# What are your favorite books?



## 20centrfuge

I think it would be interesting to know what your favorite books are. You learn a lot about a person by knowing what music they like and what books have been meaningful/enjoyable to them. Plus it might give me some ideas about books to read. 

Thanks!


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## brotagonist

I find it nearly impossible to rank composers and works and, similarly, I am unable to rank authors, books and movies. I have read a lot and my reading habit goes back even further than my classical music habit (although my serious reading, like my serious listening, both likely began around the age of 18). I spent most of the first few decades of reading on the great authors of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, primarily German, French and Russian, the same as my classical music listening. I didn't plan it, but these were the authors that won Nobel prizes for literature and those who moved in the literary circles of the time. I took a break from serious reading and spent the past 2-3 years reading a lot of westerns and adventure novels while I simultaneously focused on listening to classical music heavily and with great attention. I feel I have reached a certain level in my music listening that allows me to get back into deeper reading, hence I have recently begun to make an effort to read more non-fiction.

I think not having personal libraries and music collections is a loss. I always enjoyed visiting people and having a snoop at their collections while they were in the kitchen getting the tea made. It was an innocent act of voyeurism. Snooping the music files, play lists or books on a smart phone, computer or e-reader would not likely be welcomed by many a host.


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## 20centrfuge

It's not so much about ranking as just letting me know books you have liked. You can feel free to remove the word "favorite" if you find it too limiting. Just name a few off the top of your brain. Ya' know, for fun and stuff.


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## 20centrfuge

brotagonist said:


> I think not having personal libraries and music collections is a loss. I always enjoyed visiting people and having a snoop at their collections... Snooping the music files, play lists or books on a smart phone, computer or e-reader would not likely be welcomed by many a host.


Good point. I do the same anytime I'm in anyone's home.


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## brotagonist

20centrfuge said:


> It's not so much about ranking as just letting me know books you have liked.... Just name a few off the top of your brain. Ya' know, for fun and stuff.


Dostoyevsky, Thomas Mann, Sartre, Dumas, Hamsun, Canetti, Malraux

These types of writers.


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## Piwikiwi

_Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie
_Ulysses_ by James Joyce
_To the Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf
_Guards! Guards!_ by Terry Pratchett


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## Cheyenne

I _love_ the essays of William Hazlitt -- the collections he himself compiled are _The Spirit of the Age_, _Table Talk_, _The Plain Speaker_, _Political Essays_; the modern ones are a collection of Metropolitan writings, and selected writings from Oxford's World Classics and Peguin. The most comprehensive complete edition is that of P.P. Howe in 21 volumes (London, 1930-34), from which are lacking only "The New Writings of William Hazlitt" in two volumes edited by Duncan Wu (Oxford, 2007). Duncan Wu also recently edited a new selected edition of Hazlitt's works for Pickering & Chatto, in the Pickering Masters series, which includes most of the books he published in book form during his lifetime (thus we get "The Round Table", "The Spirit of the Age", "Table Talk", "An Essay on the Principles of Human Action", "A Letter to William Gifford, Esq.", "The Plain Speaker", "Lectures on the English Comic Writers", "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth", "Political Essays", "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays" and "A View of the English Stage"). The last volume has some essays which were not collected by Hazlitt during his lifetime - but far from all of them.

Thomas De Quincey's _Suspiria de Profundis_ is one of my favorite books, and I am very fond of _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_ too. James Huneker's _Chopin, the Man and His Music _must be mentioned, as must the _Critical & Miscellaneous Essays_ of Thomas Carlyle.

In novels I remember especially fondly Powell's _A Dance to the Music of Time_, Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_, and Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_. I am very fond of George Eliot, and will read _Middlemarch_ soon!

In poetry, Goethe's _West-Östlicher Divan_ and Byron's poems as selected by Matthew Arnold (whose _Essays in Criticism_, first and second series, deserve a mention too!); Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and _Paradise Regain'd_ too, and Spenser's _The Faerie Queene_. Then I'd add Cowper's _The Task_, and the_ New and Collected Poems_ of Richard Wilbur.

An important cute, peculiar and homely book for me is _Europe After 8:15_, written by George Jean Nathan, H.L. Mencken and Willard Wright. I really like that little book!

Well, that's quite enough for now!


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## 20centrfuge

Piwikiwi said:


> _Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie
> _Ulysses_ by James Joyce
> _To the Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf
> _Guards! Guards!_ by Terry Pratchett


I'm intimidated by the novel Ulysses. It sits on my bookshelf where it has been for several years, until I muster the wherewithal to take it off the shelf and attempt.


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## 20centrfuge

Piwikiwi said:


> _Midnight's Children_ by Salman Rushdie
> _Ulysses_ by James Joyce
> _To the Lighthouse_ by Virginia Woolf
> _Guards! Guards!_ by Terry Pratchett


I'm intimidated by the novel Ulysses. It sits on my bookshelf where it has been for several years, until I muster the wherewithal to take it off the shelf and attempt.


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## Vesteralen

If you were to look at the four bookcases in my living room, you would have no idea what my five favorite books are. 

It would be hard to separate the reader from the collector (a habit unknowingly started by my parents who bought me two books in a series of twenty all clearly marked with volume numbers on the spine).

You will find, among other things, about sixty of P G Wodehouse's books, almost all of Hardy, several sets of Shakespeare, many books on art, movies (especially silent), archaeology, ornithology and astronomy, geography and travel, music and ancient history.

But, only one of the above-mentioned has something that sneaks into my top five.

5. Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
4. The Flowering Thorn, Margery Sharp
3. While Still We Live, Helen MacInnes
2. Antigone, Sophocles (all time favorite author)
1. Singing Waters, Ann Bridge

There is a pattern to these five. Three of them sound like romance novels, but don't be fooled. They aren't. And, in fact, Singing Waters is what I would call an anti-romance.

All five feature women protagonists who either have (i.e. Antigone), or acquire in the course of the story (i.e. Gloire in Singing Waters), strong characters and purpose. Their strength is internal (unlike modern heroines, who are more intensely physical and external). For some reason, I've always found that fascinating.

But, I don't usually recommend books to someone else until I know something about their personalities. Just as with my taste in music, I never expect others to share it, and it isn't something I particularly want or need to have happen.


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## Wood

All of these were first read over 30 years ago, but have probably proved the most influential.


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## Fox

*01* ~ *The Brothers Karamazov* (1880) ~ *Fyodor Dostoyevsky*
*02* - *The Idiot* (1869) ~ *Fyodor Dostoyevsky*
*03* - *Anna Karenina* (1877) ~ *Leo Tolstoy*
*04* - *In Search of Lost Time* (1913) ~ *Marcel Proust* 
*05* - *Ulysses* (1922) ~ *James Joyce*
*06* - *The Trial* (1913) ~ *Franz Kafka*
*07* - *The Stranger *(1942) ~ *Albert Camus*
*08* - *Les Misérables* (1862) ~ *Victor Hugo*
*09* - *Against Nature "À Rebours"* (1884) ~ *Joris-Karl Huysmans*
*10* - *Dead Souls* (1842) ~ *Nikolai Gogol*
*11* - *Germinal* (1885) ~ *Émile Zola*
*12* - *The Immoralist* (1902) ~ *André Gide*
*13* - *Resurrection* (1899) ~ *Leo Tolstoy*
*14* - *The Black Sheep: (La Rabouilleuse)* (1842) ~ *Honoré de Balzac*
*15* - *The Captive Mind* (1953) ~ *Czesław Miłosz*

This was quite difficult I tried to limit myself to a "Top 10" however I felt I had to inculde the likes of Zola, Gide and Balzac in my list, therefore I settled on on fifteen instead of ten.

To make things easier for myself I excluded poetry from the list thus Baudelaire, Chekhov, Milton, Rimbaud and Nabokov are missing.

Regards,

Fox


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## SiegendesLicht

My favorite writer ever is Professor Tolkien. I have read every single book of his, from Silmarillion that many find overly complicated and boring to The Monsters and the Critics, a collection of essays on Anglo-Saxon literature. My tastes concerning other books and writers may have changed over time, but this one is immutable. And my favorite composer is Wagner, so you have an idea of what kind of person I am 

Some of my other favorites are Jack London, Hermann Hesse, Michael Crichton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Erich Kästner and Stephen King.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

My favorite books are the _Tales of the Otori_ by Lian Hearn. Never read anything I so completely loved - I wouldn't change anything about her writing.


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## pierrot

_We are oppressed at being men-men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea._

View attachment 64452


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## Cosmos

Some favorites that stuck with me:

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Marguerite Duras - The Lover
Donald Barthelme - Various stories from 40 Stories
Haruki Murakami - The Elephant Vanishes
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Philip K. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
F.Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front


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## spokanedaniel

My, oh, my. Favorite books? No way could I list my favorite books. There are too many, and many will simply slip my mind. What follows instead is a random and incomplete list of books I've loved, in no special order:

All of Shakespeare's tragedies.
All of Chaucer
The Idiot and also The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Great Expectations
Moby Dick (I was rooting for the whale from the very start)
A Daughter of the Snows (in spite of the horrid racism of the lead characters)
Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and A Tramp Abroad
All of G.B. Shaw's plays
Dune
Temeraire
El Hablador (Mario Vargas Llosa) (but the English translation is incomprehensible)
La guerra del fin del mundo (Mario Vargas Llosa)
Eva Luna and Cuentos de Eva Luna (Isabel Allende)
La vieja sirena (I forget the name of the author)
Letter to an Imaginary Friend (Thomas McGrath. Book-length quasi-autobiographical poem.)
The Thousand Nights and a Night (Sir Richard Burton translation. A.k.a. the 1001 Nights)
The Golden Compass (Avoid the movie. The movie is dreadful.)

So many more, but recalling everything is not a skill of mine.


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## QuietGuy

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) [1960]
The Heart of a Distant Forest (Phillip Lee Williams)[1984]

Both great books!


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## Albert7

Thomas Pynchon and Don Delillo. Best novelists ever.


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## starthrower

Anything by Loren Eiseley. Guy Murchie's The Seven Mysteries Of Life. Camus:Resistence, Rebellion, and Death.

Slonimsky's Perfect Pitch. Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays. The Autobiography Of Malcolm X.


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## SimonNZ

Leaving aside for now the widely regarded stuff I love like Proust and Zola, I'd like to give special mention to a novel I love which is largely unread and unknown, despite the author being a familiar name:

















Simone De Beauvoir's The Mandarins

Following a few years in the lives of leading French intellectuals, former resistance fighters and communist party members, starting with the first days of peace following the second world war. A subtle study in moral ambiguity and intellectual rationalizations once the (supposed) moral certainties of the war are removed. Also a fascinating study of the in-fighting and factionalism of the CP, and details the dawning understand of, and reaction to the horrors of Stalinism, all from the perspective of one who lived in the middle of it. Also contains a largely undisguised account of her affair and time spent with Nelson Algren on trips to America (I'd add "and of her ultimate commitment to Sartre", which is true, but the degree to which the two main male characters are modeled on Sartre and Camus is a tangled "yes and no" answer - despite the authors denial of this - particularly as the book also contains a fictionalized account of their very public falling out).


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## Albert7

Add in Walter Benjamin for sure. Arcades Project is the best book ever written.


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## SimonNZ

I've read nearly every word of George Orwell and while I love most these are my two favorites - I'd give away 1984 before these two:


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## JACE

Fun game! I'll play.

Here are a few of my faves:

Tolstoy - War & Peace; Anna Karenina
Chekhov - all of the short stories
Philip Roth - American Pastoral
John Hersey - The Wall
Martin Amis - Money
Marilynne Robinson - Gilead
Graham Swift - Waterland
Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath


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## 20centrfuge

It's tough for me to compare books that I've read recently with those read more than 10 years ago, so here are some recent favorites:









David Mitchell said this in a recent interview, which sums up the reason I liked this book so much:

"Who cares about 'brow'? I don't care," he says. "Is it one of those books where you're turning the pages and your glands - all your glands - are being affected?... Your heartbeat is being changed by words about things which aren't real. Isn't that amazing? That's what I want to do. Highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow - if it's doing that, great. And if it's not, I'd rather read something that does."









This book of short stories by Raymond Carver is one of the best things I've ever read. This writer has powerful insight into human nature and his writing is very compelling. I wish I could go back and read this FOR THE FIRST TIME a hundred times.









Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake Trilogy was a gripping and intelligent dystopian and post-apocolyptic vision.

Other authors I really love: Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ian McEwan, Dostoevsky.
Other fave books: Dune, Frankenstein, Dracula, Ready Player One by Cline (fun book!), An American Tragedy by Dreiser, and others.


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## Templeton

Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham
Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
You Can't Go Home Again and Of Time and The River - Thomas Wolfe
David Copperfield and Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment and The Idiot - Dostoyevsky
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Martin Eden - Jack London
The Comedians - Graham Greene
Collected Short Stories - Maupassant
Black Boy and The Long Dream - Richard Wright
1984 - George Orwell
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
Germinal - Emile Zola
The Clown - Heinrich Böll

Lots of others, I'm sure, but these are ones that come to mind right now.


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## MagneticGhost

These are the ones that spring immediately to mind. 


Therese Raquin - Zola
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Bleak House - Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Tess of the Durbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
1984 - George Orwell
The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
The Magus - John Fowles
Daniel Martin - John Fowles
Shogun - James Clavell
Death's Master - Tanith Lee
The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole 13 to adulthood - Sue Townsend
The Bone Clocks/Black Swan Green - David Mitchell


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## Fox

Templeton said:


> Of Human Bondage and The Moon and Sixpence - W. Somerset Maugham
> Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
> You Can't Go Home Again and Of Time and The River - Thomas Wolfe
> *David Copperfield and Great Expectations* - *Charles Dickens*
> *Crime and Punishment and The Idiot* - *Dostoyevsky* (two separate novels, naughty!)
> *The Outsider* - *Albert Camus*
> Martin Eden - Jack London
> *The Comedians* - *Graham Greene*
> *Collected Short Stories* - *Maupassant*
> Black Boy and The Long Dream - Richard Wright
> *1984* - *George Orwell*
> *The Red and the Black* - *Stendhal*
> *Germinal* - *Emile Zola*
> The Clown - Heinrich Böll (I have this but have yet to read it)
> 
> Lots of others, I'm sure, but these are ones that come to mind right now.





MagneticGhost said:


> These are the ones that spring immediately to mind.
> 
> *Therese Raquin* - *Zola*
> *The Brothers Karamazov* - *Dostoyevsky*
> *Bleak House* - (Charles Dickens) *Oliver Twist* - *Charles Dickens*
> *Jude the Obscure* - *Thomas Hardy*
> *Tess of the Durbervilles* - *Thomas Hardy*
> *1984* - *George Orwell*
> *The Lord of the Rings* - *Tolkien*
> The Magus - John Fowles
> Daniel Martin - John Fowles
> Shogun - James Clavell
> Death's Master - Tanith Lee
> The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole 13 to adulthood - Sue Townsend
> The Bone Clocks/Black Swan Green - David Mitchell


I approve of this these posts :tiphat: Those I have emboldened are those books which I have read.

@MagneticGhost, I hope you don't mind but I edited your list slightly you had written "Bleak House - Oliver Twist" I assume you meant to add Charles Dickens as the author and have done so accordingly.

Kind Regards,

Fox


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## MagneticGhost

Fox said:


> I approve of this these posts :tiphat: Those I have emboldened are those books which I have read.
> 
> @MagneticGhost, I hope you don't mind but I edited your list slightly you had written "Bleak House - Oliver Twist" I assume you meant to add Charles Dickens as the author and have done so accordingly.
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Fox


:tiphat:
Thank you kindly sir - I did notice shortly after I received your like. I looked at your list from page 1 - approved highly - and then realised that I'd forgotten Tolstoy. 
Whilst editing my post I rectified my Dickens mistake. Just a couple of minutes before you posted - probably while you were writing.

lol.. Seems I've written a long post to explain 'not very much'. 
Anyway - thanks again. I'd add Paradise Lost to my list as well, but I've never got to the end as much as I enjoy dipping in and out.


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## Badinerie

Lost Empires - JB Priestly

Earthchild - Doris Piserchia

Farewell My Lovely - Raymond Chandler

Solaris - Stanislaw Lem 

Jennings and Darbyshire - Antony Buckeridge

Travels with my Aunt - Graham Greene

Flashman - George Macdonald Fraser.


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## Giordano

Cloth-bound hardcover books are my favorite.


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## bharbeke

Here is a sampling of books I've liked:

Isaac Asimov: The End of Eternity, The Caves of Steel
Frank Herbert: Dune
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination
Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Jules Verne: Around the World in 80 Days
Michael Crichton: Sphere, Airframe
Philip K. Dick: Ubik
Timothy Zahn: The Icarus Hunt, Warhorse, Cobra, Night Train to Rigel
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
Chaim Potok: The Chosen, My Name Is Asher Lev
Arthur Miller: The Crucible
Norton Juster: The Phantom Tollbooth
Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens: Quicksilver
R.B. Bernstein: Thomas Jefferson
Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl
Jim Gaffigan: Food: A Love Story
Many Star Wars and Star Trek novels (will expand answer if anyone is interested)


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## SimonNZ

Seeing Paul Auster's City Of Glass mentioned on the currently reading thread reminded me of another couple of absolute favorites:


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## SarahNorthman

I need a good new book to read! any suggestions?


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## Piwikiwi

SarahNorthman said:


> I need a good new book to read! any suggestions?


What kind of books do you like? I just finished Haroun and the sea of stories by salman rushdie. It is a short fairy tale and a bit like the hobbit.


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## MagneticGhost

As per SimonNZ.
All this talk of Paul Auster. Great writer. ^^^^2 of my faves.


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## AClockworkOrange

A trio of my favourites include:


















​


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## Levanda

Aleksandr Pushkin poems always interesting to read and good read Gogol's books.


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## 20centrfuge

To SaraNorthMan:

Bone Clocks by Mitchell! It came out last year and is an enjoyable book.


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## 20centrfuge

MagneticGhost said:


> View attachment 64748
> View attachment 64749
> 
> 
> As per SimonNZ.
> All this talk of Paul Auster. Great writer. ^^^^2 of my faves.


New York Trilogy is one of my all time favorites. I've never read that other one, but with your recommendation I'll put it on my short list of "to reads"


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## Fox

MagneticGhost said:


> :tiphat:
> Thank you kindly sir - I did notice shortly after I received your like. I looked at your list from page 1 - approved highly - and then realised that I'd forgotten Tolstoy.
> Whilst editing my post I rectified my Dickens mistake. Just a couple of minutes before you posted - probably while you were writing.
> 
> lol.. Seems I've written a long post to explain 'not very much'.
> Anyway - thanks again. I'd add Paradise Lost to my list as well, but I've never got to the end as much as I enjoy dipping in and out.


No worries my friend I make mistakes all the time (I can't spell), thank you very much for your kind words regarding my list. I enjoy your posts very much, I'll see you around the forum till then take care.

Regards,

Fox :tiphat:


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## TxllxT

Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov - Oblomov
Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov - На краю света (At World's End - not translated yet into English)


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## elgar's ghost

One of my favourites is The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, which chronicles the period AD14 - 68. I have little more than a passing interest in Roman history but this book blew me away when I first read it - magisterial and occasionally very chilling, with in-depth accounts of current events and Rome's prime movers. 

What we don't know for sure is whether some of the more damning accounts are based on common knowledge or as a result of Nerva-Antonine revisionism (the book was written some decades after the end of the Julio-Claudian dynasty when the more negative aspects of that era were brought into sharp focus in comparison to the less turbulent times after the assassination of Domitian in AD96). Regrettably, the complete account of the reign of Caligula is lost, as are substantial, not to say crucial, chunks of the reigns of Claudius, Nero and Tiberius. Damn those barbarians...


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## Blancrocher

TxllxT said:


> Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov - На краю света (At World's End - not translated yet into English)


It seems to be available, actually: http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-World-Nikolai-Leskov/dp/0881411183

Looks like a fun read--I'll add it to the list.


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## ptr

*Joshua Slocum* - Sailing Alone Around the World (1899)










Have been pondering doing the same ever since I read this as a kid, but my love of music was greater and the uncertainty of musical reproduction at sea has held me of...

*Jules Verne*'s "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" also had this kind of allure on the Young myself!










/ptr


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## TxllxT

Blancrocher said:


> It seems to be available, actually: http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-World-Nikolai-Leskov/dp/0881411183
> 
> Looks like a fun read--I'll add it to the list.


Thanks for the info. Leskov for me is a kind of Russian Kierkegaard with a _joie de vivre_ that is staying with me. The Amazon teaser is a bit too Christian to my taste and I hope this will not distract anyone from giving it a try. Leskov is the author of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the burlesque story on which Shostakovich composed his opera with the same name. Compared with that story I find 'At World's End' to have the same 'physicalness' (that's typical for Leskov), but whereas Lady Macbeth becomes predictable and wears out, 'At World's End' does not.


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## Tristan

Some of my favorite books include:

_Dubliners_ by James Joyce
_The Trial_ by Franz Kafka
_Lord of the Flies_ by William Golding
_Kafka on the Shore_ by Haruki Murakami
_The Turn of the Screw_ by Henry James

Modernist fiction is probably my favorite genre. I've read a few of these multiple times; the rest I certainly could see reading again


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## MarkW

Current Favorites of American Lit:

All the King's Men (Robert Penn Warren)
The Sunlight Dialogues (John Gardner)
Moby Dick (Melville)
Life on the Mississippi (Twain)
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Lovecraft)
Any non-fiction by John McPhee


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## GioCar

Some of my favourites, from the end of last century.


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## Templeton

In addition to the previous ones that I listed, the following wonderful works came to mind subsequently:

'Candide' by Voltaire
'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria Remarque
'Sons and Lovers' by D.H. Lawrence

Can't imagine how I omitted Voltaire and Remarque, as both books are in my top ten list.


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## georgedelorean

Bible/CCC, The Vicar of Christ, A Wrinkle in Time, Rome Sweet Home, The Joyluck Club, The Phantom of the Opera. Aside from those, lots of manga, history, conservative, and score books.


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## JJF

An all-time favorite of mine is back off the shelf and on my desk: D'Annunzio's Flame of Life. I can take a good ten minutes to go over a single page.


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## TxllxT

We are re-reading the second book of Nadezhda Mandelstam, that we find even better than her first one. She is a chronicler of love, of humanity, of truthfulness, of the power of the word in an era, that didn't care anymore for personal relations. A book shining with heartfelt encouragement from a courageous woman.


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## Ingélou

Jane Austen novels 
Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson
Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (sent off to America for a boxed set! )
Rasselas - Dr Johnson
Eagle of the Ninth Trilogy - Rosemary Sutcliffe

and many other titles, some of which will invade my memory suddenly in the dead of night...


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## Pugg

The picture of Dorian Gary very high on my list .


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## helenora

Pugg said:


> The picture of Dorian Gary very high on my list .


and I would add all other works by Oscar Wilde


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## ldiat

lawrence sanders 1-4 deady sins. and robert ludlum...anything by him. and stephen king The Talisman and Thinner


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## Strange Magic

Some ever-rewarding books:

Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings; The Silmarillion 
Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Rosten: The Joys of Yiddish
Melville: Moby Dick, or The Whale
De Voto (Editor): The Journals of Lewis and Clark
Heyerdahl: Kon-Tiki
Kipling: The Jungle Books
Shelton: Geology Illustrated
Rhodes: The Making of the Atomic Bomb 
Dudley: The Civilization of Rome

I'm sure we all could list books 'til the cows came home........


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## TennysonsHarp

If I could list a few of my favorites, here they are:

_The Picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde
_Kafka on the Shore_ by Haruki Murakami
_East of Eden_ by John Steinbeck
_In Memoriam A.H.H._ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
_Leaves of Grass_ by Walt Whitman
_Ulysses_ by James Joyce
_And Then There Were None_ by Agatha Christie
_Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley


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