Top Ten Books

[black bart]

Just make a list of your top ten books. I find it helpful to have some sort of guide when I'm thinking of which book to read next. Here is my attempt, not in any particular order...it's harder than I thought:

1. Flashman at the Charge by George MacDonald Fraser
2. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
3. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
4. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
5. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
6.The Code of the Woosters by P.G.Wodehouse
7.100 years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
8. The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
9. Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
10. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I think I'll have to do another one at some point...eg a Sci Fi top ten.

[TwistedSister]

90% of my books are packed away.
One of these days I'll unpack them all again and make some sort of list as to what I have.
[sigh]

[Capellini]

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
4. Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde (that's 5 books right there, kind of cheating)
5. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin (another 4 books)
6. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
7. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8. The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins
9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
10. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (another 7 books)

Noting the number of series on that list, I think mine is better titled 'Top Ten Stories'.

[black bart]

Wuthering Heights...how could I have left out that! Only about the most atmospheric book ever written.

[Ubi Dubius]

1. The Bandy Papers (multiple volumes)
2. The Lord of the Rings (multiple volumes)
3. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (multiple volumes)
4. For Love of the Game
5. Lost Moon
6. The Killer Angels
7. The Harry Potter Books (multiple volumes)
8. First, Break All the Rules (and sequels)
9. Foundation (multiple volumes)
10. Simple Justice

[TwistedSister]

I read Hitchhiker's Guide.
Didn't do a darn thing for me.

[daftbeaker]

I read Hitchhiker's Guide.
Didn't do a darn thing for me.

It was a good idea and I enjoyed it but it wasn't the amazing book that everyone gave me the impression of. Bistro-mathematics was probably the highlight but I think Pratchett generally does that sort of stuff (the SEP field for instance) better.

I'll post a list when I've thought a bit more about it. Might be easier to list top 5 authors.

[Edd]

I first read HG2G in 1983. Since then, I have seen Douglas Adams' influence countless times. Sometimes I wonder at the amazing similarities between our current age and Arthur Dent's universe. I've spoken to automated customer service answering machines and, after being routed to the wrong department even when I've enunciated as loudly and clearly as possible, am reminded of the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser and the substance that was 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.' And I'm sure I wasn't the only one who compared wikipedia to the Guide itself. (Randall Munroe pointed out a version even more eerily similar.) I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out that Michael Jackson was only planning on being dead for a year for tax purposes.

DNA introduced me to many scientific theories that were still fresh and exciting at the time through a lonely, downtrodden Englishman in a bathrobe who just couldn't seem to get too worked up over losing his family, friends, home, posessions, and planet.

But, if I'm honest with myself, I must admit that when I read the series again for the umpteenth time a year or two ago, it was starting to seem a little stale. How could it not, when its echoes are all around us? Someone reading it today for the first time couldn't possibly be surprised by the answer to life, the universe, and everything or not have heard of a pan-galactic gargle blaster.

Why do I still have such fond and fun memories of the book that will always be in my personal top ten? I guess you just had to be there.

[Ubi Dubius]

I had never heard of Hitchhiker's Guide when I read it. I was simply starting my summer in the Science Fiction section, alphabetically by author. Adams, Douglas was near the beginning. My family still laughs at how helplessly in giggles I was that day. If you assume it's going to be funny, it might not be, but it took me completely by surprise.

[Ubi Dubius]

I should also add that Men Against the Sea almost made my list. It is an often ignored part of the saga of the Bounty, following Captain Bligh and his men in the Bounty's small boat as they try to find safety after being set adrift by the mutineers.

[fueledbycoffee]

Ok, that's rough. I'm so not going to number them. There's no way I could choose ten books and order them.

Candide, by Voltaire
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong (Moss Roberts' translation)
Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Prachett
Sandman, by Neil Gaiman
Y: The Last Man, by Brian Vaughan
Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
Beowulf, by some Anglo-Saxon guy (Seamus Heaney's translation).

[Detective TurtleHolmes]

I have read far too many books to remember every one I liked, but I'll do my best.

Jingo, Pratchett.
Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan. (Series)
Oliver Twist, Dickens.
HHG2TG, Adams. (Series)
LOTR, Tolkien.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain.
Animal Farm, 1984, George Orwell.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I can't think of anything else at the moment.

[Mad Willyum Bonney]

I canna do it !

Oi spose oid pick frum a vass selekshun of history bookes .

[~NoodleDemon~]

Eh, it'd be easier for me to pick my top ten semi-contemporary fiction authors.

I'll do it as soon as I remember 'em all...

[Valanthe]

Way too many good books out there for me to limit myself to just ten. I may have to come up with a list of authors, instead.

I'll have to get back to you on this...it could take a while.