Tough to narrow it down to 5, but here goes: Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson American Gods - Neil Gaiman Espedair Street - Iain Banks (could easily have been The Crow Road instead) Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein Different Seasons - Stephen King Yeah, I know Different Seasons isn't a novel, but Shawshank, The Body and Apt Pupil all in the same collection.
Not sure why, in a thread about favorite books, folks need to dump on or criticize other folks favorite books. It’s all personal preference.
I know you're smarter than me but this is impressive. I've had 100 Years in my nightstand for over 15 years and I've started it at least a half dozen times and I just can't crack it. My sister-in-law mocks me because it's one of her favorites and years ago she actually introduced it to our "book club" (excuse to drink copious amounts of wine on a Thursday night) and I just can't get into it. Maybe I'll try this summer. Same thing happened with East of Eden and after 3 or 4 starts and stops I finally got into it a few summers ago and it was one of the best novels I have ever read.
100 years was slow for me as well but I did read it on my first try. The book I nearly gave up on was Catch 22. Oh my lord what a pile of shit that book is in my opinion. Not nearly funny enough, and the plot is not linear and as far as I can tell in no particular order. I had a really tough time getting through that book.
Top 5 books is an impossible task because there are hundreds that would be in the running. I've listed 5 that are in that group that nobody else has mentioned yet, since the point of the thread is to pique people's interest. 1. A Canticle For Liebowitz - Walter Miller Jr 2. Snowcrash - Neil Stephenson 3. Team of Rivals - Doris Kearns Goodwin 4. Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson (the trilogy is very good and timely with us looking at imminent Mars colonization in the next generation) 5. Time Enough For Love - Robert Heinlein Honorable mention - anything written by Isaac Asimov not already listed above.
I have A Canticle for Liebowitz sitting on my end table - the first time I tried it I couldn't get into it (too medieval for my taste), but I plan on trying again over the next while. The Mars trilogy is excellent. I think I liked Red Mars best of the three. Asimov is my alltime favorite author, with Twain and Christie rounding out my top three.
He was a jerk. I was always a Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg man.
My kids were always partial to Ferdinand the Bull, could also recite it from memory. Nice short simply illustrated book. How the hell they made that into a full length movie is beyond me.
Asimov is an amazing force in SciFi. I remember browsing SciFi in the village circa 1999 or so. There was a woman anxiously scanning the shelves searching for something and I asked her if I could help. She said she had read everything that Isaac Asimov had written and was looking for something "like that" to read next. One of the employees was passing behind us as she said it and he stopped and pondered the question. We both looked at each other and shook our heads. Robert Heinlein? Probably not. Arthur C. Clarke? Closer but still no cigar. We settled on Orson Scott Card as probably the next best author to chase down but he's more like Heinlein and Clarke than Asimov. On A Canticle for Leibowitz: it took me three tries to get into A Game of Thrones. The first chapter just didn't grab me and I'd fall asleep before I finished it. Then I took the book on a flight to Chicago and got past The Perils of Daenerys and flowed right through three volumes in a week or so. The thing to realize about Miller is that he is both a devout Catholic (converted as an adult) and a skeptic. That explains the continual usage of comic relief as he approaches his thornier subjects. The other thing that is important is that he is more interested in history than doctrine and so the medieval setting is just a launching point for post-apocalyptic exploration. There is also a wonderful follow-up: Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which was published posthumously off of 600 pages Miller had written. Canticle was written as a series of short stories joined together. Saint was intended to be a full length novel from the get-go.
1) And Then There Were None—Agatha Christie. 2) Andromeda Strain-Michael Crichton 3) The Surgeon- Tess Gerritsen 4) City of Bones- Michael Connelly 5) Winter Prey- John Sandford Agatha Christie’s book on this list is by far the best book I have read. Couldn’t put it down trying to figure out who did it.
