Your Top Ten Books

1. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The peak of a writer looking sideways at a horribly defining event in his life; all the sci-fi elements come off as poignant attempts to write circles around the ugly truth.

 

2. The Short-Timers - Gustav Hasford

Harsher than the movie (Full Metal Jacket), if that's even possible. It's only the first half of the story; read Hasford's sequel The Phantom Blooper to get the full saga.

 

3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

The pinnacle of what HST was getting at, the American Dream seen in a funhouse mirror. Though there are times I prefer the straighter reportage of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. I don't know if this list is supposed to be all fiction, but this is an acknowledged work of fiction anyway.

 

4. Marathon Man - William Goldman

Comfort-food reading. Princess Bride's great but this spy thriller, which you won't be able to help casting in your head with Olivier, Scheider and Devane (Hoffman was miscast and knew it), is compulsive trash.

 

5. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway

The Finca Vigia edition is the only one to bother with. A master of the short form. Never liked his novels as much.

 

6. Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs

You can pretty much open this at random and find something filthy or hilarious or repellent or all three at once. Which is what I'd recommend. Cronenberg said the same, that it plays better in nibbles than read straight through.

 

7. The Stand - Stephen King

The 1978 version, now and forever. You need to hear "Hotel California" wailing in your head like a ghost when reading it, and the 1990 botch doesn't give you that. The story is, and should be, very late-'70s. So was Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which was the real Stand movie.

 

8. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

War as corporate bureaucracy. Heller and Vonnegut are here (well, not any more) to tell you that the Greatest Generation stuff is bullshit.

 

9. First Blood - David Morrell

So much finer than what Stallone did with the character that I almost wish someone would remake the 1982 film more faithfully to the novel and change Rambo's name. I've never forgotten Morrell's description of Rambo finishing a burger and Coke: "Everything went down in a sweet cruddy lump."

 

10. The Dark Country - Dennis Etchison

King's Danse Macabre hipped me to this terrific short-story collection. One I've never forgotten is "The Late Shift," which explains what the deal is with folks who work the graveyard shift at convenience stores, and I remember it every time I hit up a Cumberland Farms after dark.

Is citing a book series as a single entry cheating per se?

 I didn't really mean it pejoratively. Maybe more in terms of comparison to Princess Bride, which comes more from the heart, whereas Marathon Man is more of a potboiler. Which isn't a bad thing! It's there on my list! Obviously I like it. "Trash" maybe isn't the word, let's reserve that for his '80s stuff. Although Brothers is a hilariously over-the-top Marathon Man sequel.

Fuck, this is a hard one.  I've opted for "most re-read" and had to take a blind pick on some (the Pratchett, Smith, Stephenson and Erikson ones)

 

In no order:

 

1) Against a Dark background (Iain M Banks).  I re-read this every year.  I love the ideas, the characters and the bleakness of it all.  Not as much of a kick in the balls as Consider Phlebas, but just as much invention.

 

2) Spares (Michael marshal Smith).  Ripped off almightily by The Island but this is infintely preferable.  Even the invented drugs are better.  The image of a leaf running haunted me for ages.  If you haven't read any Michael marshal Smith books I cannot recommend them highly enough, especially the first two Only Forward and Spares.

 

3) To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).  Had to read it for school.  Loved it.  Read it often.

 

4) Deadhouse Gates (Steven Erikson).  Fuck it was hardto pick one out of the Malazn Book of the Fallen but it has to be this one.  The story of Coltane's march is one of the best standalone things I've read, let alone part of this fantastic epic.

 

5) Thud (Terry Pratchett).  Could so easily have been so many, but I love Vimes in THUD.  I love his domesticity, his intransigence and his sheer bloody determination to make sure he reads to young Sam no matter, who, or what, or where, because some things are important :)

 

6) The Stand (Stephen King).  Not only do I keep re-reading this but I keep re-buying it. My most stolen book.

 

7) Altered Carbon (Richard K Morgan).  Again picking one book of three was tough, but this is the most "noir" of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy and it works so very fucking well.

 

8) Sum (David Eagleman)  40 tales of possible afterlives.  Mind boggling (literally).  Took me about an hour to read, but I still think about it (and dip into it all the time)

 

9) Catch-22 (Joseph Heller).  I couldn't believe how well this came together the first time I read it. Structural perfection.

 

10) Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson).  I love all of Stephenson's books, but this tale of code cracking and a search for sunken gold is just top to bottom educational and exhilirating.

 

It gets better once you get past the two scientist assassins with their suicide serum and compliance spray. That takes up about your first hundred pages.

 

And by "better" I mean "more amusingly bugfuck," what with the explosive robot twins and Scylla going around killing world-class assassins without batting an eye. It's as if the publisher kept bugging Goldman to do a sequel until he just said "Okay, I'll give you a fucking sequel" and threw in everything.

1. The Plague, Camus- a profoundly hopeful and inspiring novel for those that find themselves existentially challenged, also recommend the Myth of Sisyphus and The Stranger.

2. Brothers Karamozov, Dostoyevsky- the most brilliant piece of writing I have ever encountered, though Crime and Punishment is perfection, Brothers is more ambitious.

3. Dune- incredibly deep and interesting, also a great adventure story.

4. Magistar Ludi, Hesse- the novel that opened my eyes to the perils of academia, also recommend Siddhartha and Steppenwolfe.

5. The Magus, Fowles- a slap in the face for a self involved young man, reminds you to hold yourself accountable.

6. The Darkness That Comes Before, Bakker- the most exiting and groundbreaking fantasy novel since Tolkien, too bad the follow ups have not measured up....but still love this.

7. The Fountainhead, Rand- inspiring, be ready to be mocked and hated if you tell people you like this book.

8. Grapes of Wrath, Stienbeck- very tough choosing between this and Of Mice and Men, but so ambitious and moving.

9. House of Leaves, Danielewski- Simply the most interesting new thing I have read in the past 5 years, will be re-reading it soon. An examination of the self, marriage, life and obsession. Beware the footnotes.

10. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Kesey- rebellion resistence and death during the sixties.

 

Authors who I love who are not on this list: Tolkien, Thompson, Palahniuk (sometimes), Conrad, McCarthy, King (sometimes), Diamond, Coupland, Beckett, Burgess, Ellis, Kerouac, Fine...the list goes on.

Loved Cryptonomicon, Stephenson really can turn a phrase. Never found myself laughing out loud at descriptive paragraphs before.

Catch-22 should be on my list but oddly left it off, check out Something Happened, Heller does to the family what he did to WW2.

When i find myself world weary and depressed, I can read this and it motivates me to work harder.

In no particular order....

 

1. Dune by Frank Herbert. Changed how I thought/think about Ecology, Politics, Religion, Warfare and Human Civilization and how it might evolve. And every time I read it, I change my mind on one or more of those topics.

 

2. Hellstrom's Hive, also by Frank Herbert. Not nearly as profound as Dune, this novel holds an unholy fascination for me. It's almost (but too straight faced to be) a satire on the Morman Church. A colony of Humans has decided to literally emulate social insects like Ants, Bees etc. They have created an underground Hive and have changed their own evolution to create Scientist, breeder classes etc. It is so batshit insane, yet Herbert writes in such a way that by the end of the novel you might think of chucking that individualism shit out the window.

 

3. The Stand (1978 cut). Martin Blank expresses my feelings exactly.

 

4. Strange Wine by Harlan Ellison. The first collection of short stories by Ellison I read. Every few years I pick it up and enjoy anew his playfulness with the language. "A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet" is my favorite Ellison story (and it isn't even a story) and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

 

5. The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World by Harlan Ellison. Another collection; love the title story, "Along the Scenic Route", " A Boy and His Dog", and "Santa Claus vs. S.P.I.D.E.R" are just amazing bugfuck story telling.

 

6. Valis by Philip K Dick. From his late period, when (in his mind) he was writing autobiography. Gives me goosebumps when I read it.

 

7. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. People who love the two films; maybe you should ignore this one. There are key story threads in this novel that I love that just can't be translated to film. The limits of Human knowledge and perception are a constant theme in Lem, but Solaris is the best, most succinct expression of them.

 

8. Foundation by Asimov. As I get older and read and learn more about ancient Rome (the model for Asimov's Empire) I see the flaws in this novel's ideas, its' simplistic reading of history, and things Asimov just got wrong. Plus, the anachronisms (a character in a SPACESHIP that can travel FASTER THAN LIGHT reads a report printed on a SCROLL). But I don't care. Asimov has a prose style that just takes me into his worlds, as clunky as they can be.

 

9. Moby Dick. I've read it once. Images, dialogue, themes, character are lodged in my mind forever.

 

10. Lord of the Rings. This one is different from any of the novels listed above. Those books challenged me intellectually. LoTR could do that, but I've chosen to go for the Immersion experience. Middle Earth is my Disney Land, a place that I go to so that I can escape a world of moral greys.

 

Hm reading through my own list, I first read all them (except for Moby Dick) before I was 20. Anyone else have preponderance of favorite books from that time in their life?

When I'm alone and life is getting me lonely I can always go... downtown.

 

For what it's worth, I've got your back on THE FOUNTAINHEAD.  ATLAS SHRUGGED is dead weight, though.

 

 

It's one of those books that you almost feel is cliche to list on a "favorite books" list but it's just soooo fucking good. (commented because it's going to be on my list as well)

Off the top of my head:

 

1.  Andrew Vachss: SHELLA - The leanest, meanest prose ever.  This is where Vachss perfected his craft.  There are so many elements of the main character that I identify with that it scares me.

2.  Tom Clancy: RED STORM RISING - His best book (co-written with Larry Bond).  Riveting from beginning to end and utterly convincing.

3.  Gaiman and Pratchett: GOOD OMENS - Arguably the funniest book that I've ever read.  I had Neil autograph it for me.

4.  Donald Winslow: SAVAGES - hey Cameron?  Thanks for turning me on to this guy.

5.  Laura Hillenbrand: UNBROKEN - the story of Louie Zamperini.  One of the best biographies that I've ever read.  Utterly inspiring.

6.  Andrew Vachss: STREGA - His second and best Burke novel.  It features the best plot and the best characterizations of the entire series.

7.  John Varley: TITAN - I've read this one far, far too many times over the years.  The world of Gaea and how it works/functions fascinates me, and the very adult characters that inhabit Gaea are original.

8.  Daniel Keyes: FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON - Very moving to me.

9.  Ken Grimwood: REPLAY - A fascinating 'what if' situation.  The choices the main characters make as they replay their lives over and over again are totally in line with what I'd do.

10. Richard Bachman (Stephen King): THE LONG WALK - I read this probably once a year.  Grueling.  It provides me some sort of catharsis whenever I finish it.

No order: 

 

- Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison - first off, yes, Ellison is mean, cranky prick, but writers are generally in that "if you're looking for heroes in this bunch, you're probably pretty hard up" - anyway, this is a collection of stories about the gods - old ones, new ones....the first story, "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" is worth the price of admission, but the rest is really f'in good too. Similar thematically to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but it was first, and where Gaiman is meandering, Ellison's stories are like a fist to the face. 

 

- The Memory of Whiteness, Kim Stanley Robinson - best known for his epic Mars Trilogy, this one takes place in the far future where technology has allowed humanity to colonize all the planets and moons - about the only thing tying humanity then to us now is music. Some really neat world-building, as well as really interesting ideas on the nature of the universe and free will. 

 

- The Cave, Tim Krabbe - a tale of death and suspense with the deaths early, and little suspense past that. Brilliant and beautiful. Might very well be #1 on the list if I ordered them. 

 

- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson - geez, where to start? For one it's wickedly funny; for another it captures that post-60s malaise where the Revolution was over, and HST's side lost. I used to think it fell apart in the 2nd half, but I think that's part of the point.

 

- Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis - probably the best person out there writing about money today. Best book about Wall Street ever (even though Lewis is in London for most of it). 

 

- A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, Norman MacLean - if you haven't seen the film based on the first novella, I highly recommend it. Some of the things to recommend here are the detail for a bygone time - 1919 doesn't seem like it's that long ago, but it really feels that way when MacLean writes about it (this is a compliment). More importantly, if you're looking, there are 3 stories that are fucking great and poetic about growing up and becoming a man. 

 

- High Fidelity, Nick Hornby - I'd defend any of the previous 6 as being excellent all on their own. This is more pop lit, but here mainly because I'm probably more like Rob than my wife is comfortable with. 

 

- Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner - the story of water rights in California/the West sounds like a pretty dry subject (pun not intended, but not apologized for either) but in Reisner's hands it becomes a fascinating story of money, ego, and the attempted subjugation of nature. Hint - when you attempt to subjugate nature, it will not end well for you when all is said and done. 

 

- In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson - Bryson may be one of the most entertaining writers out there, and here he gives us a glimpse of that slice of another planet that people like us live on - Australia. Bryson has an ability to empathize with the people he's writing about, while still finding the absurdity in the numerous situations he finds himself in (though the most absurd thing is not the situation, but moreso that HE has gotten himself into it), as well as the history of the Land Down Under. I've read other stuff by Bryson, and they just don't seem to come together as perfectly as this book does (though they're still worth reading). 

 

- 1491, Charles C Mann - Mann's somewhat controversial look at the pre-Columbian Americas is pretty fascinating - even if some of it is conjecture and not necessarily accepted, there appears to be plenty of evidence out there that the natives weren't exactly sitting in their tepees just smoking tobacco before Columbus showed up - there were advanced civilizations here with technologies as advanced (simply different) than that of the Europeans. This book really stuck with me, I've been thinking about some of the stuff in it for 6 mos. This may not LAST on my list, but it belongs here now. 

 

 

Oh man, "Croatoan." 

 

 

Eh, I think we've become far more Brave New World than 1984

 

The Magus!!! Damn, I'd completely forgotten about that.  I read it one summer at Uni and was completely blown away by it.  What with that and The Collector I kind of feel that Fowles was a little bit fucked up.

 

And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - great.  The fucken' combine man....

 

Agreed.  Red Storm Rising is the only Clancy book I've read more than once.  And the Long Walk is fantastic "Garratteeeeeeeeeeeeee..."

 

I'LL DANCE ON YOUR GRAVES!!!!  

The curse of this sort of thread is that you keep thinking of stuff. I'd add Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, which I'm surprised no one else has yet. Just peerlessly engaging and absorbing thriller writing. That and Red Dragon are pretty much the pinnacle of forensic let's-catch-the-psycho reads.

 

Chavez cited a few nonfiction books, which opens it up a bit. I'd nominate, first and foremost, Richard Selzer's Letters to a Young Doctor, which contains the essay "Imelda" that is, for my money, one of the top five pieces of writing ever, in any language. Please do read it, it's worth your time (it's short). More people need to be reading Richard Selzer. First encountered his stuff in an essay-writing course and was blown away.

I couldn't possibly begin to number these:

 

- The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

Not the deepest or most affecting work, and it goes on for about a hundred pages more than it needs to. But I remember thinking when reading it, "This novel was written for me."

 

- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

If you're a comic book person, this one's pretty much a given. It's interesting - for such a "geeky" writer, I find that the more Chabon delves into straight genre territory (Gentlemen of the Road, The Final Solution) the less successful he is.

 

- L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

So much better than the movie... which is saying a lot, 'cause the movie's fuckin' awesome.

 

- Light in August by William Faulkner

You can't have a top ten list without Faulkner, and the story of Joe Christmas has always been my favorite.

 

- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

I don't think nearly as much of Hemingway as I did when I was 18, but this one still makes me cry.

 

- The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale

Lansdale's got to be the most criminally-underrated writer out there today. His stories have a bite to them that you just don't see in very many other writers.

 

- The Stand by Stephen King

Suffers from a pretty lackluster climax (like most of King's work), but the journey there... hoo boy. "Epic" in the way so few things are.

 

- Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I just finished this one, so it may be too soon, but just for structure and style alone this belongs here. A reading experience quite unlike any other.

 

- Doctor Sax by Jack Kerouac

I'm definitely a pulp guy, so Kerouac's take on a Shadow-esque character would most certainly find its way onto my list. It's probably the most difficult of Kerouac's works, but if you can make it through to the end you get a wonderful examination of childhood fears and nightmares.

 

- The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea

I'm pretty sure reading this one unlocks a part of your brain you never knew was there. It doesn't hurt that it's often laugh-out-loud hysterical.

 

I'd also have to give special mention to Supergods by Grant Morrison - which is meandering as hell, but still an absolute joy to read (hopefully Morrison will get around to writing a real novel one of these days).
 

In no particular order:

 

The Lord of the Rings -- Say what you want about the length and the pacing and the prose (there are legitimate arguments to be made, even if I don't agree with all of them), this remains one of the defining feats of imagination in all of literature.

 

Dune -- One of the few books that approaches the level of world-building Tolkien did, especially if you expand it to include the sequels (meaning the books by Frank Herbert and not his demon son Brian and Kevin J. Anderson).

 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- One of the first books I remember reading where I thought, "Yeah, this guy gets me."

 

Watership Down -- So simple yet so deep, and never less than magically lyrical.

 

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee -- I've never felt more guilty in my life than after reading this book.

 

The Martian Chronicles -- Just gets the nod over Fahrenheit 451 for me, because the Martian setting lets Bradbury cut loose with some of his best imagery, and there's sense of yearning through the whole thing that seems to predict the abandonment of the space race and outer space just becoming this place humans go and ruin like everything else.

 

The Right Stuff -- Speaking of humans going into space, this firmly puts that humanity front and center.  A little less jingoistic than the film (which I still love), but probably all the more inspiring because of it.

 

Breakfast of Champions -- Slaughterhouse-Five usually gets the most love, but Champions feels more immediate to me.

 

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH -- Okay, this is purely a nostalgia pick, because it's the first real novel I ever read.  Which probably explains my enduring fascination with things like Redwall and Mouse Guard.

 

The next book I read -- Because of that indescribable moment when you open a book for the first time and have no idea where it's going to take you.  That's why we keep reading.

 

 

This is not intended to come across as snarky, but I didn't realize that could be any point of controversy - if it were "top ten novels" I couldn't even make a list, since I generally prefer shorter fiction or flat-out non-fiction. 

 

 

Also, Orxy and Crake by Margaret Atwood is amazingly good. 

 

 

Wow, can't believe I forgot about this one - LOVELOVELOVE this book. 

 

 

All of these.  But I can't believe I forgot Watership Down.  My daughter is called Hazel because of this book FFS.

 

 

Words.

Okay, some members of my list are representative of beloved book series (so hard to pick just one), and the list is pretty mainstream, geeky and unhip, but here goes...

 

 - The Lord Of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

This ones basically Ground Zero for me and my geekery and creativity.  Henson opened my mind to high fantasy with The Dark Crystal, then handed me over to John Ronald Reuel who eased me into the hot bath with the next entry on my list, but it was Frodos journey to destroy the one ring that literally blew my ten year old mind wide open. I still like to read this every few years.

 

 - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I liked the dragon on the book cover, and the fact it still had illustrations. I was nine. I was totally unprepared. Still the greatest childrens yarn ever written.

 

 - Caesar by Colleen McCullough

This book is representative of the utterly jaw dropping, mammoth achievement that is my favourite book series of all time when taken as a whole, Colleen McCulloughs Masters Of Rome. A history book, a vivid epic, a tale of love death, intrigue and the makings of the greatest empire the world has ever known, concentrating on the most magnetic character at the centre of it all Julius Caeser, and those that set the scene before him and came after, these books are the closest you'll ever get to hopping in a time machine and getting to watch a hundred years of the most fascinating and indelible historical stories in the recorded story of humanity. McCullough spent twelve years researching before writing a word and became Australias premier ancient roman historian as a consequence - and it shows in the final product. Gripping, addictive, but also incredibly dense, this is the set of books that taught me more history that stuck than twelve years of schooling. 

 

 - Dracula by Bram Stoker

Gothic horror at its finest. This is my 19th century novel par excellence. The building blocks of horror and the vampire mythos never bettered. This scared the pants off me at age 11 and I still read it for the pure joy every couple of years.

 

 - Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice

Gothic horror may have never been bettered than Stoker, but I'd argue it was at the very last equalled. As much as I want to fault Rice for planting the seeds that would be the complete defanging of the modern vampire mythos, this first novel is still a stunning page turner (followed by one holy hell of a sequel). Read this as a teen and I dare you not to wish you could become one of the immortals by the stories end.

 

 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowlings

My favourite entry in one of the most shamelessly enjoyable and addictive book series I've ever read. At it's heart Rowing basically gave the children of the world a sprawling magical epic that was very much Lewis-meets-Dickons for kids and ended up becoming one of the most enjoyable engrossing ripping yarns I've read. Azkaban wins as my favourite tho as this is of the character depth the series would become known for, and for the final third of the story, one of the most enjoyably crafted third acts in all of popular fiction in my estimation.

 

 - Dune by Frank Herbert

If McCullough nailed the meat and potatoes of human history in our past, then Herbert actually nailed the history of humanity long into the future. Lyrical, vivid, engrossing and quite beautiful. I mean, it's frikkin Dune, man. This is cornerstone scifi.

 

 - Neuromancer by William Gibson

Blade Runner set the scene, but Neuromancer solidified my adoration of all things cyberpunk - a love thats never completely left me.

 

 - The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

Basically this entry represents my love of the LA Quartet, but I think in a lot of ways this is still my favourite of the stories. It feels the most personal somehow.

 

 - Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman

This first entry into what is a truly phenomenal piece of fiction - essentially the athiests answer to Lewis' Narnia - but at its heart this first books also happens to be simply one of the most enjoyably vivid, engrossing reads I've ever come across

 

 

 

special mentions: Trainspotting (Irvine Welsh), The Passage (Cronin), Stark (Elton), Boy (Dahl), Devil In The White City (Larson), The Lost City Of Z (Grann), Papa Hemingway (Hotchener), Unreliable Memoirs (James), Robinson Crusoe (Dumas), Gentlemen Of The Road (Chabon)

I'm sure I'll want to change this the second I post it, but here goes:

 

(No particular order except for number 1).

 

1. Sabbath's Theater, by Philip Roth

A tragicomedy epic. Roth's most blazingly obscene, hilarious, inventive and in the end, emotionally blistering work. From the amazing opening line to the darkly fulfilling last one, this novel so brilliantly moves between comic raunch and real heartbreak and humanity. The last 100 pages are a tour de force. This is the book that cements Roth as the finest writer of his generation and the one that cemented him, for me as the finest American novelist other than William Faulkner. Speaking of whom...

 

2. Absolom, Absolom! by William Faulkner

I feel a little guilty putting this one up, since I only recently read it, and usually I'm quick to temper my reactions of "best ever!" so soon after experiencing a work of art. However, it's not as though I'm likely going to one day turn around and find fault with one of the most important and acclaimed novels from my all-around favorite novelist ever. In truth, my favorite peice of writing from Faulkner is his story/short novel The Bear, but since this is favorite books, Absolom, Absolom! takes the cake. Difficult and rewarding, this dark tale is probably the most important novel ever written about race in the South. Though it's not politically correct by our standards, it is a morally brave book and the power of it's metaphor (not to mention scope, depth and prose) made the provincial universal.

 

3. Ulysses, by James Joyce

Because it's probably THE great novel. Because it turns the normalcy of the every day into an epic. Because it completely disregards any and all rules. Because you could, as Joyce had hoped, should the city of Dublin ever be laid to ruins you could rebuild it using this book as a blueprint. And because even though it doesn't hit me as hard emotionally as some other books (though it does at points), I've never felt prouder of myself for finishing a book as I did when I finished this. Except for maybe...

 

4. The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

This one was hard going, but man is it worth it. Like Vonnegut said, this book contains pretty much everything you need to know about life. It is, to me, the essential book about God and morality. The Grand Inquisitor and Ivan's recollection of being visited by Satan are two of the most brilliant scenes ever written. Another book which after I finished, I felt like I could take on any book there is.

 

5. The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O' Connor, by Flannery O'Connor

Best American short story writer ever. A Good Man Is Hard To Find is a perfect story, as are a dozen others she wrote. Brilliant, shocking, funny, tragic and hard as nails. As someone who is not only a lapsed Catholic, but a strident opponent of everything the Catholic Church stands for, even I have to cross myself after reading O'Connor.

 

6. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

When people talk about The Great American Novel, this is the one that springs to my mind. A novel ostensibly about race, but moreso about America at a pivotal moment in it's history. Everything about this book is genius, and as someone who deals very heavily in the subject of race in my own writing, this is the book I look to as to how to tackle the subject.

 

7. Stoner, by John Williams

Has nothing to do with weed. Rather, this most underrated and under-read of classics is an example of perfect writing: concise, clean prose which so casually doll out moments of beauty that it will take you by surprise. The story of a self-described unremarkable man who lives a dissapointing life, yet it's made riveting by the remarkable precision of the writing. I generally don't blaze through books in two days, but this one I did. Considering that it's not a pot-boiler heavy on action or suspense, but rather the quiet story of an English professor who stoically resigns himself to various setbacks and strife throughout his life (none of which are particularly shocking or surprising), that's saying something.

 

8. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

The scariest book I've ever read. One of the most mind-blowing and beautifully written. Other than my number one pick, this is probably the best American novel of the last three decades. Gorgeous in it's brutality and utterly unlike anything else I've ever read. The Judge might be the greatest character to ever appear in American fiction other than Moby Dick and Ahab.

 

9. American Tabloid, by James Ellroy

Although I'm not as obsessed with Ellroy as I once was, the man and his writing still mean a lot to me, and I will always count him as one of, if not the, most formative writers in my life. This is his masterpiece.

 

10. Erasure, by Percival Everett

I've read other books which are better (which is not to say that this book is not very, very good on its own merits), but I really related to this one an extremely personal level. The struggle over remaining true to yourself vs. others conceptions of you based on your race (others being both people of your race and other races). That this book is not some inspiring 'just be yourself' Oprah book, but rather a disturbing and evisceratingly brutal novel that finds absolutely zero comforting answers is what makes it so dear to my black, bitter heart.

James Ellroy-American Tabloid. A hallucinogenic blazing trip through the dark heart of America in the fifties and sixties. Ellroy really doesn't like the Kennedy's, it's absolutely fascinating to watch the rise and fall of Kemper Boyd and the fall and rise of Ward Littell with Pete Bondurant hustling and working his way through the underworld.

 

Jim Thompson-The Getaway. Killer Inside Me might have the greater reputation but this book to me, is Thompson at his most observant about damaged human beings.

 

George Pelecanos-The Big Blowdown. The first half of this book has to be one of the best coming of age stories I've ever read, just full of heart and humanity then Pelecanos delivers a gangster story and serial killer story all in one, the man is nothing if not versatile.

 

James M Cain-The Postman Always Rings Twice. I think this pretty much invented the erotic thriller, two damaged people find each other consumed by their lust. By today's standard's it's fairly tame but it still pack's a hell of a punch.

 

Lawrence Block-When the sacred ginmill closes. I still need to read the rest of the Scudder series after A Dance at the Slaughterhouse but Ginmill is much more than just a crime novel, it's a snapshot of a group of men at a certain point in time, there's a nostalgic tone to the entire novel, almost like Scudder was recalling a fond memory with a sense of sadness.

 

Ovid-Metamorphosis. A wonderful collection of greek myth's about the nature of change essayed with lyrical beauty by Ovid.

 

Leo Tolstoy-War and Peace. I know, I know, this old warhorse but when I finally decided to read this (the size alone was daunting) I found it to be much more than just a story of two families, it's also about the nature of change within a nation and how events unfold and shape the people caught up in it. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I read and I've never forgotten it.

 

Richard Price-Clockers. Without this book, The Wire would not exist, the surface level of this book largely looks at the drug trade on a street level view but this book is far, far more than that, the two brothers are the ultimate american tragedy and there's no easier answer for either of them.

 

George Pelecanos-Shame the Devil. I don't know if we're allowed to include more than one book by the same author but I have to include this one, it's one of the best explorations of grief and the slow crawl back to humanity I've ever read, it just aches with human honesty and power.

 

Don Winslow-The Power of the Dog. This book completely guts the american drug war from head to toe, leaving nothing. It's an astounding piece of work.

 

I totally didn't mean to sound snarky either. It was just that I believe you were the first to list some nonfiction, so before that I'd (wrongly) thought this was meant to be strictly a fiction thread. Otherwise I'd have listed some nonfic too. Maybe I'll do a separate list.

1. The Stand - Stephen King

 

You should give Brothers another day in court. Skim the suicide serum/compliance spray shit, it doesn't mean much to the rest of the narrative and it seems to be there to pad things out. Once Scylla gets briefed on what's going on and what he has to do, it's fun. Not all that great, but fun. Before that, there are entire chapters devoted to the two kids who commit suicide and the guy with the spray who makes the homophobe get it on with the black guy, and it's like, is there a story in here somewhere?

 

I read most of Goldman in college as brain-vacation from the course reading. I remember a lot of his '80s stuff, like Control and Heat, being kinda pants. One thing you definitely notice from Marathon Man onward is that his screenwriting affected his prose —

 

— lots of dashes —

— speeding you along —

— like a screenplay —

Yeah, that was great. Something like "This kindly, wonderful dentist, suddenly gleeful at the prospect of drilling into a healthy tooth -- 'Bill, it would be agony -- anyone would crack, anyone--'"

 

Preston and Child are my guiltiest of guilty pleasures.  Regarding RELIC: I still think it's hilarious that the film got rid of Pendergast, one of the most magnetic characters in fiction, by combining him with D'Agosta.  That was one of the stupidest decisions ever.

 

Good to know I'm not alone on that one.  I almost put Preston's Blasphemy on here, but I'm kind of ashamed I like that book as much as I do.  

 

And yeah.  That one decision alone made the movie pretty much unwatchable for me.  

Love love The Relic. Riveting but smart read. Defintely their best effort and it comes closest to what Crichton was doing when he was at the top of his game.

1. The Thin Red Line, by James Jones

2. Drowned Hopes, by Donald E. Westlake

3. Tunnel in the Sky, by Robert Heinlein

4. The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

5. Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett

6. The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson

7. Black Alibi, by Cornell Woolrich

8. Fletch, by Gregory McDonald

9. The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster

10. Cockfighter, by Charles Willeford

My personal top ten - I'm making no claims to any of them being literature for the ages, though some are. Mostly books that I remember vividly, for whatever reason, and that had a substantial impact at the time in my life that I read them

In no particular order:

Ringworld by Larry Niven
Dune by Frank Herbert
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Berlin Noir by Phillip Kerr
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Score by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Michael Chabon
Burmese Days by George Orwell
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Age of Reason by Jean Paul Sartre

In no particular order, here goes...

 

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. One of the funniest and saddest books I've ever read, with a fierce anarchy of imagination exploding out of the almost supernaturally precise grammar and composition. I read it when it came out, and return to it every few years either to graze its wonders or for a full reread. His other stuff is great too.

 

Watership Down, Richard Adams. This was read to me as a child, and it remains one of the best adventure stories I've ever read. I can still remember the names of most of the rabbits, and the tales of Lord Frith resonate with mythic meaning.

 

Money, Martin Amis. For those of us who were there, this is strongly evocative of the eighties, and John Self is a figure of heroic self-gratification and self-abuse, which is a pretty good two-line description of the decade. Laugh-out-loud funny, and like the best comedies, significantly tragic. The scene where Self shows up in black socks and ancient plum-smugglers to shuffle the court in an exclusive Manhattan tennis club is notably hilarious, and typical of Amis's treatment of his 'heroes'.

 

My Idea of Fun, Will Self. The first novel from Self, this is a sick, lean little piece of satire with fangs to spare. Self is a verbal acrobat in the mode of Amis, but where Amis has echoes of magical realism, Self dips right into the surreal. This is a downright nasty little book, and great fun for those who don't mind straying into the truly transgrassive.

 

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami. One of those books that I never have a copy of because I keep giving it away. A window into the living mythic life of Japanese culture, this book abounds with memorable passages (the letters of Lt. Mamiya, the massacre at the zoo). Most of his other stuff is worth reading too.

 

The Stand, Stephen King. I'd like to nominate this book as some sort of keystone text in the cultural syllabus of the post-millenial generation. King really hit a nerve here, and as someone already noted the parallels with Dawn of the Dead are obvious.

 

Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks. It's kind of a toss-up between this and Against a Dark Background, but the mind-bending cannibal island interlude and the fact that this was the first Banks I read make this the one. This is space opera of the highest level, and established the Culture as a literary universe I'll visit any time.

 

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. Staggering in both it's violence and its beauty. This novel is unique in both the elegance of it's language and the gutter brutality of its subject matter. At times genuinely difficullt to read, but worth the journey if you have the inclination. This is not magical realism, but mythical realism. I am a little uneasy with how much I love this book.

 

And the Ass Saw the Angel, Nick Cave. I've loved Nick Cave since The Birthday Party. This novel is what perhaps what would have happened had Stephen King been born in Yoknapatawpha county. Strange, feverish and often beautiful, this stands with the finest of his songs.  

 

What's Bred In the Bone, Robertson Davies. It's hard to pick just one Davies novel, but if it must be so, this is the one. The perfect synthesis of so many of the writer's lifelong obsessions, this is rich, detailed, educated and funny. But really, just pick up any Davies novel and give it a try; if his use of the High Plain Style alone doesn't hook you, well then, I'm afraid we probably wouldn't get along if we met at a party.

Great books mentioned in this thread.  Thinking about my list, I couldn't come up with books from ten different authors.  Well I could, but I'm very strict about these kinds of things.  Ok, I'm OCD, but whatever, here's a list of 7.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

Master of post-modern surreal fantasy.  It's like going down the rabbit hole to the nth degree.

Shogun - James Clavell

Clavell's 'Asia saga' are a collection of mammoth books over a thousand pages long each, set in Japan, Hong Kong and Iran, and spanning the years between 1600's to 1979.  Shogun is chronologically first in the saga.  In the vein of the Game of Thrones series, the stories are populated by hundreds of characters all plotting and scheming against each other.  Addictive stuff.

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

My first foray into Vonnegut remains my favourite.  Blew my fragile 21 year old mind with its humour, irony and scope.

The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester

One of the angriest books I've ever read.  Referred to as the 'first cyberpunk' novel, it takes the concept of teleportation and runs with it to fantastic effect.

To The White Sea - James Dickey

One of the great 'survivalist' genre books, just reading the premise alone should pique your interest.  It was going to be adapted by the Coens and starring Brad Pitt once.  Would have been a masterpiece!

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

After Vonnegut, I got my mind blown again by Heller.  Hilariously tragic and just essential reading really.

Permutation City - Greg Egan

Hard to pick between this and Diaspora to add to this list.  These books are the hardest (and technically arduous to get into, I'm amazed it was published) sci-fi you will ever read, it's so hard that despite the fact that it was written in 1994, to this day it's still far ahead of not only its time, but our time.  Any time I see a sci-fi premise to a new novel or film, I always think to myself "Eh, Egan did that already".