It's hard to pick five absolute favorites, so I'm just going to throw out the first five great books I think of!
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Atonement by Ian McEwan
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Oh I had forgotten Water for Elephants...that's a really good book. Another vote for that!
Also, Max Tivoli...which is I believe the book precurser to the movie Benjamin Button. That book made me SO sad and touched me in such a profound way...I was literally sobbing on the last page, it was just so tragic. Is it weird that a book that makes me cry is one of my favorites...lol.
OMG....how did I not mention TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?! Good GRIEF Bethany, get it together. THAT is my number one favorite all time book. One of the first books I ever read oddly enough...after I had fallen in love with Gregory Peck in the movie...at the ripe old age of 8.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Any of the Jeeves books - P.G. Wodehouse
The Harvester - Gene Stratton Porter
Mr. Midshipman Easy - Captain Frederick Marryat
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Scaramouche - Rafael Sabatini
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
The Taming of the Shrew - Shakespeare
Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Inferno - Dantes
Behold Your Queen - Gladys Malvern
I'm sure I can come up with more, but these are my favorites.
The casting for the Stand is so weird. Some of it is BRILLIANT - Gary Sinise as Stu? Awesome. But ugh, Molly Ringwald and Corin Nemic (who I adored in Parker Lewis Can't Lose) were horrible, just horrible!
I'm going for just a good book. The lists I've seen of the "classics" have like nothing on them past 1980 - and although there were good books before 1980 - there have also ben great books written after them.
I'm not limiting it to fiction.
You can list as many or as few as you'd like.
Yeah, books with the most votes get ranked higher on the list. I'm going to give it a week or so, then I'll post my final list.
My favorites - which I will not include on the list unless they get other votes:
Deerskin - Robin Mckinley
Solstice Wood - Patricia McKillip
Alphabet of Thorn - Patricia McKillip
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Giver - Lois Lowry
The Iliad - Homer
I was going to put To Kill a Mockingbird but I figured it was one of those high school books you'd already read. I've taught it several times, though, and it's one of the few that all the kids seem to like. I could never figure out why people don't like Lord of the Flies, though -- I like teaching that one! All that great symbolism!
I second Lord of the Flies. Read it in 11th Grade English in high school and enjoyed it greatly. And I tend to be the type of person who, if told, you "have to read this book" I'll go into it not wanting to like it.
I was going to put To Kill a Mockingbird but I figured it was one of those high school books you'd already read. I've taught it several times, though, and it's one of the few that all the kids seem to like. I could never figure out why people don't like Lord of the Flies, though -- I like teaching that one! All that great symbolism!
Lord of the Flies is one of my all time favorites along with The Thornbirds
Mists of Avalon is freaking amazing, I must have read it about ten times.
I'd suggest:
Anything written by Terry Pratchett but particularly his Discworld series.
The Swarm by Frank Schatzing
China Lake by Meg Gardiner
Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham (British crime author, his books are really gritty and quite disturbing)
Tokyo by Mo Hayder
The Golden by Lucius Shepard (not for the faint hearted or those that don't like a bit of... kink... to their vampires, but it's the PERFECT antidote to those godawful Twilight books)
Mmmyep. I could go on, I have a VAST library of crime fiction if anyone is interested in some more recommendations.
