10 BEST BOOKS

brigez

Very good thread, some of my favouites...............

Catcher in the Rye. JD Salinger
The Diceman, Luke Rhinehart
Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen king
Mystic river, Dennis Lehane
Bravo 2 Zero, Andy Mc Nab
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Red October, Tom Clancy
Wolf of ther Plains, Conn Iggulden

I've not read the book, but I can remember a few years ago on a Sunday night I was about to go to bed when channel 4 started to show "Casino". The film stared at 10pm, I've got to be up at 5am, but I thought I'd watch for a few minutes....nearly 3 hours later I went to bed thinking that was the best film I've ever seen, and I'm not a mafia/ganster film fan!

proto

The Diceman. I lent that to a friend of my son just last week. Brilliant book, although it was 30 years ago that I read it!

How about some Hemingway? Old Man and the Sea works for me.
Or Thomas Hardy? Dickens?

Or the books that got me reading all those years ago, the Biggles series by Capt. W E Johns. I loved them.

brigez

i read Dice man about 25 years ago when i was a teenager, gives you something to think about with regards to choices in your life when you are looking at the future.

dennisn

proto wrote:

Or the books that got me reading all those years ago, the Biggles series by Capt. W E Johns. I loved them.

Ian Flemings James Bond books hooked me on reading.

pedylan

Fiction

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Last Tycoon - F Scott Fitzgerald
Periodic Table - Primo Levi
Tess of the D'urbevilles - Thomas Hardy
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
I Claudius - Robert Graves
Puckoon - Spike Milligan
Scots Quair - Lewis Grassic Gibbon (spoilt originally in Higher English but I went back to it.)


Non Fiction

True Tales of American Life - Compiled by Paul Auster
Any travel book by Paul Theroux
Chronicle by Bob Dylan
Any Sports writing from Hugh McIllvaney

I used to be a voracious reader; I read a dictionary once. I thought it was a poem about everything. (Steven Wright )

I've just finished Pullman's Dark materials trilogy. Really enjoyed them.

popette

Yeh, loved Dark Materials too.

My edition of War and Peace had a handy section at the back which listed all the characters and their relationship to each other - very useful as there are lots of people in it, sometimes with very similar names. Perhaps it's all in the translation; this is the one I read - http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Peace-Pengu ... 149&sr=8-1

Currently reading catcher in the rye - about 2/3 through and I'm wondering what's going on.

jimmypippa

Goodby to all That by Robert Graves, is interesting nonfiction autobiography mostly about his time in the trenches...

So not particularly cheerful.

The Chingford Skinhead

pedylan wrote:

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
.

+1000 Best book I've read by a mile.

Two books I was fortunate to read before they were made into very good films, but very good films that were not a patch on the books...

1 Do androids dream of electronic sheep - Philip K Dick (film: Blade Runner - Ridley Scott)

2 Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard(film: Jackie Brown - Tarintino)

The Yes Minister ? Prime Minister scripts are also great

scwxx77

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Muriakami
Sprawl trilogy - William Gibson
Patern Recognition - William Gibson
Ware Tetralogy - Rudy Rucker
Dexter series - Jeff Lindsay
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Code Book - Simon Singh
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
Have a Nice Day - Mick Foley

scwxx77

dennisn wrote:

I was sort of fascinated by Rushdie's "Midnights Children",
which is set largely in Bombay(fiction).

I'm reading this sporadically at the moment. Certainly enjoying it and I wish I had more time to spend on it. After I've finished I'll be picking up a copy of River of Gods by Ian McDonald set in a future India.

DaveyL

Underworld - Don DeLillo
Libra - Don DeLillo (fictionalisation of Oswald and the Kennedy assassination)
London Fields and Money - both Martin Amis
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Quite liked "Despair" by Nabokov, just for the twist.

dennisn

pedylan wrote:

Fiction

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Last Tycoon - F Scott Fitzgerald
Periodic Table - Primo Levi
Tess of the D'urbevilles - Thomas Hardy
Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
I Claudius - Robert Graves
Puckoon - Spike Milligan
Scots Quair - Lewis Grassic Gibbon (spoilt originally in Higher English but I went back to it.)


Non Fiction

True Tales of American Life - Compiled by Paul Auster
Any travel book by Paul Theroux
Chronicle by Bob Dylan
Any Sports writing from Hugh McIllvaney

I used to be a voracious reader; I read a dictionary once. I thought it was a poem about everything. (Steven Wright )

I've just finished Pullman's Dark materials trilogy. Really enjoyed them.

Well, another I, Claudius" fan. Really good "who done it?" of sorts. Intereresting glimpse into early Rome.

Dennis Noward

afx237vi

scwxx77 wrote:

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Muriakami

There were a few posts earlier on about people not getting Catch 22 (me neither, btw) and your posts reminds me of when I read Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Never in my life have I been so utterly baffled by a novel. I did not have the faintest idea what was going on, and at the end I was none the wiser. Oddly, though, I quite enjoyed reading it.

LittleB0b

Greenvoe - George Mckay Brown
Vurt/pollen - Jeff Noon
House of Leaves -Mark Z. Danielewski
Riders - Jilly Cooper
LOTR - Tolkien
Feet in the Clouds - Richard Askwith
Ground beneath my feet - Gwen Moffat
Where the wild things are - Maurice Sendak
The Wind up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Peoples act of love - James meek

fluff.

Mostly SF, and in no order:

Vurt - Jeff Noon
LOTR - Tolkien
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
Dune - Frank Herbert
Ubik - Philip K Dick
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
The Tiime Ships - Stephen Baxter
Touching The Void - Joe Simpson
Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Saw someone had the Diamond Age on their list as well.. I wanted to like that book but I just found it so annoying. Hyperion is the last one I read on my list, just finished the 2nd book which is fairly standard SF compared to the first, which isn't.

mercsport

This thread has reminded me that it's an age since I've read anything other than technical stuff or 'net based pages . It would seem that my 'literature' period was way back in school and early youth . Anyway , in no particular order of preference , these are my ten :

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
Sword of Honour (Trilogy) - Evelyn Waugh
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Diary of a Supertramp - William Davies
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Soft Machine - William Burroughs
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Nostromo - Joe Conrad
The Dragon Masters / The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
Catch 22 - Joe Heller
The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek

The titles - mostly - are really only pointers to the authors as I tended to read everything that they'd written .

I , like everyone else , have a host of authors and books that I tried and failed on , leaving me scratching my noggin and asking ' how in heck ... did this become so popular ? ' . Such as Tolkien , James Joyce , Rushdie and so on .

The most recent book I got gripped on cover to cover was ' Scott & Amundsen' by Roland Huntford . Not a great work of literature ( in fact , pretty dry ) , but what a tale .

pedylan

dennisn wrote:

Well, another I, Claudius" fan. Really good "who done it?" of sorts. Intereresting glimpse into early Rome.

Dennis Noward

BBC had an excellent adaptation of I Claudius in the late 70's. This steered me in the direction of the book which I've read several times.

Murder, incest, orgies - how could it be a miss

I was disappointed though with Claudius the God which I thought was pretty turgid, lacking just about everything that made the former book so great.

pedylan

Should really have added Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to my top 10, took a couple of attempts to get through start to finish but I then reread straight away. Odd not to have seen it on anyone's list.

Adding "glorious failures" to the list is a good idea.

Life - A Users Manual by Georges Perec. I've taken this onto more planes than I care to remember and never got beyond the first 100 pages. Piantings turned into Jigsaws that are then turned back into paintings and then destroyed. I was out of my depth :?

Anonymous

Cant believe I didnt put in one flew over the cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey.

Also day of the jackal is sooo gripping, yes indeedy.

dennisn

mercsport wrote:

This thread has reminded me that it's an age since I've read anything other than technical stuff or 'net based pages . It would seem that my 'literature' period was way back in school and early youth . Anyway , in no particular order of preference , these are my ten :

The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
Sword of Honour (Trilogy) - Evelyn Waugh
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Diary of a Supertramp - William Davies
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Soft Machine - William Burroughs
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
Nostromo - Joe Conrad
The Dragon Masters / The Dying Earth - Jack Vance
Catch 22 - Joe Heller
The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek

The titles - mostly - are really only pointers to the authors as I tended to read everything that they'd written .

I , like everyone else , have a host of authors and books that I tried and failed on , leaving me scratching my noggin and asking ' how in heck ... did this become so popular ? ' . Such as Tolkien , James Joyce , Rushdie and so on .

The most recent book I got gripped on cover to cover was ' Scott & Amundsen' by Roland Huntford . Not a great work of literature ( in fact , pretty dry ) , but what a tale .

Nostromo gets a yes.
On the Road - just didn't hit me for whatever reason.
Must make mental note to look into Sword of Honour. Enjoyed his Handful of Dust
and Brideshead Revisited.

Dennis Noward

dennisn

fluff. wrote:

Mostly SF, and in no order:

Vurt - Jeff Noon
LOTR - Tolkien
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
Hyperion - Dan Simmons
Dune - Frank Herbert
Ubik - Philip K Dick
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K Dick
The Tiime Ships - Stephen Baxter
Touching The Void - Joe Simpson
Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Saw someone had the Diamond Age on their list as well.. I wanted to like that book but I just found it so annoying. Hyperion is the last one I read on my list, just finished the 2nd book which is fairly standard SF compared to the first, which isn't.

Have you tried Stranger in a Strange Land(Heinlein)?

mercsport

Additional to the above stuff I'm reminded of a host other stuff also - memory !

'fluff's' mention of 'Touching the Void ' is a masterpiece of mountain literature for sure .

Heinrich Harrers' 'The White Spider' had me gripped as a kid also .

'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test ' by Tom Wolfe I read in middle age but reminded me , graphically , of where I came from , along with the other guidebooks for bums mentioned in previous post . Kerouac wrote other books too . Desolation Angels was another of my favourites .

Dennis , do you ever tune into - via the 'net , I'd suppose - 'A Good Read' on our BBC Radio 4 ?

jimmypippa

And of course Das Boot is a powerful, if grim read... (see t'other thread here)

Anonymous

The right stuff by Tom Wolfe, good as well.

popette

SpinningJenny wrote:

Hmm, at 5am I'm not sure if I can come up with 10 but let me see:

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
!

Had this sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I'm going to start tonight, following your recommendation Jenny.

Just finished Catcher in the Rye - need some time to absorb that one I think.

I've never read any Charles Dickens - I have a few books of his that I've bought, read a few pages and then put down again. Can you recommend a good Dickens to start with?

proto

dmclite wrote:

Cant believe I didnt put in one flew over the cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey.

Excellent.

As someone has posted, I tend to read everything by an author. So ploughed through all the Rankin, Banks, Deighton, Le Carre books. Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck too. Loved all the H G Wells books, especially his short story collections.

Just started on the Maj Sjovwall/Per Wahloo 'Martin Beck' detective series. Just about to start #3 (of 10). Very good.

jimmypippa

Proto, if you like Ian M Banks, you might find some Neal Asher books amusing e.g. "The Skinner"

The Polity is very similar to the Culture, but it is a bit more of a lightweight read.

Pretty fast moving though.

proto

I've enjoyed most of Iain Banks' books, especially the earlier ones, Wasp Factory, Walking on Glass, The Bridge etc, thought they went off - Whit, The Business and so on, just didn't have the same clout.

Did try an Iain M Banks SciFi- can't remember the title, possibly Consider Phlebas, recommended by a neighbour, but have to admit I didn't enjoy (or finish) it.

I used to read tons of SciFi when I was much younger, but I think I've moved on. :?

dennisn

mercsport wrote:

Dennis , do you ever tune into - via the 'net , I'd suppose - 'A Good Read' on our BBC Radio 4 ?

No I haven't, but will give it a shot.

Dennis Noward

mercsport

dennisn wrote:

mercsport wrote:

Dennis , do you ever tune into - via the 'net , I'd suppose - 'A Good Read' on our BBC Radio 4 ?

No I haven't, but will give it a shot.

Dennis Noward

Well , that was a poor lead from me , as it isn't on the schedule anymore - thought I hadn't heard it for awhile . Seasonal . A programme that I usually hear throughout the drear' days of winter .

The format is simple : the presenter ( Sue McGregor ) and two guests ( celebs' normally ) declare their favourite 'read' - which the others will have read also - and proceed to natter about it . :roll: I enjoy it anyway .

The closest to it currently on tap is 'Bookclub' : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... iaolu_Guo/ presented by James Naughtie - which means , regardless of content , I reach for the off-switch as quickly as possible - but you may find him digestible . Others do .