Your Library: 10 Favorite Works of Fiction?

[Zomby Woof]

1. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
3. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
5. All The King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
6. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
7. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
10. Rabbit Redux - John Updike

[Broken_Hero]

1. hmm...

1. Dark Elf Trilogy-RA Salvatore

2. Dark Tower series-S. King

3. Without Remorse-T. Clancy

4. Annals of the Black Company-Glen Cook

5. Daughter of the Drow-Elaine Cunningham

6. Lord of the Rings trilogy-JRR Tolkien

7. Harry Potter Series-JK Rowling

8. The Dark Knight Returns-Frank Miller

9. Memnoch the Devil-Anne Rice

10. A Time To Kill-J. Grisham.

Great thread, I'm staring at three whole bookshelves, a coincidence?...:)

on edit:fiction, God is Red is Non-fiction...so put in DOD books...

[xchrom]

2. ok

1 -- midsummer night's dream

2 -- light in august -- william faulkner

3 -- portrait of a lady -- henry james

4 -- anything by irvine welsh -- with special attention to ''e''.

5 -- sons and lovers -- dh lawrence

6 -- david copperfield -- dickens

7 -- the pat barker trilogy -- regeneration, the ghost road and the eye in the door

8 --for whom the bell tolls -- william faulkner

9 -- not a novel -- but i loved it -- broke back mountain -- annie proulx{i wonder how many eyes are rolling}

10 -- at swim, two boys -- jamie o'neal

[Zomby Woof]

4. 6 years ago...

I bought Annie Proulx's collection of short stories "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" because I was intrigued by the title - my Mom, her sister, and their parents are all Wyoming natives, and at the time, my parents lived near Yellowstone, a place a remarkable beauty. Of course, Wyoming has a varied topography and plenty of colorful characters to make good short stories.

So I was not disappointed. "Brokeback Mountain" was the last story in the book, and I was struck by the genuine subject matter. It's a reality many from that background would just as soon keep hidden. Let their eyes roll - it's one of the best short stories in contemporary fiction.

I enjoy Faulkner too - Light In August is my favorite so far, but admittedly I have only read 2 others and figure there are at least 3 or 4 more I should tackle one day.

[xchrom]

18. well -- it seems to me that enjoying proulx and faulkner

is a good fit.

they have things in common with their writing -- and there is an undeniable regionalism in their work that takes your breath away.
one of those things that makes me realize -- i look -- but i don't really see.

[begin_within]

22. Not to be picky about it, but did you mean "For Whom The Bell Tolls" by

Hemingway?

[xchrom]

34. lol -- you should be picky about that.

yes.

[sir_captain]

3. Tough question

1. Moby Dick -- Herman Melville
2. Billy Budd -- Herman Melville
3. The Moviegoer -- Walker Percy
4. Love in the Ruins -- Walker Percy
5. Portnoy's Complaint -- Phillip Roth
6. The Doctor Stories -- William Carlos Williams
7. The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. Tender is the Night -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. All My Sons -- Arthur Miller
10. Death of a Salesman -- Arthur Miller

[Zomby Woof]

5. I enjoyed "Moby Dick"

I have a great edition of it on my shelf, with a cloth cover made from denim sailcloth. A lot of people love to bash it, but I like to get caught up in the adventure and Ahab's obsession. Plus, you learn more about whaling than a half shelf of reference books could teach you. :-)

[sir_captain]

6. Melville was an incredible genius

I come from a family of English professors and Melville scholars and so on, so I was introduced to him at an early age. There is seriously more content in one paragraph of Moby Dick than in about 99% of entire novels.

And if you ask me, Melville's novels have that sort of timeless quality to them that is the marker of true works of art (ie, there's a reason why there are still so many Ahab allusions in popular culture.)

Anyway, you should check out Billy Budd if you haven't read it--it's a truly heartbreaking piece of fiction.

Edit: check out Benito Cereno as well--very applicable to today's international political situation.

[Zomby Woof]

8. I read Billy Budd many years ago

I was in high school, where youth is wasted on the young, at least when it comes to good literature. :-) Need to re-read it with fresh perspective.

[sir_captain]

9. I know what you mean

I think having high school kids reading Melville is ridiculous.

[begin_within]

23. I read Billy Budd in junior high school (30 years ago) and now I couldn't

tell you even one thing about it. Either I have a terrible memory or it made no impression on me whatsoever. In fact I had forgotten the title completely until it was mentioned here. All I know is that we read it.

[sir_captain]

25. Give it another shot

the idea that a 12 year old could appreciate it is totally ridiculous. I really don't understand why schools insist on making adolescents read Melville.

[begin_within]

31. I think I was 15 - now bits of it are coming back to me- was there a

ship that ran over a sandbar or something?

[sir_captain]

32. Heh

The nautical aspects of the story aren't so essential in Billy Budd. If you're interested in it, there's a terrific chapter in "Melville: His World and Work" on Billy Budd that does a much better job than I ever could of expressing its brilliance.

[Fox Mulder]

7. I have so many...

off the top of my head:

Interview With the Vampire - Anne Rice
The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice
Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice
-I just recently read all three of these books...again
Dracula - Bram Stoker (notice a theme?)
The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Odyssey - Homer
Beowulf
la Divina Commedia - Dante Alighieri
The Book of the Dead

[Broken_Hero]

10. I've read a lot of anne rice

I have read 99% of her vamp books...I know ther are at least two vamp books of hers I haven't read yet...just havne't found them yet...:)

[Fox Mulder]

11. I like reading her work...

except she kind of "jumps the shark" after Memnoch the Devil. I guess Vittorio the Vampire was an okay book, though. :shrug:

[Broken_Hero]

13. she sure does

last great vamp book was Memnoch...the Marius, Pandora, and Armand books that have followed, have been mediocre at best, to down right shameful(armand). I think there are a couple more novels in there....I haven't read vittorio yet...and probably wont, unless I find it cheap somewhere...

[greatauntoftriplets]

12. I just bought "The Book of the Dead" yesterday....

to take on my vacation, which begins two weeks from yesterday.

I gather that our friend Pendergast is mouldering away in the slammer while his evil brother plots mayhem on the world. Those are a great series of books!

:bounce:

[Fox Mulder]

14. I was actually talking about...

the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Sorry about the confusion! :hi:

[greatauntoftriplets]

15. Ah....

:shrug:

Sorry about that! The writers are still good, though. :)

[peacefreak]

16. My ten

100 Years of Solitude--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Master & Margarita--Mikhail Bugliov
Tin Drum--Gunter Grass
With--Donald Harington
Samurai's Garden--Gail Tsyukiama
Time in It's Flight--Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
Beauty--Sheri Tepper (did like the Robin McKinley one, also)
Eight--Katherine Neville
Memoirs of a Geisha--Arthur Golden
Corelli's Mandolin--DeBerenies
Some well known, some not at all. All gave me tremendous satisfaction at the closing of the last page.

[philosophie_en_rose]

17. 10 Favorite Works of Fiction in my Library

1. Pride & Prejudice
2. Pullman's His Dark Material Series
3. The Remains of the Day
4. The Silence of the Lambs
5. Fight Club
6. About a Boy
7. Bridget Jones' Diary
8. Memoirs of a Geisha
9. Jane Eyre
10. David Copperfield

Honorable Mention to the Harry Potter Series, but I'm withholding judgment until the last book comes out. I've read too many series that end up crap, as the storyline progresses. (Anne Rice, Laurell Hamilton)

[Arkham House]

19. I could make a dozen lists like this...here's one of them...

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Othello, William Shakespeare
4. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
5. Calamity Town, Ellery Queen
6. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
8. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
9. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
10. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

[terrya]

20. Mine:

1) "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

2) "Lincoln" by Gore Vidal (part of his cycle of novels that span the length of American History from the Revolutionary War to the 1960's. But "Lincoln" is so good, it can stand on its own)

3) "Slaughter-house Five" by Kurt Vonnegut.

4) "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin

5) "The Public Burning" by Robert Coover. I'm re-reading it now and am once again delighted at the sheer genius of Coover's writing.

6) "Ragtime" by E. L. Doctorow. Simply a gorgeous book by one of my favorite writers.

7) "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens

8) "The Road to Wellville" by T.C. Boyle

9) "A Boy's Own Story" by Edmund White

10) "The Beautiful Room is Empty" by Edmund White

[Zomby Woof]

26. I have "Lincoln" in hardcover

I try to get my favorites in hardcover, and that is one of Vidal's masterpieces. Lincoln is three-dimensional and believeable, without losing his quality of character.

Thumbs up for Baldwin too, one of my favorite writers of all time.

Also have the 25th anniversary edition of "Slaughterhouse Five". Vonnegut wrote a new preface, where he slams George Will. :-)

"Great Expectations" was the first Dickens I read beyond "A Christmas Carol". "Bleak House" is my favorite so far. I have not read "Oliver Twist", although it is on my long list of planned readings.

[Spider Jerusalem]

21. Not ranked (because that's just too hard):

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
The Cairo Trilogy (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street), Naguib Mahfouz
The Red Night Trilogy (Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads, The Western Lands), William S. Burroughs
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess

[Zomby Woof]

27. It is hard

I even revised my first list within the edit time, because I felt I omitted something even more important to me.

Pynchon is a genius - the most complex author in my mind since Joyce. Great list!

[pscot]

24. So many books, so little time

This is really just a sampler:

The Brothers Karamazov--Dostoievski

Red Cavalry Stories & Tales of Odessa--Isaac Babel

Pride & Prejudice--Jane Austen

Moby Dick--Melville

King Lear--Shakespear

Huck Finn--Twain

As I Lay Dieing--Wm Faulkner

Heart of Darkness--Conrad

Catch 22--Joseph Heller

The Long Ships--Franz Gunnar Bengtsson

The Aubrey Maturin Novels--Patrick O'Brian

[Zomby Woof]

29. I have a friend who swears by "The Long Ships"

He insists that I read it, so it's on my list.

[RetroLounge]

28. Fiction: In no particular order

100 Years of Solitude--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in The Time of Cholera--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgrald
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Moby Dick - Hermann Melville
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Go Dog Go - P.D. Eastmann
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
The Bible - A bunch of dead guys with an agenda

RL

[Zomby Woof]

30. ROFL

Or as I say, "Written by bare-assed nomads from the Bronze Age, living in tents."

Good list! I haven't read "High Fidelity" but loved the movie. :D

[xchrom]

36. i wondered what a partial list of yours would look like.

interesting.

[Redneck Socialist]

33. In no particular order...

Moby Dick -- Herman Melville
All the Pretty Horses -- Cormac McCarthy
Light in August -- William Faulkner
The Dread Empire Series -- Glen Cook
Sometimes a Great Notion -- Ken Kesey
A Short History of a Small Place -- T.R. Pearson
Affliction -- Russel Banks
Sandman -- Neil Gaimen
Someplace to be Flying -- Charles DeLint
Lonesome Dove -- Larry McMurtry

and many, many more...

[NYdemocrat089]

35. My top ten:

1) The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
2) Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
3) Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut
4) Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
5) 1984 - George Orwell
6) We the Living - Ayn Rand (I hate her philosophy, but I really liked "We the Living")
7) The Catcher in the Rye -J.D. Salinger
8) Antigone - Sophocles
9) The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
10) The Glass Menagerie - Tennessee Williams

After numbers one and two they aren't in any specific order.

[fishwax]

37. Let's see ... my ten at the moment would be

1. Bless Me, Ultima -- Rudolfo Anaya
2. Death of a Salesman -- Arthur Miller
3. On the Road -- Jack Kerouac
4. Sundown -- John Joseph Mathews
5. The Phantom Tollbooth -- Norton Juster
6. "Rappaccini's Daughter" -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
7. Sunset Song -- Lewis Grassic Gibbon
8. Jazz -- Toni Morrison
9. The Outsiders -- S. E. Hinton
10. Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse -- John Fitzgerald