The Book Club

[bean6344]

I'll list some of my favorites.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Stand by Stephen King

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (I have not yet read The Baroque Cycle.  They are in my other stack).

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I always feel like I am leaving something out when I make these lists.  I'll stick with those 5 for now.

Bean

[Wood]

That's a great point.  Reading Blood Meridian is almost an exercise in stamina; but a stamina of faith in humanity rather than one of muscles.  You want to cling to those few fleeting moments of compassion like a drowning man to a life preserver.  There have been quite a few novels that explore what humanity quickly descends to when removed from the normal moral framework of society (someone else mentioned the great Lord of the Flies in this thread) and they tend to speak to me as well.  Blood Meridian stood out to me as particularly uncompromising in its refusal to let virtually any hope shine through, but that was surely the point.

Yep...Lord of the Flies is a great example. Very recently, the Hungers Games trilogy has played with this theme yet geared the works to "young adults." I'm kind of stunned that these books are such hits right now, only because I find them playing in the same modality (the futile nature of humanity, our tendencies toward violence) but in a much less sophisticated way.

[Wood]

I'll list some of my favorites.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Stand by Stephen King

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (I have not yet read The Baroque Cycle.  They are in my other stack).

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I always feel like I am leaving something out when I make these lists.  I'll stick with those 5 for now.

Bean

Confederacy of Dunces was on my mental short list for inclusion, too

[BoomerZ]

I don't know if I have ever considered one book to be my favorite but ones I do place on some kind of pedestal include Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Caleb Carr's The Alienist.  

And though it certainly isn't a novel, I could read the script for John Guare's play The House of Blue Leaves again and again and gain something new from it every time.

[Sampsa_G]

A tough one, but here's a few of the top of my head.
Call me a sentimental fool, but I have to put Kenneth Grahame's Wind In The Willows Here an awesomely beautiful story of pastoral beauty and friendships.

Good Omens Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett I can reread it again and again.

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams need I explain?

Moulin Rouge by Pierre La mure the story of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec heart breaking stuff that affected me deeply at the age of 13.

[the other mike]

good grief, you guys. i feel like a total caveman after reading some of your choices. positively a blithering idiot. geez!

my personal list is 100% populated by genre books. you will find nary a human interest or a drama or a classic. i'm all about sci-fi, fantasy, horror, war, action/suspense and historical fiction. (this also reflects my dvd collection.)

it by stephen king
the talisman by stephen king and peter straub
swan song by robert mccammon
all 20+ books of the sharpe series by bernard cornwell
the dragonlance chronicles by margaret weis and tracy hickman
storm of swords by george r.r. martin (and the rest of ASOIF)
...
i give up. there's too many books i like. my brain boggles how to figure out how to cram every book i love with all my heart on the list. for every great one i mention, i miss ten more equally good.

-mike

[BurlIves]

my personal list is 100% populated by genre books. you will find nary a human interest or a drama or a classic. i'm all about sci-fi, fantasy, horror, war, action/suspense and historical fiction. (this also reflects my dvd collection.)

To my mind, aint no difference except which shelf of the bookshop they're one.  I'll put King's best stuff up there with a lot of those mentioned.  Look at people's lists above and see how many classics are genre books.  And frankly, if a good horror story doesn't get to the heart of the human condition, then I don't know what does.

[Matt H.O.W.L.]

The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger (completely different book each time I read it)
The Brothers Karamazov/Crime & Punishment - Dostoevsky (read these in a course on the author taught by a renowned Dostoevsky scholar. A life-changing semester.)
Breakfast of Champions/Slaughterhouse-Five - Vonnegut
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Sun Also Rises/The Old Man & the Sea - Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury
As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Blood Meridian/Child of God - McCarthy

These are the books that altered my DNA. This list is as short as I can get it.

[Dotanuki]

I echo the Of Mice and Men love...the book is a prose diamond as far as I'm concerned. Through various eras/emotional states/psyches of my life I can still conjure scenes from this book...when I conjure them I can immediately remember being the nervous community-college kid that I was when I read it, yet the story feels like it could fit into any era of my life, if that makes any sense.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein falls into the same category, IMHO. I didn't sit down and properly read it until I'd moved on to the UW and a Creative Writing degree. Whether the story deserves this accolade or not: I can't imagine my appreciation of "modern" science fiction without Frankenstein.

[Papercut]

The Sun Also Rises/The Old Man & the Sea - Hemingway
Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury
As I Lay Dying/The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Blood Meridian/Child of God - McCarthy

 

 

[Papercut]

So if I were to follow the subject line and pick a book that I deemed "Best" instead of "Favorite" or "Most Re-Read" -- then I'd have to lean towards.....


 


AAAAAAAHHHH!!!  TOO HARD TO COMPUTE!!!!!

[Swany]

Much like The Other Mike i feel like a wheel of furtune contestant playing Jeopardy! - a little outta my league.

Anyways like mike i'm a genre guy so my short list includes:

The Collector - John Fowles
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

[Jeppe]

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

[Matt H.O.W.L.]

Much like The Other Mike i feel like a wheel of furtune contestant playing Jeopardy! - a little outta my league.

Anyways like mike i'm a genre guy so my short list includes:

The Collector - John Fowles
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

No slouches on this list! The Collector knocked my heart's dick in the dirt when I first read it. A wonderful and creepy book. 

[Ted Falconi]

I think the only times I've ever said "the best book I've ever read" out loud, I was talking about Breakfast of Champions.

[Alejandroh]

Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead (I prefer Speaker a lot more) - Orson Scott Card
Alas Babylon - Pat Frank

[SDAL]

I'll add my love for It by Stephen King, Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. If you haven't read any of those, give them a go.
Sad story about Lord of the Flies, I was reading a copy I bought from a secondhand bookstore, and about halfway through, there was a page missing, so I didn't feel I could continue. Must get back to that one.
And something new to the list. I felt like I could've added the Harry Potter series, but I'll just limit it to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Loved it loved it loved it, definitely my favourite one of the series. I just love the ending.  

[NeverWanderer (Joey Cruz)]

good grief, you guys. i feel like a total caveman after reading some of your choices. positively a blithering idiot. geez!

my personal list is 100% populated by genre books. you will find nary a human interest or a drama or a classic. i'm all about sci-fi, fantasy, horror, war, action/suspense and historical fiction. (this also reflects my dvd collection.)

I'm right there with you, homey.   

With very few exceptions, I have this (admittedly unnecessary) aversion to classic and/or notable literary works.

I feel I can pretty well distinguish between what I think are the Best books I've read, as opposed to the books which are my favorites. As with my favorite movies, though, my number one choice exists on both lists:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (no book has ever filled me with as much joy and raw anticipation as this book has. The only book to come close is Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, but as deeply as I love that book, I do think Rothfuss's writing trumps it)

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (a book I was not expecting to be anywhere as engrossing as it was - I can really only compare it to watching The Wire for the first time; you start off watching/reading fiction, and before you know it, you're experiencing a life)

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (my friends practically forced me to buy this book against my raging preconceptions - I wasn't ready for it to be as good as it was. I am still waiting for another book to come along and deliver the same experience again)

[ThePatheticClub]

I generally prefer non-fiction. But here's a few good books.

World War Z.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man.

Honestly though, I tend to forget novels I've read. It's the non-fiction which sticks with me.

[NeverWanderer (Joey Cruz)]

World War Z.

Ooo... that's a good one. I forgot that one. It didn't have the emotional impact of BR and NotW, or the storytelling skill of NotW and GoT, but it was definitely an engrossing read that really made me think and reexamine my life.

Not in the top three, but maybe the top five. Top ten definitely.