Best Books you've ever read?

[Ein]

Fiction: Stephen King's Needful Things

Non-Fiction: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent

[Rowdyboy]

1. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

There is no other possible choice...

[Maple]

2. Augggh

I was going to put 'A Confederacy of Dunces' on the 'worst book you've ever read' thread last night, but I didn't get around to it.

Personally I think the first 25 publishers who turned him down were right!

[roughsatori]

11. This is outrageous

I AGREE with you--it is awful and boring. I have lost friends over how tedious this book was to me. I once told a friend (I did not know it was his favorite book) that I thought Dunces was for Dunces and that it was a book to love for people who don't read much literature. He screamed and cursed--our friendship did not withstand my attack on that book. But to be honest almost everyone except us seems to love it. But being in the majority has never been my idea of a good time.

[Ein]

12. It must be good then

If it divides people so... will check it out.

[roughsatori]

14. OH NO, that is a good reason to read it

You are right. If I heard people fighting over a book I would want to read it--but I warn you, if you don't like it keep it to yourself unless you are very big and strong---the people who love it are CRAZY.

[Tinoire]

30. ROFLMAO! You are TOO funny!

[Maple]

20. Well there's two of us then!

And I forgot to list my 'best' books because I was so busy choking. ;-)

My favorites are 'The Outsider' by Colin Wilson and 'Future Shock' by Alvin Toffler.

Both written a loooooong time ago, but they had a profound effect on me. Many a time I've been grateful I read them.

Sorry for the aside...carry on.

[roughsatori]

22. I am re-reading Colin Wilson's "Poetry & Mysticism"

as I type. I read and liked, very much, both books you mentioned.

[Maple]

25. Ahhh

a kindred soul!

[Tinoire]

27. Double Ouch!

I'm an avid book-worm (at least I used to be until * stole office) and loved it!

How far did you get? I'm so shocked! I loved the dry humor and thought the writing was superb.

Peace

[roughsatori]

36. I put it on top of a garbage can in center city Philly

I figured maybe the drunk who lived outside my building might enjoy trying to sell it for some wine. I stopped when I had about 30 pages left. I never even smiled once. My ex-best-friend kept saying "you will love the humor." At first I felt mentally, or emotionally defective--then decided to opt for pride in my not finding anything good about the book. And as you know pride comes before a fall, my ex-best-friend was ready to shove that book up my....well you know where.

[Tinoire]

23. Ouch!

How far into it did you get?

[Maple]

28. I forced myself

to read the entire thing.

I kept hoping it would get better.

No such luck!

[Tinoire]

32. Then my hat is off to you

for sticking with it. Maybe Roughsatori is right; maybe we ARE CRAZY! lol.

Peace

[roughsatori]

38. Please stop harrassing us!!!!

Must I now change my DU name for safety. I warn you, I have been working out---and practise Tai Chi.

[Tinoire]

53. OMG! Well even if you didn't like it- you certainly do a GREAT imitation

I can clearly visualize Ignatius saying that! lol

Peace

On edit: Liberate Paradise Vendors!!!

[Bossy Monkey]

24. I disliked it too

but mainly because it was so transparent that Ignatius J. Reilly was John Kennedy Toole, and the treatment of the mother was just harrowing (the mother who in real life beat down doors to get the book published). The self-loathing that eventually took his life dripped off every page and this misery completely overwhelmed any humor there might have been in the book. If I'd read it without knowing the author had killed himself, maybe I could have liked it. Too much empathy here, though, I'm afraid.

[Tinoire]

33. That saddened me too

but I disassociated the two. I remember being enthralled by the character, the literary prowess of perfect phrases, and the humor.

Peace and peace to O'Toole

[Tinoire]

4. LOVE that book! Great choice! But my favorite is probably

Metamorphoses by Ovid

Call it sentimental attachment...

Peace

[classics]

3. Fahrenheit 451

As far as political fiction goes.

A wonderful book that people say is about censorship, but is really about how people are being farmed, how we are being made the 'same'.

[toolfan]

5. Mine

Fiction: Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

Non-Fiction: A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

[alaine]

6. Non Fiction #1: "Haciendo Caras, Making Face, Making

Soul- Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color" edited by Gloria Anzaldua

This one absolutely changed my life; I still have the worn and tattered copy.

Fiction: "Bastard out of Carolina" Dorothy Allison, made into a movie by Anjelica Houston, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, rough subject matter, not for the faint of heart

Poetry: "Not Vanishing" Chrystos, changed my life, same as Haciendo Caras

[roughsatori]

13. I forgot "Bastard Out of Carolina" I loved it

very moving and reminded me of my own milieu when growing up in the trailer park. Beautiful and sad book, a wonderful engrossing read. I literally laughed, screamed and cried while reading it.

[PittPoliSci]

7. excellent topic!

seen it before, but i always love to share my literary achievements, minor as they may be.

Fiction: Two Vonnegut books, Cat's Cradle, and Slaughterhouse-Five

Nonfiction: The Greatest Sedition is Silence by William Rivers Pitt, just finished it today when I should've been watching children swim.

The joys of apathy when you work 13 hours a day...

My first message on DU2

wooo!

[Ein]

15. thanks

[roughsatori]

16. "The Joys of Apathy"

I had to read your post twice looking for the author--then I realized it was just your phrase, LOL. You may have a best-seller on your hands.

[WindRavenX]

50. Slaughter-house five and The Great Gatsby

Slaughter-house five hit me like a ton of bricks. The suffering of Billy was just beyond words...which the book beautifully showed.
The Great Gatsby...I can't describe why, but it just..feels right to me.

[BurtWorm]

8. Lolita (and other Nabokov--etc.)

is the book I've reread most, so if forced to make a choice, that would be it.


Edit: (Wow! I actually changed the subject line!)

I'll add some other books I've read that I'd include.

Ada, also by Nabokov. I've only read it once, about 25 years ago almost, but it was a supreme pleasure.

Pale Fire, also by Nabokov. Ingenious.

Middlemarch, which I read in about three or four very long sittings over a weekend, hit me with a whallop. It's one of the few novels that made me weep over the plight of the characters.


It's much more difficult to single out nonfiction, though I actually prefer to read it lately.

[Tinoire]

34. Love of my life, fire of my loins...

Nabokov ROCKS!

[roughsatori]

40. we can agree on Nabokov

he does rock. I mean a man who loves capturing, killing, cataloging, and displaying the corpses of butterflys must have something going on upstairs.

[Tinoire]

54. You're too much! Thanks for the lesson- I did not know this

No writer of Nabokov's stature, not even Goethe, has been a more passionate student of the natural world or a more accomplished scientist. No one has ever evoked with more enchantment how a child's first passion for nature can grow into lifelong love and devotion. In the years after Lolita thrust him into fame, Nabokov became the world's best-known lepidopterist. He had been highly respected by fellow specialists for the papers he wrote while in charge of Lepidoptera at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, in the 1940s, at a time when he was also earning a reputation in America for his stories and poems in The Atlantic Monthly, but those who saw his zeal for butterflies featured on the cover of Time or in the pages of Life in the 1960s often assumed that he was a mere hobbyist. The scale and significance of his butterfly work remained a mystery to many until scientists started to re-examine and expand on his work at the end of the 1980s and throughout the 1990s. One of the foremost of these scientists, Kurt Johnson, has recently, with Steve Coates, written eloquently of Nabokov's inspiration and legacy in Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius (1999).

Nabokov had long contemplated publishing his collected scientific papers, but this plan, like many of his most ambitious butterfly projects, remained unrealized. Now Beacon Press, of Boston, has undertaken a project almost as ambitious as any Nabokov himself conceived: to publish an anthology of his astonishingly diverse writing about butterflies, whether scientific or artistic, published or unpublished, carefully finished or roughly sketched, in poems, stories, novels, memoirs, scientific papers, lectures, notes, diaries, letters, interviews, dreams. As Nabokov's biographer, I co-edited Nabokov's Butterflies -- the largest and most varied collection of his work in any single volume -- with the distinguished nature writer Robert Michael Pyle, the author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies. While Nabokov was alive, Pyle had agitated for the protection of the Karner Blue, a butterfly that Nabokov first named as at least a distinct subspecies in a paper in the 1940s and introduced playfully into Pnin in the 1950s. Partly because of the help that Nabokov gave to the initiative of Pyle and others in the 1970s, the little Karner Blue has become a major symbol of the conservation movement in the American Northeast.

<snip>

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/04/nabokov.htm

[roughsatori]

9. "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky, fiction

Ray Monk's Wittgenstein," autobiography. "Long Days Journey Into Night" play, "Tropic of Cancer," "Tropic of Capricorn," "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, Shakespeares "Sonnets," Pasolini's "Roman Poems." Ovid "Metamorpheses" mythology, "Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany" art book,"The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations," for distraction, "King James Bible" for the poetry, and shared history, OED, reference work.....

I love reading books,I love the smell of them, I love carrying them, this is off the top of my head---as soon as I start listing what I like more and more pop up--Oh I love "Wuthering Heights," the essays of James Baldwin, Emma Goldman......"The Indian Mummy Mystery" from childhood, Aesops Fables, Canterbury Tales....time to log off and read then go to bed--thanks for the memories.

[Tinoire]

37. Excellent selection!

Victor Hugo "Les Miserables"
Tolstoy - "Anna Karenina"
Doestoevsky - "Crime and Punishment"
Kafka - ANYTHING
Ralph Ellison - "Invisible Man"
Martin Luther King - "A Testament of Hope"
James Baldwin - Anything



The list goes on and on...

Oh and PG WODEHOUSE! All of them!

Peace

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

10. Fiction-- "Stand On Zanzibar" by John Brunner

Non-fiction-- The Holy Bible.

[roughsatori]

21. Which translation of the Bible do you like?

I grew up Catholic, but find that translation lacking in the poetry of the "King James."

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

39. The King James Version

I grew up with it, and it's still the best version I've ever read.

[Ein]

42. by any means

to be truthfull (i am agnostic), I can't see how the Bible would be considered Non-Fiction.

Besides that I was even taught in high school that the kings james version was heavily altered under king james.... can't remember the specifics, but what is up with that?

[jafap]

59. makes my top five

but literati are not known for liking Science fiction. I got into Vonnegut because he was in the science fiction section of the college library, but if you read him as a sci-fi writer he sucks. It is only as a social commentator that makes him awesome.
Another one on this list I really liked was Fahrenheit 451.
My own list would be:
Fiction - Lightning by Dean Koontz
Non-fiction - Small is beautiful - EF Schumacher

Funny how many of people's best end up being disliked. I liked the title of Confederacy of Dunces, but did not get very far into it. I recently tried to read "Aida" and cannot understand the appeal of Nabokov. I did not finish Lolita either. Aida struck me as being poorly written, like he writes his sentences (and then puts something else inside it (and then another oblique reference (with another aside)(and I wish I had noted a real example))) but he also does it without the benefit of parentheses, and it just seems like an clumsy way to write. Maybe the writing was beyond me, but like Lolita I very quickly stopped caring.

[barbaraann]

17. The Source by James Michener

Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
Oh, The Places You'll Go by Dr. Suess
and the Father Brown mystery stories by G.K. Chesterton

[Syrinx]

18. Funniest book ever is...

"Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas," by Dr. Thompson.

[Ein]

26. I;'ve only seen the movie

and the one based off of "Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72'" called "Where the Buffaloes Roam" (And Bill Murray should be ashamed at how badly Depp upstaged him)...

But I hear the one mentioned above is a better book than "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", you ever read the above mentioned?

[Syrinx]

43. Yeah I've got 'em both

They're two entirely different kinds of books. The campaign one is a little more serious. It still is very "gonzo" though. Oh geez, I'm having trouble explaining the difference. "Las Vegas" has at least a couple of belly-laughs per page. Just get the books and read them! :)

BTW, I thought the most recent movie was ok, but it didn't really do the book justice.

ON EDIT:

I thought the Las Vegas movie should have be directed by somebody like Scorcese or somebody, not the guy from Monty Python. I think it played up the gimmicky special-effects too much. But I would still give it :thumbsup:.

[Syrinx]

47. Just thinking about the Bill Murray movie

I saw that on cable years ago. You're right, I think, Bill Murray gave a kind of lethargic performance. He's shown comic brilliance in some performances, but that was not his best.

Didn't the guy who plays Raymond's father on the sitcom play his "attorney?" I can't recall his name right now, but he was good friends with John Lennon. FWIW.

Peter Boyle, that's it. :)

[Ein]

49. Yea, it was lackluster

But from what I understand Depp spent months on end with Hunter studying his mannerisms. I don't know how Murray prepared.

Boyle might've beem it, but the performance was also crap compared to Del Toro, imo.

To be fair, put Depp into "What About Bob?" and see how he would've done. Actually, pretty well, probably... I don't think I've ever seen Depp in a bad movie. But Murray isn't that bad.

[Bossy Monkey]

19. Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward (n/t)

[MoonGod]

29. Island by Aldous Huxley with honorable mentions to...

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
God of Small Things by Arundhatti Roy
Evolution of Consciousness by Robert Ornstein
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
1984 by George Orwell

[Syrinx]

48. How do you pronounce "Aldous"?

I did my 12th grade term paper on him, but I'm *still* not sure.

I think it's al-dus or maybe all-dus. But I've had people tell me it was something like all-do.

[Ein]

51. i thought it was

al-jew-us

[MoonGod]

52. I've always pronounced it All-do-us...

... But I could be wrong.

Either way, Island is a great book... I need to go back and reread Brave New World. I last read it in high school or maybe jr. high, so I'm sure I'd get something different out of it now.

I also want to go back and reread To Kill a Mockingbird. The only time I read it was in jr. high...

[Bossy Monkey]

72. I've only ever heard All-duss

[Mz Pip]

31. Tough choice

"Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clark is up near the top.
"Feast of All Saints" by Anne Rice (not a vampire novel!
"Cold Mountain" can't remember the author


but probably the best ever would have to go to "The Forsyte Saga" by John Glasworthy - it's 6 books altogether.

MzPip
:dem:

[OurMorale]

35. Different categories

Mainstream Fiction: From Here to Eternity by James Jones and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsonlver
Gay Fiction: Was by Geoff Ryman and The Hours by Michael Cunningham'
Short Stories: Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz and Typical by Padgett Powell
"Literature": Three Novels by Samuel Beckett (Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable)
Science Fiction: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

Political Nonfiction: The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Economics: Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips and The Divine Right of Capital by M. Kelly

There's more, but that's a start, eh?

[Ein]

41. Second reply with Zinns book

I love it, keep educating yourselves! Gay Fiction? I would love to read it, thanks for the reccomendations.

[roughsatori]

45. the gayest best "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

so funny of a book. Every paragraph is filled with brightness. Oscar Wilde truly had much more to declare than his genius.

[BulletproofLandshark]

44. Ender's Game

Hello everyone. Longtime DU lurker, first-time poster.

Fiction:The Ender Quartet (Ender's Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, & Children Of The Mind) by Orson Scott Card

Non-Fiction:Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

[roughsatori]

46. Welcome Tinman, hope to see more of you

I was a long time lurker too.

[Tinoire]

55. Welcome to DU Tinman!

:toast:

Nice thread to start off in!

Peace

[MoonGod]

56. The Ender books were great...

... After finally getting around to reading Ender's Game, I had gobbled up the rest of the quartet within a couple months. I didn't think any of the rest quite held up to the first, but liked 'em all.

If you didn't already know, a movie is in the works, with a screenplay by OSC himself and Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, Air Force One, Perfect Storm) on board to direct. Seems like it would be quite a challenge to make a decent movie, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/

[BulletproofLandshark]

57. Just As Long As They Don't...

Cast Haley Joel Osment or Jake Lloyd as Ender, I'll be happy. Also, the last time time I heard about the movie's development(which was some time ago), it was said that the whole Locke/Demosthenes sub-plot was going to be scrapped due to time constraints. It seems as though it would still have to be a DAMN long movie. Hope Card doesn't cop out and decide to make it a "Sci-Fi Original" miniseries instead. I think I would probably cry then.

Thanks for the link MoonGod.

[MoonGod]

58. I suppose it could go in any direction...

... but I don't think they pulled Petersen aboard to make a "Sci Fi miniseries" ;-)

It can be done... just takes a lot of skill in filmmaking. The old adage "A picture is worth a thousand words" can definitely apply if that picture is skillfully shot.

And yes... I agree with you on the Osment and Lloyd comments. Fortunately, they should be too old, by then.

[no_hypocrisy]

60. These books are timely and highly recommended to DU'ers:

Both by author Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry
It Can't Happen Here

When I first read these books, they were fiction. Now they seem prescient.

[jomcnamara]

61. Best fiction: The Palliser novels by Trollope

and non-fiction: Walden by Thoreau

[Kathy in Cambridge]

62. The Master and Margarita and Zinn

Bulgakov.

I also like Gogol's "Dead Souls"

For non-fiction, I have to chime in with Zinn also.

On July 4th, Democracynow presented actors and authors reading from APHOTUS. It's probably in the website's archives...worth watching/listening.

[Iris]

63. To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye and

more recently, Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections."

[MoonGod]

71. Oooh.. Catcher in the Rye.. thanks for reminding me...

... that's also on my "haven't read it since jr. high and need to reread it" list.

[JayS]

64. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

It is not the easiest read but well worth the effort.

[seethrougheyes]

65. Best book....

I have ever read (well my favourite) is Stone Diaries by Carol Sheilds. She is an amazing Canadian author and won the pulitzer for this book, among other awards. It is a brilliant book.

[noonwitch]

66. East of Eden and The Witching Hour

I love Steinbeck, and East of Eden is my favorite of his books. The characters and story are great.

Anne Rice's The Witching Hour is the most addictive book I've ever read. The sequels suck, but the first book is amazing. I could not put the book down when I was reading it the first time, I just had to know what was going to happen next.

[Cheswick2.0]

67. LOTR, Grapes of Wrath, Les Miserables

I also have to admit to a lengthy romance with Dean Koontz books. My favorites were Lightening, Strangers and Watchers.

[primavera]

68. Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited. One of my all time favorites.

[RandomKoolzip]

69. Best books I ever read

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Valis by Phillip K. Dick

for fiction, and:

Rock and the Pop Narcotic by Joe Carducci
People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus

for non-.

That is all.

[Ramsey]

70. Fiction: Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Also: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Dune by Frank Herbert

[Michael Daniels]

73. Patrick O'Brien series and "I, Claudius"

Both are supurb examples of historical fiction that actually can be classifed as "literature" vs just a story/book.

Both capture a solid representation of the political and social landscapes of their respective times and integrate them fully into the story vs. just making them background for the central action.

[mvd]

74. Mine

classics like 1984 and Grapes Of Wrath

The Firm, A Time To Kill, A Painted House - John Grisham

The Harry Potter Books - J.K. Rowling (all of them because I can't like one part of the story without liking the others - it's all fascinating.)

Where Are The Children? and On The Street Where You Live - Mary Higgins Clark

Outbreak - Robin Cook

Blinded By The Right - David Brock

[RetroLounge]

75. Been a while, need to re-read them...

100 years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Incredible...