Most Beloved Books

[Naggamanteh]

@nagga....

youve got good taste

Thanks, I like your taste too. Isn't Ionesco rather weird (like Kafka?) I need to read something by Dickens too, I heard he inspired John Irving a lot. And stories by Chetrien de Troyes and Marie de France's lais sound good too, I will add those authors to my "to read" list.

 

[Hitori]

yes but I find Ionesco just... funny, like everything from the absurd, while Kafka is more thought-provoking and dense. i couldnt read the whole way through the process once, i felt so claustrophobic and frustrated

 

[Anglachel_Sword]

And ignorants sucks even more and worst!! The books are the best of the best.

For only mention a few ones of my favorites:
Tolkien books , love then all

Well, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Portrait of Dorian Gray I love it! Stephen King, Anne Rice
Have read The Illiad, The Odissey, The Eneida and so

 

[gringalet]

ooh, my kind of thing...

wuthering heights – emily brontë
a clockwork orange – anthony burgess
brave new world – aldous huxley
nineteen eighty-four – george orwell [yes, i like my depressing dystopia novels]
white teeth – zadie smith
trainspotting – irvine welsh
the master and margharita – mikhail bulgakov
the giaour – byron
various modern greek short stories
waiting for godot – samuel beckett
the magus – john fowles
stephen king usually tells a good yarn...'tommyknockers' was pretty good, as was 'misery'...and 'christine'...hehe

i could probably go on...

at the minute i'm reading 'demian' by hesse...'tis velly good...only in translation though. want to get my german up to scratch enough to read 'der steppenwolf' auf Deutsch – couldn't get into the translation i was reading – although, the best way to do this would probably be just to read it! so many books i'd love to read... yag yag, tired blatherings...

 

[houkai]

Nice to see a few Wuthering Heights fans! In the order I remember them:

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Franz Kafka - The Trial
Jorge Louis Borges's short stories
H.P. Lovecraft's short stories
T. S. Eliot - Lovesong of Alfred J. Prufrock (poem)
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman (graphic novels)
B. H. Liddell Hart - Strategy (history)

 

[Cosmic_Sea]

Stephen King - Misery
This is probably the most fucked up book I have ever read on my life

 

[Metal Manic]

james herbert-
others
fluke
once
the rats
dalton trumbo- jonny got his gun
LOTR- jrr tolkin
hell bent for leather- whoeverwoteit

 

[Lokakuu]

To Kill a Mocking Bird , old fav.
The Di Vinci Code, very good.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

nineteen eighty-four – george orwell [yes, i like my depressing dystopia novels]

woohoo! An all time favorite of mine!


Orwell - 1984
C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (big Lewis fan)
Josh McDowell - Evidence that Demands a Verdict
Dean Koontz - Cold Fire (big Koontz fan)
Crichton - Sphere (big Crichton fan)
Lovecraft - pretty much everything

King's stuff, I usually don't get into much, but I have been itching to read the Dark Tower series.


I thought Jordan's Wheel of Time stuff was good, but dragged an incredible amount..

I also once read a young adult trilogy by Catherine B Cooney called The Fog, The Snow, and The Fire, and it was way better than anything else that's probably ever been in the genre. Gets in touch with some really 'weird' emotions.

 

[AlphaTemplar]

In terms of stuff that I really enjoyed:
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
Farenheit 451 (Bradburry)
the Drizzt novels (RA Salvatore)
the Ender novels (Orson Scott Card)
Calculating God (Robert Sawyer)
Armor (John Steakley)- one of the most underrated books ever
Hitchiker's Guide to the galaxy (Adams)

In terms of literature:
Night (Eli Wiesel)
The Illiad (Homer)
Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)

I'm 13, so I haven't read a helluvalotta literature-ish stuff. Twain and Steinbeck is pretty much it for the modern writers.

 

[Orion Crystal Ice]

Hitchiker's Guide to the galaxy (Adams)

can't believe I forgot this masterwork

 

[Beatrice]

I read a lot!... So I have many favorite books

I love all the books from Tolkien;
We children from the train station Zoo, Christiane F.
Nausea, Satre
The Antichrist, Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil., Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche
Sexus, Henry Miller
All the tales from E. Allan Poe
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Perfume, Patrick Suskind
The Pigeon, Patrick Suskind
The Metamorphosis, Kafka

(...)

 

[kosh]

Hmm, way too many good books out there.

Everything by Tolkien rocks. Jack Vance also was a very good writer, especially the "Durdane" trilogy and "The Eyes of the Overworld" and it's sequel.

"The Shadow out of Time" and "Celephais" (short-story) by H.P. Lovecraft.

Everything by Edgar Allen Poe, though its a bit difficult to read in english.

"The old Man and Mr. Smith" by Sir Peter Ustinov is very well written, wise and extremely funny.
(God and the Devil meet after an eternity of ignoring each other and decide to come to earth together to see, what is going on there. The story takes place during the Cold War and puts the heroes in all kinds of uncanny and confusing situations)
-highly recommended-

Still there are too much more to mention.

 

[Hitori]

I'd like to add Song of Fire and Ice to my list

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

My personal favorites:
Ender series-Orson Scott Card
The Stars My Destination-Alfred Bester
All the works of ALexandre Dumas- Count of Monte Cristo, Three Musketeers, THe Black Tulip etc
All of Edgar Allen Poe's stories

 

[Nico]

I dont read much. I should, but I'm lazy. So...

Tropic of Capricorn/Cancer - Henry Miller (kinda changed my life... or at least the way I view it)
One/Illusions - Richard Bach
The Antichrist - Nietzsche

 

[Cythraul]

Yeah what can i say i am a classics/history/literature geek if one can call it that as it seems all people read these days are bad romance, mystery, and Tom Clancy like drivel.

For me, fantasy and sci fi are literary valium of absolutely no value. Not that i mind people reading them, nor should i judge people for reading them.


On a serious note, does anyone care for any American authors? I always have a hard time with American authors, I love American plays by Albee, or Oneill, Tennessee WIlliams etc, but american literature is a vast wasteland, Hemingway and Salinger, Hawthorne etc, are all so overrated.

Now that I mentioned ALbee, I remembered his play AMerican Dream is the perfect critique of hollywood and american culture that still stands true today.

I'm in complete agreement with you. It's encouraging to know that there's other people out there who appreciate writers like Dostoevsky. I'm interested in becoming a writer and I'm very serious about it so maybe I can help bring the reputation of American literature up to the level of those aforementioned classics. I know that's a pretty ambitious goal but I really do think I have the capability to write some really relevant stuff.

Anyway, favorite books:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra- Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil- Friedrich Nietzsche
Notes From Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot- Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell- William Blake
Songs of Innocence and of Experience- William Blake
The Castle- Franz Kafka
various stories and parables by Kafka, especially "The Metamorphosis", "The Burrow", and "The Great Wall of China"
LOTR and The Hobbit- J.R.R. Tolkien

 

[halwaya]

Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Julio Cortazar - Rayuela

 

[Profanity]

Harry Potter and The Philosophers Stone

 

[Tye]

The Bible - where else can you read about giants, unicorns, demons, devils, evil in one book?
Fast Food Nation - I forget the authors name but its a fascinating looking into the evils of mcdonalds, the meat industry and general multi-national corporations.
The Book of Kells - great paintings
any Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft books