Ulysses -- James Joyce

The Vivisector -- Patrick White

The Sacred Fount -- Henry James

He Knew He Was Right -- Anthony Trollope

Titus Groan -- Mervyn Peake

Vertigo -- WG Sebald

Eimi -- E.E. Cummings

His Master's Voice -- Stanislav Lem

Doctor Faustus -- Thomas Mann

The Chateau -- William Maxwell

brownsugar said:

my favorite shakespeare is merry wives of windsor. i don't know why - i love the earth mother monster at the end, and i like how he predated three's company by hundreds of years.

Anx said:

i never seen or read this one. its on my list. man i got so much shit i have to read

brownsugar said:

slicksight said:

i know i know, i gotta get to it

brownsugar said:

2the9s said:

2the9s said:

9s, I for the life of me cannot get through Ulysses. What am I missing?

How do I approach this book that mocks me every time I go the bookshelf?

I've read what must be thousands of books in my life, but it's not always the "best" writing that sticks with me, therefore I'll make my list based upon books I still think about years after reading, characters that somehow became a part of me, some of this may seem trite, so forgive some of my silliness please.

10.The Chesapeake Bay Trilogy ~ Nora Roberts
9.Watchers~ Dean Koontz
8.Notes from Underground~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
7.The Red Tent ~Anita Diamant
6.The Stranger ~Albert Camus
5.Backroads ~ Tawni O'Dell/I Know This Much is True~ Wally Lamb
4.The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
3.Waking The Moon ~ Elizabeth Hand
2.Push ~ Sapphire
1.Catcher in the Rye ~ JD Salinger

jerseykrs said:

I luv ya! You scare me sometimes though!

slicksight said:

My liver hurts.

'the stranger' is awesome...i love everything i've read by camus. i also love his story 'the plague'...one scene always sticks with me - the man who stands in long lines at a theater, and when he gets to the front, he walks right back to the end of the line and waits all over again. i love that.

kisscamille said:

I get Faulkner, but he's just too much work! When I read I want to be taken to another place not feel like I'm studing for a final exam!

Anx said:

The first time I read The Stranger as a highschool student I was blown away...everytime I read it I find something new that stands out...he has such an odd view of life that somehow makes sense in the end... I've never read the plague... I think I will now.

Sure thing. Randomly listed:


1) Black Betty by Walter Mosley
2) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
3) A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
4) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
5) Faust by Goethe
6) Go Tell It on the Mountain by Baldwin
7) The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman
8) Day of Confession by Allan Folsom
9) Widow for One Year by John Irving
10) A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe

Oh and I would have added Hamlet, Death of a Salesman, Raisin in the Sun,
Waiting for Godot, The Glass Menagerie, No Exit,Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, and A Street Car Named Desire...but they are plays not novels.

ThreadBare said:

I almost put that on my list, A Prayer for Owen Meany is really good too.

Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger
The Once and Future King
Star Wars by Alan Dean Foster, but credited to George Lucas (okay he came up with the plotline, so it's co-authored).
Hotel New Hampshire
Ciderhouse Rules
[Edited 5/13/06 8:17am]

Stax said:

I think I'm the only person on Earth that didn't like this book.

Not a big Hemingway fan either.

kisscamille said:

That's funny. The same thing has happened to me with Faulkner. Same book. I must admit though that I'll stop a book if I'm not feeling it. If I get into it though-- watch out. Oh, and like you Hemingway is probably my favorite author. He and James Baldwin. So here's my list and I see a lot of folks share some of my picks-- great taste. In no particular order:

1. The Sun Also Rises (I also love A Farewell To Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Old Man and the Sea)-- Hemingway
2. Another Country (or Go Tell it on the mountain)-- James Baldwin
3. The Alchemist-- Paulo Coelho
4. Sophie's World-- Jostein Gaardner
5. War and Peace-- Leo Tolstoy
6. Crime and Punishment-- Dostoyevsky
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Les Miserables-- Victor Hugo
9. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle-- Haruki Murakami
10. The Great Gatsby-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Damn. It's hard to leave off 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Stand, The Talisman, Zorba the Greek, East of Eden, The Count of Monte Cristo, Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, Don Quixote, Satanic Verses, The Name of the Rose, Steppenwolf...
[Edited 5/11/06 18:22pm]

TheResistor said:

There are a lot of good guides and annotations etc. out there that can help you through the book, though I would recommend staying clear of the annotations and sticking to the guides, especially Harry Blamires' Bloomsday Book, which is basically a plot summary.

Blamires can help you get through the actual reading of the book, though for a book that shows how carefully written and downright fun Ulysses can be read anything Hugh Kenner has written about it, especially Joyce's Voices or his Ulysses (Kenner did a very bold thing giving his own critical study of Joyce's book the same title as the thing he studies.) Kenner is brilliant.

Remember, Ulysses is a book about a guy walking around Dublin while his wife is having an affair with another man. He is aware of this. And his wife is aware that he is aware of this. And then there's Stephen...

I can't believe I left House of Leaves off my top ten, or The Count of Monte Cristo, or Valis!

2the9s said:

And by the way, you shut up!

You've read more of Proust than I'll ever read!!

Imago said:

I definitely agree with you. I think you might like a book I recently read. "Mindscan" by Robert J. Sawyer. Check it out.

slicksight said:

Haven't read this one. Did you read Mindscan? I enjoyed it.

coolcat said:

not yet but I did read most of "the neanderthal parallax"

slicksight said:

Is it good? I'll have to check out Calculating God...

coolcat said:

it's quite intriguing .. i read calculating god cuz one of the guys around town recommended it

slicksight said:

is that your fav Shakespeare? i never really turned on to him
until i read MacBeth. wow. i have copies of that all about, i
think there's even one in the toillet downstairs, lol.

2the9s said:

I'm not big on general fiction, I read more science fiction and fantasy, and although I do read tons of it, not much of it sticks out as spectacular or worth a second read. All of the ones below I would happily read again, and again, and again :

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Dark Elf Trilogy - R.A. Salvatore
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Split Infinity (trilogy) - Piers Anthony
Magician (series) - Raymond E. Feist
Empyrion - Stehpen Lawhead
The Persistence of Vision - John varley (the best, bar none, collection of short SF stories I've read)
Burning Chrome - William Gibson

I almost feel obliged to include James Joyce's Ulysses, but I've only read it once, and have only read one book about it, so I'm still very much at the beginning of my 'what the hell is Ulysses all about' journey. But, as I have read it, and intend to continue my study of it, I assume I will one day see it for the literary brilliance is it renowned to be. I'm sure Mr. Joyce is spinning in his grave at the thought of his masterpeice being included in a list of favourite 'novels'. Oh well.

I feel that Stephen King should get a mention because I've read and enjoyed plenty of his books. 'The Tommyknockers' was a good one, and one of his fantasy books 'The Eyes of the Dragon' was a great read.



Non Fiction :

The Ambient Century, From Mahler to Moby - The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age - Mark Prendergast
The most enjoyable, informative, and all encompassing book about music I've ever read.

Food of the Gods - Terence McKenna
History of the use of drugs, how they are enmeshed in cultural and religious symbolism.

Cyberia - Douglass Rushkoff
Not particlarly relevant any more as time and technology have moved on (although the choice of drugs hasn't). A good account of what it was like at the cutting edge of drug and technology culture as digital technology opened up a whole new range of art forms and methods of expression.

Inside Out - Nick Mason
Excellent biography about the Floyd, not just full of info about the band from an insiders point of view, but Nick Mason is also a very talented writer. I hope he writes some more. I can see him writing some very good humourous fiction a la Terry Jones or Robert Rankin.

Margrave Of The Marshes - John Peel, Sheila Ravenscroft
First bit written by John, sadly he died before completing it, so his wife finishjed it with input from their children. Probably not the best biography ever written, although John Peel did have a nice witty style. I'm still reading this one, and thoroughly enjoying it - it's nice to find out more about Mr. Peel, for whom I have the utmost respect.

The Holographic Universe - Michael Talbot
Very interesting theory about life, the universe and everything.

Earth Memory: Sacred Sites - Doorways into Earth's Mysteries - Paul Devereux
My favourite account of some of the most important ancient sacred sites. Really cohesive and well written book.

The book of Lies - Alistair Crowley
Even the explanations of the passages are difficult to follow. Not the easiest book in the world to read, but fascinating to me because I enjoy trying to figure out what he's on about. I still haven't a clue, but I'll keep trying.