List 5 Essential Novels On Your Shelf

[Seneca]

Again, no order, not set in stone, and please, no flaming each other. :-)

1. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

4. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

5. 1984 - George Orwell

[Don Claybrook]

1. Off the top of my head, no particular order

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude
2. Midnight's Children
3. The God of Small Things
4. The Handmaid's Tale
5. The Razor's Edge

[RevolutionaryActs]

2. Define "essential"

:P

[Seneca]

4. It means...

You need them more than oxygen!

[RevolutionaryActs]

7. Well what I find essential, others wouldn't.

But I'll list some anyway. :silly:

1) The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien.

2) The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley.

3) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.

4) The Count of Monte Christo - Alexandre Dumas.

5) Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - Dee Brown.



:)


Wait! I want to add more! :o

The Metamorphosis, The Princess Bride(I love it :P), A Tale of Two Cities(can't believe I for to add that!), The Catcher in the Rye(even thought I didn't like it).

[Seneca]

10. But that's the point of this thread

I want everyone to list what is essential to him or herself. Otherwise, we would be an echo chamber chamber...chamber. :-)

[RevolutionaryActs]

13. Well then let me list every book I own.

:7

[lenidog]

19. That doesn't matter if they don't find it essential its what you find

essential. But there you are wrong two of yours are on my list and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" would be on my list of essential history books to read.

[Left Is Write]

3. I don't think I have five essential novels.

Well, maybe. I guess I can think of four off the bat that I own: 1984, Cuckoo's Nest, Brave New World, and To Kill A Mockingbird.

I have a ton of popular fiction, but not much for classic novels.

[Seneca]

5. "Mockingbird"

Definitely a favorite. Similar tastes! :-)

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. Cryptonomicon, Dune, The Sun Also Rises, Moby Dick, This Side of Paradise

[JimmyJazz]

8. Here are mine:

1. On the Road - Kerouac

2. The 3 Musketeers - Dumas

....okay, that's really it as far as the essentials... :)

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. Hey, you only had "On the Road" on there before!

What's next, number 3?

:grrrrrrrrrrrr:

:hi: JimmyJazz!!

[JimmyJazz]

15. I know, but then I saw Rev Acts named the Count of Monte Cristo and

I remembered that the 3 Musketeers was also a favorite of mine.

[Seneca]

16. I like Milky Way too

No wait, that's the 5 Essential Chocolate Bars thread.

[Seneca]

12. Even with those 2

It's an eclectic list. :-)

[El Fuego]

9. I think this is mine:

1. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
2. The Stand - Steven King
3. Lolita - Nabokov
4. The Beet Queen - Louise Erdrich
5. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldricht - Philip K. Dick

[lenidog]

14. Here are mine

In no particular order

Alls Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee
The More than Complete Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler
Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Beowulf- I know he said name five and it might not count but I am adding it on.


Some contenders who didn't make it

Dune- Frank Herbert
Nargun and the Stars- Can't remember the author but it was one of my favorite books as a kid
The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammet
Day of the Jackal- Frederick Forsyth
The Princess Bride- William Goldman
Foucault's Pendulum- Umberto Eco

[Rick Myers]

17. Here ya' go...

1. Neuromancer - William Gibson
2. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
3. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
4. The Thin Man - Dashill Hammett
5. Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

Just off the bookshelf in the living room!!!

[Democrats_win]

18. 1. The Bible

2. A charge to Keep
3. Unfit to command
4. Who's looking out for you?
5. The Starr Report

[gmoney]

32. You sure we're not allowed to flame? (n/t)

[BamaGirl]

20. hmm, 5 is damned near impossible lol

Huck Finn
Handmaid's Tale
To Kill a Mockingbird
Great Gatsby
House of Seven Gables

Completely subjective of course lol.

[enigmatic]

21. My 5:

"Winseburg, Ohio"- Sherwood Anderson

"The Razor's Edge"- Somerset Maughm

"The Music Of Chance"- Paul Auster

"Women"- Bukowski

"Big Sur"- Kerouac

[yellowdogintexas]

22. My five:

Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell
To Kill a Mockingbird harper Lee
The Godfather Mario Puzo
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
The Joyous Season Patrick Dennis

[Lannes]

23. Some of them..

Rabbit Run (also Rabbit Redux,Rabbit is Rich,Rabbit at Rest)-John Updike

The Alienist-Caleb Carr

Candide-Voltaire

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu-Proust

Christine-Stephen King

[DawgHouse]

27. Oh, Christine!

What a great book. The movie was such a disappointment. But that King sure got inside my head with Christine. Of course, King has a knack for doing that.

[mac56]

24. Catch 22

Cat's Cradle
To Kill A Mockingbird
Cannery Row
Huckleberry Finn

[Zenlitened]

25. Must must MUST have Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath"

I'd also add "Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut...

Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings," certainly.

Quirky little favorites of mine: "Saint Maybe" by Ann Tyler and "Asa, As I Knew Him" by Susanna Kaysen.

And can I slip in some non-fiction for a number six? "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan is one of the most wonderfully entertaining and awe-inspiring history books I've ever read. :)

[DawgHouse]

26. These are a few that had a somewhat profound affect on me

Sorry, had to name six instead of five. I read these again from time to time:

The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Call of the Wild - London
Animal Farm - Orwell
Night - Elie Weisel

[uppityperson]

28. Mockingbird and Family Tree, Neverwhere, dictionary

1. To Kill a Mockingbird- Harper Lee
2. The Family Tree- Sheri Tepper
3. Neverwhere -Neil Gaiman
4. Dictionary (technically not a novel, but then again it could be)
5. Zits comic strip book, helps me keep my sanity with teens

[FreedomFry]

29. In no particular order ...

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
Armadale - Wilkie Collins
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

Runner-up: The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

[gmoney]

30. 5 quick favorites

1984 by Orwell (obviously)

Money by Martin Amis

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Conner

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

...and for some reason I have 600+ copies of Catcher in the Rye around the house.

[Aristus]

31. Mine. (No order).

1984 by George Orwell
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Shogun by James Clavell
The Seed And The Sower by Sir Laurence Van Der Post
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

[alarcojon]

33. Mine:

Brothers Karamazov
Native Son
The Bluest Eye
The Odyssey
Lolita

[Tyrone Slothrop]

34. Only 5?

That's tough to narrow down...

1. Ulysses - J. Joyce

2. Gravity's Rainbow - T. Pynchon

3. Foucault's Pendulum - U. Eco

4. Tender Is the Night - F. S. Fitzgerald

5. The Sirens of Titan - K. Vonnegut

Wow, that's rough...