Top 5 from the list read in 2007

** Doesn't have to be 5 necessarily, just your top picks for the year :)***

OK, the year's not quite over yet, but here are my top five, in no particular order:

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Bleak House by Charles Dickens

I only read 4:

the Invisible Man
the Island of Doctor Moreau
the Picture of Dorian Gray
the War of the Worlds

Dorian Gray didn't impress me at all but the other three I loved, very chilling. Also, I saw on the list that Gulliver's Travels is one of the 1001. We read excerpts of it in my English class this semester, and I absolutely loved it. I'm going to buy an unabridged version as soon as the semester is over to read all the way through.

In no order:

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Curious Incident of the Dog in night-time Mark Haddon
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Worse book off the list: Dracula by Bram Stoker

I'm reading A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving which might push one of them off the list by the end of the year.

I've only read 2 for the year so I'm stuck!

Animal Farm and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Well, I've only read 8 this year, so I'll list them all in the order I've enjoyed them.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau not quite done but should be done by 12/31--definitely top of my list.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco--listened to this as an unabridged audiobook and found it confusing--perhaps would do better to read it.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (thought the first couple chapters were hilarious, but quickly got bored with it)

My favorite 5 this year:
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Caleb Williams by William Godwin originally made the list, but I had forgotten about Tom Jones

My least favorites of the year, I'd probably say The Body Artist by Don Delillo, Foundation by Isaac Asimov (an interesting concept, but a poor prose writer), and Herzog by Saul Bellow (just too many intellectual history/philosophy allusions that bog it down).

Top 5:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

My least favorite was The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.

What's with the touchstones, anyway?

Mine are:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Regeneration (actually, I loved the whole trilogy--this plus The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road, but I think the first one was my favourite.)
The Wasp Factory
The House on the Borderland--this one really annoyed me at times as I was reading, but it was so bizarre and interesting, I'm glad I read it.
The last one...I don't know. Maybe Nadja?

I read 13 this year. Here are my top 5 (some of which I see others have also loved):

Tess of the D'Urbervilles
To Kill a Mockingbird (re-read)
Cloud Atlas
The Grapes of Wrath
Sense and Sensibility

I didn't get very far on the list this year...but my favorites have been

He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (probably one of my favorites of all time!)
Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

I also read The Hound of the Baskervilles but I didn't care for it.

>2 Thwaite: raggetig, top 2 is OK :)

On reflection, I should've made the title 'Top Picks read in 2007'. I can't change the title unfortunately :(

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
Ninteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

I read quite a few more but there's the five that I'm going to throw in a mention to.

Also Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy can get a mention as I finished this one off in 2007, and it was quite a fantastic book.

#11 digifish_books I was hoping to get a third one in this year, but I didn't quite make it since I read as slow as I do. I only stumbled upon this 1001 list this summer so I guess I'm doing okay in that aspect. I have since purchased a lot more books from the list that will will probably get to in 2008.

In fact, I went to a book sale yesterday where a bag full of books were $1 and out of everything I picked up, only 1 book was not on the list. You can see the list of books I got in the 'What Books Came into Your Home for Dec. 2007' thread.

Middlemarch was my absoulte favorite.
Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
and A Bend in the River by Naipaul (?I think thats on the list)

Worst, worst, worst -- Ulysses

well i can only think of one great book from this year:
Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.

>15 Pheobe: Thanks, but its not in the 1001 Books list. This topic is about your top recommendations read this year from the list.

My top 5 out of 9 read in 2007:

The Tin Drum
Fingersmith
Fatelelssness
In cold blood
The hunchback of Notre Dame

There are still 29 reading days left this year, so this list may change, but for now, the top 5 that I read from the 1001 list are, in no particular order:

1. Anna Karenina
2. Animal Farm (reread, and it stands up well after 20+ years)
3. Mansfield Park
4. The Yellow Wallpaper
5. Enduring Love

In no particular order:

American Psycho
Emma
Lolita
Rebecca
The Turn of the Screw

It's hard to pick just 5, because I don't think I've disliked any of the books I read from the list this year, but the ones which immediately stand out in my mind are:

Atonement
Northanger Abbey
Disgrace
An Artist of the Floating World
The Midwich Cuckoos

There are plenty of other books on the list which I love and have read, but most of them are not ones I read this year!

I think the reason why some of these books stand out so much for me is that they have either introduced me to a new author whose works I now want to seek out and finish (Ian McEwan, J M Coetzee), reminded me of a great author I had previously read and forgotten about (Kazuo Ishiguro, John Wyndham) or finally completed a "set", with Northanger Abbey being the last Jane Austen novel I hadn't read. It's been a good reading year....though that may have interfered with me achieving anything else this year!

1. Infinite Jest by David
Foster Wallace

2. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

3. The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

4. House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

5. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I also really liked One hundred years of Solitude, The Name of the Rose, (even if i knew who did it 100 pages in), Ulysses and Trainspotting.

I still have Walden to finish and War and Peace to start by the end of the year.

-mistress 'rissa

I was having trouble coming up with a Top 5, but did have some related thoughts:

Pleasantly surprised by:

-Hard Times, by Dickens (since I usually really dislike Dickens)
-Tender is the Night, by Fitzgerald (not sure why I was surprised though- I didn't really like Gatsby when I was younger, but did enjoy it during a recent reread. Still, pleasantly surprised)

Quite Liked:

-Watchmen, by Moore (but then I like graphic novels a lot)
-All the Raymond Chandler books (man, they are just good times)

Did Not Care For:
-If On a Winter's Night A Traveler (too pretentious, too gimmicky)
-Get Shorty (like a less interesting version of Chandler, IMO)

I read a few others but these were the ones I felt more strongly about. And then there's Tristram Shandy, which I just CANNOT get interested in. With time I will triumph, however. Someday.

So far, I've read 30 this year, and those that really stood out ahead of the others are:

Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey (932)
John Cleland - Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (974)
Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre (904)
D. H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley’s Lover (676)
Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights (902)
Anne Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (901)
Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr. Ripley (495)
E. M. Forster - A Room with a View (761)
Daphne Du Maurier - Rebecca (603)
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird (456)

It's hard to narrow that little list down to just 5, but here goes (in no particular order):
1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley
3. Northanger Abbey
4. A Room with a View
5. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

I'm itching to switch things around, but I know if I did, I'd be sitting here changing my choices for weeks!

I've only read 10 this year, but my top five would be:
Jane Eyre (re-read)
Gone with the Wind
The Woman in White
Wide Sargasso Sea
Don Quixote

I think they're probably in order...

I've only read 6 this year so I just list them all in the order I have read them:

Emma
Jane Eyre (reread, and I just love this book!)
Fingersmith
The Forsyte Saga
The Little Prince
The House of the Spirits (finished about an hour ago, very delightful)

I pretty much liked them all but Jane Eyre and The House of the Spirits were probably my favorites.

I read about 65 books off of the list this year and a lot of them were really good, so this is going to be difficult.

In no particular order, the top five are probably.

Watchmen
Don Quixote
Moby-Dick
Of Mice and Men
The Hobbit

Message #24: I read The Talented Mr. Ripley this year also and it was awesome -- much better than I thought it would be and a close second to the ones above.

This year, my favorite author that I had never read is John Wyndham. I read The Midwich Cuckoos, The Day of the Triffids and Chocky, and liked all of them very much.

-- M1001

I can't come up with 5. I didn't have a lot of luck this year, but my top 2 would be:

The Double by Jose Saramago
Watchmen by Alan Moore

It's good to know that others share my taste in fabulous story-telling although I was surprised that Edith Wharton was not present.

My top 5 in no perticular order:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The scarlett letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
A Christmas Carroll by Charles Dickens
The house of Mirth by Edith Wharton

no particular order:

Enduring Love
Infinite Jest
Team of Rivals
In Search of Memory
Breaking the Spell

hated:

The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable

Re: #29: "I was surprised that Edith Wharton was not present."

Only because I didn't read them this year, wurmpie. Edith Wharton rocks my world.

I just didn't want you to feel alone in your love.

Catcher in the Rye
Notes from the underground
Slaughter-house 5
A Scanner Darkly
On the beach

Reread #1 #3 & #5

Of mice and men
Travels with charley
Turn of the Screw
1001 books to read before you die
Bluebeard

I know Travels with Charley, Bluebeard, 1001... are not on the list, but I immensely enjoyed them and enjoyed sharing these titles.

Back at message 18, I said: There are still 29 reading days left this year, so this list may change, but for now, the top 5 that I read from the 1001 list are, in no particular order:

1. Anna Karenina
2. Animal Farm (reread, and it stands up well after 20+ years)
3. Mansfield Park
4. The Yellow Wallpaper
5. Enduring Love

---------------

At the end of December I read The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I thought was great. It bumps off either Animal Farm or The Yellow Wallpaper.