Your Top 10 books of all time.

bookmark - thinking...

Huckleberry Finn-Mark Twain
The Dwarf-Par Lagerqvist
The Glass Bead Game-Herman Hesse
Dialogues-Plato
Science and the modern world-Alfred North Whitehead
Western Intellectual Tradition-Jacob Bronowski
Desert Solitaire-Edward Abbey
Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintainance-Robert Persig
The Tin Drum-Gunter Grass
Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad
of course tomorrows list would be different

Tough one, but...

Mine, in some semblence of order:

The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood- Rebecca Wells

The Crow Road- Iain Banks

The Shadow- Neil Gunn

Little Women- L.M. Alcot

Emotionally Wierd- Kate Akinson

Wonder Boys- Michael Chabon

Godfather- Mario Puzo

Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

St Maybe- Anne Tyler

Dys has a very good list and, as a matter of fact, I have five of those in plain view.

#'s 1, 3, 8, 9 @ 10

I'm curious about The Dwarf, Dys. I'll check it out

Crime and Punishment Dostoyevsky
The Birth of Tragedy Nietszche
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Letters to Malcolm C.S. Lewis
The Power of One Bryce Courtenay
Fear and Loathing Paul Perry
The Boy in the Bush D.H. Lawrence and M.L. Skinner
The American Dream: Stories from the Heart of our Nation Dan Rather
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane

Is it shameless to include your own?

Just in case it is, my final selection would be:
The Fall of a Sparrow Robert Hellenga

These are in no particular order and not at all a fullfilling list. I listed ones that would not be the obvious from an extensive high school and college reading list. These are solely ones I've read of my own, not for a grade. And they were hard to select from the multitudes sitting on my book shelf.

Michael Allen

Ten, huh? I'll start this and edit to add more.

Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, a favorite for a decade now.

I Dream of You, novel by Nuala O'Faolain, a recently read favorite.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Ulysses - James Joyce
An Essay on Morals - Philip Wylie
Faust - Goethe
the Tropics - (Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn) - Henry Miller
War and Peace - Tolstoy
Walden - Thoreau
Interpretation of Dreams - Freud
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Autobiography of Frederick Douglas

Not the top ten books of all time; only the ones that have influenced me the most. A few of these have lasted decades; some change with time.

Life Against Death - Norman O. Brown
Language Made Plain - Anthony Burguess
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
Narcissus and Goldmund - Hermann Hesse
Menzogna e Sortilegio (House of Liars)- Elsa Morante
I Ching
Falling in Love - Francesco Alberoni
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
The Naked Sun - Isaac Asimov

Great thread! Here are a few of mine:

Great Expectations (Chas. Dickens)
The Secret Agent (Jos. Conrad)
Underworld (Don DeLillo)
Mason adn Dixon (Thos. Pynchon)
The Children of Dynmouth (Wm. Trevor)
The Behindlings (Nicola Barker)

Thank you D'Artagnan, and everyone who has contributed. It's possibly the hardest question that someone could ask me, as I deliberate for hours to choose 10 books out of a lifetime of reading...

Hmm, here are some of my choices so far:

Les Liaisons Dangereuses Laclos.
Faust Goethe.
The Poisonwood Bible Kingsolver.
Germinal Zola.
Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky.

They're not my certain choices, though. Also, if you could choose one book out of your list that you would recommend everyone read, what would it be? Why?

Too hard to answer so I'll do my favorites that these lists reminded me of:

Tom Sawyer
Huckleberry Finn
Great Expectations
A Christmas Carol
The Catcher in the Rye
The unabridged works of Edgar Allan Poe
The mammoth book of first hand accounts
Beau Geste
Man of La Mancha (boring as hell but a neat study of translations)
Sphere

Great Expectations -- Charlie Dickens
la Rève -- Little Emilio Zola
Mansfield Park -- Janey Austen
Quincunx -- Charlie Palliser
Uranus -- Marcello Aimée
l'Education sentimentale -- Gus Flaubert
A Connecticutt Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- Ol' Sam Clemens
Our Mutual Friend -- Chuck Dickens, again
Sense and Sensibility -- Janey Austen, again
The Lord of the Rings -- J.R.R. "Dyn-oh-mite ! ! !" Tolkien

I loved Beau Geste when I read it, but t'was long ago..

This is a tough question. Some of the books I'm listing are simply favorites, not necessarily great. And others are both.

Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamozov, Dostoevsky
The Light in August, Faulkner
The Metamorphosis, Kafka
Huckleberry Finn (up until Tom Sawyer shows up), Twain
The Painted Bird, Kozinsky
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Smith
To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
The Wall, Haushofer
Call It Sleep, Roth

The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
The Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
Wish you well, by Nicholas Baladacci (sp?)
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte



I have yet to finish that list

In no particular order:

Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy. Every time I read this book, I want to go out and join the Light Infantry.

Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein. Not just a alien vs humans book, but quite a commentary of society.

The Testament, John Grisham. This was tough. There are too other books of his that I hold in equal regard, The Street Lawyer and Bleachers. He has a wonderful way of looking at the human spirit.

Adiamante, The Timegod Series & The Parafaith War, L.E. Modesitt Jr. Again, hard to pick, so it's a threefer. L.E. Modesitt Jr has a way to look into the human soul, and show us why we do the things we do. Some do it for duty, some because it's the right thing to do, and some because they were told to. But each is a journey.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach. Oh, what the mind can do. . .

Uhura's Song, Janet Kagan. Just a wonderful story from the Star Trek universe. One I've read time and time again.

Well, that's ten right there. . . I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones that come to mind.

The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)

The Little Prince (St Exupéry)

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

Jacques le Fataliste (Diderot)

Tom Jones (Fielding)

Life of Pi (Martell)

Manon Lescaut (Prévost)

Madame Bovary (Flaubert)

i must include a wonderful art book, 100 Famous Views of Edo (Hiroshige), leaving a tie between

Jude the Obscure (Hardy)

The Tales of Kenji Miyazawa


Honourable mentions;

The Giving Tree (Silverstein)

Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)

Snow Country (Kawabata)

Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Laclos)

The Alchemist (Coelho)

The Poems of R.S.Thomas

The Summer Book (Jansson)

The Owl Hoots Twice at Catfish Bend (Burman)

plays;

Phedre (Racine)

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

short stories;

The Garden of Forking Paths (Borges)

A Child's Christmas in Wales (Dylan Thomas)

I actually find it tough to think of ten books I've read that deserve to be on a favourites list. I'm only including books I've read in the last two and a half years, because before that I was a very casual reader:

An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell
To the Finland Station - Edmund Wilson
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The American Political Tradition - Richard Hoffstadter

I'm a pretty fastidious reader, so I'm not too happy with this list. The only books there that I actually consider great are the top three. Hopefully most of the others will be bumped off soon.

A thought-provoking and eclectic list, Epsilon! Some of my faves are one their, too, as well as some I've been meaning to read. Like Dreister. I've read others of his novels, but not "An American Tragedy"--must remedy that!