Your personal top 10 all time favorites list(s)

The Master and Margarita ranks now in my top 10. DavidXs last post in the what page are you on thread just helped me realize that. The books is so complex, and yet so coherent; a book that can be read at multiple levels (and be enjoyed at each level) dependent upon how much time you want to give to it. Thought I'd update my lists. I'm dying to see yours! And don't limit yourself to top 10. Go top 100 if you like. I may eventually edit this post to include my top 100. (I'm sure everyone is just fascinated)!

Literature

01. Les Miserables
02. Infinite Jest
03. In Search of Lost Time
04. The Recognitions
05. War and Peace
06. Crime and Punishment
07. David Copperfield
08. The Royal Family
09. Women and Men
10. The Master and Margarita

Being called to dinner; top 10 Genre is up next.

What dropped out of your Top Ten to make room for Master and Margarita?

Favorite First Novels, genre, lit, & trash combined

The Recognitions was Gaddis' first novel, but since I've already included it in post 1, I won't be redundant here. So many renowned firsts I've yet to read. This list subject to change.

01. House of Leaves
02. Under The Volcano
03. Journey To The End Of The Night
04. Deliverance
05. The Magus
06. If He Hollers Let Him Go
07. Invisible Man
08. Carrie
09. Drawers And Booths - by Ara 13
10. Play It As It Lays
11. Wise Blood
12. Postmortem
13. Lightning On The Sun
14. City of Night by John Rechy
15. Less Than Zero
16. The Moviegoer
17. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
18. The Dragon In The Sea
19. Revolutionary Road
20. Lord of the Flies

I'm glad to see that Tolkein has mysteriously disappeared from the first time you posted this thread.
hehehe

This second list is better than the first

I know these lists are subjective, and I certainly understand the desire to include some Flannery O'Connor, but I thought The Violent Bear it Away was much better as a novel than Wise Blood. Her natural ouvre was the short-story while the novel was more difficult for her to structure. I think she did a better job with VBA. Wise Blood is too much like a grad school exercise.

Having sat out The Master and Margarita, o which I was unable to focus after my ever-so-exciting concussion, I probably shouldn't even list here, but I will anyway. The following list is preliminary and disappointing. It doesn't have much historical depth and is extremely Euro/Anglo-centric. I'm merely including books that have touched me to the core at some point.

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The Magus by John Fowles
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Telling by Ursula Le Guin
The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien
Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Odyssey (not a novel I know, but I couldn't resist) by Homer?
Germinal by Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Gambler by by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (imagine the touchstones not working)
Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing
The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight by Doris Lessing
My Name Is Red by Orphan Pauk
The Book of Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist
The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Candide by Voltaire
The Ten Thousand Things by Dermoût
The Chateau D'Argol by Julien Gracq

And . . . please don't gasp and turn your heads in disgust . . . a YA novel I recently read and can't get out of my head. I keep compulsively rereading it: The Hunger Games.

please don't gasp and turn your heads in disgust

How can I when I have read only three of them?

Love that first novels list. I'm a big fan of first novels.

Thanks slick. Of course I've yet to read Vollmann's debut, so I'm sure it'd be near the top had I read it. Not to mention DFWs first, which I hear is funny (much funnier than IJ) and fabulous. I know that You Bright and Risen Angels is your alltime fave; any other debuts high on your list?

Ohh, I like this first-time novelist idearrrr. :))))

-The Illuminatus! Trilogy (counted as 1)
-Catch-22
-V.
-The Broom of the System
-You Shall Know Our Velocity!
-Watership down
-Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me
-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-A Confederacy of Dunces
-At Swim-Two-Birds
-Deliverance
-Just a Couple of Days
-The Raw Shark Texts
-House of Leaves
-Eeeee Eee Eeee
-The Wasp Factory
-The New York Trilogy (counted as 1)
-Americana
-The Origin of the Brunists
-Observatory Mansions

Eeeee Eee Eeee sounds like the most amazing book I have not read ever. Going to have to pick that up.

Eeeee Eee Eeee is not nearly as good as his short story collection Bed. His stories just don't work as well when they're drawn out, so I srsly recommend you try Bed first.

His new collection Shoplifting from American Apparel just came out and I need to pick it up so hard.

(He's similar to Miranda July, but better.)

10 19th C First Novels:

The Pickwick Papers
Poor Folk
JAne Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Adam Bede
Sketches from a Hunter's Album or Rudin (controversial)
Treasure Island
Almeyer's Folly
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Grey

I didn't realize Almeyer's Folly was Conrad's first. That looks like a good list to work from. I've read:

The Pickwick Papers
Jane Eyre
Adam Bede
Treasure Island
Almeyer's Folly
Sense and Sensibility

What happened to this thread? It was fun. I think all new members to the group should post something as condition of entry. This is a (benevolent) dictatorship, after all.

Yes virapol - who are your favorite authors? Dead????

These might not be in order of apprecation. Also I probably forgot a few.
Kristin Lavransdatter
War & Peace
Dr. Zhivago
Lonesome dove
Raintree County
Gone with the Wind
Grapes of Wrath
Look Homeward, Angel
The Rains Came
The Awakening Land trilogy
Friendly Persuasion
The Poisonwood Bible
The God of small things

Tawp 10 w/ Amazons -- Seriously one of my favorite Don DeLillo novels. Probably his most fun, and it's the one and only he denies having written (originally published under a pseudonym, and co-written w/ a college friend named Sue Buck)! Come on! It's great! Go out of your way, DeLillo fans, to find this obscure treasure!
-Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
-Zanesville
-The Origin of the Brunists
-A Political Fable
-Hell's Half-Acre
-Pinball, 1973
-The Wreckage of Agathon
-The Ninth Configuration
-...uh...hm...You Can't Catch Death, I guess...This list would be way different if I included poetry...

Man, I hope to really change this up soon by digging into more unknown/neglected authors.

>OK here's a more or less random list of favourites (defined as books I would happily re-read), at least those that come to mind without scouring my bookshelves. Only allowed myself one book per author:

The Leopard - Giovanni di Lampedusa
Le Rouge et le Noir
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Wuthering Heights
Tristram Shandy
Love and Garbage
Your Face Tomorrow - actually I've only read the first two parts, still waiting on Amazon to deliver the final volume, but I know I'll love it
Love Medicine
The Man in the High Castle
Ulysses
The Great Gatsby - someone just mentioned this on the radio and I thought gosh how did I forget that?

Lots more I could mention - Balzac, Zola, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Faulkner

OK here's a more or less random list of favourites (defined as books I would happily re-read)

Is there a top 10 list of books you have re-read?

Aren't top tens by definition re-read many times?

Okay, as a newbie...

Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East
Atlas Shrugged
Leaves of Grass
David Copperfield
Last of the Mohicans
Candide
Oscar Wilde
The Holy Sinner
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Les amitiés particulières

Thank you, K.J.! for your list! If anyone gives you any trouble about Atlas Shrugged, then they're gonna have to deal with me. And if richardderus says anything about David Copperfield, then he's at the salon's mercy.

Everyone, we have an LT author in our midst...K.J.! Glad to make your acquaintance K.J.!

K.J. is the author of a wonderful sounding title right up a lot of our alleys, Impaired Ocular Acuity and other Demented Synapses - a short story collection - that I'm going to wishlist after this post. He also has two other books coming out w/in a year, The Other Lamb & An Atheist in a Foxhole.

Feel free, if you like, to tell us more about your writing. I have visited your website and that is indeed a great place to start. The salon delights in promoting new or "unknown" writers and their works.

I hope you'll feel quite at home here. I think The Holy Sinner would make a fine future group read too, btw.

Mr Carpenter, that is a cool list!
Habroptilus, I have never heard of any of those books! Are you you sure they exist?
Atlas Shrugged? ????! Are you serious?

Don't care too much for lists. But on 21's list there is listed a John Gardner. An old up-state New Yorker from the goodledays. THE SUNLIGHT DIALOGUES & OCTOBER LIGHT. Not to forget GRENDEL. JG was what old John Barth thought he was.

JG was born in Batavia, NY. the son of a Shakespeare loving lay preacher and farmer. His life was tragically shortened by a motorcycle accident.

Murr murr murr I need to read more John Gardner murr murr murr murr.

> 24 Yes, had we but world enough, and time ;-)

I was a huge fan of On Moral Fiction back in my university days. In the last year I have read Grendel and Freddy's Book and my admiration for the man is unbounded now. I will read the rest of his oeuvre. I cannot recommend the ones I know highly enough.

26> Mon Dieu! That's quite a welcome, Enriquefreeque, et merci. Since you, too, favor the brilliant work of Ayn Rand, I will share a brief history of my encounter with this wonderful book.

I was in school, in upstate New York, when I was about 14 years of age, and I was a bit on the edge, most of the time. I was reading The Fountainhead and a history teacher noticed and approached me after my study hall to get my 'review' of what I had read. He seemed surprised to find me as excited about it as I was, and offered to loan me his private volume of Atlas Shrugged, complete with handwritten annotations filling the borders of most of the pages, providing that I was careful with it, while it was in my keeping. I vowed to do so, and then spent a wonderful, winter weekend holed up in my room, in the window seat, devouring the first part of the book. To me, it was fascinating, and the thought that a man of his stature would loan me something so wonderful astonished me. We are still friends, today. So, in spite of the disdain of others, it will always be a remarkable work, for me. (Yes, I did return the book in the same condition as it was when it was placed in my care.)

As for Charles Dickens, well...what can be said of him? He was a master wordsmith, and one of the greats, alongside: De Maupassant, Peyrefitte, Zola, Voltaire, Proust, Melville, Faulkner, Nabokov, Mann, Steinbeck, Gide, Hugo, Dumas and Austen (Jane), to name just a few.

As for my writing, please feel free to ask what you wish, and I will do my best to provide answers.

Again, I offer my thanks for the warm reception.

KJ

Post Script: How could I forget Agatha Christie? Hercule is my hero.

My top 15 (I couldn't cut it down :/) novels, not in any particular order:

Anderson's Fairy Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Claudine At School
The Dirty Little Unicorn
Freakonomics
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Into the Wild
Locke & Key
Lost Girls
Of Mice and Men
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Rocket Ship Galileo
Stranger in a Strange Land
Story of the Eye
Umbrella Steps

#32, yes, Ayn Rand is, like "classic" SF, best served very young. After one has a real experience of life she doesn't stand up very well. If you love her, please, don't read her beyond young adulthood, it will be a negative experience. Fourteen year olds don't have the critical faculties to understand Rand's point. As one gets older her tendentious fifty page rants get tiresome and are plainly set pieces of a rather unpleasant philosophy.

Personally, I wish all Randians would go Galt. The sooner the better. Then, to paraphrase evil itself, the grown-ups can get to work fixing our country.

After having commented on others top tens, it occured to me I give my top ten.

In no particular order except the first:

The Bible
Heart of Darkness
Jude the Obscure
Pickwick Papers
Middlemarch
The Grapes of Wrath
As I Lay Dying
The End of the Tether
The Golden Bowl
Treasure Island
Ivanhoe

There are many, many more that I am glad I've read and thoroughly enjoyed, but these are the ones I choose here and now. Tomorrow, it may be different.

Gene, if you want a touchstone for The Bible, you can use The Holy Bible. Unless you were referring to The Satanic Bible.

ETA Hmm, my bad. Touchstone for The Holy Bible works in edit mode, not in view mode. The Bible touchstone references The Cake Bible. Odd. Well, at least the Satanic Bible comes through.

Gene,
Interesting list. Has there been anything published in the the last 30 or 40 years that is close to your Top 10?

Not that comes to mind. I stopped reading contemporary fiction after a run-in with Looking for Mr. Goodbar many years ago.

I followed that with The Pickwick Papers. It was at that time that I learned I had some innate affinity to 19th century English and Russian literature. I have since branched out geographically, but not much in time scope, except to move backwards toward the Quixote.

I do enjoy Graham Green's entertainments, but I wouldn't say they are favorites. I enjoy many of the thrillers by Preston and Child, especially the Pendergast novels, but they are entertainments, not much brain food. I like to view the creation of our time through the lens of those who created it. I realize "our times" change, often radically, from time to time, but I think the nineteenth and pre-WWI twentieth centuries are where the later twentieth century was being invented in the minds of the nineteenth century.

The sense of hopelessness, impermanence and disaffection in later twentieth century literature I find off-putting as it tends to atomize society rather than strengthen the bonds that tie us together. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century were suffused with the possibilities of civilization. After the wars, this sense of belief in the future was turned inward on the individual rather than outward to the society as a whole. It is this individualism that puts me off. We can see, after thirty years of Randianism, what this near narcissistic individualism does to the cohesiveness of society. "If it feels good, do it", (or conversely, "if it feels good, don't do it") is no way to live life. "I got mine, you get yours" is a despicable, destructive philosophy and I don't subscribe at all.

So, most of the contemporary stuff I read is non-fiction or entertainments as I call them. Serious stuff from the last fifty years is, in my experience, mostly toxic.

I read a whole bunch of contemporary literature in college: DeLillo, Pynchon, Nabokov, and so forth (you see what an impression they left on me). I don't care for the word games, inside jokes, and such that suffuse their works, these are designed to separate people into groups, the "Ins" and the "Outs" and are mostly mental masturbation for each side. I want to bring people together rather than separate them.

I find danger in contemporary literature.

>34 geneg:, Too true about Ayn Rand. I read We the Living and Anthem when I was a teenager and was so caught up in the stories, shaking my fist, "damn" the man. Only after I finished reading them did I realize her deeply creepy philosophy.

I'm new, btw. Murr invited me a while back, but I was out of the country for a while and frankly, the erudition of this group scares me.

32> I reread Atlas Shrugged when I was 27, and again, a few years later, and again... As with all good literature, I came away with different emotions each time, but never did I come away feeling that I had just immersed myself in a negative experience. Instead of becoming a Randian, or Jungian, or Freudian, I come away from my reading experiences more firmly convinced that the best books I have ever read, were written by Baird T. Spalding, many years ago. The Life and Teaching of the Masters of The Far East was 'dropped in my lap' by one of my mentors, and it is her wisdom that let me open the door into a level of understanding that neither Rand, nor anti-Rand, ideals can alter.

34>

As for going Galt, (and I am chuckling as I write this) I would humbly suggest that it is the adults that have put folks on the other side of the pond in their current circumstance. Unlike the broken lamp in the living room, this one cannot be laid at the feet of their children. Just a thought.

Fanny, it's good to see you here. Don't be scared of erudition: everyone's point of view is valuable.

I'm very puzzled about the Ayn Rand phenomenon, and at the risk of offending, I want to put this out here:

I am puzzled that readers who are obviously well read and who revere good lit (KJ, you mentioned some great writers in 32) still are attracted to AR. Is it because, as you say, you read the book when you were very young and impressionable and didn't know better, or is it a forgivable lapse of taste (we are all allowed those, like liking Abba)? Frankly, I wince when I see AR's name conjoined with the great writers by readers whom I have been led to believe should know better.

Just a thought, and I'm really curious about it, not trying to pick a fight (for once) :)

>38 geneg: I read your comments with great interest gene, as I think much of our tastes overlap. I also favour the 19 and early 20th centuries over much of what is written today. From 1845 to 1920, roughly, was the great age of European and English lit.

However, I also enjoy the work of Pynchon and Delillo and Gaddis and DFW, as reflecting the times we live in as much as Dickens and Eliot, say, did for their times.

my top 10: chosen at random, provisional, temporary.

The Pickwick Papers (I want to be buried with this book)
Oblomov
Portrait of a Lady
Collected works of WH Auden
Collected works of Shakespeare
Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Middlemarch
Gravity's Rainbow
The adventures of Augie March

I have a tag in my library called Really Great Books, which are the books I revere and which have stayed with me since I read them.

In no order of preference; just alphabetical
by title:

Aeneid by Virgil

Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist\
by Ammon Hennacy

The Confidence Man: his Masquerade by
Herman Melville

Dhammapada anon. (Buddhist scripture

First Corinthians by St. Paul

The DIggerʻs Game by George V. Higgins

Gospel of John attributed to St. John

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The Ox Bow Incident by
Walter VanTilburg Clark

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

38: I find danger in contemporary literature.

I simply havent read enough contemporary fiction to judge a statement like that. Of what little contemporary fiction I have read I think McCarthy is pretty terrific. I'm sure there are other living authors who can rank with those 19th century giants, as well.

38...I hope you'll give Infinite Jest a chance when we get to it next year. I'd be very curious to hear if you, having no affinity for Delillo or Pynchon, would find IJ palatable. I think Wallace surpassed those writers (which may not be saying much, from your perspective, of course) but hopefully it's enough of a nudge that you'll give him a chance, because I think you'll be richly rewarded if you do. DFW digs deep, in IJ, into our media saturated culture, how it disconnects us from our humanity and ultimately addicts us and kills us. He jumps back and forth, primarily, between a tennis academy (DFW was once a junior tennis upstart himself) and a halfway house for drug addicts (DFW, while perhaps, arguably, not fitting the def. of an "addict" himself, nevertheless struggled mightily with drugs and booze in his mid-twenties after the success of his first novel, The Broom of the System left him feeling quite - I guess an accurate if cliched word would be - "empty." Infinite Jest could just as readily be titled "Infinite Emptiness," as DFW mines like no other the gaping void in his tome created by a North American culture (very much like ours) designed to distance us one from another; a "culture" that values advertising over art; crass competition over personal connection; consumerism gone so bonkers that even years can be renamed having been bought by major corporations ("The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" for instance); a culture, which, all in all, advances the hubris of the avant garde over an accessible aesthetic. Madness, in other words, very much like our world. Infinite Jest, geneg, critiques and often skewers the very complaints you've elaborated on (and sounds like you loathe) in contemporary lit. And yet, while IJ is contemporary (though as tomcat asserts, DFW is a throwback to the greats of the 19th century - perhaps he was born too late?) it possesses a universality that puts it at home in any generation, imho.

Well said, Enrique! Can't wait to do the group read of this. I also hope Gene will join us.

Gene Simmons?

Jean Simmons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMlgKIWGypA

Where are the clouds, tomcat? Where are the clouds?! That song accompanying that excellent video montage, makes me feel...so...so melancholic...so sad! Thanks!

>41 QuentinTom:, Murr, thanks for inviting me! I'll try to raise myself to the level of this group, rather than bring it down with talk of vampire novels! ;)

Perhaps a separate Ayn Rand topic is in order? For me, I was drawn to Anthem because I was reading a lot of dystopias - Brave New World, etc off of my parents bookshelves. And I read We the Living because its about the Russian Revolution/civil war and I was totally a Russophile at the time. I've never gotten into either of her two more famous works - Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. Its shallow, but I was turned off by the small print in my copy of the former. I recently gave it away in my book purge because I realized that I was just never going to waste the time to read it.

>46 absurdeist: EF, I hesitate to mention this, since I said the same thing to Jen just before she left, but could you occasionally hit the enter (return) key for a new paragraph? My eyes fuse all the letters together. Whitespace is good, no e-trees are sacrificed for whitespace.

ETA: BTW, the accompaniment to TC's video is Send in the Clowns, by Stephen Sondheim. It tears me up whenever I hear it. It's from A Little Night Music and tells of a missed love connection, like Josie Hogan in Moon for the Misbegotten, which also tears me up.

The reference is, of course, to the circus, where they send in the clowns if someone falls from the trapeze, to cover over the tragedy. Re clouds, you may be conflating Both Sides Now, or Clouds. Both Clouds and Clowns are sung wonderfully by Judy Collins. Great video, Murr!

Thinking of my top ten reads ever is a real challenge. Different books speak to us at different times in our lives, I think. When I think of the books that I love, I honestly cannot think of ten that have affected me in the way that the ones I am about to list have. These are not necessarily in order.

(1) Passage to Dusk by Rachid al-Daif - a short but lush and surreal novel about a young man losing his grip on reality during the Lebanese civil war. I've read this book three times and it never loses its power over me. It combines so many of my favorite literary techniques - unreliable narrator, shifting points of view, jumbled time - and contains passages that are both hilarious and heartbreaking (sometimes at the same time). For instance, in one of the scenes describing the narrator’s loss of his arm, he says: “It was humiliating, to have my blood lapped by rats. It was humiliating to have rats reach my shoulder before someone could offer me a hand, before someone could save me, move me to a hospital, a clinic, or a house….But nobody came. How I wished that some human being would come up to me before I died. But no one did. So I got up, carrying my wounds, rising above the pain….I walked on towards Barbeer {a hospital}. When I reached Barbeer, no one asked me what was wrong. It was obvious.” (Italics mine) After such a horrifying passage, I have to confess, I laughed hysterically at that last line.

(2) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen - Duh, right. I mean, check out my username. This was probably my third or fourth Austen (I think I accidentally read her novels in chronological order). This is probably Austen's most problematic, contentious novel and that is part of why I love it. All her other heroines have rather charming faults and most of them are sparkling & witty. FP is not. Honestly, the first time I read this book, I thought that Mary Crawford would somehow end up being the heroine, as she initially appears to be much more like a typical Austen female lead than meek, retiring Fanny. This is basically the only Austen that drives me to seek out critical scholarship and debate, which - for me - is a sign that I love a book.

(3) The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West - Such a quietly shattering book. There were times reading this book when I was literally breathless with the weight of West's prose and would put the book down for days just to linger with the memory of a sentence she had written. For instance: "We had suffered no transfiguration, for we are as we are, and there is nothing more to us. The whole truth about us lies in our material seeming. He sighs a deep sigh of delight and puts out his hand to the ball where Margaret shines. His sleeve catches the other one and sends it down to crash in a thousand pieces on the floor. The old man's smile continues to be lewd and benevolent; he is still not more interested in me than in the bare-armed woman. No one weeps for this shattering of our world." (Sigh.... I feel overwhelmed once again.)

(4) After Dark by Haruki Murakami - I know this is almost no one's favorite Murakami; some fans violently despise this book. I admit its the only book of his I've read, so perhaps it is weak or derivative in some way that I do not understand. Although I cannot really explain it, I loved this book. Sparse, understated, a growing undercurrent of David Lynch-like menace that (almost) never seems to go anywhere. Experiments in perspective. Totally unresolved. Don't overthink it.

(5) The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz - consisting of three books: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. This book did not leave me breathless the way the others mentioned above did, but it was still one of the best books I've read. Sure, it is weak and didactic at points - Palace of Desire is pretty much a political science lecture. However, Palace Walk is so wonderful and the cumulative effect of the three books is nearly perfect.

(6) We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - So creepy and well-written.

Other fantastic books but not ones that make me weak just thinking about them - The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, Persuasion, and a semi-non-fiction about Iranian intellectual history right before and during the revolution The Mantle of the Prophet. That book is one of the best pieces of non-fiction I've ever read; lyrical, absorbing, reads like a novel.

Edited to close the bolding.

it's great to get such detailed comments along with a list, Fanny. I agre with you about MP: it's also my favourite Austen. Have you read Nabakov's lecture on it?

>54 QuentinTom:, No! Where can I find it? Perhaps the Google.

#46, EF, I have every intention of reading "Infinite Jest" when the time comes. I've heard enough about DFW that I want to give him a try.

Wilf and EF, here is Both Sides Now, two different versions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcrEqIpi6sg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQSlH-LLTQ&feature=related

For me, I prefer the second one. Joni Mitchell has matured into a singer of great depth. Her last album reminded me of what Billie Holiday used to do with songs.

#46 et al

Oh, Enrique, it is beginning to sound like reading Infinite Jest is now a prerequisite for membership in the Salon. You mean I really do have to ask for it as a Christmas present, and then spend the Christmas break reading it, rather than spending time with the in-laws? On second thought, maybe that's not so bad...:-)

41> Your message had a tone of curiosity, so I will share my thoughts with you, and I, too, do not wish to pick a fight.

I understand your 'wincing' at the mention of AR with other great writers, for I have the same reaction when art collectors mention Picasso or Warhol in the same paragraph as Sargent or von Hofmann, for I find their work to be mindless, characterless and a waste of space. This perspective of mine did not always site well, with my fellow art enthusiasts.

My perception of the enjoyment of literature is that it is one as private and unique as a person's spiritual beliefs, which is why I steer clear of criticisms, regarding the reading habits of others. And, I actually like Abba, but dance is a pleasure that was removed from my life due to the partial loss of mobility, so perhaps that is why I enjoy them so much. (Perhaps that is why I was listening to one of their CDs in the car, as I drove home from a short shopping run, not an hour ago.)

For me, Ayn Rand came to me at a time in my life when I needed to reinforce my individuality, or die. I liked how she painted her characters and their individuality, and this helped me strengthen my own. Without it, I would not have survived.

I guess, for some, she was off key. From my perspective, she appears to have been prescient, when it comes to creativity. Today, mediocrity seems to flourish in art, music and literature, and the truly great we do not get a chance to see. Has anyone watched that abomination of talent shows, recently, to see what they are 'moving along to the next level?' I thought I was watching a frog-choking contest.

I did not enjoy all of her writing, but The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were very important books to me, when I was growing up, and I have long admired men and women who do what they know they must, in spite of public opinion. This does not mean that I condone greed or selfishness, for that is not part of my mantra. One cannot truly create great things if one is selfish, for selfish men and women can only create big things, and that is not the same, at all.

I have always loved Joni Mitchell. I used to go to little clubs and listen to her, Chuck Mitchell, James Taylor, et al. many years ago in Detroit. The first girl I ever thought twice about looked exactly like JM but for her green eyes. Same 'Ubaid' features and Dorothy Wordsworth wildeness. The latest 'biog' of DW says that WW raided DW's journals for nuggets for his poems. Frank Kermode knows that the discerning scribbler knows the value of DW's journals. Descriptions of nature (quite a surprise!) and the domestic front (nursing the bloviating STC) among other household goddess chores. Remember Falstaff's description of his Eastcheape whizz of the comestibles and various other creature comforts. Especially back in the days when The Fat Knight' s waistline was no larger than an alderman's ring.

And this song about my winter home for the last 30 years, my second home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q4foLKDlcE&feature=related

#60 poor-ious I do believe only you could name check Joni M, Dorothy W (2 favourites of mine too when it comes to the 'weaker sex'), Frank Kermode and Falstaff in the same post.

But tell me, what does 'ubaid' signify?

When I first heard 'Blue' it (phonetic pun alert) almost literally bl-w me away. There is rarely a day when part of that tune does not bounce around in my head.

#53 fannyp those are great, great mini reviews - I am taking those books very seriously now based on your recommendation. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is one of my all time greats - one of those few books which I could never be without.

However I have never read West's fiction. I think her biography would provide interesting reading too...

ETA more clearly defined paragraphs for Wilf.

Thanks, Murr, for the Joni Mitchell. The second video was especially poignant knowing her history, she surely has seen love from both sides now.

Getting back to Clowns, the most melodic I've found is by Judy Collins, the most dramatic is by Judi Dench.

And for urania whenever i may find her: simple (and not so simple) gifts.

ETA And for zeno, thanks, my eyes were already blurry from the videos.

Sorry Z for the wide circle of associations. Just a circle game I guess. It is a bit much, maybe. I was comparing JM's & DW's elfin wildeness. I admit to being a name-dropper, Kermode has a review in the latest NYRB on the subject of WW's faithful sister. It looks like I've developed the messy habit of substituting this LT for my note-books. At 60 years old I've shed the idea that I should care about what others think of myself as blatherskite. My old advisor in college used to tell me Fuck em if they can't take a joke. And if you know me you know he didn't have to take a lot of time to convince me of that wisdom. Of course there are times that I pretend just the opposite is true, but I soon get over it.

Oh, 'Ubaid' has to do with archeological things. A culture that pre-dated the Mesopotamians (too lazy to check proper spelling). The figurines have batrachian eyes, high cheekbones, and Shaw's St. Joan's jaws. Features very much like JM or another example is the Melusine-like Kate Moss. That solves an enigma with a riddle, doubtless.

52...are you tellin' me Mister it was clowns? and not clouds? All my life I thought it was clouds. I wonder how my life would've turned out differently had I known it was clowns? Clowns?! Where are the clowns and not where are the clouds?

And yes, white space is good, Wilf. Don't worry. I won't be deletin' all my posts since you mentioned it, though I'm tempted to. I'll try to remember. But you must remember too that DFW writes 5 page paragraphs regularly in IJ, small font, on oversized pages. Be forewarned! Which reminds me of JR, a 700-plus page beast with not one paragraph break in its entirety; an exhausting but always engaging read.

polo...or maybe you could read Infinite Jest to your in-laws; you might never have to see 'em again after that.

Great list & blurbs, Fanny! You sound like a lifelong salonista already. Glad you've joined! I've read Adrift on the Nile but not The Cairo Trilogy, which I think would be a fabulous group read, especially since we have several people here with personal experience in the Arab world in general and Egypt in particular.

And zeno, that Black Lamb and Grey Falcon sounds fantastic too. I don't see why we couldn't mix in some literary-caliber non-fiction on occasion. That, or even books like The Executioners Song; non-fiction that reads like an exciting novel.

#63 thanks p, my education in things arcane and enigmatic continues apace. I consider this to be a good thing.

Enrique - non fiction contenders is a good call.

>63 Porius: I've developed the messy habit of substituting this LT for my note-books. for which we are grateful. do please continue to be as messy as you like...

Zeno and Fanny, I've seen a copy of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon kicking around a second hand bookshop here for ages. Can you say a bit more about why it's so good. I'm half persuaded to go out this afternoon and track it down.

KJ, thanks for sharing your thoughts. As I thought, your appreciation has much to do with the impact the book made on you in your youth, which seems to be how it works for most fans of AR, I guess. I just feel somewhat surprised at the immense loyalty AR commands among her fans who should really know better. But the books of one's youth - there's a lot to be said for them. Agree with what you say about the presence of mediocrity in today's art, but I find it hard to divorce AR's quasi fascist worldview from what she says about mediocrity. I too deplore the unworthy elevation of mediocrities, but I don't think they should be shot.

Also, much of what AR says is simply watered down from the Russian philosopher Herzen, whose views were much more nuanced, complex, systematic and humanistic, and who was a literary genius to boot; and that kind of irritates me that AR (as a mediocrity) gets all the credit, while Herzen (the true master) languishes in obscurity -at least in the English speaking world.

Anyway.

> 55 Fanny, you can find it in here:

Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabakov

I'm looking forward to some day reading Atlas Shrugged. I read The Fountainhead, liked it a great deal, started to become confused, hated it, and even now go back and forth over it every time the topic comes up. Even though I disagree essentially with many of the things Rand put forth, the questions and challenges she raised in my mind as I read was worth the struggle of going through what I eventually felt was an unrealistic and disturbing story. My brother read Atlas Shrugged and said it was a more refined presentation of Rand's ideals, so I'm interested in seeing what's different.

I don't remember what I listed the last time this thread came up, but think my list then and now will be very similar (and I don't know who wrote what when so unfortunately I can't put up something fancy like 'famous firsts'). My favorites are all those books I find myself trying to get others to read, so if I had to suggest 10 books the would probably be something like this.

The Count of Monte Cristo
Kokoro
The Good Earth
The Plague
100 Years of Solitude/Memories of my Melancholy Whores
Language in Thought and Action
Robot Dreams Huckleberry Finn
Lolita

These are just the first ten that came to mind. The time it took me to come up with some really amazing books reminds me that I need to read more really amazing books.

>67 QuentinTom:, Murr, its all on Zeno! I've actually not yet read Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

oh. Zeno? Zeno? Zeno? Wake up man. Someone put an ice cube down his shirt.

I love these lists, they are starting points for journeys of discovery, and I simply have to figure out on which journeys to expend my time and energy.

Undset, Goncharov, and West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon are all new to me. I second TomCatMurr's request for a bit more description about West's book.

Top ten coolest (and sometimes luckiest) finds at second-hand shops:

-Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis
-Letters by John Barth - 1st ed. + signed for $5! :
-A Political Fable (again) + Pricksongs & Descants + The Public Burning by Coover - came across these along with 6 or so other Coover titles one day, 1st ed. all of them. Very cool.
-Amazons by Don DeLillo - yep, again!
-Short Short Stories by Dave Eggers - very hard to find/expensive
-Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone by Richard Farina
-Bed by Tao Lin
-The Nightclerk by Stephen Schneck - yet to read, but it sounds and looks great.
-Infinite Jest & Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace - first editions, both of them--for cheap. Now...if only I could find Broom of the System...
-Nog by Rudolph Wurlitzer - just found this yesterday completely by accident.

Well, as its by popular request....

The first thing to note is that the book comes in at over 1000 pages - so if you find you don't like it, you are in for a long haul.

It is a personal testament (I read several years ago that it forms a unique group of non fiction books which have re-invented a whole world based on the writers own inner world - the other 2 books to which this degree of personalised history was attributed were Seven Pillars of Wisdom and The Anatomy of Melancholy).

In fact, thinking about this today I came to the conclusion that it is not too far distant to Proust. West likewise projects her inner world onto the outer world to produce a synthesis of the two, some kind of hybrid world.

And I believe this is where both the acclaim and the dissenting opinion comes from. Those who glory in the book see it as a visionary piece, with some dazzlingly esoteric writing (the section on Gavril Princep and the assassination of FF is a case in point) whilst those that don't are annoyed by the less than even handed treatment of the various peoples and cultures.

I am trying to be even handed in approach because I think this is a book that will divide readers into camps, it does not make it easy to read the book in a neutral frame of mind.

To take the case for the prosecution one step further I quote from a fellow LT'er deebee1 (hope this is allowed - I do it as deebee is someone whose opinion I respect and who usually has similar tastes in books to me):

"What is tiresome in this book is that West loves to go rambling on what seems at first a philosophical discourse but after a while, turns into some mystical reflections. I find this surprising --- she appears to be very rational and intellectual in her initial approach to exploring the story and the mindset of these peoples, but in trying to understand them, she somehow imbues mystical qualities to events and characters. In any case, she can go on and on, and it is nothing but mind-numbing"

So there you have it - visionary, mystical even, but the flipside is irrational and to some a little tiresome when repeated over 1000 pages.

Like a moth to the flame, tho lists brings to mind Bertie's aunts.

Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake - A great work of the imagination and goddammed funny to boot.

Venus and the Voters, Gwyn Thomas - One of the finest. I just about passed out with . . . when I read a Thomas thing for the first time.

The Chronicles of Barset, Anthony Trollope - What can I say. When a person gets tired of Trollope they get tired of reading.

Burr, by Gore Vidal - What haven't I learned from this just about last of the great auto-didacts.

Our Mutual Friend, The Inimitable - Twemlow, Twemlow. Twemlow. And Silas Wegg is verra pfunny.

The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton, Russell Greenan - Anything by RG is fantastic. Wickedly Funny.

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons - She mocked one of my favorites John Cowper Powys, I'll let that go, She was supposed to be a one hit wonder. I've read a 1/2 dozen of hers this summer, including her nephew's biography of her. She's a keeper.

The Waves, Virginia Woolf - The spookiest book I've ever read. VW's essays are top shelf, by the way..

Porius, by John Cowper Powys - Too hard to explain.

The Cornish Trilogy, Robertson Davies - I've read just about every word published by RD. The wisest man of his times, certainly.

Is it 10 yet?

#76: Ah! Maybe I'll give one of those other Stella Gibbons novels in your library a try, then.

I wasn't going to give my top 10, as I'm young and came to good literature later than I should have. My list of faves is constantly changing as I read Great Things and kick something else off the top 10. (For example, I'm reading Les Miserables right now, and I'm quite certain that it'll be a new top-tenner for me.) But, courage:

In Search of Lost Time - Proust
Emma or Persuasion, depends on my mood - Austen
A Room With a View - Forster
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
Straight Man - Richard Russo (I really think everyone in the world should read this book, and certainly no one in academia should be spared)
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Plowing the Dark - Richard Powers
Hardboiled-Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler - Calvino
The Famished Road - Ben Okri

>75 zenomax: Thanks Zeno. I'll take another look at it. Anything on FF and Gavrilo Princip sounds intriguing to me. I loved 7 Pillars of Wisdom, but couldn't get on with The Anatomy at all.

poor and Medellia, those are some lists!!!!!!! Poor, have you read the whole series of novels from which Burr comes?

I've read all the American History series. Most of the novels including MYRA & MYRON; the historical novels in CREATION, JULIAN, & Co. & Co. The many books of Essays, which is a Liberal Education in themselves; the autobiographical stuff, which he didn't have any plans to write; and all the political writings between book covers and in mags, etc. & on the googles. Vidal, Burgess, Davies, and Updike are the 3 great men of letters of the 20th C. Of course Byatt, Paglia, Oates, Drabble, could be mentioned as well, but being 60 yrs. old I naturally mention the males first - this listing is fraught with many touchy areas, this gender thing being maybe the most touchy. When you, or if you have what it takes to understand just how awesome and intimidating Byatt's knowlege is, how could you put her below anyone on your list. But we do. And there it is.
Who has more presence: Laurence Harvey or Stewart Granger? Claire Bloom or Gene Simmons (not the moron rockandroller on the TV by the way)? What does a semi-intelligent voter like myself do when faced with these disturbing questions?
The Nobellers chose obama over candidates every bit as worthy for their Piece Prize. Was not Sar-ko-zee or Karr-zie (of the Afgans and their poppies) not at least as worthy?
I will start working full-time next week, so I'm getting in my licks while I can.

Poor, I've come to the conclusion that you are me!!!!!
And Medellia.

Maybe we're your good and bad angels. (I'll leave the decision of which is which up to you. *bats eyelashes innocently*)

Poor-ious,

I deeply resent that you used the word "voter" in post 79. Please edit it.

Gracias, Infidel Frique.

Oh and btw, on Trollope, I lucked out last weekend and got a bunch of Trollope, but still not quite the 40+ volumes of Trollope you own, dear poor-ious. Trollope in 2011, I say!!!

Voter, voter, voter!!!!!

Tolstoy had a very high opinion of old Anthony. Between A.T. his mother Francis and brother the wrote at least 300 books. Don't throw the towel in early, En-rrreee-kay, as with most really fine stories, the writer puts you to the test early, almost as though they had in mind the keeping out of the sluggards. Maugham refered to something or another as 'no featherbed for sluggards.' Of course the opening of BLEAK HOUSE closes the deal, but Mervyn Peake is ever vigilant to screen out those without the Nixonian beans, brawn, brains, and most important, butt. Nixon was of course a silly man in many ways - tho he wrote his books HIMSELF. A great book on 'tricky dick' by Gary Wills: NIXON AGONISTES. Sorry. I'm trying to quit but my fingers keep typing anyway.

And to our redoubtable tomcat: I am you as you are me as we are all together, koo koo ka ju and all that sort of thing. See how they fly like Lucy in the sky . . .
. . . What is he ded . . . sit you down father rest you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yNcE8c3j2M

You can hear echoes of the Tragedy of King Lear in the final seconds of I AM A WALRUS, great Nonsense.

Gads I'm a boor, but this has always summed it up for me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN1SveAyEIs&feature=related

I'm back. Watch for the M & M feline in this clip. Very spooky, it seems to me, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfYbcZFgTGQ&feature=related

dammit, youtube is down again. I never know whether it's the underwater cable or the government...

In the Trollope/Dickens debate I'm firmly on the side of Dickens. As you say, the opening of Bleak House is absolutely one of the best things in the language.

Not exactly competing with my #44, but giving equal time and space to another ten. (Iʻd rather choose 100 favorites than 40, and 50 rather than 10 or 25}:
Alcestis and Helen by Euripides

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson

Coganʻs Trade by George V. Higgins

Gospel of Luke by St. Luke

The Ice Man Cometh by Eugene OʻNeill

Jonathan Wild by Henry Fielding

The Odyssey attributed to Homer

On the Marble Cliffs by Ernst Junger

Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett

The Upanishads (anon.) -- Hindu Scripture

Rare Ben. Sigh. The other name I considered for LT is 'notwithoutmustard'.
In EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR Puntarvolo couldn't take Sogliardo's Cote of Arms without mustard. Sogliardo had purchased his gentleman's status, he had pelf aplenty but no gentlemanly standing in the community.

Poor Geo. he didn't have all that time, did he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh7bzIX3EBo&feature=related

Lists+books=not joy+joy, but joy squared.

1. The Magus
2. The Tin Drum
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. The Magic Mountain
5. The Lord of the Rings, and anyone who doesn't like it can cast themselves into the Cracks of Doom
6. The Illuminatus! Trilogy
7. Riddley Walker
8. Madame Bovary
9. Monsignor Quixote
10. The Baron in the Trees

Ten already? Shit.

>91 MeditationesMartini: - Fear not. There are never only ten top tens. There are probably twenty top ten universities in the states, and I'd guess thirty if you're testing worldwide. None-the-less, I will get my own list down to 10 with some careful editing - the usual qualifications apply, the list includes only literature but I'm not limiting myself to novels:

1. Omeros - the greatest book written in the English Language during the last twenty five years (and yes, I've read them all)
2. Moby Dick - by definition the greatest book of all time, since it is the definition of a "10" ranking on my scale. How often I think on the Whiteness of the Whale.
3. The Transposed Heads by Thomas Mann
4. A Dissertation on Roast Pig by Charles Lamb - oh how we laughed!
5. Something by Tennessee Williams, though just what keeps changing
6. One Thousand and One Nights, in all its variations, including but not limited to Mahfouz's Arabian Nights and Days
7. Brothers Karamazov, for no other reason than the debate between Ivan and Father Zossima
7. V by Pynchon, because it was the best experience of my first semester of college and so had a lasting impact.
7. The Broom of the System, for deeply personal reasons best not revealed
8. Swann's Way plus the Kafka thing about the bug - yes, there was a girl involved in this choice and the two works framed the relationship; she is now entirely forgotten but the literary pining was truly exquisite and memorable
9. Renascence and Other Poems - the title poem is the best way to take ten minutes to read and feel like you've just been traveling; plus I like that it is so woefully out of literary favor
10. Flowering Judas by Katherine Ann Porter, which, together with the wonderful movie La Guerre Est Finie defined my young life as a revolutionary
10. The Combined Collected Works of Homer, Laxness, Kadare, Agee, Elytis, Firdawsi and a dozen other folks, including selections from the Bible, Quran, Phenomenology of Spirit and Das Kapital (a volume I am currently editing)

There! I got my list down to 10!

10?! That's more like 37!!! Great having you here in the salon A_Musing!

Do you really think we're going to let you off the hook and not hopefully coerce you into revealing those "deeply personal reasons" for The Broom of the System?

Aw, come on, 'Rique. Everybody's allowed a private life! Why, I didn't press you to repeat to the Salon what you told me about your double life: upright individual by day, murderous fiend by--

I fear I've divulged too much.

The Broom of the System is not far off my top ten. It is definitely in the top few funniest books I've read. I'm looking forward to Infinite Jest next year.

http://www.bartleby.com/131/1.html

Renascence

>94 Medellia:...Yes, we are all allowed some Oingo Boingo every now and again, I suppose, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZJHgZX1yQk

top few funniest books...am impatiently waiting for someone to list their top 10 funniest books of all time....

Thanks. I'll consider whether to reveal the deeply personal reasons at some point during the Infinite Jest read, if, indeed, I'm able to get back into Infinite Jest. Until then I'll just be cryptic and difficult about it. That's what DFW - and Oingo Boingo - would have wanted.

But the Broom is worthy of inclusion on a great first novels list, no?

My top personal ten funniest books of all time would simply be Charles Lamb's essays. Another great list of funniest books would be the unintentionally funny - I once kept Ronald Reagan's The Creative Society in my bathroom, for example, and got many chuckles from it. Hmmm. I'll have to try to think of funny books. A lot of people don't realize how funny Melville was in Moby Dick, but it's still tough to put it on a top 10 for that.

But, dammit, I just realized I left off of my list of top 10s Faustus, Faust, Doctor Faustus, or whatever you call him. That's a great book!

The 10 funniest books I have read, in very rough order:

Straight Man - Richard Russo
The Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Emma - Jane Austen
A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
the short stories of Saki--"The Stampeding of Lady Bastable" is a riot
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
Dorothy Parker-- her reviews in my Portable Dorothy Parker are priceless
Diary of a Nobody - George Grossmith

My "funniest books" list would include Diary of a Nobody and Three Men and a Boat for sure--possibly , certainly A Confederacy of Dunces and indelibly The Sot-Weed Factor. Um, John Fowles' Mantissa? It's funny if you were a humanities major. (Speaking of which, my list would NOT include the nasty-minded, pissy Lucky Jim.) Perhaps The Loved One?

For the funny list: Haldorr Laxness's Under the Glacier and The Fish Can Sing. Dry, dry, dry. Funny, funny, funny.

OK,

sorry about this, not a contribution to the funny books, just my list of Top Ten, which of course does not consist of ten, is liable to change any time, is idiosyncratic, of books that affected my life. Not in any order:

Madame Bovary
Anna Karenina
The Idiot
Light in August
Good Soldier Svejk
Pride and Prejudice
Passage to India
Iliad, Odyssey
Huckleberry Finn
Good Soldier
Lord Jim
Franny and Zooey
Grendel
Song of the Lark
Wise Blood
The Outsider
Daring Young Man
No Country for Old Men

Re: funnies:

Gravity's Rainbow - I was lulzing on every page! Same goes to Pynchon's other book, Mason and Dixon!

How has no one listed Catch-22???

While Infinite Jest sho' is a funny book, The Broom of the System is way ahead of it, comedy-wise. You can tell he was a huge Pynchon junkie when he wrote it; their senses of humour are virtually identical.

I find a lot of Don DeLillo's stuff very funny, esp. my favorite: the criminally underappreciated Ratner's Star, aka DeLillo's Gravity's Rainbow. The Amazons book I mention EVERY post is up there, too. And End Zone.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - I love Eggers...annnnd I've got the feeling I'm alone on that here. The snobbiest of the snobby really have it in for Eggers. Absolutely hate his guts.

Both Barth's Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy are chock-full of good times and page after page of lulz. The later chapters of John Smith's diary are just brilliant, the diarrhea incident in particular.

O, & American Psycho. :) The Third Policeman / At Swim-Two-Birds. A Confederacy of Dunces.

Cormac McCarthy's Suttree's unexpectedly funny (the only book I've ever read with watermelon fucking), and one of his best.

How about very funny silly walks. They're funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w&feature=fvw

Egads! I feel I am encroaching on a small room, y'all suppin' and sippin' away at coffee, cookies, pieces of delicious looking cake: moist, dense, chocolatey stuff with shining, creamy looking chocolate icing, oozing over the edges as you sit, forks poised, cake prevented from exploding onto your tongues by my entrance.

Hopefully you'll bring me into the fold (I do so enjoy cake!) once I've told you my top 10, in no particular order:
1. Norwegian Wood
2. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller
3. Of Mice and Men
4. Fathers and Sons
5. Kafka on the Shore
6. The Woman in the Dunes
7. Ender's Game
8. V
9. Dandelion Wine
10. La Nausee

Now, it seems that at present I am going through a literary awakening - I've only recently come upon the likes of Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Eco, Tolstoy, Balzac.. aii, and so many others. I feel as if I have begun too late, as if I should have started earlier - never fear, for I am quick of mind and eye: soon I shall be up to speed with the wisdom that these geniuses have to offer.

some great lists!!!!!!!

Top 10 funnies:

Brother Karamazov
Anything by Kafka
Doktor Faustus
Hunger
The Waves
The Death of Ivan Illych
The Stranger
Anatomy of Melancholy
The Book of Disquiet
Das Kapital

All side splittingly funny.

clearly people like lists...

It's comforting to list things and view the world as a series of lists, as something you can turn into a list.

Lists get me hard.

>102 tootstorm: OH YEAH Catch-22! And Gravity's Rainbow also, although some of the jokes are so mid-20th century. I can't say I love Slothrop as much as Pynchon does.

All of Heller's books, at least the one's I've read were hilarious. And deep too, Mac. Esp. GOD KNOWS & SOMETHING HAPPENED. Most readers don't think of Anthony Trollope as funny but he can be very funny. The suitors of Arabella Greenow in CAN YOU FORGIVE HER are a scream. And of course the reliably unreliable Mr. Jingles in PICKWICK PAPERS. Dickens was anticipating Joyce's method when he wrote Mr. Jingles. I know you will treasure this little bit of info, EF, Joyce fan that you are

107 LOL LOL LOL a bookbone !!

Is that you poor-ious ? Why : "And deep too Mac", what's that suppose to mean ? LOL

Here is a list of " must read authors".

Fernand Braudel
Mohammed Choukri
Khalil Gilbran
emile Habibi
Nazim Hikmet
Yacine Kateb
Kazantzakis
Yachar Kemal
Naguib Mahfouz
Avraham yehoshua

It is big world out there

Tis me minus a couple o's, oh,and by the way deep as in a well.

I have been meaning to post in here. I've been reading everyone else's lists with interest!

Favorite Funny Books
• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome — Probably the first book I ever laughed aloud at, and my introduction to British humor.
• Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens — I read this on vacation one year, lying on the beach chuckling at the lovable absurdity of it all.
• The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue by P. G. Wodehouse — I listened to this on audiobook read by Peter Cecil, and actually had trouble driving at times because it was just so hilarious. I am sure I looked absurd to other drivers on the road. Cecil totally gets Wodehouse, and the result is mercilessly funny.
• Laughing Gas by P. G. Wodehouse — My first Wodehouse and the first book I ever had to set aside because I was laughing so hard. Really, almost anything by Wodehouse is guaranteed to have me laughing. You can't go wrong with him.
• Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett — One of my first Discworld books, and the funniest I've read so far.
• Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey — A childhood favorite, it's the story of a family of twelve children and their eccentric father and mother. Maybe it was so funny to us because our family was a bit larger than the usual too.
• Anything by James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Wise and Wonderful, All Things Bright and Beautiful, The Lord God Made Them All, etc.) — More long-time favorites, the hilarious memoirs of a Yorkshire veterinarian in the 1930s. In college I read Herriot as an antidote to the nonstop depression on my course syllabi.
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain — Satirically funny joke on both hardheaded Yanks and melodramatic medievals.

Favorite Books of All Time
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo — One of the most transfiguring books I have ever read. My soul got bigger as I read this book; it was like a baptism. This book has it all. I cannot wait to read it for the third time this December.
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte — Read this one as a teen and really liked it; read it recently as an adult and was absolutely captured by it. Wonderful characters, glorious Gothic story, and a skillful treatment of true religion and hypocrisy. "Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion."
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — I'm with martinmccarvell; if you don't like it, go jump into the cracks of Mount Doom! Tolkien was a genius. I wrote my honors thesis on Middle-earth and was still in love with the book even after a year of patient grubbing among the scholarly works on the subject. I reread it yearly.
• Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz — Vast, epic, brilliant historical fiction covering the persecution of Christians by Nero. This book informed my imagination as a young reader and became the standard by which I judge all historical fiction.
• Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen — My first Austen, and consequently a very special one to me. I am always debating whether this or Pride & Prejudice is my favorite.
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee — Can a book be any more perfect than this one?
• Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery — I'm with Mark Twain; Anne is "the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice."
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — Incredible insight into the human condition. This is the sort of book I don't think I will really love, and then I hang on every word, astounded by the skill of the author.
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin — Fantasy again. Compelling and powerfully written, with not a word out of place.

I could go on and on... there are so many other authors I love (Dickens, Collins, Gaskell, Sayers, Lewis, McKinley, McKillip, Eliot, Tey, Clarke, etc.). Narrowing a favorites list down to ten is so hard. Maybe I should do genre lists instead.

LOVE this thread.

And thanks, Murr, ever so much, for your list of funnies.

The greatest of all are of course, as you say, Kafka and Camus, with Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn just slightly behind.

Laugh on, Macduff!

Another great funny book, recently listened to, is The Reivers. And while on Southern Fiction of the American brand, we can't forget Flannery O'Connor.

Wisewoman! I like your list! I love that you recognize the take-it-to-the-next-levelness of Tombs of Atuan as compared to the rest of the trilogy (have you read Tehanu? I just learned it existed); I love that someone's speaking up for Hester Prynne; I love that you included To Kill a Mockingbird, because thinking about that book just always gives me a good feeling in the cockles; I love that you support my LoTR-hater aspersions; and I am very excited about reading Les Mis (for the first time) as well.

Oh, weird, I can't delete without leaving a little vestigial tail? Well, I only deleted that first message because I accidentally left some letters out of "wisewoman", not because anyone said anything that drove me into a rage which I subsequently recanted.

I sense another fantasy fan in the room... :)

Yes, I've read all the Earthsea books. The original trilogy is miles better than the later additions, though. I actually really disliked Tehanu. The storyline was weak and even Le Guin's usually deft writing seemed poor. The Tombs of Atuan is definitely the high point in that series, no question.

How do your cockles like the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird, martin? Mine glow happily.

*high-fives for Tolkien* I'm in the middle of my annual LOTR reread at the moment, listening to it on audiobook this time around. Rob Inglis actually sings the songs! Some of his melodies are forgettable, but others really do fit the words (like Tom Bombadil's song). Good stuff!

You are going to LOVE Les Mis. I'm excited not just for rereading, but for doing so with other readers (and especially with first-timers).

118--When I get around to winnowing down my favorites to ten, To Kill A Mockingbird will be there. Loved the movie version. It captured the essence of the book, largely thanks to Horton Foote's screenplay.

Can't wait for Les Mis. I'm a first-timer for you.

I'm very excited myself about Les Mis too. I'd be really surprised if anyone reading it ends up not loving it!

Cockles like film v. much! Did you see that article in the New Yorker recently about how Atticus Finch was the worst kind of Southern patrician liberal and actually set civil rights back by trying to work within a rotten system? Madness.

Sorry to hear about Tehanu, but on LoTR, have you seen the animated version of The Hobbit? The songs are uniformly amazing and will stick with me all the days of my life.

>112 atimco:, 116, 118, Love finding fellow fans of The Tombs of Atuan specifically. Definitely the best, most interesting book of the Earthsea series.

>116 MeditationesMartini: and 118, I had mixed feelings about Tehanu. It was almost too real - seeing our heroes old and washed up was just too sad. Also, as wisewoman said, the story itself seemed weak and mostly uninteresting.

104...redkit - thanks for dropping by the salon with your list! Great list (like seeing all that Japanese lit represented). You are very welcome here. Hope you'll consider joining.

Okay, you guys are inspiring me to come up with my own top 10 fantasy/sci-fi list. I can't separate fantasy & sci-fi because I haven't read enough of it to have 10 in each genre, so here goes:

01. The Lord of the Rings (deal w/it tomcat!)
02. Dune just the first; I also like Children of Dune, but the drop off from Dune to Dune Messiah was truly atrocious.
03. Titus Groan - the entire trilogy really is fabulous, should be a salon read someday soon.
04. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin - I'm sorry, but forget 1984 & Brave New World, We is the dystopia to top all dystopias. '84, except for that iconic opening sentence, bores me. BNW was derivative (let's argue about it!) is dated, and is definitely not the best starting place for what otherwise is an exceptional author, Aldous Huxley.
05. The Sheep Look Up - Brunner nailed a lot (not all) of the environmental catastrophes looming on, what was his, 21st century horizon.
06. The Illearth War - my favorite from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
07. The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak - the very first book I ever bought on my own at the visitor center in Grand Teton National Park, 1980 family vacation, I'll never forget it. I'm sure it'd be disappointing today, which is why I'll never return to it.
08. Riddley Walker - A Clockwork Orange meets The Hobbit.
09. Childhood's End - either that or 2001. I choose CE because of its dark, occult overtones which were really unexpected to me at the time.
10. Foundation - the trilogy only. The fourth one, Foundation's Edge, was okay, but nothing near the originals. Foundation and Earth I couldn't finish, and know nothing about the three other volumes Asimov wrote or the four others that his estate has authorized people like Gregory Benford to write.

I've yet read The Chronicles of Narnia (sorry WW ;-) ) or any Ursula Leguin, or any Heinlein, or any steampunk, or anything new, or anything by Philip K. Dick that was good, or that latest from Stephanson, Anathem which is supposed to be a masterpiece. Or: Robert Anton Wilson! Terrible! Would love to see some sci-fi or fantasy lists from those of you who are really really in to it.

I don't usually do lists such as these - too much agony deciding among equally amazing works. But last Friday I found I had a friend in rather extreme circumstances - I don't know the details of what happened as yet, but knew I wanted to send him something to sustain him. Actual choices were influenced by price, but here goes:
Rumi's World: The Life and Work of the Great Sufi Poet (I Am Wind, You ..)
Art and Architecture of China: The Yale University Press Pelican Histo
Les Miserables
The Master and Margarita

Solla,

OMG.

you are amazing in so many ways,

but you are also an ASCETIC!

Almost everyone else is saying I have to do 20, or in some cases, 37, including entries such as "the collected works of Shakespeare..."

and you do a list of

FOUR!!!

Bloody amazing!

Enrique--gooooooood choices on the sci-fi. I'm trying to reacquire the Foundation books for my first reread since high school and am very excited about it.

And oh man, We sounds amazing. There are always new delights under our tired old sun.

SCI Fi .?

1Foundation Asimov
2Ravage Barjavel
3Do androids dream of electric sheep ? by by .... ( Philippe K Dick ? )
better known as the cult movie "blade runner"
4Martian chronicles Bradbury
5Dune Frank herbert

7 From the earth to the moon J Verne
8 War of the worlds by Wells ( why not the musical - opera version ? )
9 I am legend by Matheson ( who is the monster ? )
10 A clockwork orange Anthony Burgess
11 Frederic Brown : Martians go home
Michael moorcock, Tanith lee , Arthur c clarke ?

Science Fiction favorite authors:

Olaf Stapledon- SIRIUS
E.T. Bell (John Taine) - FORBIDDEN GARDEN
John Cowper Powys - UP AND OUT
P.K. Dick - THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE
Dingleberry MacNichols - HOWS ABOUT ME
Michael Moorcock - BEHOLD THE MAN
Colin Wilson - THE SPACE VAMPIRES
Rudy Rucker - SPACETIME DONUTS & THE WHITE LIGHT
H. G. Wells - TONO-BUNGAY (tho I'm taking liberties with the catagory here)
Johannes Kepler - SOMNIUM (THE DREAM) could also be called a fantasy, but who's counting?

121: No, I have not seen that article about Atticus Finch. Good grief.

I haven't seen the animated Hobbit for years. I see I will need to raid the library for it. And speaking of Tolkien songs, have you ever heard anything by the Tolkien Ensemble? This song (Galadriel's "Ai! Laurie Lantar") is simply amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtQkR8gBmwA. I believe the artwork is by Ted Nasmith.

This is another favorite of mine from them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9Erdh3XFJ8. I sang this one for a benefit concert last year, accompanied by guitar and keyboards.

fanny, I feel so validated now about disliking Tehanu! It just felt more about an issue than a story, and the whole thing suffered as a result. I'm still not sure why she went back and tried to add more to the original trilogy.

Enrique, it's nice to see another Peake fan. I agree that the Gormenghast books would make a GREAT salon read.

I read Dune and found it rather... bloodless. Disconnected, somehow. It was a good enough story and the world-building was creditable, but I felt a profound disconnect from the characters and thus the book left me cold. The others in the series are worse?

I'm enjoying everyone's lists. I haven't heard of many of these.

And I see I need to make a top fantasy/sci-fi list. And we should also do favorite children's/YA books. Yay lists!

Gormenghast is great! And three cheers for Mr Jingles!

Gormenghast is great, but I felt that lush painterly thing he has going a bit much after the first two books and always thought Titus Alone was better off for being sketchier/unfinished. the characters will certainly stay with me, though.

Wisewoman, thanks so much for that link! It was beautiful, and the renderings were amazing (especially that black dragon halfway through--was that Glaurung? Turin Turambar was my least favourite bit of the Silmarillion when I was a kid, although I think I was still more comfortable with pure-laine heroes like Aragorn than antiheroes like Turin).

On the sci-fi tip, allow me to suggest Robert Silverberg's stunning Dying Inside.

There's no real rhyme or reason to my list, just ten books jumbled together.

Les Miserables - V. Hugo
Foucault's Pendulum - U. Eco
Invisible Cities - I. Calvino
East of Eden - J. Steinbeck
The Master and Margarita - M. Bulgakov
A Passage to India - E. Forster
Paradise Lost - J. Milton
Wuthering Heights - E. Bronte
For Whom the Bell Tolls - E. Hemingway
Anything by Borges...

Also, I've re-read The Count of Monte Cristo, The Wicked Day, and Dune every year since I first read them... They may not be my absolute favorites (any more), but I still love the three of them dearly.

Torikton, I like Foucault's Pendulum better than The Name of the Rose myself - we seem to be in the minority on that, though.

matin, funny you mention Dying Inside, as I within the last couple months picked it up dirt cheap just because of the fascinating title and blurb on the back. I will need to read it based on your rec.

WW, Gormenghast in 2011!!!

I needed a break from magazine editing and this thread looks promising....
Sticking with just novels and not poetry or collections of short stories or non-fiction makes it more difficult for me to make my list, but I'll give it a try. Keep in mind that with no qualifier, I'm creating my list based on what I really enjoyed - some may be of questionable literary merit, others I read when I was much younger and they have stuck with me over the years. . . I'd say these are in order from favorite on down - the last two I could have been convinced to switch out with some others.

1. House of Leaves
2. Lord of the Barnyard
3. Where the Red Fern Grows
4.Bridge to Terabithia
5.Reservation Blues
6.Straight Man
7. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
8. World War Z
9. Good Omens
10. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

P.S.
Amusing observation (at least to me) - three of my choices have titles that have something to do with plants.

This is a top 10 list of the books I've re-read many times. This list does not include the many, many Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K.Chesterton books that I've re-read many times because then it would become a mystery top 50.

1. Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen.

2. The Rivals. Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

3. Seryozha: Several Stories from the Life of a Very Small Boy. Vera Panova.

4. Plays Pleasant. George Bernard Shaw.

5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams.

6. Short stories of to-day. J.W.Marriott.

7. The Secret Garden. Frances Hodgson Burnett.

8. The Pickwick Papers. Charles Dickens

9. A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens

10. Death of a Salesman. Arthur Miller.

134...oooohh, House of Leaves! I'd forgotten about that in my lists. May need to amend that with an experimental fiction list or macabre list. Anytime you need a break from magazine editing, Sean191, the salon is here for you!

135...Porua, nice seeing you here! Death of a Salesman, ooommpphhh, that's a visceral impact hits you deep in the gut read. Perhaps we also need a top ten plays of all time list, eh? Death of a Salesman would probably be my #1.

# 136 Hey that's a great idea! I know a lot of people don't like reading plays but I just LOVE them!

For plays put me (and Goethe) down for Khalidasa's Sakuntala.

How about a list of lists?

138...Ask and ye shall receive...A List of Lists

1. (Sci-Fi) http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books_rank1.html

2. ("Regular People")http://www.thebest100lists.com/best100novels/

3. (Crime Novels) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Top_100_Crime_Novels_of_All_Time

4. (Adventure Books) http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0404/adventure_books_1-19.html

5. (Beach Reads) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106983620

6. (Mystery) http://danitorres.typepad.com/workinprogress/2009/03/1-the-complete-sherlock-hol...

7. (Fantasy) http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/fantasy100/lists_books.html

8. (Children's Books) http://childrensbooksguide.com/top-100

9. (Classics) http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/072098best-novels-list.html

10. (Postmodern) http://listverse.com/2009/02/13/top-10-works-of-postmodern-literature/

A List of Lists continued:

11. (Poetry) http://www.poetry.com/greatest-poems/

On the Fantasy list:

Dante's INFERNO 98 or thereabouts and Harry Patter coming in at 2 over Charles Dodgson and Clive Staples Lewis? Harry Patter's a fine little story but enoughsenough.

Are lists becoming obsolete in the internet age? For example, if I want the most useful sharespeare quotes, I can go here: http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html

List of plays:

The Alchemist - "Rare Ben"
MSND - "Our Elusive Willy"
Man & Superman - Bernard Shaw
She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night, 1773 - "Goldy"
Irene - Sam: Johnson
Question Time - Robertson Davies
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
The White Devil - John Webster
The School for Scandel - "Sherry Derry"
When We Dead Awaken - Henrik Ibsen
Exiles - James Joyce

Vital additions to the play list:

Waiting for Godot
Endgame
Rockaby

Goethe's Faust
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida
Sophocle's Antigone
The Qing Ding Pearl
The Producers

Plays:

The Oresteia-Aeschylus
Antigone-Sophocles and Anouilh's (with Sophocles, I'd opt for the entire Oedipus Cycle
A Delicate Balance-Edward Albee
Waiting for Godot-Becket
Enemy of the People-Ibsen
Mother Courage-Brecht
Long Days Journey into Night-O'Neill
Macbeth-or almost any Shakespeare
The House of Bernarda Alba-Lorca
A Streetcar Named Desire-Williams

There was a time when Death of a Salesman would have been in the top ten and Streetcar would have been down the list as being just too "too." Now I'd switch them. And I once would have chosen "Virginia Wolf" for Albee. Pains me not to include some Chekov, Ionesco or Pinter, but none of them are too far away. And no women playwrights, hmm....

Glass Menagerie maybe?
and Death and the King's Horsemen

Dear Porius:

I said in another thread tht I was waiting to see someone attribute The Alchemist to Ben Jonson, and NOT to Paulo Coelho.

After several months in LT you are the first one Iʻve seen who gives The ALchemist to "Rare Ben".

Well done, and a good choice for your list.

Plays: In no particular order

Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound; the Persians;
The Seven against Thebes

Shakespeare: Julius Caesar; Othello
Romeo & Juliet; The Tempest; Twelfth Night

OʻNeill: The Iceman Cometh

Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof;
Summer & Smoke

Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Ionesco: The Lesson

Jonson: The Alchemist

Chayevsky: The Tenth Man

Goldsmith: She Stoops to Conquer

Chekhov: The Boor (the ONLY good ONE-ACT play that I can think of off-hand)

Gogol: The Gamblers; The Inspector General

Moliere: The Doctor in Spite of Himself

Ibsen: An Enemy of the People

Euripides: Alcestis; Helen

Aristophanes: The Clouds; The Frogs;
Lysistrata; Thesmophoriazusae;

Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus; Ajax

Plautus:* The Haunted House (Mostellaria);
The Merchant

Frisch: The Firebugs (Biedermann und die Brandstifter)

OʻCasey: Juno and the Paycock

Shaw: Heartbreak House; Androcles and the Lion;

* I have played a supporting role in both of these

149> Excellent list!

The tough part is making the tough choices even though the choices might change here and there on another day. Many of my choices are plays that I've seen. I saw Houseman's company put on THE WHITE DEVIL in Ann Arbor MI. It was stupendous It got on my list probably forever.

To theaelizabet:

Thank you.

(It just struck me that Sophoclesʻs Antigone should be on the list, even if at the expense of, say. the Shaw items.)

Tamburlaine and Angels in America

Now wouldn't that be a great double bill?

146... yes, hmmm, is right! Where are the women playwrights represented here?!

Top 10 plays by women playwrights, someone, pronto!

>151 Porius:--I'm jealous. I've heard that it's an impossibly hard play to produce.

>152 rolandperkins:--And I can't believe I left off Aristophanes.

>153 A_musing:--It boggles the mind. I would love to see the producer that would take that on.

>154 absurdeist:--Yeah, the woman thing? Uh, I'm working on it....anybody else out there?

#154/155: Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun? I can't say it'd make a personal top 10 list, but it's not without merit.

Medillia, I actually thought about her and almost listed The Sign In Sidney Brustein's Window which is overwritten, but quite powerful in spots. Sadly, she wasn't around for very long. I've always thought she would have matured into one of our top playwrights.

Actually, there are many strong women playwrights, but I guess I can't think of one I'd put in my top ten.

155 - John Houseman's minions were up to the task. And not a nosegay to be seen anywhere. I can't think of too many women play- wrights right off the top of my head. Not with plays that you can put in a class with EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR, & co. & co.
I might have put in Brecht's GALILEO. The film of was excellent. And what no Greeks?! Of course they all could make the cut but I knew others would make up for my omissions. I wanted to get out a few names that were under the radar. Any chance to proselytize.

Actually, there are many strong women playwrights, but I guess I can't think of one I'd put in my top ten.

Do tell. Embarrassingly, Hansberry is actually the only female playwright I can name off the top of my head.

Don't be embarassed. I googled "women playwrights" and while they're out there, there's really no big names everybody's heard of. Susan Glaspell's name comes up. Gertrude Stein wrote some plays, but she's not really known foremost as a playwright.

Here's a well known play written by an "unknown" woman playwright: http://www.librarything.com/work/8275

and here's a piece on the dearth of staged plays by women playwrights: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=an.EDXm2gS_0&refer=m...

Lillian Hellman, Edna Ferber, Wendy Wasserstein, Tina Howe, Suzan Lori-Parks--those come to mind. Oh and good 'ol Aphra Behn, one of the first (if not THE first women playwrights (If I'm correctly remembering the notes from my college theater history class).

In the 90s, the Signature Theater Company (I think it was them) in NYC used to build their seasons (3 or 4 plays) around the work of one playwright. The first woman they acknowledged was Adrienne Kennedy. Not that I don't respect her work, but I do remember it was hard for them to find a women who had enough available plays and who wasn't Wendy Wasserstein.

Apologies to Mrs. AB. I've read her novel OROONOKO (1688); and as British Secret Agent in the Lowlands, "Astrea", she conjured up THE FAIR JILT. The plays,etc. have never caught the attention of Harold Bloom, et al., it seems to me.

Playz!

I am gonna cheat and give myself four Shakespeares (comedy, tragedy, history, and problem play), because he is that awesome. Actually, I'm gonna double cheat and substitute a problem play for a history, because much as Falstaff and Crookback Dick have their moments,they're not the equal of either of the problem plays on my list.

The Tempest
Much Ado About Nothing
Romeo and Juliet
A Winter's Tale
Kit Marlowe - Doctor Faustus
Brecht/Weill - The Threepenny Opera
Anne-Marie MacDonald (a woman playwright!) - Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet
Oliver Goldsmith - She Stoops to Conquer
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
RB Sheridan - the School for Scandal

I did it! Ten plays and I didn't have to use another Shakespeare or sully myself with Beckett. Wish I knew more about the Greeks though.

Sci-Fi:

Asimov, Foundation series
Clarke, Childhood's End
Silverberg, Dying Inside
Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Footfall
William Gibson and Robert Anton Wilson the Difference Engine
Verne, 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea
Wells, The Time Machine
Colin Wilson, Spider World
Otomo Katsuhiro, Akira

Maybe we could throw in a play or two here and there for the sake of education, don't all laugh at once.

AS YOU LIKE IT with the incomparable Richard Pasco as the Melancholy Jay-kwees, includes a young Helen Mirren.

The 1983 TV MACBETH with the scintillating Nicol Williamson and the bewitching Joan Lapotaire. She delivers a WS sonnet in John Barton's PLAYING SHAKESPEARE series, 9 pts. with many notable members of the RSC - that kills me dead each and every time I play it.

Sci-Fi (like, pure sci-fi, not counting something like Gravity's Rainbow or Ratner's Star or whatever, nawmean?):

01. The Illuminatus! Trilogy by RA Wilson & R Shea
02. Solaris by Lem (the Tarkovsky movie (Solyaris) is AMAZING too)
03. Roadside Picnic by the Brothers Strugatsky (again, the Tarkovsky adaptation (Stalker) is just as good)
04. Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy by RA Wilson
05. Masks of the Illuminati by RA Wilson
06. Snow Crash by Stephenson
07. Jurassic Park by Crichton (gtfoilovehim)
08. Sphere by Crichton (same, like best beach reads ever)
09. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Adams
10. A Scanner Darkly by Dick

I guess I really haven't read enough sci-fi. Or FANTASY:

01. The Lord of the Rings by duh
02. American Gods by Gaiman (does that count?)
03. The Princess Bride by Goldman
04. The Wind in the Willows by Grahame
05. The Hobbit by JRRT
06. The Little Prince by de Saint-Exupery
07. The Harry Potter series...?
08. Neverwhere by Gaiman (again, does that count?)
09. Uhhhhh....Grendel by Gardner
10. Stardust by Gaiman (OK, that one DOES)

I definitely need no! WILL read more of both genres w/in this next year. For sure. I've been looking into starting a bunch of fantasy series lately, like those big epic ones. As long as it's done. Not like Martin's series.

nice play lists!!!

5 Woman playwrites/playrights/playrites:

Caryl Churchill Top Girls
Franco Rame A Woman Alone
Fanny Burney The Witlings
Shelagh Delaney A Taste of Honey
Dodie Smith Autumn Crocus

My favorite plays,

The Rivals. Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

All the plays in Plays Pleasant. George Bernard Shaw.

Death of a Salesman. Arthur Miller.

A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde.

All the plays in Plays Unpleasant. George Bernard Shaw.

The School for Scandal, A Trip to Scarborough and The Duenna by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

What does this list say about me? That Sheridan is one of my favorite authors, I love comedies and Bernard Shaw rules!

My Top Plays (in addition to those above)

Lear Edward Bond
Saved ditto
Narrow Road to the Deep North ditto
Six Characters in search of an Author Pirandello
Juno and the Paycock Sean O'casey
The Caucasian Chalk Circle Brecht
Galileo Brecht
The Country Wife William Wycherly
Private Lives Noel Coward
Design for Living ditto
Blithe Spirit ditto
Woe from Wit Griboedov
Luther John Osborne
THe Hypochondriac Moliere
School for wives ditto
Translations Brien Friel

oh those were the days........

oh and I forgot this masterpiece:

The Marat Sade Peter Weiss

In most of these cases, certainly for the fantasy, I read these books years ago...not sure what I'd think of them now, but I know I enjoyed them a lot as a teenager.

Sci-Fi:

1. The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
2. R is For Rocket - Ray Bradbury
2. Machineries of Joy - Ray Bradbury
3. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4. 1984 - George Orwell
5. Anthem - Ayn Rand
6. Farenheit 451
7. Alas, Babylon
8. I am Legend - I guess sci-fi? Horror?
9. World War Z same as above?
10. Johnny and the Bomb - Terry Pratchett

Sci-Fi Fantast little cheating here since many are trilogies - and not in any real order due to that - I also tried to stick closer to "sword and sorcery" type fantasy - otherwise, Watership Down, for example, would have been top of the list and actually, most of these books wouldn't be here:
1. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
2. Dragonlance original Trilogy
2. The Iron Tower Trilogy - by Dennis McKiernan (yes he did write these as a tribute to Tolkien
3. Winter of the World Trilogy- by Michael Scott Rohan
4. Silver Call Duology by Dennis McKiernan
5. Harry Potter Series
6. Chronicles of Narnia
7. Chronicles of Prydian by Llloyd Alexander
8. Moonshae Trilogy by Douglas Niles
9. Icewind Dale Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore
10. Xanth Series by Piers Anthony

I have to be geeky and point out that The Lord of the Rings is not technically a trilogy. A trilogy consists of three works related in theme, each of which can stand on its own as an independent story. This is not the case with The Lord of the Rings, as it is one story broken up into three volumes because of the cost of paper after the war. Sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine!

131 re: Gormenghast: That's funny, martin, because Titus Alone has always been my least favorite for precisely the reasons you mentioned. I thought the plot was very unfocused, and the story could have ended perfectly with Gormenghast.

I watched the BBC miniseries a few years ago. Has anyone else seen it?

135 Porua: I LOVE The Secret Garden! It's nice to see it making a top ten list :)

Plays are definitely a weak point in my reading. I'd be up for a salon read of a play sometime.

Top Fantasy Books
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (surprise, surprise)
• The Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake
• The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
• The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (if I had to pick one, probably The Horse and His Boy)
• Harry Potter (if I had to pick one, probably The Order of the Phoenix)
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Ronia, the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren

Lots of YA fantasy mixed up in there too.

>133 absurdeist: I wonder why that is. I liked them both, of course, but I feel like Eco put a great deal more of himself into Pendulum.

Top 10 Sci-Fi:
Dune: Herbert
VALIS: PKD
Snow Crash: Neal Stephenson
The Shadow Out of Time: H.P. Lovecraft
Illuminatus!: Shea & Wilson
Sirens of Titan: Vonnegut
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Heinlein
The Lost World: Conan Doyle NOT Crichton
Neuromancer: William Gibson
The Man in the High Castle: PKD

#172 - Actually, technically, a trilogy just needs to be three parts related in subject or theme - there's no requirement for them to be able to stand on their own. I know LoTR was supposed to be one story - but the fact that it was released and is generally still marketed as a three book collection keeps it as a trilogy.

#174: Marketing, shmarketing. If Tolkien regarded it as a single work, it's a single work.

The thing is, it *is* is one story. Not supposed to be. Tolkien himself talked about the misapplication of the term "trilogy" to The Lord of the Rings somewhere in his letters, I believe.

And the definition of trilogy is this: "a series or group of three plays, novels, operas, etc., that, although individually complete, are closely related in theme, sequence, or the like." That's why I said "technically."

Of course you may call it whatever you please! :)

#175: It doesn't matter what he regarded them as if there are physically three separate books - three = tri. The logy part translates from Greek to something like "knowledge" or "thought." So basically, three thoughts.

#176: I suppose I should be more exact if I'm getting into a discussion relying on semantics - I meant to say one volume, not one story.

I'm not sure where your definition came from, it differs from the Merriam Webster Dictionary's, so it may be a case of dictionary choice causing the discrepancies in our views ;)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of trilogy: "a series of three dramas or literary works or sometimes three musical compositions that are closely related and develop a single theme"

It was dictionary.com.

Your breakdown of the word itself is fascinating, but it can be made to argue for either position. To me, "three thoughts" means "three distinct and complete-unto-themselves thoughts," if that makes any sense whatsoever! The Lord of the Rings is one thought in that it is really one story, not three (though with lots of offshoots and subplots, of course). So a definition of trilogy that says "three thoughts" really doesn't support the position that The Lord of the Rings is indeed a trilogy.

I do think that if Tolkien made the distinction himself that the work is not a trilogy, we ought to respect it. (I need to find that reference!) Ah, here it is. Sorry, I was mistaken — it wasn't Tolkien, but Douglas Anderson in his 1986 "Note on the Text":

"The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, published for convenience in three volumes."

I was pretty sure Tolkien also mentions this somewhere, but I don't have my copy of his letters with me.

It's rare to hear a Tolkien scholar call it a trilogy because the term is generally considered incorrect. Of course the filmmakers throw "trilogy" around indiscriminately, but that doesn't make it correct.

And The Lord of the Rings isn't always published in three separate volumes now. There are plenty of one-volume editions floating around: in fact, I have two, one of which is the big gilded glorious 50th Anniversary Edition :D. If you want to be really picky, it's actually a six-part work; each of the three volumes is divided into two books. So saying it's a trilogy because it's published in three separate volumes doesn't make much sense, especially when the definition of "trilogy" is not physical but thematic, having to do with the content rather than presentation.

*is loving this conversation*

Do people make the same distinction for The Illuminatus! Trilogy? I've only ever seen it in one volume...

It's interesting how the size we individually decide to draw our boxes has so much effect on these lists. I definitely would have put 1984 on mine, and actually did put Illuminatus! on my best books list . . . but I just didn't consider either of them sci-fi. I always felt like the stress in sci-fi should be on the "sci"--it's not just "future fantasy".

As for traditional fantasy (obvs series, not individual novels):

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. I think this should really include the whole legendarium, from The Hobbit to Unfinished Tales &c. Otherwise, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion at least would get separate slots.
CS Lewis, Narnia, and my favourite is The Horse and His Boy as well. Pevensies out!
JK Rowling, Harry Potter, and my favourite is also Order of the Phoenix! Wisewoman, clearly we're doing something right.
Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising sequence. These are stunning and underappreciated. The best one is the eponymous.
Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast (as a set, but my fave is clearly Titus Alone)
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
Lloyd Alexander, The Prydain chronicles (I thiiink my favourite is The High King)
Ursula Le Guin, Earthsea (but I think the last one is a disappointment)
Just to see a different tradition represented, Fritz Leiber, the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books.
Aaaand Michael Moorcock, the Elric saga (gotta be ONE saga on here).

Yikes! That was hard! I disqualified Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and the unclassifiable Riddley Walker, or they'd definitely be on the list. I wanted to include the Dragonlance books, at least the first series, but feel like I should go revisit them first under the strong suspicion that they may really suck. (Said suspicion is even stronger in the case of Terry Brooks's Shannara series, although they certainly left a mark on my budding psyche as well).

Pretty sure I've got no good excuse for leaving off Conan, though:)

Oh, and ditto on excluding Watership Down, which I love dearly. Hey, you guys know what was kind of precious but kind of good? The Gammage Cup.

>181 MeditationesMartini:.

W.r.t. the WHOLE Legendarium: some may question you on that. Generally Tolkien purists. ESPECIALLY those who despise the annotations and edits brought forth by one Christopher Tolkien. I've met people who won't even read the Silmarillion because of this.

Clarke definitely would get in my top ten, but I must say that my top ten would have to be using a number system in base 11 or higher...

How would you define the Elric saga, though? He appears in so many other stories! I'm slowly trying to collect 'em all, like soul-stealing Pokemon. I'd rather take the Eternal Champion series as a whole, which, I think, is everything Mike ever wrote. Did he write non-EC works? I've yet to discover one.

Your intuition is right: Shannara is teh suxX0rz. You're better off just buying a new edition of LOTR and replacing words like "Gandalf" with "Allanon", "Flick" with "Sam", and "Brona" with "Sauron" or even "Saruman."

The book as the author intended it was The Lord of the Rings. One book. I actually own a copy of this one book. After he wrote The Lord of the Rings, people who did not have his best artistic interests in mind (nasty people who only wanted to make lots of money off his hard work) decided to divvy the book up into three sections, fearful that 1000+ pages of a single book wouldn't sell well or would be too imposing for the public to read, which was hogwash (it was all about the money honey) - they could make more selling three books rather than one.

Thankfully, they weren't arbitrary in how they divided the book, divvying it up into sections where natural breaks in the narrative had already occurred - which might make it seem like to some that Tolkien intended this on purpose. But he didn't, and they'd be incorrect in assuming that he did. It's one book, there is no question of semantics. That it's sectionS are sold separately is a publishing/profit cause (more bucks) not an artistic one at all, nor Tolkien's decision. I think it's safe to say the author of the book gets to decide if what he or she has written is one book or not, don't you?

And it would have sold well, I'm sure, as one book; the public would have still eaten it up as one volume, but there we stand: the publishers created a faux "trilogy" out of what was written as a singular, unified work, never meant by Tolkien to be read or sold separately.

*is not familiar with The Illuminatus! Trilogy*

Ack! How did I forget Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell? Add that to my list; that one's amazing. I've read it twice and it only gets better with time.

martin, that's just scary. So why are HHB and OotP your respective favorites?

I love the Prydain Chronicles too, though I would say The Black Cauldron is my favorite. Or maybe Taran Wanderer; it has such a melancholy, reflective tone. The High King is fantastic too. I would say The Castle of Llyr is probably the weakest, though, wouldn't you?

I included Watership Down in my list as I *do* consider it fantasy. I have it tagged "Animal Fantasy" in my library though.

I've heard The Gammage Cup is good but I haven't read it yet. I think I better listen to your recommendations, since we seem to like so much of the same stuff!

Also, in my re-reading of JS&MN, I've noticed that's a "trilogy" too... As much as LOTR is.

Also, wasn't the original, spoiler-free title of LOTR part 3 "The War of the Ring"?

>183 aethercowboy:, I'm no purist in anything. It seems to me, if you love Middle-Earth but have Christopher Tolkien's influence, isn't that just where the really interesting story begins? Teasing out what's JRR and what's Chris. Imagining what JRR would have done had he lived forever. Most of all, having ten times as much material to mull and play with, in no matter how attenuated the form. It seems sort of anti-life to reject something if it's not pristine, like leaving your (one's) wife after her face gets disfigured with acid.

I've been trying to dredge a complete set of Elric stories together as well (or "researching" more than trying, really) and it is freaking hard. I may just sit on my set of the little silver Elric paperbacks from Ace, and leave it at that. I remember Moorcock also for a book the name of which escapes me but which was about human beings creating themselves into these divine entities with, like, brain powers (name escapes me) and for an amazing essay slagging LoTR, but mostly I'm ignorant.

Well said on Shannara, but what's really teh suxxorz is my math skills. Is "top ten in base 11" a good thing?

>187 MeditationesMartini:.

http://www.multiverse.org has some pretty useful Moorcock-related lists.

Are you referring to The End of Time books feat. Jherek Carnelian and Mrs Amelia Underwood? Also, the essay is called "Epic Pooh." My favorite quote from it: "If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits."

If you can't tell, I'm a Moorcock fan. In fact, my profile image is my face as I was sitting next to Mike (http://picasaweb.google.com/jacob.silvia/MichaelMoorcock#5170642472241423394)

A number's base, essentially, determines how many unique things there are between nx and nx+1 (where n is the base). If you have base two (binary), you have 1, 10, etc. If you have base eight (octal) you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, etc. If you have base 16 (hexadecimal), you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, 10, etc. So, your top ten can be of indeterminate length, provided you don't run out of symbols.

Of course, I dropped my math double major at the last minute in favor of graduating with a BS in CS on time, so I may be wrong.

Wisewoman:

HHB--partly because it was the first one I came to; partly because it presents the Calormenes as human beings (albeit nasty ones) and not just a bunch of cartoonish, undifferentiated heathens to fall before the clean steel of the North (I know there's a lot of that in HHB too, but at least they are humanized a little first); partly because the idea of "horse language" fascinated me (and still does, as a grad student in linguistics--I wrote a little paper on the phonetic inventory of the skylark, which was silly but fun); partly because I came to Lewis via Tolkien, and had little tolerance for that public-school-kids-on-a-summer-adventure thing that is in so much (especially British) children's fantasy--'swhat I meant by "Pevensies out." I wanted an otherworldly journey, not a Mary sue--or at least, my Mary sue didn't need to be a Little Middle-Class British Boy or Girl Just Like Me, so Shasta was adequate. Partly because the mounds of the dead were fucking creepy. Other reasons!

OoTP--It seems to me like this is where the series finally takes wing and gets away from the whole Hogwarts-Quidditch-sarnies and butterbeer rigmarole of the earlier books--and lest you think I'm just irretrievably prejudiced against British public schools, I definitely see the appeal of all that and cherish the Hogwartsian aspects of my own academic life, but it gets cloying after a point, and I think this book more than any of the others is where the bildungsroman aspect comes to the fore and Harry stops using his big-man-on-campus, boy-who-lives specialness as a crutch to help him through. Later on ***** kills ********** (as I'm sure everyone knows now), yes, and Harry is even more on his own. But he's already been alone, in this one--starting out at Sirius's house, cut off from school and comfort and everyone, meeting the Order, who are a support network of a different, more autonomous, more adult-world sort. Before his victories were all Hogwartsian, right up to the Tri-wizard tournament, and Voldemort's intrusions were just that. Now, Harry gets a sense of what the struggle ahead is REALLY going to look like, and how lonely grown-up life can be, and how your friendships are looser, more dispersed, but just as essential, and where it's easy for the young to be beautiful, we value the tested and grown for their bravery and the scars they bear--and whatever loveliness they've managed to preserve.

Also, I read it in a wooden house in Tokyo during typhoon season, and it's a good memory:)

Aether:

Aha! so your meaning was "JS&MN would be #11."

and yes, that was the series. Good reads! Thanks!

And that's an excellent thought.

Thought? I mean, "photo." whatever.

Wisewoman:

Definitely The Castle of Llyr is the weakest. It's a pointless excursion and would have been better as a freestanding bookwith no Prydain connection.

And yeah, check the Gammage Cup. I reread it a few years ago and found it more derivative and twee than I did as a kid, but there are still aspects that are lovely without being cutesy, and the Mushrooms (you'll see) are still waaaay creepy.

>190 MeditationesMartini:.

More specifically, "If I made a top ten list, I would have more than what you would expect, as I would define ten in a way to suit my needs."

Something like that.

I suppose I must concede the LoTR argument - although I am glad they were split up - it doesn't make a difference to the story but it does make a difference to the back-health of a young kid carrying the book in his (or her) backpack ;)

#184 - That's an interesting theory about the publisher. While it may be true, on the flip-side, by breaking them into three, it probably served to ultimately sell more copies of the story in it's entirety than it would have if they were all compressed. One huge volume would likely prove too daunting based on looks alone for some, while introducing it in installments would be more welcoming, getting people hooked. Also, while people might not be as willing to part with say, double the price of a single volume (just a guess of what it might have cost at the time), they'd be more willing to spend less book by book, but more in installments overall.

I don't know how clear I'm being - it has been an incredibly long week and I'm running on vapors right now...at least I should get home at a reasonable hour tonight and another issue of the magazine is done.

Back from my digression and perhaps this is a topic for a separate thread - but it has been my own pet peeve that the chronicles of narnia are numbered 1 to 7 with "Magician's Nephew" being #6. I believe it has changed more recently, but when I was a kid and had first read the books, that's where they shoved that one. That seems like it was strictly based on publishing chronology rather than story chronology. So, were publishers just too lazy to reprint? Would it have cost them a little extra to correct things? Did no one bother to think about the issue at hand until years later when someone who actually had read the books as a child grew up and became a big shot at a publishing house and made the change?

Yes, I may need to get home earlier tonight...

Sean:

Yeah, that always bugged me as well. I actually see it with The Magician's Nephew, though--it has a kind of prequel quality, being about Digory and not actually having a tonne to do with Narnia at all. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe introduces the Pevensie kids and the main storyline, and it feels right to number the books in-continuity from then on (making e.g. Prince Caspian #3, not 2), with The Magician's Nephew as a #0.

Oh boy. I don't have time to get into publication versus chronological order right now. Later *rubs hands with glee*

I'm new to the group and thought I'd jump in this way, if you all don't mind.

Top Ten (No order, though maybe subconsciously...)

The Little Prince
Catch-22
Shogun
His Dark Materials Trilogy
The Shadow of the Wind
Franny and Zooey
The Secret Garden
The Last Unicorn
Pride and Prejudice
Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Welcome mihess! I'm pretty new here myself. Good to see the Dark Materials Trilogy (and it is a trilogy, isn't it?) mentioned here for what may be the first time, yes? I've only read the first book, but eventually will read the other two.

194/195--I read "Narnia" with the "Magician's Nephew" later, but by the time I was reading it to my daughter in a spiffy new oversized hard back edition, "MN" was the first story. I remember that the Introduction to that volume offered an explanation, but I'll have to find the book to remember what it was. I liked having "MN" first.

Edited to add words that were mysteriously lost when I posted message.

Thanks theaelizabet! This group seemed to be pretty active and that is exactly what I need for my not-so-active job in which I have plenty of time to troll the forums...

Glad to bring something new to the table, though His Dark Materials isn't new by any means. I first read them when I fit the YA category and now that I don't, I still think they are wonderful and jam packed with layers of very not YA subject matter. I hope you will enjoy them when you get the chance!

Welcome to the group, mihess! We seem to have two books in common, The Secret Garden and Pride and Prejudice. Although I've recently read Catch-22, I wouldn't put it in my top 10, as I'm not sure that I will re-read it in the future. It's not that I didn't like it. It was just a difficult read at a difficult time for me. But I've explained all that in my review so I'm not going to get into that right now. Anyway, nice to see that you've put The Secret Garden in your top 10.

Thanks Porua! These are two good books to have in common. Pride and Prejudice always makes me laugh out loud and even though I know the ending, I always suffer along with the characters. As for The Secret Garden, it makes me dream about living in a garden such as the one Mary, Dickon and Colin created. After finishing the book, I usually get the urge to grow my own flowers and plants. Unfortunately I have no green thumb and live in a desert. Sigh! Maybe one day...

You are welcome, mihess! Yeah, I have that dream too. But unfortunately I live in the city, which is kind of a jungle, definitely not a garden! Maybe someday I'll be able to move out of this city and finally have a garden of my own.

When I first started reading this thread, I felt that my list would be rather déclassé when compared to the lists of others, but upon further reading and discovering several more plebeian titles in the mix, I decided to post mine.

01. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
02. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus
03. Trinity by Leon Uris
04. Cathedral by Nelson Demille
05. Lion of Ireland by Morgan Llywelyn
06. Second Son by Charles Sailor
07. The Descent by Jeff Long
08 .The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle by Peter S. Beagle
09. The Last Dance by Carmen Agra Deedy
10. The Stand by Stephen King

Except for #01, they are in no particular order and, in fact, should probably be all tied for #02.

Any list that has John Kennedy Toole on it can never be considered "declasse," as you say, in my book.

Which version of The Stand do you prefer, Boobalack? (I love your handle btw - ;-) ) I'm in the minority and actually like the originally released version better than the one with the extra 500 pages he re-released (I think) in 1990.

Trinity trivia: The book is featured in Mark Wahlberg's movie, Invincible. It's the mid 70s, and Mark's character is in an NFL lockerroom, and one of the offensive linemen is sitting on a bench apparently enrapt with his paperback copy of Trinity.

You feel free to join us here in the salon, Boobalack, any time you like.

Thank you EnriqueFreeque. When I see your handle, I always hear "Freaky" in my mind. Sorry.

I also prefer the original version of The Stand. Glad to find someone else who does.

Most people consider A Confederacy of Dunces to be humorous, but I found it quite sad. So did my daughter. Poor Ignatz, as we so fondly call him. Have you read The Neon Bible by Toole? I wish he had lived to write more.

I suppose I was just in awe of all the deep/intellectual literature that was listed here. The only one of that nature that I have read and enjoyed is Anna Karenina. It's been so long since I read it that I need to reread it.

I like some of the modern classics, if there is such a thing. Loved The Grapes of Wrath and seem to have a different reaction to the word Okie than do most Oklahomans. Could be because I'm a transplanted Okie. To me, this book emphasized the strength, work ethic and more of the Okies, rather than it's being insulting because they were poor. Different drummers, I suppose.

I'm glad you like my handle. You can read all about it here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/73610 .

Excuuuuuuse me Boobalack! When you see my handle you hear what?!.... "Freaky"?! In no way did I ever intend my handle to be pronounced in that peculiarly pejorative manner! My name is clearly pronounced "Free-Kay" and not "Free-Key," I'll have you know!

However, I'm going to let this unfortunate incident slide for now, because I completely agree with you that A Confederacy of Dunces is incredibly sad, much in the same way that Infinite Jest is incredibly sad, despite both books being so renowned for their fall-down, drop-dead humor.

I like your handle even more, Boobalack, now that I know it's named after a bird with a very large libido.

;-)

It's like "Mrs. Bucket" on "Keeping Up Appearances." I did apologize, after all, so you can pretend that I don't think that any more. ;-) I shall concentrate, and before long that appalling moniker will be gone from my mind.

You should have seen my husband's face when I found that silly song and told him who the bird really was. The nickname had been mine for so long, it would have been a shame to change it, especially since I had little grandchildren calling me that.

Great lists! I'll have to do mine as an Authors List, as it's too difficult to differentiate preference for an individual work of those in my list (although, I'm fairly confident that Ulysses is my favorite book).

1. James Joyce
2. William Shakespeare
3. Dante Alighieri
4. Gustave Flaubert
5. Stephen Jay Gould
6. Emily Dickinson
7. Samuel Beckett
8. Herman Melville
9. Thomas Mann
10. Thomas Pynchon

So now it's our favorite book, is it? No longer content with the wiggle room provided by a top ten list, we now must distill it all to just one book?

Well, yes, thank you for asking, I do have a single favorite book, just one book that I put above all others, that holds a place near my heart and that I expect to have buried with me so I can read it in the next world. It is actually easier for me to identify the top one than the top ten.

Moby Dick; or The Whale. Just the title tells you that this is no 19th century book, but rather one that is, from the beginning, atuned to the signified and the signifier, the individual and the idealized. What's in a name? Call me Ishmael, indeed. My name is Sam - it is a variant. It means "listens to God." Yes. This book and I were meant to be.

Easy, and agreed : the top 1 is easier than the top 10

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann; final. point.basta.

#209, I've requested to be buried with The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle and all of my Fogelberg CDs.

The Pickwick Papers in my coffin, please. If you hear ghostly laughter, you'll know why.

I am strange---I dont think I could list as many as 10 and I definitely couldnt reduce it to one.

Riddley Walker over my face, The Baron in the Trees over my heart, The Tin Drum over my belly, The Magus over my junk, and The Communist Manifesto buried at my feet to keep bankers from violating my corpse.

Look at this - we can't even count to one?!

I guess I took the "buried" as more salient than the "one". I dunno, give me the Compleat Shakspere.

(Note: I'm the one with 37 top 10s).

212 LOL LOL LOL
214 LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL Tha MAgus over your junk ? what does that mean ?

Bury me with Pride and Prejudice and I shall be happy even in death.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW - Anthony Trollope. It's not a grave matter, though.

219-Thought about P&P, but must go with Jane Eyre. To the grave, that is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTcZbVV8yIc

Play it loud ! Wake up the neighbourhood !!

You know, my baby-makin' junk. It seemed like the appropriate chi point for The Magus, if I were gonna be buried with it.

# 221 Nah! Jane Eyre is good but too gloomy. Death is a gloomy business as it is! At least Pride and Prejudice will keep me happy! :-)

224--I will admit that it's a tough call!

Edited to add: Now that you've pointed out the need to counteract the gloominess Porua, perhaps I'll go with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland instead!

Harking all the way back to message 189: Martin, that's interesting about why you like HHB; your first two reasons are negatives (the non-presence of the Pevensies and cartoonish Calormenes). That's cool about the linguistics thing! Bree's full name is always fun to say. HHB is my favorite because of its tight plot (long-lost heir before that became too much of a cliché) and the characters. Aravis is amazing — plenty of spunk but also a lot of insecurities that make her very realistic. I love the culture of Calormen, the stylized speech and storytelling, the hints of insanely decadent luxury for the upper classes. The humor is great too. There are some iconic scenes in this book: Shasta's night at the Mounds (yes, creepy!), his night journey on the mountain, the secret council with Rabadash, the Tisroc, and Ahoshta, etc. I love how each character makes a different journey... and finds Aslan at the end, who has been guiding their paths all along. No one is ever told any story but his own. Mmm.

And hey, the Pevensies aren't totally out! Edmund and Susan are there in Tashbaan, and Lucy fights in the battle at Anvard. Peter's off fighting giants. Come on, no Pevensie love?

I think we are closer in our reasons for loving OotP best (though I don't find the first four books cloying). I saw the first four movies before I read the books, so the fifth was the first one I read without knowing what was going to happen. It was a WILD ride! I have a fascination with secret resistance movements too, so that element really appealed to me. I also really liked how Rowling started integrating Harry's story with the bigger picture of the Ministry of Magic and all the politics that go along with it.

So which are your least favorites in these series? And why, of course. Anyone may answer!

194: Sean, you are evidently a strong proponent of chronological order for the Chronicles of Narnia. I confess myself a diehard publication-order-ist, mostly because that is the order I grew up reading. Publication order wasn't a mistake on the part of the publisher; they just published the books as Lewis wrote them (1950–1956, one every year or so, I believe). In a letter to one of his young fans Lewis expressed a mild preference for chronological order, but it wasn't until 1994 that HarperCollins reordered the series. Now you can't buy a publication-order set new, to my distress. I cling to my beloved pre-1994 paperbacks that are numbered correctly :-P

I like publication order because you can follow the evolution of Narnia in Lewis' own head. There are some fascinating differences between the Jadis of LWW and MN, for example. Also, MN's not one of my top favorites in the series so I would never advise someone to start there. I love the "oh-so-THAT-is-how-that-happened!" feeling you get when you read MN after the others. And perhaps it doesn't make sense but I have always loved how Narnia's beginning is revealed just before its ending. It would probably make more sense to use the creation and apocalypse as bookends for the rest of the adventures, I suppose. But I always felt that Lewis was giving us one last adventure before the end.

Andrew Rilstone has a pretty good article on the subject of chronological versus publication order: http://www.narniaweb.com/resources-links/in-what-order-should-the-narnia-books-b...

So I guess we'll just have to keep looking for something to agree on, Sean! :) At least we are reading some of the same books, right?

mihess (message 201), I know exactly how you feel with The Secret Garden making you want to try your hand at growing things! But it wears off pretty quickly, I've found. I'm an armchair gardener :-P

Pride & Prejudice versus Jane Eyre is a terrible, terrible choice. I'm not sure I can decide.

#226. We'll keep working on it WW ;)

>226 atimco:, wisewoman, I had no idea that the Narnia books were now sold in chronological order only! My (publication order) set is at least pre-1990s and has fantastic weird covers, so you can bet I'll be holding that tight. All this talk of Narnia makes me want to re-read them again.

>228 fannyprice:.

I didn't realize they were sold in chronological order until the Walden Media version of LWW came out in theaters. I went to see it with my wife and siblings-in-law (all younger than me), and they were wondering why they started making the movies with the SECOND book.

I was like, "bwaaaa?"

WW:

Well, mixed negatives, maybe; it's not the non-presence of the Pevensies so much as (as you say) their transformation into fantasy heroes, which for the kid I was then, coming to Narnia from Middle-Earth, was much more agreeable than the ickle children. I also prefer the Pevensies in Prince Caspian, say, where they seem like kids but are actually old campaigners who surprise Trumpkin with their skillz. I didn't want to be stupid old LWW Edmund, screwing everything up with his candy needs, is what it came down to.

And as for the Calormenes, it's not the non-cartoonishness exactly, or at least it's viewable both ways--the non-cartoonish Calormenes are, as you say, the Calormenes of the deep, rich culture, the stylized storytelling, the palanquins, etc. The scene with the Tisroc and Rabadash, yes. Even the initial thing where Shasta's dad is gonna sell him off.

And yeah, Aravis=huge crush when I was 8, for sure.

Least faves? For Narnia, I'd go The Silver Chair. I wanted more Narnia, or at least more worldbending fantasy like in Magician's Nephew and Dawn Treader, with crazy worlds. Instead we get this little grey bog story, and sure, Eustace is there, but instead of Lucy with him or somebody in whom we have some investment--or a free Narnian or a fierce Calormene a la Aravis--we get fretful Jill, who never grabbed me as a character. (Ditto Puddleglum). I know the bringing new people into Narnia was important for Lewis's allegory project (which, incidentally, my early life was so thoroughly non-Christian that I did not pick up on until I reread the books as a teen. "Aslan is Jesus?"), but I was like "Come on! Learn something from Tolkien! Take us to Telmar, glamorous and cruel!"

On Pride and Prejudice v. Jane Eyre, well, for your consideration (from my review of Jane):

Jane Eyre is an irrefutable argument against Pride and Prejudice. All those ponderous, poncy, prancy nasty fucks and their drawring-room drama get their comeuppance right here. Like Pride for its wit? Rochester's jousting with Jane has so much more blood, as well as more fancy - elves and fairies vs. bleating about "My name, my good name" on Darcy's part. Compared to Jane, Elizabeth whassername is a spoiled child.

Like Pride for its romance? I don't even wanna talk to you. However you interpret the ending of Jane, it is so much more heartbreakingly romantic - for good or ill. Austen is "You hurt my feelings. Let's date." Bronte is the story of a life, with the guts and bones mixed in, and when you start to find Jane tedious and troublesome in the St. John Rivers chapters, you realize - oh yeah, she's been totally wounded by life. She's not our plucky heroine; she's riding the knife-edge between that and tragedy.

Like Pride because of the interesting light it sheds on the courtship and marriage customs of the English gentry in the early 19th century? Okay, you may have me here. Jane Eyre is a lot more feelingsy, bringing us inside our protagonist's head the way it does, and maybe indulgent with all its what-is-he-thinking and I-must-flee. I can see what Sarah from school thinks it's more "chick-lit" than Pride: it's a lot more sentimental and closer to purple in passages. While REALLY NOT being interested in setting Sarah and I up as representatives of our gender, it's interesting too that I prefer the love story about the nervous bird and the charming cad - Rochester learns, I think, his lesson in the end (even if he has to be crippled to do it, and let's pray it doesn't come to the same with me) and she prefers the one about the piqued middle daughter and the arrogant aristocrat. As far as the men go, I like the guy who is passionate and fun and has been wounded by living, but is a manipulator and liar - he learns to temper his excess. Sarah likes the one with the guy who's honest and upright, but charmless and fastidious and (I know he isn't, but this is what I always imagine) dumpy. He is a jerk to you and you feel bad, but when he says he loves you he knows you really mean it. Can this possibly reflect a female anxiety about whether you really have the heart of the one you love, and a male defensiveness about our underhanded ways with women? Also, Sarah's girl Elizabeth could be considered a kind of Mary Sue for the female reader to inhabit, but also a cipher - as much as the story has remained with me, I think I remember preferring both the oldest and youngest sisters. Jane, on the other hand, is hard and uncomely - the kind of woman that other women often do not like; but notwithstanding the fact that we know we're wrong for her, that men often fall for - a staff for to grasp.

If you read this rambling and feel inclined to respond, please post on my LibraryThing profile page and give your gender, whether you prefer Jane and Rochester or Elizabeth and Darcy as a couple, and (if you feel like it) why. Thanks! ( 4.5 starz; I gave P&P three )

fanny, aether, yes, it's chronological only now. On a Lewis forum I've visited, "2456317" is a common signature line denoting one's alliance :)

Martin: Ickle children don't bother me when they are imperfect, bickering, but ultimately goodhearted ones like the Pevensies.

Oh dear — SC is in my top three of the CoN (note: I am starting to use acronyms. Beware). Little grey bog story? Good heavens! How about super-cool underground kingdom ready to break forth upon Narnia story? Tell me the "Gentle Giants" at Harfang weren't fun! Tell me Puddleglum doesn't rock ("there's one good thing about us being trapped down here; it'll save funeral expenses"). And Bism, land of the fire-breathing salamanders!

I don't know what you don't like about Jill. She's no prim little princess. She makes plenty of mistakes and I love her because and in spite of them. SC is the beginning of our "investment" in her, as she also comes back in LB (where she also rocks). I help moderate a Narnia movie fansite and we receive queries almost daily from young girls wanting to play Jill in the film. Of course we have nothing to do with the casting, but Jill-hopefuls are by far the largest group we get requests from. I think you are being unjust to Jill to write her off so easily.

I know the bringing new people into Narnia was important for Lewis's allegory project

Ah, but Narnia is not an allegory! Consider this quote from Lewis:

Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age-group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out “allegories” to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. It was part of the bubbling.

There are definitely parallels, but it's not a one-to-one allegory like Pilgrim's Progress. I could sit here and give you minute details about the places Christianity and the Chronicles don't coincide, but I won't try your patience overmuch with that :-P. But the short version is: parallels, yes; allegory, no.

And as for P&P and JE... I actually saw your review when it was posted and disagreed heartily. And not just with the content; your tone seemed intentionally offensive toward anyone who would dare disagree with you! Stuff like this:

Like Pride for its romance? I don't even wanna talk to you.

doesn't EXACTLY foster the discussion you claim to want in your last paragraph, you know ;)

But for what it's worth, here's what I think. P&P is social satire, a joke with a real point. And I do think its characters are realistic; both our protagonists make mistakes and have to change over the course of the story. At least they lived very fully in my imagination over the days I first discovered the book.

Bronte is concerned with society too, but in a much different way. Her concerns are hypocritical religion, cruelty in the name of charity, and the narrowness of opportunity for a woman alone in the world. This is heavier than Austen's playful pokes at the silliness and stupidity of the upper classes. But why does heavier automatically = better? Can't we appreciate each for what it is?

I think, like Dr. Gibson in Wives and Daughters, that "you needn't strike at one to praise the other." P&P and JE are two completely different books. One is hilarious in its sly, understated, polite way, while the other is passionate and darkly Gothic. You could say P&P is inferior because it doesn't have the "blood" that JE does. You could also claim that JE is inferior because it hasn't a spark of humor (well, it does perhaps have a spark here and there, but for the purposes of my argument, I'd say it's basically humorless compared to P&P). But it's so silly to condemn a book for not fitting into a completely different genre!

Jane, on the other hand, is hard and uncomely - the kind of woman that other women often do not like; but notwithstanding the fact that we know we're wrong for her, that men often fall for - a staff for to grasp.

Hmm, not sure I can agree with this. I think women tend to dislike other women who are the opposite of Jane — the soft and comely kind. We feel threatened and insecure. Hard and uncomely is usually no problem, shallow as that sounds.

If I HAD to choose, if there was no way to take both, I think I would pick JE over P&P. Maybe this is because I just reread JE and it completely took over my world, and I am still reeling from it. But both are in my top five books of all time, and I love each dearly.

Excuse me now, I must be off to finish my third JE adaptation in the past ten days :-P

I'm fond of the silver chair as well. Puddleglum is one of my favorite characters.

Dawn Treader is my personal favorite. I love the image of Reepicheep sailing off alone to Aslan's Country.

Wisewoman is a moderator on NarniaWeb, I don't think she'd mind me mentioning or plugging, since she's obviously too humble and modest to mention it herself.
Wisewoman's Narnia credentials are impeccable.

Could there be a salon Narnia read looming in 2011 or 2012?

WW:

Well, I am given to hyperbole, as evidenced by both my description of SC and my JE (two can play the acronym game!) review. And everything is relative. It's probably a personal failing, that the underground kingdom didn't grab me as much as the other books--or maybe just claustrophobia--but I certainly didn't mean to imply that I didn't enjoy it.

(I also realized I only answered half your question. My least favourite Harry Potter book is one of the first two, and I dare not enquire too closely into how much of that is due to the Chris Columbus-aesthetic of the movies retroactively colouring the reading experience).

I have read that quote from Lewis and I withdraw my allegory remark unconditionally. I just meant that I didn't pick upon the ways in which Christian themes were present. I would be very interested to have some places where the Chronicles and Christianity don't coincide--sounds intriguing:)

As for my Jane review, no offense meant, at all, at all! I was dismissing my potential detractors with the same overflip tone that I use to write Frank Norris off as a raving anti-Semite, when obviously it is more complex. I tend to write these reviews by just getting a feeling and going with it, and sometimes regretting it in the morning:) The "claiming to want a discussion" me is the real one.

I think when you can see the comedy in P&P, it becomes a lot easier to love--I felt like there was a smugness in it that, for me, robbed the humour of its savour. In a way it's a mark in Austen's favour that her characters are real enough that I feel uncomfortable laughing as though they were ciphers--it's just that they're also tedious enough that I have trouble drumming up the requisite empathy. But that's just me. And certainly they are different sorts of books and it's ultimately a cheap comparison.

And of course any statement like "women dislike x" is doomed to be reductive, whether it's my initial thought or your reversal. I was thinking in particular of a woman I used to date (I tend to say "girl" because I'm still kind of young, but for her "woman" is the only appropriate term) who combined a very Jane-esque seriousness in her approach to life's tribulations/joys with a truck-driving horse-breaking sort of can-do attitude that brought the men flocking but made a lot of women sort of uncomfortable or intimidated and caused them to be a bit cruel to her on a superficial, she-looks-like-a-man-in-that-outfit level. Certainly it was only a certain sort of woman who would feel threatened by her, though, and certainly a soft, hyperfeminine type could be a different kind of threat. I mean, ultimately a sexual threat is a sexual threat, and the same thing can be said about men--I'm sure I'd feel equally eclipsed sitting at a table with an alpha man like George Clooney, say, and an exquisite androgyne like 1972 David Bowie.

I'll be finishing The Dark Tower and Other Stories probably today. The stories so far...not bad. But I think the part that horrifies me is the preface of the tales. It's explained that the stories in the book were saved from Lewis' brother who had heaped so much of the author's work into a bonfire. It's upsetting to think of what might have been lost. There was no mention of further Narnia stories there...but, I'm a fan of his other work as well - or I am becoming a fan as I track down more.

On the other hand, there's questions as to how much of the Dark Tower collection was written by Lewis and not by his secretary who "saved" the works from the fire.

Martin booksfallapart says: "I was thinking in particular of a woman I used to date (I tend to say "girl" because I'm still kind of young, but for her "woman" is the only appropriate term) who combined a very Jane-esque seriousness in her approach to life's tribulations/joys with a truck-driving horse-breaking sort of can-do attitude that brought the men flocking but made a lot of women sort of uncomfortable or intimidated and caused them to be a bit cruel to her on a superficial, she-looks-like-a-man-in-that-outfit level. Certainly it was only a certain sort of woman who would feel threatened by her, though."

simply awesome. save that for your novel.

Slick:

They'll be the first and final words.

>234 absurdeist:, Hell, I'd vote for a Salon Narnia read in 2010 as a counterbalance to all the 300-pound tomes we've got going on. Most of the Narnia books don't take more than an hour to two to read....

Out with Kathy Acker and in w/C.S. Lewis in July, 2010, you're suggesting?

How often are those two authors mentioned together do you think?!

I was thinking the same thing! Talk about polar opposites.

It's a done deal unless someone talks me out of it. I've never read Narnia. It'll help us unwind some from Proust.

I have no preference & wasn't suggesting that anything should be eliminated, just that Narnia is such an easy, fun reading experience that we could do it in addition to everything else. Perhaps I'm overcommitting - it's a common fault of mine. :)

I know you weren't suggesting anything fanny, I was just being 'frique. Truth is, I was already becoming very uncomfortable with the idea of Kathy Acker in a salon setting (Acker, I think, is best read in the privacy of one's home, like Marquis de Sade) and besides, there's at least six people here I'm sure about who will be pleased with Narnia.

I am becoming increasingly intrigued by the reactions Kathy Acker inspires in people (I just learned about VC Andrews! Who thought that was appropriate for kids?), but given the choice it'd be Narnia all the way, personally.

Don't get rid of Acker! Whatchu think youse doin'?!?

Hey why not add it to January? That West sho' is short...

The Naughty Hottie would LOVE Acker.

**"accidentally" squashing mauling quartering a hobbit to death**

Oops.

I know, I know--I'll head for the Cracks of Doom as soon as I finish this post.

SOME--only SOME--very few SOME--personal innermost most important faves... for instance... par exemple... whatever comes to mind first...

The three fat men by Yuri Olesha

The confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

Proust

All of Virginia Woolf, novels, letters, diaries, shoelaces

The book of disquiet by Fernando Pessoa +all his poetry

All of Robert Walser

All of Andrei Platonov

All of Dostoevsky

Arabian nights in the Powers-Mathers translation of Mardrus' translation

The magic mountain

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP

Ten line entries and I've barely cut into my favourites. This is one cruel, cruel exercise. But I suppose I deserve some pain for...*SQUEEEESHSH* oops, another hobbit down.

**tip-toeing out of the thread as gracefully and quickly as possible**

heh.

Lola, in his magisterial study of modernist footwear: "The Feet of Clay", (mm, mysteriously, the touchstone doesn't seem to work) Chavenet devotes a great deal of space to the pros and cons of VW's left and right shoelaces, eventually coming down on those of the left foot as better.

I wonder on what side you stand in this controversy?

Please don't squash the hobbits. they make excellent training toys for young cats when mice and rats are not available.

While we're on the topic of Lewis (are we still?): I'd recommend Till We Have Faces.

235 Martin: Is it Chamber of Secrets that is your least favorite HP book? It's mine (or at least vies with Half-Blood Prince for that dubious distinction). I appreciate the themes of racism and and intellectual snobbery that Rowling explores there, but something about the story in general just doesn't resonate with me.

As for the Christian elements of Narnia, I think most of the time you can take them or leave them. The stories and writing are still excellent without them (though for me, the spiritual elements add a thrilling extra dimension). As a young reader I picked up on some of the parallels, though certainly not all.

I would love to read the Chronicles with the salon. Enrique, you are deprived (depraved?) for not having read them! :-P

Okay, JE and P&P... I think I understand where you are coming from now, Martin, though I've never picked up on the "smugness" of P&P. Actually it's very honest about some ugly things and even hints at a sense of desperation (like Charlotte Lucas' dismal prospects if she doesn't quell her better feelings and reject Mr. Collins, and the way that Lydia's stigma would attach itself to all her innocent sisters and ruin them in the eyes of their world). Yes, we get the happy ending; yes, Charlotte manages to make life with Collins livable and Lydia is packed away out of sight after being married. But the problems that are presented are very real ones, and perhaps we love the happy ending so much because life doesn't usually supply it.

That makes more sense now that I know the context for your thoughts on "hard and uncomely" women like Jane. I don't know your former girlfriend but my impression of her is not at all like Jane Eyre; Jane hardly had that "truck-driver-tough-girl" persona, I think. If anything, she was retiring and mild in company, amd I don't think it brought men flocking.

Sean, it's been a really long time since I read The Dark Tower and Other Stories. I think I was too young for it at the time, but I want to revisit it. Thanks for bringing up Till We Have Faces, aether. I recommend it too; it is absolutely incredible. It was Lewis' favorite among his fictional works. I need to reread; my initial review is so rambly and gushy: http://www.librarything.com/review/29728867

(Warnie burned Jack's manuscripts??? I don't want to know this. I don't want to think about this. *weeps*)

Yes - according to Hooper (former secretary of Lewis and editor of the Dark Tower and Other Stories collection), the gardener actually begged the brother to not burn the notebooks, thus saving that collection of stories and some other pieces. Still, apparently a lot was tossed into the fire.

I want to say something similar happened with a lot of Kafka's works.

I wonder how many great works were lost to intentional burning? I also wonder how many works were said to have been burned but instead, were less poetically just thrown into the trash or paper shredder, or never existed at all?

Yeah, "just doesn't resonate" is about my best take on the underwhelmingness of CoS too. And despite my man-crush on Kenneth Branagh, even rereading with the film in mind didn't warm me any to Gilderoy Lockhart as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher--and the new Dark Arts teacher each year seems to lend his cast to a book. This one just seems inessential.

and yeah, didn't mean to say that Jane was like a truck-driver (I'd have trouble supporting that one)--but much as she doubts herself, she has a strong core, a stubbornness, and an unwillingness to soften her sharp edges that reminds me of Cassia. And adds an extra, disturbing element to her final "surrender", although on balance I still read JE as a less unhappy book than most people do, I think:)

So, has anybody read the Moomintroll books?

I have not, but I have heard they're wonderful! Any recommendations as to which one to start with?

Yes! I read them when I was a kitten. Lovely! and no right wing christian axe to grind either!

Comet in Moominland is one of my favorites and also book 1, so it would be a good place to start. My favorite character, by the way, is little My, but she is not born until book 4.

248

Lola, Lola, Lola.

The Salonistas may not be aware that over a year ago, over your vigorous protests, you were named BookGoddess, a title which cannot be resigned, or passed on.

Since I AM aware of your title, I took your list to what I consider the best used bookstore in Ontario. (I was not looking for VW, or Dostoevsky, or Mann, or Proust, or Arabian Nights, of course.) But on all the others, nada.

I want to read them; I must read them. I no longer will buy any book in the world new. It is forbidden. So, what do I do, o Goddess?

Polutropos, I wish to join your no-new-books creed on the bottom floor, and will commence making sacrifices to your Goddess immediately.

Next, I'm starting a church, I mean religion, and TITHING! Ol' income's been thin of late...

Andrew! WHAT did I stick in the post above? Olesha? That's a children's story (also made into a play and a ballet and who knows what else), recently published by Hesperus. Worry not, you'll come across it some day. The library perhaps? Same for Svevo, that one should be widely available. Platonov and Walser have been reissued all over the place in recent years--NYRB Classics, Northwestern University Press... Likewise Pessoa.

It's true they may not be overflowing in the secondhand bookshops (yet), so I answer "the library" to all you pleas! Borrow, borrow, borrow.

Since this is a list of 10 favorite books as opposed to 10 best books, this one is much easier to compose. I tend to be simple in my "literary loves".

So here they are in no particular order:

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen or Isak Denisen,
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell,
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton,
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston,
The Land of Spices by Kate O'Brien,
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
The Little Grey Men by B.B.,
The Black Fawn by James Kjelgaard,
The Little Princess by Frances Hodgeson
Burnett,
Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.

belva

Nice to see Karen Blixen on someone's list.

I haad a faarm in aafricaa at the foot of the Ngong hills...

I loved Babette's feast !

she is a wonderful stylist

Absolutely.....and that is probably one of the (if not THE) best remembered first lines of a novel ever written.
belva

I have only read Ehrengard, was very impressed. Major talent. She didn't write much, did she?

http://www.karenblixen.com/biblio_by.html

List of books by her here. I wonder how many of them are still in print.

Perhaps NYRB would be interested in reissuing some.

Glad this is 10 favorites and not 10 best, which is much more stressful a list to make. This is an ever-changing list, but so far (in no particular order)

1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
2. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
3. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
4. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
6. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
7. Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf
8. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
9. Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
10. Persuasion, Jane Austen

1. Alexander Theroux: Darconville's Cat
2. Hermann Broch: The Sleepwalkers
3. Javier Marias: All Souls (etc.)
4. Walter De La Mare: Etc.
5. Henry James: I prefer the novellas, and not solely because I am lazy: The Altar of the Dead; The Jolly Corner; The Figure in the Carpet; The Aspern Papers; The Way It Came (The Friend of the Friends); The Turn of the Screw.
6. Stendhal: Le Rouge et le Noir
7. Julien Gracq: Chateau d'Argol and The Dark Stranger
8. Tommaso Landolfi: An Autumn Story
9. Edgar A. Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination
10. Thomas De Quincey: Etc. (particularly Opium Eater and Suspiria De Profundis)

(Restriction to 10 makes me cut off Yasunari Kawabata's unforgetable House of the Sleeping Beauties, al-Ghitani's Zayni Barakat, Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl, Cavendish's The Black Arts, The stories of Kleist, Gogol, M. R. James, Ernst Juenger's Storm of Steel and the Decameron , ETC.)

Wonderful list, Benwaugh; there are a number of excellent reviews, esp. by yourself and M. Markifat, on many of those.

This thread reminds me what I don't like about these other top ten threads going on. I want to know about good books that I have not read that would not be part of these canons. In fact, how about a less-well-known-books-I-have-loved thread?

I have a tag in my library called "Underappreciated Little Gems" for short, sweet less well known books that ought to get read more. Maybe there are others who tag the overlooked?

Coming in late with a list within a list:

Classics: Jane Eyre, Wives and Daughters, Mansfield Park
Genre: Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire series (George R R Martin)
Plays: The Importance of Being Earnest, Hamlet
Contemporary: The Remains of the Day, The Secret History
Funny: Guards! Guards! (high-fives WW), Leave it to Psmith, by P.G. Wodehouse

I'm glad to see that there are others present like me, who are just trembling on the verge of discovering the great literature. I have read very little Real Literature, and feel very feeble and unlearned in this group. So, ask me in ten years, and this list will probably look very different.

A virgin! I love virgins, I am very good with them. Chocolatemuse, make 2010 your year for classics!!!!!

Ah! Such a strong and commanding post! So powerful! I feel strangely compelled to obey you.

>276 QuentinTom:, Murrushka,

Do you like your virgins sacrificed or with pickled herring on their sides?

why choose? in this age of instant, maximum gratification, why can't I have my virgins toasted with pickled herring, and garnished with chocolate sauce, and drowned in vodka, of course.

Bliss!

ChocolateMuse, it's my eyes, they are hypnotic, and they never blink.

ChocolateMuse, it's my eyes, they are hypnotic, and they never blink.

Not even that freaky third eyelid? (Sorry, cat, the nictating membrane is weird.)

Why do I think Enrique's about to assign us all Lolita?

Message 273: A crawl through Crucifer's Stacks? ;):

1. Justus Lipsius: On Libraries (Have to pull my notes on this one - a slim volume of odd bibliomanic anecdotes from antiquity and the middle ages).

2. R. Murray Gilchrist: A Night on the Moors and other Stories (1890s supernatural tales in maximalist prose).

3. Walter de La Mare: The Return (and the collections The Riddle, The Connoisseur, and On the Edge). DLM is a master, in my opinion, of the supernatural tale - because in the end the "unheimlich", the spectre, is the revelation or reception of strange insight, or rather the rebellion, if you will, of primordial, fundamental strangeness against the cramped script of the ordinary: the deep transformations of a quiet introverted man whose face begins to resemble that of a long dead rascal; surly apparitions in a secret library of a rare bookshop; an old lady of great wit and appetite who seems to be an incarnation of all that drains and beats a person down in the world (the devil, if you'd like).

4. I don't know how well-known Henry James's tales are, but they often are incredibly strange (no, not all of them are incredibly dull). They are undervalued probably because of the fact that they're forced on us as undergraduates.

James's The Altar of the Dead is a meditation on reverence (or for you co-religionists - you know who you are -, an attendance of the Adoration); a tale of memory, love and solitude (and, of course, death - which is, at the altar, always only something else: memory, fear, grief, ritual, fiction). It appropriately involves two persons and two locations: a quiet catholic church, with all its relics and memorials, and a widow's flat, with all its mnemonic regalia of the passage of her life: photos, flowers, objects. James offers a study of two hermetic solitudes transformed - or assumed - into a briefly flowering single Presence, which, to me, brings to mind the image of the reader in his or her unfathomable and essential solitude, with the book; or two strange creatures whose solitudes randomly intersect and die of love). The Figure in the Carpet is a quest for the absolute, which seems to be figured as the quest itself: the long many-voiced sentence chatting on about the need for terminal punctuation. As in De la Mare's tale "The Looking Glass", James suggests (and see The Jolly Corner) that the spectre haunting the garden appears in the mirror. The mirror or altar is, or can be, literature.

282: Exactly!

Re; Message 7:

"She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

I love that sentence.

The cult of Cormac McCarthy owes a calf to Flannery O'Connor.

That gal standing on one leg hollaring at the scoundrel who took her other leg is priceless, as is Parker's back and the Artificial Nigger. I lived in Atlanta for years and years and believe me there are places (or were) in which white folks just diod not feel welcome. Mostly because of their own fears.

Flann is at the apex of the short story.

I just wish her novels had been less episodic.

>282 Randy_Hierodule: when you say "tales" you're making a distinction between the short stories and the novels? I would love to like James, really I would, but so far, no dice. Looking forward to giving The Turn of the Screw another shot, though.

Ben,

That Altar of the Dead sounds fantastic. I have The Portable Henry James somewhere at home and am crossing my fingers when I get home tonight, that that story, and the two others you mention, will be included in it. If not, I’m on the hunt for them. Terrific suggestions.

Oh, and here's three plugs for three great groups created by Ben Waugh that some of you may not (especially all you newbies to Le Salon or LT hereabouts) be aware of. Well, it’s time you got yourself enlightened:

If a post like 282 whets your appetite, check out this smorgasbord, focused on Decadent Lit: http://www.librarything.com/groups/decadencethemetamorp

If Arab, North African, & Middle Eastern Lit is your cup of tea, try this: http://www.librarything.com/groups/arabicnorthafricanan

Rock ‘n Roll & old vinyl collections up yer alley (Porius, this group has YOU written all over it!), click here: http://www.librarything.com/groups/recordcollectors

I’m a lurker in all three, particularly in The Abyss!

Thank you, Enrique.. I'm all embarrassed now... not least of all by the fact that I haven't done much lurking in most of those groups in some time (I think I was starting to turn the r&r one into an obituary column...). Any way, thank you for letting me prattle on; I look forward to going through all the many topics here.

Best,

BW

Henry James's tales are fabulous. I also recommend The Beast in the Jungle, which takes James's skill of writing about.... nothing(!) to great heights.

This IS a great thread! I collect TBR titles the way some people collect cheap, used postage stamps. Lots of new choices here. The pile grows...

Ok, capricious, arbitrary, temporal, not in any order:

War and Peace
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Master and Margarita
The Brothers Karamazov Hilarious! Uplifting! Light!
The Illiad
Candide
Anna Karenina
Nostromo Honest! Especially the last 2/3
Ulysses Ha! I said it!
The Sun Also Rises

This IS a great thread! I collect TBR titles the way some people collect cheap, used postage stamps. Lots of new choices here. The pile grows...

Ok, capricious, arbitrary, temporal, not in any order:

War and Peace
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Master and Margarita
The Brothers Karamazov Hilarious! Uplifting! Light!
The Illiad
Candide
Anna Karenina
Nostromo Honest! Especially the last 2/3
Ulysses Ha! I said it!
The Sun Also Rises

To sandydog1:

"Hilarious! Uplifting! Light!" -- LOL

"...Honest!. . ."
"Ha! I said it!"
--No apology needed for what is possibly Joeʻs best, nor for Jimʻs definitely best

"...takes Jamesʻs skill in writing about -- nothing(!) to great heights" -- tom Cat Murr
(#289)

I wonder if you know the parody anonymous essay in which there is a trial Eddy v. James in which the plaintiff, Mary Baker Eddy sues James for plagiarising her special brand of obscurity in his novels.

The judge finally rules for the defendant, Henry James, on the grounds that James has his own special brand of obscurity and didnʻt steal it from Mrs. Eddy.

He says that in a James novel you donʻt expect anything to HAPPEN. (Could it have been "The Beast in the Jungle" that he had in mind?) But you do end up with a vague idea of what did NOT happen. Whereas, with Eddyʻs book you donʻt end up with any idea of anything.

The author is unknown, but it has been attributed to Mark Twain. I donʻt remember the title. I saw the book, a collection of literary facetiae in Boston Universityʻs library; I suppose Harvard and a few other large collections have it

HAHA that sounds fantastic. I must look it up.

Re 'The Beast in the Jungle', this tale has puzzled critics since it first appeared for its very obscurity. It really is about nothing, in the sense that at its heart there is some secret so carefully hidden that not even the narrator knows about it. If the 19th century novel can be said to revolve around a secret, James takes this idea and distils it to its very essence, creating a marvel of ambiguity and veiled suggestions, even on the level of syntax and vocabulary.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has given a very convincing reading of it imo, giving it a queer reading, with the secret as the protagonist's homosexuality. Once read, her essay ineluctably impresses itself upon any subsequent reading of James's tale, which I suppose is the mark of great criticism...(?)

It is one of James's lesser known masterpieces, and I highly recommend it, especially to lovers of TS Eliot, who borrowed heavily its tone for Prufrock, sections of The Wasteland and his own homage to James, his poem Portrait of a Lady.

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to try to hunt that essay down. I'll let you know if I get anything.

293: Very good! You sent me on a hunt in my stacks - which I had recently rearranged (hopelessly confused). You can find that essay (and others, such as "The Corelli-ing of Caine") in The Literary Guillotine: "An authorized report of the proceedings before the Literary Emergency Court holden in and for the District of North America". Mark Twain and others, serve on the bench. It was published by The Bodley Head in 1903. Here is a link to my copy which has a link to an old review in the NYT: http://www.librarything.com/work/6618135/book/38396110.

Oh excellent Mr Waugh! Thank you!

The entire text may be read here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/literaryguillot00goog#page/n20/mode/1up