher in the Rye[/i] - J.D. Salinger. Guess I'll have to check out [i]King Dork[/i].

5. [i]Slaughterhouse Five[/i] - Kurt Vonnegut. And so it goes.

[waldnorm]

From the former English/MFA major here (and now a librarian), I apologize if I seem too literary. [:)]

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Storytelling still lives in this postmodern age. About every five years, I will read this wonderful novel again. Magical realism is absolutely fascinating and I am a big fan of the "Boom" of Latin American fiction from the 60's to the 80's.

2. Beloved--Toni Morrison

I am a big fan of Toni Morrison's rich novels. I think she's definitely the greatest living U.S. author right now.

3. In Watermelon Sugar--Richard Brautigan

Someone starts to speak and suddenly for like a day no sound can be heard until the instruments can start playing in this peculiar universe. The technique of telling stories in fragments was definitely mastered by three great ones: Brautigan, Cisneros, and Evan Connell (of Mrs. Bridge, an excellent novel).

4. Lolita--Vladimir Nabokov

I would never think that a story about a man who has a lust for pre-adolescent girls and how he manages to drive around the country with his love, Lolita, would be one of my favorites--but Nabakov's mastery in storytelling through the mind of Humbert Humbert succeeds because Nabakov makes him both sypmathetic and despicable. Then the details of American 1950s pop culture throughout makes the depravity just seem to fit in the setting. Well done!

5. Oh!--Mary Robinson

For those who love Raymond Carver and minimalistic short stories, the novel where minimalism clearly works (without being broken into fragments) is this peculiar novel about a very dysfunctional family. The narrative just gives pure description throughout. That is all. And yet, the vividness, the non-narrative nature of the story still draws you in.

I also love: Milan Kundera--Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Ray Bradbury--The Martian Chronicles, Gustave Flaubert--Madame Bovary, Christa Wolf--Patterns of Childhood, Isabel Allende--House of Spirits, Kurt Vonnegut--Sirens of Titan, Tim O'Brien--Going After Cacciato, Jerzy Kosinski--Steps, Ken Kesey--One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Franz Kafka--The Metamorphosis, John Irving--A Prayer for Owen Meaney, Sandra Cisneros--The House on Mango Street, Keri Hulme--The Bone People, Zora Neale Hurston--Their Eyes Were Watching God, Louise Erdrich--Love Medicine, Don Dellilo--White Noise, Simone De Beuvoir--The Woman Destroyed, Italo Calvino--If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, A.S. Byatt--Possession, Anthony Burgess--A Clockwork Orange (that does not include the alternative ending), Mikhail Bulgakov--Heart of a Dog, Margaret Atwood--The Handmaid's Tale, Harriet Arnow--The Dollmaker, Ralph Ellison--The Invisible Man, J.D. Salinger--Catcher in the Rye, Evan Connell--Mrs. Bridge, Alice Walker--The Color Purple, 1984 and Animal Farm by Orwell

and yes there's a few I've forgotten.

For the spirit of the 80s, short story collections by Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, David Foster Wallace, Mary Gaitskill, Lori Moore, and Haruki Marakumi are a must as they best capture the spirit of fiction writing (minimalism, etc.) of that age. Brett Easton Ellis is overrated, I'm sorry to say--I think he'll be remembered as part of the 80s culture and not much beyond that. Granted, I've only read Less than Zero and part of American Psycho, so maybe I've missed something.

[phillyidol]

I loved all the ann rice books.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v647/dbince/tinhat.gif">

[DonGately]

[quote][i]Originally posted by hexicon[/i]


"The Secret History," by Donna Tartt. Amazing prose and page-turning story, though it falls apart toward the end. "Brideshead Revisited" meets "The Bacchae."...

...Robertson Davies anything [/quote]

The Secret Hstory is another great book. I had to read it as part of a writing class in college. I've only read one Davies book, the first part of the Depford trilogy, but I was very impressed.

[coop41]

ok, here goes, although I'm sure I've left stuff off. I used to read a book or two each week but much less now, mostly non-fiction now.



1. American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis- twisted and wrong and nearly ruined for me by a movie that was horrible


2. End Of Alice- A.M. Homes - another sick story by my favorite author


3.River - Roderick Thorp - from the author of Die Hard, a fictionalized version of the hunt (and capture) of Seattle's Green River Killer


4. High Fidelity - Nick Hornby - For the record collector geek in me, this is how I remember record stores and meticulously sorting and organizing records and making lists. The movie did not do it justice.

5. (Tie) Disclosure - Michael Crichton- read it in one night, couldn't put it down.

5. (Tie) A Simple Plan - Scott Smith - a fantastic suspense novel and again, a movie that was light years away from how good the book was.




So when do we do our non-fiction books??????[:D][:D]

[hexicon]

[quote][i]Originally posted by coop41[/i]
<br>1. American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis- twisted and wrong and nearly ruined for me by a movie that was horrible


2. End Of Alice- A.M. Homes - another sick story by my favorite author

[/quote]


Ew! Ew! Ew! [xx(][xx(]

I was about to say, "Coop, you are one sick fuck," but in the spirit of the season I'll change that to "Gee, we have very different tastes in literature, don't we?" [:D]

I am 100% anti-censorship but if I were on a library board or similar, I would be very torn about "Alice." I bought that in hardback a couple of years after it came out, so I missed the controversy, and after I finished reading the book I picked it up by a corner and put it in the garbage. I think "American Psycho" has redeeming value as satire (which is probably why I liked the movie better than the book) but even Home's amazing prose couldn't stop me from tossing that horrible book. I've read DeSade without wincing and thought "Lolita" was brilliant, but "Alice" . . . ew!

Ah well, different strokes. Maybe Jane Austen makes YOU hurl? [:D]

P.S. Don't tell Philly what this book is about.[;)]

[geoffolehane]

Yeesh! I do a lot of reading and it's hard for me to pick five favorite books. Five favorite authors is another matter. My Top 5 books change almost everytime I read a new one. I tend to read science fiction almost exclusively

If I were to pick five right now I'd go with:

1. Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer (Just about any book by this author is a real page-turner)

2. Tranquility Alternative - Allen Steele

3. Foundation - Isaac Asimov

4. Lord Valentine's Castle - Robert Silverberg

5. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

But right now I'm reading an intense old book by Jeffrey A Carver called "Infinity Link" which is really great. By old, I mean it came out in 1985. It's about a woman whose mind is linked to a computer program on a ship heading to a distant galaxy while her body is essentially in a vegetable state here on good old Earth.

I'm about to begin reading the first of "The Dresden Files" books by Jim Butcher because the new TV series is scheduled to debut in about three weeks.

[Bitter Almonds]

<p align="justify">I never cease to be surprised whenever I see a Garcia Marquez book listed. I read [i]One Hundred Years Of Solitude[/i] way back in sophomore year for an independent project in English and at the time I thought how a lot of it might not translate well into English - either the language itself or the situations presented might seem [i]too[/i] foreign for non-Spanish speakers/non-Hispanics, mainly because I related to the book and I could think back to my own family back in Latin America and how a lot of what's mentioned in the book reflected all of them[:0] The next year I read Gunther Grass's [i]The Tin Drum[/i] and that book struck me as very much in tune with the style of Garcia Marquez, except this time around it's set in Germany.

[WolverineSyr]

I got a copy of Lucifer's Hammer for christmas. I love post-apocalyptic stuff, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

Has anyone read The Road by Cormac McCarthy? Similar vein - it sounds good!

[Bitter Almonds]

[quote][i]Originally posted by hexicon[/i]
<br>[quote][i]Originally posted by coop41[/i]
<br>1. American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis- twisted and wrong and nearly ruined for me by a movie that was horrible


2. End Of Alice- A.M. Homes - another sick story by my favorite author

[/quote]


Ew! Ew! Ew! [xx(][xx(]

I was about to say, "Coop, you are one sick fuck," but in the spirit of the season I'll change that to "Gee, we have very different tastes in literature, don't we?" [:D]

I am 100% anti-censorship but if I were on a library board or similar, I would be very torn about "Alice." I bought that in hardback a couple of years after it came out, so I missed the controversy, and after I finished reading the book I picked it up by a corner and put it in the garbage. I think "American Psycho" has redeeming value as satire (which is probably why I liked the movie better than the book) but even Home's amazing prose couldn't stop me from tossing that horrible book. I've read DeSade without wincing and thought "Lolita" was brilliant, but "Alice" . . . ew!

Ah well, different strokes. Maybe Jane Austen makes YOU hurl? [:D]

P.S. Don't tell Philly what this book is about.[;)]
[/quote]

<p align="justify">I used to really like [i]Lolita[/i] when I first read it and recall the blurbs from reviews that would call it a kind of "romance" novel - and I ignorantly bought in that notion. I was 16 or 17 at the time (senior year in high school). I read that book again recently and it reads so differently now. I remember hating the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation from it because I felt it did not capture the "essence" of the romance/love purported to be a theme in the novel, but that perspective was so misguided that now I can see what Kubrick (and Nabokov) were aiming for. In a sense, they do trick the readers and viewers into the world of a child molester and some are taken in by the style of narration that they confuse it with "love" in the end. Kubrick saw through this ruse and, on film, it all looks like a farce... because that kind of "love" IS a farce; it is grotesque and laughable and pathetic and sad. When I read that again years later I did not see "love" as one of its themes. Now, [i]End Of Alice[/i] was shocking and utterly demented. It makes [i]Histoire D'O[/i], [i]Venus In Furs[/i], and [i]The Collector[/i] look like middle school reading[}:)]