Top Five Books

[snout]

I've recently finished "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" by David Mitchell, no not the comedian, the bloke what wrote "Cloud Atlas".

A truly first class historical novel, set in Japan at the turn of the eighteenth century. It's very daunting at first with the immense cast of characters he throws at you (hint: there is a cast list at the back) and you might need a dictionary at hand for some of the obscure words he uses with abandon. But stick with it and it's very engrossing. You can hold it up so many different ways to see it as a love story, a historical document of Japan's opening up with the West, a meditation on the state of the human soul or just a plain thriller.

I shall certainly be re-reading in a year or two. It's confirmed Mitchell as one of my favourite modern authors alongside Iain Banks and Matthew Kneale.

[murf]

Mitchell had never let me down, will have to catch up on this one.

Is Kneale the guy who wrote about the boat voyage to Oz, blue cover, very hyped a few years back? Very good but not heard of him since....

[workie-ticket]

"the book thief" by marcus zusak is incredibly good...

[Billy Whiz]

I've just finished reading Music & Silence by Rose Tremain, set in and around the court of King Christian IV of Denmark, circa 1630 (but also in England, Ireland and Norway of that period). It's one of the best books I've ever read. Wonderfully written, intriguing historical detail, superbly drawn characters, a kaleidoscopic plot and a breathtaking ending. In fact it's gone into my top five, which now reads (in no particular order):

Garp - John Irving
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Complicity - Iain Banks
Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Peter Hoeg
Music & Silence - Rose Tremain

[Ironfist]

Lord of the Rings - J.R.R.Tolkien - Fantasy Fiction
Gates of Fire - Steven Pressfield - Historical Novel
The Throwback - Tom Sharpe - Humour(ous) Novel
Enemy Coast Ahead - Guy Gibson - War/biography
__ (any) _ - James Harriot or Gerald Durrell - Nature/wildlife

...and a 6th book for good luck...

The Red Queen - Matt Ridley - Science

[Pouzar]

My always changng list in no particular order

Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Emma - Jane Austen
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Ulysses - James Joyce.

[Mister Talons]

"the book thief" by marcus zusak is incredibly good...

I looked for that in the Library, but someone had nicked it!

[mephisto]

Always different, always the same
Vanity Fair (first fictional flirtation with Miss Sharp)
Money (whats changed?) the arrogant Amiss
Treasure Island
The Thirty-Nine Steps
Robinson Crusoe
Stevenson wrote a good deal about writing. If the following holds water, you will swim in the lives of others;
"The author must know his countryside, whether real or imagined, like his hand".

[Zimmerman]

Tried to pick my favourites five, very tricky though...

In no particular order

Life of pi - Yann Martel
Crow Road - Ian Banks
High Rise - JG Ballard
Dice man - Luke Rhinehart
Strip Tease - Carl Hiaasen

On another day:
Catch 22, 1984, The Beach, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Wasp Factory, Complicity, Chocky, Day of the Triffids, something from Roddy Doyle, something from Irvine Welsh.

Im not massively well read.... Tend to find an author i like and then read all his books.

[Zimmerman]

Just found that I have written in this thread before, didn't realise.

It's actually quite hard to think of best books.... cant really even remember books I've read.

I enjoyed both Brave New World and 1984.
Catcher in (of) the Rye? Absolute dross (IMO).... I read it after reading Mark Chapmans biography. Nothing happened.

Wasp Factory is up there for me too (although I like most of Banks' work inc Complicity and Crow Road).

Life of Pi, Diceman (as mentioned) were good reads.

In terms of light reading, Dave Gorman's 2 novels (he has another one due at the start of November) and his pal Danny Wallace's "Join Me" was also an easy and humorous read.

Anyone read any Carl Hiaasen? Quite an amusing author. With strong undertones of being a "green and righteous dude"! Strip Tease (the film with Demi Moore) was actually one of his books - as a book it was an excellent read. There is a continuation of charactors in his books but each can be read in its own right.

Just remembered a "classic" that I read recently: High Rise.
Quite good, but cant help feeling let down. Bit like watching Lost - you keep going, and it does enough to hook you in, but at the end you're disappointed.

What happens in Catch 22? Sure I've read it, but cant remember. Who's it by?

Edited: Sorry just noticed that there is a general "Books" thread opposed to this "Best 5 books" thread. Perhaps my ramble would have been better suited in that one

[mikeg13]

Top 5 books hard as books that meant most to me read long time ago, these days read for pleasure as against life learning.
Have read most of excepted classics, some enjoyed some bored the life out of me, but finished.
These are probably 5 that meant most to me and if had to take on a desert island.

Naked and the Dead
Of Mice and Men
Catch 22
The Women in White
Sherlock Holmes collection

[waiheke]

Ok, I’m going to cheat a bit and have three top5 lists, all of which change on a regular basis:
1. Top 5 “stand alone books”
Don Juan (Lord Byron), American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis), On the Road (Jack Kerouac), The Outsider (Camus), Once Were Warriors (Alan Duff)
Just outside my top5 : The Beach, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, True Grit, 1984, A Clockwork Orange, Roald Dahl’s childrens books.

2. Top 5 series or trilogies:
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), Millenium Trilogy (Stieg Larson), Bernie Gunther series (Phillip Kerr), Rebus series (Ian Rankin). Trainspotting Trilogy – assuming you’d class Skagboys, Trainspotting and Porno as a series/trilogy- ( Irvine Welch),
Just outside my top 5: Wallander series (Henning Mankell), Harry Hole series (Jo Nesbo), Phillip Marlowe series (Raymond Chandler)

3. Top five sports books
An anatomy of England (Johnathon Wilson), Moneyball (Michael Lewis), Foul! (Andrew Jennings), All Played out (Pete Davies), Tragedy: The Kenny Carter story (Tony McDonald).
Just outside: Fever Pitch (Nick Hornby).

[Zimmerman]

I've not read skagboys (thought id read all his books). Glue also features some of the characters too.

[Hogmeister]

Don't read as much as I used to and these days tend to stick to favourite authors like Terry Pratchett, Ian McEwan, Iain Banks (mainstream and scifi), Martin Amis, Ishiguro, PD James, Patricia Cornwell, Susan Hill, etc etc. And have been catching up with some classics recently - Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot.

Top 5 would be something like...
Lord of the Rings
Brideshead Revisited (Waugh)
The Trial (Kafka)
Atonement (McEwan)
Mort (Pratchett)

[blahblah]

Tragedy: The Kenny Carter story (Tony McDonald).

The Speedway rider?

[golden bear]

Top Five Books read so far this year:

1. Down And Out In London And Paris - George Orwell
2. Persian Fire - Tom Holland
3. Atrocitology - Matthew White
4. The Potato Factory - Bryce Courtney
5. Road To Wigan Pier - George Orwell

[thebillfella]

I couldn't get into Catch 22 when I tried reading it some 30+ years ago.

It's slow and difficult to get into at the start, but it's a grower.

[Wiz]

Top Five, this will probably be edited about 50 times in the next couple of days

Brave New World - Huxley

Shogun - Clavell

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy + 3 - Adams

The 'Sharpe' shelf - Cornwell

The 'Aubrey/Maturin' shelf - O'Brian

The almost list includes anything by Steinbeck apart from the one with his dog, Banks especially The Business, Papillon-Charriere, American Psycho-Ellis and something by Christian Jacq, Crichton, Roddy Doyle, Puzo, F Forsyth, Le Carre, Grisham, Cruz-Smith, George RR Martin and John King.

I'd need another list for pre 1900 though

[waiheke]

I've not read skagboys (thought id read all his books). Glue also features some of the characters too.

It only came out in April this year – a prequel to Trainspotting, charting the early stages of their heroin addiction. Not as good (IMHO) as Trainspotting or Porno (my two favourite Welch novels), but nonetheless a good read.

Tragedy: The Kenny Carter story (Tony McDonald).

The Speedway rider?

Yes indeed. I wouldn’t say it’s brilliantly written – I’ve yet to read a Speedway book which is – but I found it a compulsive page turner . The title is very apt, charting the early loss of his mother to suicide, the domineering father, and controversial career up to the tragic end in 1986.

To my above list of favourite series I’d have to add Harlan Coben’s Myron and Win series which I’ve just discovered , and the Terry Pratchett discworld series (in particular the Ankh Morpork and Death novels), which on a given day might crack my top 5 list.

[blahblah]

Thanks I'll dig that one out.

[waiheke]

you a speedway fan Blah (present or lapsed)?

[blahblah]

I used to go to Hackney as a kid, until I was about 7, when we moved. And I was at Wembley for the WC in 72, when someone (Mauger ?) went over the fence. We moved the day Sunderland won the Cup, and I have hardly been since....

[Pouzar99]

Today's version of my Top 5.

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Republic - Plato.
Middlemarch - George Eliot.
The Rainbow - D. H. Lawrence.

[jpk]

What was yesterday's version?
Beowulf and The Epic of Gilgamesh

[murf]

What was yesterday's version?
Beowulf and The Epic of Gilgamesh

I think it was on papyrus

[Pirlo's Beard]

I have so many books that I've bought over the years gathering dust in my room, always with the intention of getting around to read them. I blame my poor attention span for my inability to finish most of the books I start reading.

Here are five that I've actually finished!



The Princess Bride
William Goldman, 1973

Easily my favourite book. A wonderful fantasy tale with great characters and memorable lines. Adapted into a movie in 1987.

"Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."

"[Goldman's] swashbuckling fable is nutball funny . . . A 'classic' medieval melodrama that sounds like all the Saturday serials you ever saw feverishly reworked by the Marx Brothers." --- Newsweek

"One of the funniest, most original, and deeply moving novels I have read in a long time." --- Los Angeles Times



The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America
Bill Bryson, 1989

"Funny as this wonderful book is, it is also a serious indictment of the American way of life and the direction in which it is going . . . he is genuinely shocked, as we are, by the statistics of affluence, poverty, crime and culture that he drops in hither and tither." --- Irish Times

"The Lost Continent is paradoxically touching -- a melancholy memoir in the form of snide travelogue." --- Newsweek



Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby, 1992

"Vividly captures the elation and utter despair of a love affair with a particular team. Stirring stuff." --- Mail on Sunday

"Good books about football could be counted on the teeth of Nobby Stiles' upper jaw . . . Fever Pitch is a small classic." --- Michael Palin



The Rum Diary
Hunter S. Thompson, written in the 1960's but not published until 1998

"Crackling, twisted, searing, paced to a deft prose rhythm . . . A shot of Gonzo with a rum chaser." --- San Francisco Chronicle

"Enough booze to float a yacht and enough fear and loathing to sink it." --- New York Daily News



The Road
Cormac McCarthy, 2006

"It's hard to think of [an apocalypse tale] as beautifully, hauntingly constructed as this one. McCarthy possesses a massive, Biblical vocabulary and he unleashes it in this book with painterly effect. . . . The Road takes him to a whole new level. . . . It will grip even the coldest human heart. --- The Star Ledger (Newark)"

"Illuminated by extraordinary tenderness. . . . Simple yet mysterious, simultaneously cryptic and crystal clear. The Road offers nothing in the way of escape or comfort. But its fearless wisdom is more indelible than reassurance could ever be." --- New York Times

Among the books gathering dust in my room, at the top of my list of ones to read are the new Harper Lee novel, Go Set a Watchman, the Charles Frazier novels Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons, and Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice.

[Steph]

My favourite books read as a child:
Neverending story (German hard cover edition - Michael Ende)
Momo (in German - Michael Ende)
Krabat (in German - Otfried Preussler)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
The Master and Margerita (Mikhail Bulgakov)

My favourite non-fiction books:
Art of the infinite (R Kaplan and E Kaplan)
Bad science (Ben Goldacre)
A short history (Bill Bryson)
Down Under (Bill Bryson)
The Mind's I (Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett)

[jeffmcgow]

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Three Fevers by Leo Walmsley (made into the film Turn of the Tide - J Arthur Rank's first)
Winnie the Pooh/ House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne

[buckowski]

Difficult to stick to 5, slight bit of cheating then with a few series of books...

The First Law trilogy - Joe abercrombie...Glokta is my favourite character of any book
Game of thrones - George RR Martin.
Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski
The Conquerer series - Conn Iggulden
The Troy series - David Gemmell

And just missed the boat...
Tales of the city series - Armistead Maupin.