This list might change after I think about it a little more, but here's 21 that I could think of. I'm sure I'm forgetting bunches, and I wanted to have some variety in genres. Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart Paul Beatty - White Boy Shuffle Jonathan Birchill - Ultra Nippon Augsten Burroughs - Running With Scissors Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius John Feinstein - March To Madness Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections Nelson George - Hip Hop America Eric Frederick - The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955 Alex Haley - Autobiography of Malcolm X Edward M. Hallowell, John J. Ratey - Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood to Adulthood Nick Hornby - About A Boy Simon Kuper - Football Against The Enemy A.A. Milne - Winnie The Pooh Toni Morrison - Bluest Eye Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood David Sedaris - Me Talk Pretty One Day Eric Schlosser - Fast Food Nation Laurence Shames & Peter Barton - Not Fade Away Thomas Wolfe - Bonfire Of the Vanities Richard Wright - Native Son
Catch-22 – Heller Catcher in the Rye - Salinger Fever Pitch - Hornby High Fidelity – Hornby About a Boy – Hornby Killer Angels – Shaara The Lord of the Rings (counting them as one book) – Tolkien Harry Potter series (really just one long story) – Rowling Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Hardy Old Man and the Sea – Hemmingway The Princess Bride – Goldman The Prince – Machiavelli John Adams – McCullough I really can’t think of anything else good that I have read. Most of the books I read are for school (history and government classes often lack books that you want to read more than once) and I don’t have much time to read anything else.
I'll give 10 for now The Brothers K - David James Duncan Franny and Zooey - Salinger The Corrections - Franzen Wind up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck A Million Little Pieces - james frey Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison Great Divorce - CS Lewis Gardens of Kyoto - Kate Walbert Norweigan Wood - Murakami
I'll get crackin' on mine if work is slow enough today, but that's going to have to be on there. Stayed up til 5 in the morning to finish that one. A couple weeks later, so did my wife, and a month or so after that, so did the guy who was the best man at our wedding. Great friggin' novel.
Dr Wankler, you are the man. Nobody I know has known of that book of hand, but everyone I reccomended it too loved it. I have never cried so much during a book as I did with that one. Strangely enough, I find it very difficult to get into the rest of his work.
10 I could think of off the top of my head. Microserfs - Douglas Coupland 1984 - George Orwell Perelandra - CS Lewis Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Catch 22 - Heller The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck The Chronicles of Narnia (all 7) - CS Lewis Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card Brave New World - Huxley
I almost put Life After God in my list, but I can't tell if it just hit me at the time or if its that good. Coupland's last few have been so awful, I can't tell if I am growing out of him, or if he's just lost it.
Yeah, I liked Miss Wyoming, but didn't really click with All Families Are Psychotic. Microserfs is the quintessential early 90's novel, the techy boom. I really loved his exploration of geek culture, especially starting out my college career as an engineering major. A lot of those characters were carbon copies of the computer science program geeks I got to know.
The Brothers K., by David James Duncan Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, Frost in May, by Antonia White. The Granite Pail, by Lorine Neidecker Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg Collected Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, by Kenneth Rexroth The Poet's Work, by Sam Hamill The Geography of the Imagination, by Sam Hamill. The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, edited by Frey, Friedman, and Frances Murphy Zauhar* The Making of the English Working Class, by E.P. Thompson Beyond a Boundary, by C.L.R. James Manchester United Ruined my Life, by Colin Schindler Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch** Essays, by Montaigne** The Bible, by God** Tao Te Ching, by God, as told to Lao Tzu Wisdom of the Desert, edited by Thomas Merton Flight out of Time: A Dada Diary, by Hugo Ball. Farewell to Reason, by Paul Feyerabend various recently published journals, by Doris Grumbach (I'll get the title of my favorite later) *edited by my wife, so this is truly a nod to WJC **haven't quite finished these yet
Ok, I will give it a go On the Road, Jack Kerouac War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, WP Kinsella The Legend of Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald Ball Four, Jim Bouton The Graduate, Charles Webb The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hahn
Niedecker and Rexroth, way to go, Doc. In no particular order, and I dont know if there will be 21 or not: Midnight's Children, Rushdie The Trial, Kafka Winter's Tale, Helprin VALIS, Dick Omeros, Walcott Sarah Canary, Fowler Carmen Dog, Emshwiller Collected Poems, Rilke Don Quixote, Cervantes The Education of Henry Adams, Adams V., Pynchon Song of Solomon, Morrison Geek Love, Dunn The Dog of the South, Portis Kavalier and Clay, Chabon Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Murakami Labyrinths, Borges Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness, Kaufman Ask me tomorrow, some of these will be different.
1984-Orwell Gravity's Rainbow-Pynchon Dune-Herbert Catch 22-Heller A Confederacy of Dunces-Toole Bombardieers-Bronson Don Quixote-Cervantes
Didn't respond to my own thread because I've been writing a 20 page semiotic analysis of soccer for the past couple days. Thank God, that and the term are both over. I have to do this while I'm still in my place, with my books here, or I'll never remember. The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil Letters To A Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke The Geography of Nowhere - James Howard Kunstler Sketchbooks (both volumes) - Max Frisch Pan Tadeusz - Adam Mickiewicz Evgeny Onegin - Alexander Pushkin The Street Of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz Kieslowski on Kieslowski - Krzystof Kieslowski and Danusia Stok Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov The Counterfeiters - Andre Gide A Season With Verona - Tim Parks Collected Poems - Boris Pasternak The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler Le Grand Meaulnes - Henri Alain-Fournier The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell On Becoming a Novelist and The Art of Fiction - John Gardner Gravity and Grace - Simone Weil Essays - Montaigne Dominion - Matthew Scully Barca - Jimmy Burns
Looking at my Bookshelf last night I felt idiotic when I realized I had left these out... Godric - Fredrick Buechner Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera I forget who mentioned Enders game by Orson Scott Card. I really would like to read that, I've heard so many good things about it. The wierd thing is with Science Fiction I am always hesitant cause there always wind up being sequels or prequels and it just seems so time consuming. I'm probably just a big sissy.
Max Frisch! Hadn't thought of him in a while. The sketchbooks are great, and I admire Man in the Holocene too.
This is being done at the office, so I'm sure I'm missing some fine ones, but here goes. Also-- hangthadj-- read Ender's Game tomorrow. Seriously. The rest of the series is OK, but that one's an all-time classic. 1. Dune, Frank Herbert 2. Songs of Ice and Fire series, George RR Martin 3. Lord of the Rings trilogy, JRR Tolkien 4. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card 5. American Gods, Neil Gaiman 6. Fever Pitch, Nick Hormby 7. Harry Potter series, JK Rowling 8. Hyperion, Dan Simmons 9. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester 10. Shogun, James Clavell 11. Timeline, Michael Crichton 12. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman 13. Night Shift, Stephen King 14. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series, Tad Williams 15. The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy 16. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 17. Darwinia, RC Wilson 18. The Art of War, Sun Tzu 19. Carnivores of Light and Darkness, Alan Dean Foster 20. Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan (at least the first three or four books) 21. Reserved for my novel when it's finished
Lots of these have been said already, and this is off the top of my head: 100 Years of Solitude - Marquez Beloved - Morrison Alice in Wonderland - Carroll V - Pynchon Satanic Verses - Rushdie A People's History of U.S. - Zinn Imagined Communities - Anderson Wretched of the Earth - Fanon Huck Finn - Twain Lord of the Rings - Tolkien The Arrivants - Brathwaite Collected Yeats Collected Walcott Name of the Rose - Eco The Complete Sherlock Holmes ** - Doyle The Penguin Complete Shakespeare ** Culture and Imperialism - Said Cats Cradle - Vonnegut Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Flagg A River Runs Through It - Maclean Their Eyes Were Watching God - Hurston Unclaimed Experience - Caruth ** These might be considered cheating, but I DO own them both in single volume books, so technically...
I haven't read any of his since Miss Wyoming for fear of being disappointed. I LOVE Microserfs. I'll have to look at my bookshelf and come up with a list later.
read Ender's Game and ignore all sequels and prequels as if they would give you a communicable disease.
Ender's Game [misty R] How the hell did I forget Huck Finn? On Ender's Game: read it if you want one particular nerd's justification for all of his homicidal impulses. The story is swell until it occurs to you that this whole book is a loony unpopular kid's wet dream: all of civilization counting on him to destroy beings he does not have to understand, only hate--and he's the only one who can do it. He can exterminate an entire race of thinking beings and suffer no consequence, and then he doesn't even have to feel guilty about it because he can plead being misled. This is why teenage boys love this book so much. If Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris didn't have passages memorized, I'll be stunned. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone, because I know this is a much-beloved book, but I find it hateful in the extreme. OSC's other books (with the notable exception of the Alvin Maker series) tend to contain these same sorts of subtexts. In addition to condoned violence against women, etc.
Don't know about coming up with 21, but here are a bunch in no particular order. Ball Four - Jim Bouton The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton Where The Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman 1984 - George Orwell The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald Number The Stars - Lois Lowry The Age Of Spiritual Machines - Ray Kurzweil
That's pretty much where I am as well. My sister said I would like Hey Nostadamus! and gave me her copy, but it just sits on my bookshelf. I'd like to pint out that I am an idiot for not including Spring Snow by Mishima on my list initially.
1. 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez 2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce 3. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami 4. The Decay of the Angel, Yukio Mishima 5. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather 6. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard P. Feynman 7. Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata 8. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John J. Mearsheimer 9. In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster, and the Price of Neutrality, Robert Fisk 10. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis 11. A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn 12. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain 13. Ficciones, Jose Luis Borges 14. Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee 15. Le Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory 16. Eamon de Valera: the Man Who Was Ireland, Tim Pat Coogan 17. Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw 18. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie 19. Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut 20. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 21. Theory of International Politics, Kenneth Waltz They aren't all books, per se, because there's a short story collection and a play in the list. And the Waltz book I enjoy more for the theory it outlines rather than it's actual readability.