Top 3 Must Read Books

[jodal]

What are your top three Must Read Books? I.e. what 3 books would you tell a friend that s/he should read before dying?

My three are:
Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

(remember to name your own list before ripping into my one)

 

[BadlyDrawnGirl]

'The Collins Road Atlas Of Great Britain 2007'
'The BT Telephone Directory, Lewisham Area, 2006/7'
'The Yellow Pages'

 

[sojourner]

Tough one. I'm struggling, but...

Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon (or the Bluest Eye)

Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials

Leslie Feinberg - Stone Butch Blues

 

[DotCommunist]

The Secret History-Donna Tartt

LOTR-Tolkien

Dune-Frank Herbet

 

[tufty79]

everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer
catch 22 - joseph heller
if nobody speaks of remarkable things - jon mcgregor
(for the moment, at least)

 

[BadlyDrawnGirl]

Meh. Low-brow pulp, all of it!

 

[f for fake]

janet and jane

spot the dog

hitchhickers guide to the universe

 

[quimcunx]

Captain Corellis Mandolin (predictable choice but a beautiful book)

House of the Spirits

The Wasp Factory

 

[yield]

It's a tough choice having to bring it down to three. Do you mean fiction?

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany.

The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K Dick.

(There really ought to be some Kurt Vonnegut in there...)

 

[DotCommunist]

It's a tough choice having to bring it down to three. Do you mean fiction?

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany.

The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K Dick.

(There really ought to be some Kurt Vonnegut in there...)

Phils second-best book, after the three stigmata of palmer k eldritch

 

[yield]

The Secret History-Donna Tartt

LOTR-Tolkien

Dune-Frank Herbet

Dune would definitely make it into my top ten. It's probably the book I've read most number of times. Frank Herbert's depth and detail especially of the ecology is amazing.

Phils second-best book, after the three stigmata of palmer k eldritch

Not got around to Three Stigmata yet, really looking forward to it if it's better than Man in the High Castle.

 

[bluestreak]

Luther Blissett - Q
Alan Moore - From Hell
Tolkien - The Lord Of The Rings

 

[Gmart]

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Catch-22 Heller
Hitch Hikers - Adams

(Almost chose: The Idiot - Dostoyevsky, Stranger in a strange land - Heinlein, Prometheus Rising - Wilson (non-fiction, Island - Huxley, the list goes on)

 

[moonsi til]

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Catch-22 Heller
Hitch Hikers - Adams

(Almost chose: The Idiot - Dostoyevsky, Stranger in a strange land - Heinlein, Prometheus Rising - Wilson (non-fiction, Island - Huxley, the list goes on)

Good choices...though I gave up on The Idiot on holiday in Jan...I think it perhaps not the best book to take to Goa.

 

[Sweet FA]

What, Top 3 ever?!

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller, 1984 - George Orwell, The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck, Lord of the Flies - William Golding, Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad, Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie...off the top of my head...and there should probably be some Joyce in there too - Ulysses? Portrait? And what about Huxley...Vonnegut...Lawrence...Catcher in the Rye...Things Fall Apart...the Qur'an/Bible/Torah...?

It's a silly OP

 

[DotCommunist]

TBH I am a voracious reader and get through a couple of paperbacks a week be it trash or quality.
I have done since I was 11, but the one I will never tire of recommending is Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The economy and elegance of her writing is something I strive to reproduce, without apeing her actual style. Truly one of my favorite pieces of genre fiction.

 

[Cid]

Slaughterhouse 5 - Vonnegut

1984 - Orwell

Invisible cities - Italo Calvino

Bloody hard to choose mind you...

 

[jonnyd1978]

THE DA VINCI CODE!!! (joke )

I'd say, the Adrian Mole series is must read and I'm counting that as one book, sorry! Some of the other Sue Townsend stuff is a bit self indulgent but still good in places!
My favourite book of all time is "London Fields" by Martin Amis......love it! So that's got to figure for me!
I'm trying to think of modern (ish!) books for your thread so after going for an Amis and a classic, (can Mole be described as classic yet?!) I'll go for a modern prize winner.
It got some bad press recently when they brought out that list of books people started but never finished but I absolutely loved "The life of Pi". I thought it was fantastic!It's nowt to do with maths by the way!

 

[no-no]

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

The Vanishing - Tim Krabbe

More Than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

Sadly I just read that I Am Legend is to be made into a film starring Will Wanking Smith. Still, a good read though.

 

[Fez909]

None of the above. None of the below.

"must read"

 

[tommers]

if nobody speaks of remarkable things - jon mcgregor
(for the moment, at least)

heh. lemontop knows him. I'll tell her to tell him his book is on somebody's "top three ever".

it's not bad though, is it?

 

[tommers]

Alan Moore - From Hell

yep. good choice. I had to go to the william gull ward in st thomas' the other day. felt a bit spooked.

if I had to pick three...

um...

I wouldn't be able to.

 

[Fez909]

heh. lemontop knows him. I'll tell her to tell him his book is on somebody's "top three ever".

it's not bad though, is it?

I read the first few pages of that and it seemed a really good 'start'. Unfortunately it was my old housemates and I moved out not long after. Gonna write it down so I don't forget about it again.

Is he from the North East?

 

[tommers]

I read the first few pages of that and it seemed a really good 'start'. Unfortunately it was my old housemates and I moved out not long after. Gonna write it down so I don't forget about it again.

Is he from the North East?

don't think so. I think he's from nottingham or something. I've never met him though. I'll ask lemontop.

 

[mozzy]

There are loads of books in this list people have mentioned that i have not even heard of, let alone read! Must get reading hat on.. My fav would have to be Herman Hesse - Sidarthur, Phillip K Dick - Valis, Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

 

[tufty79]

don't think so. I think he's from nottingham or something. I've never met him though. I'll ask lemontop.

according to his bio, he went to uni in bradford and now lives in notts.... one of the things i really liked about his book was that it could have been anywhere at all - loads of people i knew from different places were convinced he was writing about their home town...
thanks to this thread i'm gonna go dig out a copy of 'the secret history' again - totally forgot how much i enjoyed it first time round.

 

[polly]

It's a tall order but if i had to give someone 3 books that they must read...and because my memory is destroyed I'm working strictly from my recently read pile :

Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
and (possibly will be labelled a bit low brow but I found it incredibly moving despite having seen the film 500 times, and am a sucker for American writing) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

(another one that I'm telling everyone to read at the moment is Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack )

I think everyone should read Cahier d'un retour au pays natal by Aime Cesaire too- it's not a novel but an epic poem. I've given the name in French because the names in English vary by translation but are usually something like Notebook of a Return to My Native Land. I think the best is by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith and is part of a collection of Cesaire's poetry. He wrote it over a long period but started in the 1930s (I think)- I can't really begin to describe it but the themes are slavery, exoticism (as in fetishising the Other) and reclaiming 'blackness', for want of a better term. He's from Martinique and I think is still alive and serving as Mayor of Fort de France. Amazing man.

 

[Cid]

Sadly I just read that I Am Legend is to be made into a film starring Will Wanking Smith. Still, a good read though.

WHAT?!

Does Will Smith now get a kick out of butchering classic literature or something?

 

[mentalchik]

Blimey top 3, well it's near impossible but, Dune, LOTR would definitely feature.........


will have to come back to it !

 

[Kripcat]

Why does everyone fawn over "Catch 22" does something amazing happen at the end? I couldn't finish, spent half the fuckin book repeating itself.