These are my 50 favorite books. These are books I wouldn't feel bad about recommending; books I already have, or will probably, read multiple times. I do not claim these are the best books ever written.
The order here is: off-the-top-of-my-head (or as I found them on my bookshelf). I didn't go back and do a real ranking, because I don't think I could. Because a book takes so long to read, as compared to listening to an album for example, it's hard to develop the kind of fine-grained familiarity and appreciation I think I need to be able to judge the 43th vs. the 44th. I might be able to rank the top five or ten - things I find truly outstanding. But I didn't do that here.
In other words: it's best if you just ignore the numbers. If it's on the list, I like it.
- Jeff VanderMeer - City Of Saints And Madmen
- Mark Helprin - Memoir From Antproof Case
- China Mieville - Perdido Street Station
- Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow
- David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest
- The Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
- Jonathan Lethem - Gun With Occasional Music
- Edward Gorey - The Ghastlycrumb Tinies
- J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter (series)
- John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy Of Dunces
- Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
- Neil Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
- Frank Herbert - Dune
- W. Shakespeare - Hamlet
- W. Shakespeare - Othello
- Hunter S. Thompson - Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
- Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
- George Orwell - 1984
- Michael Chabon - The Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay
- Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
- William Golding - Lord Of The Files
- Walter Van Tilburg Clark - The Oxbow Incident
- Larry Niven - Ringworld
- Anne Rice - Interview With The Vampire
- Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye
- Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
- Joseph Heller - Catch 22
- Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game
- Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
- J.D. Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye
- Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
- Jerzy Kosinski - The Painted Bird
- Stephen Crane - The Red Badge Of Courage
- Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint
- Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
- Ken Kesey - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
- F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
- Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
- Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
- John Updike - Rabbit, Run
- Matt Ridley - The Red Queen
- Douglas Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach
- Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel
- James Gleick - Chaos
- Stephen Hawking - A Brief History Of Time
- Michael Azerrad - Our Band Could Be Your Life
- Murakami - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
- Thomas Hardy - Tess Of the d'Urbervilles
- Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
Any potentially embarrassing omissions ?
Nice list. The ones of these that I know, are generally in my top N as well. I have a hard time doing this kind of thing because I find myself agonizing about books I have left off that should really be on there.
I like most of those books so well that I’m going to recommend others in the hope that they’ll be contenders for mention next time.
Dorothy Dunnett’s two historical series, Lymond and the longer Niccolo are superb.
Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter books likewise.
I very much like Robertson Davies’ Deptford, especially the first, Fifth Business
John McPhee’s non-fiction. I’d start with Rising From The Plains or The Control of Nature.
Ursula LeGuin’s two masterpieces, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.
I find both Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men In a Boat and Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man to be funnier than Ignatius, but not as funny as Catch 22 or Huck Finn
If T. H. White’s The Once And Future King does not break your heart, you haven’t got one.
I two-thirds through Neal Stephenson’s new Anathem. Not much happens at first; that changes. I can tell you that a joke on page 320 made me laugh out loud.
> Lord Of The Files
subtitled : An Introduction to the Unix I/O Model
oh, yeah, I forgot :
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina
just sayin’
except for Anathem, i’ve never read any of those you mentioned… now i can feed my Amazon wish list! :)
thanks!
Great list. Off the top of my head I’d add the following:
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Attwood.
‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley.
‘War of the Worlds’ by H. G. Wells.
‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells.
‘Foundation’ by Isaac Asimov.
‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell.
‘Earth Abides’ by George R. Stewart.
‘I am Legend’ by Richard Matheson.
‘Alas, Babylon’ by Pat Frank.
‘Trainspotting’ by Irvine Welsh.
OK, I forgot to add the following:
‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy. This book has made more of an impression on me than any other in the last 10 years, by a long, long way.
‘The Stand’ by Stephen King. OK, I know King gets a bad rap nowadays but the complete and unabridged version of this book is one hell of a story and I’ve read it multiple times.
If I didn’t already know you’re male I would know it from your list. I’ve read 16 of those, and other than 1984, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and A Confederacy of Dunces I’d probably include them in my top 50 too. I think it’s a gender thing–maybe why you didn’t include Pride & Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre.
I was surprised you didn’t have any Vonnegut. I pegged you as a Vonnegut fan.
If I didn’t already know you’re male I would know it from your list.
:)
I think it’s a gender thing–maybe why you didn’t include Pride & Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre.
i’m not really big on the Victorians – too many words for me. Thomas Hardy barely made the list.
I pegged you as a Vonnegut fan.
i tried reading Breakfast Of Champions, once. and failed. that’s all i’ve read of him. i know i should read more of him, but i’ve never been able to get there.
i tried reading Breakfast Of Champions
there’s your problem right there guvnor
you need to read Slaughterhouse Five and then maybe Cat’s Cradle and then stop. some of them they likes God Bless You Mister Rosewater, and some of ’em doesn’t. Me, I likes it.
and Rob Caldecott is right about the H. G. Wells
but left out The First Men In The Moon
which will color your nightmares for the rest of your life
excellent.
i’ve just ordered “The Once And Future King”, “The Road”, “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Brave New World”.
and, hmm… this gives me an idea for tomorrow’s Start Your iPods…
“too many words for me.” but Gravity’s Rainbow is included? I’ve been trying that one for two months and switched to “Moral Man and Immoral Society” by Reinhold Niebuhr because its easier to comprehend philosophy of ethics than the dense swamp of adjectives that is Thomas Pynchon. (GR is a good book and I’m determined to finish it eventually)
My list would have “The Snow Leopard” by Peter Matthiessen and something by Joyce Carl Oates, probably “The Garden of Earthly Delights”
I’ve read 16 of those, and I agree with all of them. I’m really glad “Ender’s Game” made it on the list: I’m a big OSC fan.
I second Rob’s suggestion of “Foundation” (although you can skip the later books, when Asimov decided many years later to merge all his main series into one big mega-universe).
I suggest “The Player of Games” by Iain M Banks (his Culture books are great, and PoG is the best), and “The Power of One” by Bryce Courtenay.
(a bit late replying… guess i missed these comments before – sorry)
“too many words for me.” but Gravity’s Rainbow is included?
my first time through, i basically skimmed it. then over then next few years, i read a few on-line summaries and discussions here and there. after realizing how much i missed, i eventually went back and read it again, patiently. the second time was still tough, but i was able to follow it pretty well. i don’t think i need a third try.
on the other hand, i tried “Middlemarch” a couple of years back and it kicked my ass completely. i made it barely 150 pages. i just can’t handle that style of writing.