10 BEST BOOKS

passout

You lot are actually quite intellectual (don't mean to sound suprised). Nobody has mentioned Chris Ryan or Dan Brown! I read he Da Vinci code because of the fuss it created, not quite as awful as the film.....but still awful. Anybody else dabble in rubbish books now and again?

finchy

passout wrote:

You lot are actually quite intellectual (don't mean to sound suprised). Nobody has mentioned Chris Ryan or Dan Brown! I read he Da Vinci code because of the fuss it created, not quite as awful as the film.....but still awful. Anybody else dabble in rubbish books now and again?

I'm doing some temp work in a library at the mo and I read the blurb on some of the obviously appalling books.

My "favourites" are the Mills and Boon ones. I love titles such as "Taken By The Viking", "The Sheikh's Wife" and the all-time best "Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed". With titles like that, who even needs to read them?

guilliano

I've read all of Dan Brown's books as they are an easy read and don't take too much concentration. I used to read them on the train commuting to and from London simply to pass the time. They are entertaining, but certainly not what I'd call great books.

I actually quite like reading Shakespeare plays (yes I know). I just find that it makes me think a lot about what I am reading and there are so many ways a lot of it can be interpreted...... everyone will get something different from them

CHRISNOIR

Is it wrong to proclaim my favourite book ever as 'Revolution In The Head; The Beatles Records and The Sixties' by Ian MacDonald? Don't get me wrong, I'm as keen on a bit of Kafka as the next man but this is the book I always find myself flicking through - it's a good scholarly account of the music / times.

passout wrote:

Anybody else dabble in rubbish books now and again?

As far as 'rubbish' goes I've never felt fully satisfied by any 'Lad Lit'. Awful stuff.

crown_jewel

The George Smiley Trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; Smiley's People) - John LeCarre
Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Jeeves Stories - PG Wodehouse
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Complete Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Iliad - Homer
King Lear (any of them, really) - William Shakespeare
Martin Luther King Trilogy - Taylor Branch
The Best and the Brightest - David Halberstam
The Dark Side - Jane Mayer

Ten is not enough, as you can see!

Crapaud

passout wrote:

You lot are actually quite intellectual (don't mean to sound suprised). Nobody has mentioned Chris Ryan or Dan Brown! I read he Da Vinci code because of the fuss it created, not quite as awful as the film.....but still awful. Anybody else dabble in rubbish books now and again?

The thread title's '10 best books' so I'd be surprised if they got a mention.

I was surprised that I quite enjoyed The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. The Da Vinci Code in particular was a real page turner, but they're chewing gum for the brain. Good fun though. The rest of his stuff's guff.

More good rubbish is Stephen Clarke's 'Merde' books: A Year in the Merde and Merde Actually (I've still to get the third one). Laugh-out-loud funny they are.

I'll read just about anything. The worst book that I've ever read was Battlefield Earth (24 years ago). So bad that it should have been funny. It actually goes way beyond that, passed total and utter shite, through pulp and on into a realm of its own. Avoid L Ron Hubbard shite at all cost!

jimmypippa

johnfinch wrote:

passout wrote:

You lot are actually quite intellectual (don't mean to sound suprised). Nobody has mentioned Chris Ryan or Dan Brown! I read he Da Vinci code because of the fuss it created, not quite as awful as the film.....but still awful. Anybody else dabble in rubbish books now and again?

I'm doing some temp work in a library at the mo and I read the blurb on some of the obviously appalling books.

My "favourites" are the Mills and Boon ones. I love titles such as "Taken By The Viking", "The Sheikh's Wife" and the all-time best "Millionaire Dad: Wife Needed". With titles like that, who even needs to read them?

Ah yes, I read rubbish books, my wife has a theory that anyone who reads shedloads will have a (trashy) genre of choice. The thread title is "best" books, so I left out a lot of the stuff that I'd only read once.

My genre of choice is science fiction (very teenage).

Saying that, my brother and I did find westerns (particularly by JT Edson) amusing as teenagers, as they were so terrible it was almost art.

Hilariously (repressed) homeorotic writing together with (not so funny) political views (starting with "the wrong side won the US Civil War")

Wiki seems quite accurate.

The huge procession of characters from book to book ensured that the first few pages of an Edson book always ended up looking alike, with descriptions of a small, insignificant looking Dusty Fog, who suddenly appeared to become a giant when villains he faced down felt the full force of his personality, the tall and Greek-god handsome Mark Counter, ....

I did wonder if the author was 5'6, as he seemed to have a thing about hight...


but just look at the book titles:

Dusty Fog the School Teacher from Hard Riders became Master of Triggernometry;

passout

I like your wife's theory as I quite enjoy sci-fi myself. My general rule of thumb is two or three seious books followed by either a comedy or something trashy (often sci-fi). It's a bit of light relief and adds variety.

I'm reading the History Man by Malcolm Bradbury which is really funny and exceptionally clever. Witty in other words.

dicer

10 books I would recommend:
Clould Atlas- David Mitchell
Pimp-Iceberg Slim
Vernon God Little-DBC Pierre
A Tale of Two Cities-Charles Dickens
Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison
An Autobiography-M.K.Gandi
The Fight-Norman Mailer
Pryor Convictions-Richard Pryor
Things Fall Apart-Chinua Achebe
The Oxford English Dictionary- How often have I been sidetracked by the wonder of the words new to me.
I was told by a friend that you can tell more about a person from the books they fail to read then the books they read, maybe. My list of half finished books-well, that`s another story or tread.

Nuggs

Has anyone on here read Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold? One of my favourite books of all time, but not widely known.

Others that make my list are:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Woolf
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Bible - God
Hitchhikers' Guide - Douglas Adams
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murukami
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
FWTBT - Hemmingway
One Hundred Years of Solitute - Marquez

DavidBelcher

passout wrote:

I'm reading the History Man by Malcolm Bradbury which is really funny and exceptionally clever. Witty in other words.

Enjoyed it in its way, but it did get me rather annoyed - based on my own experiences, the world of academia is full of Howard Kirks, all of whom need their necks wringing. :x Such an attitiude may be why I'm also a huge fan of Lucky Jim!

Aside from the above work by Kingsley Amis, my other nominations for a 10-best list in no particular order would be:

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
The Ipcress File - Len Deighton
A Kind Of Loving - Stan Barstow
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
The Rotters' Club - Jonathan Coe
What A Carve Up! - Jonathan Coe, again
Billy Liar - Keith Waterhouse
Saturday Night & Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

David

passout

Agree about Howard Kirk - one of the most annoying characters ever invented. I too suspect that he reflects the reality of the ivory tower, at least in the social sciences. I loved it for that reason. You should try 'Nice Work if you can get it' too - another pop at academics; forget the authors name.

Brighton Rock made my list too. As a study of good & evil it's brilliant. By the way Graham Greene reviewed a book called the West Pier by Patrick Hamilton as, 'the best book about Brighton ever written". I read it for that reason and it was excellent, I almost put it on my list but Greene just beat him to it. Quite a similar story in many ways.