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#1
07-15-2009, 04:21 PM
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Your favorite book. I know, it's tough.
I'm sure there's already a similar thread out there, but honestly, I suck with technology and don't really know how to go about finding it. Computers ultimately confuse me.
Anyways, the thread title says it all. What's your favorite book? Mine personally would have to be One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. With The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie coming in a close second. 
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#2
07-15-2009, 05:01 PM
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Imajica by Clive Barker, hands down.
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#3
07-15-2009, 06:01 PM
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Regarding fiction, I'd again have to put out George R.R. Martin's series, 'A Song of Ice and Fire'. I haven't read a lot of fantasy, unfortunately because of how good these volumes were and how I am very afraid nothing else will measure up. The depth of Martin's writing on every single level--from characters to plots to moods to themes--is monumental, and his refusal to submit himself or his characters to any polarity of morals is mesmerizing. Additionally, as the cynic I am, I always appreciate his complete lack of hesistance to off his main characters when the plot needs it most.
I've read far fewer non-fiction works, though Stephen Ambrose is one of history's greatest storytellers; I'd especially recommend the book version of 'Band of Brothers'. Despite how magnificent the series was, the books trancends any historical account I've encountered. Finally, C.S. Lewis gave us the series for which I am most grateful, obviously 'The Chronicles of Narnia', though his groundbreaking theology and related books are intellectual bliss.
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#4
07-15-2009, 08:44 PM
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CS Lewis' wonderful The Screwtape Letters.
Letters from a minon of hell to his nephew, an apprentice attempting to tempt a man into damnation. Here's a favourite passage (From Letter 2): MY DEAR WORMWOOD, I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian. Do not indulge the hope that you will escape the usual penalties; indeed, in your better moments, I trust you would hardly even wish to do so. In the meantime we must make the best of the situation. There is no need to despair; hundreds of these adult converts have been reclaimed after a brief sojourn in the Enemy's camp and are now with us. All the habits of the patient, both mental and bodily, are still in our favour. One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords. Hopefully that little bit will make you want to read this brilliant book.
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#6
07-15-2009, 09:28 PM
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'Twas the first thread in the forum: http://www.joblo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35286
/\/\ That's one of the worst I've ever read. Can't stand The Fountainhead either. Beyond hating her selfish anti-people philosophy, I don't think Rand's prose is very strong and her characters never seem like real people for a moment. In fiction, it's a tie between Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan and Breakfast of Champions. They're the funniest, most honest, bracing, and relatable books I've encountered. I definitely read more non-fiction, so it's harder to single just one out. I'll have to do a top few. Howard Zinn's Declarations of Indepdendence, which makes an irrefutable and beautiful case for human liberty, Malcolm X and Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the most compelling biography I can imagine, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, a personal and profound account of human suffering of incredible scale, Studs Terkel's Working which is as honest and accurate a picture of daily American life as I've found anywhere, and Normal Mailer's Armies of The Night, a groundbreaking work on the 1967 March on the Pentagon. Last edited by QUENTIN; 07-16-2009 at 01:13 AM..
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#7
07-15-2009, 09:32 PM
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Frank Herbert's "Dune" It's pretty much the only big novel I've ever read.
I'm not much of a reader. I prefer pictures 
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#8
07-15-2009, 10:13 PM
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I probably can't choose one book.
I narrowed it down to five. Gravity's Rainbow, A Fan's Notes, Blood Meridian, Ubik, and The Razor's Edge. At this moment, if I had to, I would choose Gravity's Rainbow, but that could change. Gravity's Rainbow is about as perfect as a novel gets, its a strong, heavy work that you really have to invest yourself into, but it's totally worth it. Another five that would round out an unranked top ten would be The Dice Man, Slaughterhouse-Five, V., The Puppet Masters, and Neuromancer. Two that I've read recently that are great are We and Killing for Coal, in fiction and non-fiction respectively. We is a great novel, and it truly is better than 1984 and Brave New World in just about every way.
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#10
07-16-2009, 01:07 AM
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That's actually an easy one.
Far Seer by Robert J Sawyer It was simply by chance that I even heard of it. Does anyone remember a long time ago when the Sci-Fi channel first came on and had a show called "Faster Than Light?" There was a segment on the show where viewers could call in and make recommendations about anything sci-fi. The show I just happen to catch ha a call raving about this book. I don't know why exactly, but it caught my attention and I ended up buying it soon thereafter. This is some seriously powerful shit. It didn't just become my favorite book - it was my favorite by far. I haven't read anything else that came close to the gut-punch that this one did (though its two sequels were almost nearly as great).  My other favorites are: Forests of the Night by S. Andrew Swann The Sword of Samurai Cat by Mark E. Rogers Watership Down by Richard Adams Those are basically my "big four" - meaning there's other good stuff, but nothing even comes close to those four books (all but Watership Down were part of a series of books that I basically lump together).
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#11
07-16-2009, 01:36 AM
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#13
07-16-2009, 03:47 PM
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Her philosophy is about rational self-interest and being for the individual. I don't know about you; but I positively loathe people and only celebrate individuals.
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#15
07-17-2009, 10:12 PM
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Blood Meridian or A Confederacy of Dunces, I'd say.
At least for the time being. My to-read list is never-ending.
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#16
07-18-2009, 07:09 AM
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#18
07-18-2009, 11:42 AM
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#22
07-22-2009, 11:32 AM
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Of Mice And Men
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#23
07-22-2009, 02:14 PM
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Watchers and Fear Nothing/Seize the Night (get the third book finished already!) by Dean Koontz
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman Storm Front by Jim Butcher The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein The Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum Last edited by Tyler_Durden_208; 07-22-2009 at 02:21 PM..
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#24
07-25-2009, 05:01 AM
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American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
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#25
08-05-2009, 05:07 PM
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Memories Dreams Reflections, Carl G. Jung's autobiography. I wouldn't say it's hands down my favorite, but it's a pretty trippy fucking book. It's got loads of his thoughts on dreams, the paranormal, and is filled with some fascinating stories and personal accounts of very strange happenings.
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#26
08-06-2009, 01:33 AM
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I refuse to name ONE book, but I will name my top ten (at present) that are not graphic novels or comic books.
 Essays, references, pictures, history, EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine when it comes to Dracula is in this very book as well as the original, unabridged story. It cost me seventy bucks but it was worth every penny.  I had this read to me in Year Four and I begged my mum to buy it for me after I got sick of trying to loan it out at the library when it was never there.  Not as perhaps well-known as 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', but once again, I was exposed to this as a primary school student and I wanted it after the teacher finished the first chapter.  I think this one is a given. Many may argue it is overrated, but it is overrated for a good reason. Plus, I love this cover.  I haven't read that many Koontz novels, but his creation of Edgler Vess is downright out there that it's too brilliant to ignore. I would like to see a solid movie come out of this one (I know it was made into a TV movie, but it was considerably watered down compared to the stuff in the novel)  Short, but it packs a huge punch. Nothing is explicit, but everything is ultimately made clear. If something like what happened in the book happened the same way in reality, the human race will inevitably become extinct unless we wake up to ourselves.  I can only imagine how many 'HOW DAR U's I would get if I stood up in front of a bunch of single-minded do-gooders and professed my love for this book, but they would be gleefully ignored. This book does not glorify the act of child molestation, but it also shows that Lolita isn't completely a victim either.  I am a Phantom Phan, and while I am not a purist, I wouldn't mind seeing the original work being truthfully translated on screen because I feel it would be great.  Devastatingly oppressive and bleak but why did I include this? Quite simply put, it is simply brilliant.  Yet another school-introduced book and I don't regret reading it or analyzing it whatsoever.
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#28
08-06-2009, 05:28 AM
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Charlotte's Webb is a great one too.
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#29
08-06-2009, 10:39 AM
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Like so many others, I find it impossible to name just one. So I guess a top 10 or so would work...
The World According to Garp by John Irving Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Don Quixote by Cervantes On the Road by Jack Kerouac For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway High Fidelity by Nick Hornby The Rum Diary/Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson Slaughterhouse 5/Cat's Cradle/Slapstick/Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
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#30
08-08-2009, 02:58 PM
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#31
09-28-2009, 11:58 PM
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I AM LEGEND.
In the land of the blind, Richard Matheson has one eye. Or something. Anyway it's a great fucking novel and I can't sing it's praises enough. It's not even really about vampires, it's pretty much this one man dealing with being alone and trying to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING to get out of the permanent hell he's surrounded by. No adaptation compares.
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#33
09-29-2009, 10:42 PM
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Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
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#35
11-04-2009, 12:41 AM
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I am pretty well read, and almost embarrassed to say:
Wizard & Glass...Dark Tower series
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#36
11-04-2009, 05:02 AM
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It IS impossible to choose one. So here are a few:
SHOGUN by James Clavell. Over 1000 pages long, and when it ended I was like, "oh shit, the story's just begun!" I can't get over how awesomely epic this novel is. There's a shitload of political intrigue, Japanese culture, and romance that shoots straight as an arrow into the readers' heart. BOY'S LIFE by Robert McCammon I've read this four or five times. It's still amazing. The story of a ten year old boy in a small town during the 50's has elements of child-like imagination mixed in with a large cast of cooky townsfolk. The main thread of events revolve around a disturbing murder and the mystery behind the accounts. On a milk run one frigid morning, his father dives in to retrieve the driver of a car that splashed into an immensely deep lake. The driver was murdered. His father is haunted by vision of the victim. A series of chapters recall seemingly innocuous and non-sequitorial anecdotes, only to bring it all together by the final pages. THE DARK TOWER SERIES - Stephen King I have read all of King's big novels, and this is an all-encompassing look into almost all of his books. Knowing of his entire repertoire only deepens this series' significance. At the end of book 5, I was starting to lose faith in the crossover from fiction to reality, but he tied it all together nicely by the end. ANGELA'S ASHES/'TIS/TEACHER MAN all by Frank McCourt Mr. McCourt lived a very interesting life as a poor Irish kid all the way into his years as a teacher at an esteemed American school later in life. These three books are all excellent reads. I could go two pages laughing, only to feel like crying a couple pages later. His prose takes a little while to get used to, but then becomes a voice that wouldn't seem to work as well if spoken any other way. ENDER'S GAME/SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD/XENOCIDE/CHILDREN OF THE MIND - Orson Scott Card The first book in the series is a quick read, and very exciting. The sequel takes place with an ADULT Andrew Wiggin (the boy star of ENDER'S GAME), and the first time around I was a little disappointed at the direction SPEAKER took. I've grown to respect the final three books in the series on their own merits. This is sci-fi at some of its best. The SHADOW series is also alright, except for the latest book... but they don't really mesh as well as the first four books did. Afterwords it's more about Card's views on superpowers and deceitful logistics while characters out-think one another and try to stay a step ahead. That's not BAD, but it gets old after a while. DUNE - Frank Herbert Speaking of sci-fi, this is also pretty awesome. Many may find it tedious and boring, but I've read it four times and loved it each time. WEAVEWORLD - Clive Barker I have read a lot of fantasy, but Barker's WEAVEWORLD has worked best with me. I love his writing style; he has a nice vocabulary. Many times his horror is filthier than it needs to be, but there's a touch of his "dark" horror tainting the colorful world that shoots from a carpet in this novel. Much like the cuckoos (humans) who delve into the magical carpet-woven world, I forget most of what happens within a couple years of reading it. So, over the last 15 years or so I've rediscovered the adventure maybe - oh, I'd say 4 - times. For simplistic reading amusement (brain candy): THE WOLF'S HOUR - Robert McCammon A WWII James Bond-like spy story in which the lead character goes on Indiana Jones-calibur adventures... and he's a werewolf. Super gory, and just plain brainless fun.
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#37
11-05-2009, 12:49 PM
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Top Ten, in no particular order
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Slaughterhouse Five Fahrenheit 451 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Animal Farm Brave New World High Fidelity Lolita Last Exit to Brooklyn The Road
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#38
11-07-2009, 06:56 PM
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i'd add The Shining
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#39
11-11-2009, 02:50 PM
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Also, I think it's funny how the title is laid out on the cover, it looks like it says "The Wolf's Whore" - assuming your cover is the same as the one I had.
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#40
11-11-2009, 04:13 PM
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IT
By Stephen King. I'm not as well read as some of you guys, but I have read an ass load of horror and sci-fi novels and this one effected me like no other. The characters and emotions are so real, not to mention its the only book to truly ever frighten me. I've read it three times, and its over 1,000 pages. The Stand is a close second and I would have to say The Never Ending Story is third.
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