As part of which a vote was held on the books you can't live without.
1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5%
8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
= His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%
I think I have 9 of the 10 in my house thou I've not read them all (Lady Irving likes those bronte/Austin tomes)
So how many have you read and are there any books you would add to the list (obviously Home and Away and the Valiant 500 by Colin Cameron and the Rothmans football yearbook are in there but what else)
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Comments
To kill a mockingbird is one of my most favorite reads. To that I would add:
Catch 22
Catcher in the Rye
100 years of solitude
Don Quixote
Hard to think of others but when I was a spotty Yoof Catcher In The Rye by J D Salinger was considered a rite of passage.
on a quick thought i'd add.
name of the rose - umberto eco
devils of loudon - aldous huxley
heart of darkness - joseph conrad
london fields - martin amis
the outsider - albert camus
Mocking Bird - wonderful and timeless prose.
LOTR is jank imo - big waste of my time - only a pathetic duty bound need to finish a book I've started drove me on. A fanstatically realised world with the most dull dialogue and one dimensional characters that seems to have inspired The Bill.
I can live without these (once read I'd rarely read again), but enjoyed them thoroughly:
Bill Bryson - Notes on a Small Island (Sucks up to us a bit, but so many funny Englishisms looked at)
Michael J Fox - Lucky Man (Very heartwarming and inspiring)
PG Wodehouse - What Ho, Jeeves (compilation) (Funny)
Bruce Robinson - Withnail and I Screenplay (which I am reading again at the moment)
Terry Pratchett - Men at Arms (Like his style, great story and characters)
Mike Dash - Batavia's Graveyard (Laiden with precise historical facts/figures but when the story gets going it is a stark reminder of how horrific humans can behave)
Tom Sharpe
Terry Pratchett
DH Lawrence -Short Stories The Rocking Horse Winner is my favourite
Alan Sillitoe- The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner and Saturday Night Sunday Morning
James Joyce- The Dubliners and Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Not necessarially books I couldn't live without but they are all books that I've enjoyed reading.
scepticism inc by bo fowler on there
the astrological diary of god also by bo fowler
also gone with the wind by margaret mitchall
sleepers by lorenzo carcaterra
apaches by lorenzo carcaterra
the twits - roald dahl
For something less heavy and still very well written I would have to go with Stephen King, probably The Stand, and as a choice of reading for the Train, Plane etc any Sci Fi - no limits there from EE (Doc) Smith to Robert A Heinlein and everything in between.
For pure horror it's got to be Ramsay Campbell especially The Doll who ate it's Mother.
BTW 1905 if you like Pratchett (which I don't) try JK Rowling again and stick with it, she has better puns.
Mocking Bird, Catcher In The Rye and Great Expectations are also fantastic books - read them twice - well CitR three times.
Others I would recommend for that list are "Atonement" by Ian McEwan and "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck - the Steinbeck one is only 100 pages so get stuck in and enjoy!
I also second Crime and Punishment - might have to see of there is a recent translation and enjoy it again!
Pullman is pure quality. I received the Dark Materials trilogy as a Christmas present years ago & must have read them all over three days. I have since read others by him and the man is a brilliant writer.
Pratchett has been a long standing favourite of mine, a copy of his latest always accompanies us on the holidays. And if anyone thinks that Harry Potter women's one liners are funnier they obviously just don't get Pratchett' s humor, which is fair enough.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho I really enjoyed reading. Not because it answered all those unanswered questions but because it was very well written & had some great one liners that I have used since.
I didn't finish Curb's biography.................all this 'I'm West Ham through & through' has left a bitter taste in my mouth now. Still, he put four kisses on it for me, so maybe some 'Ammers' fan with the same name as me will buy it off me on ebay ;-)
Northern Lights/Subtle Knife/Amber Spyglass are huge, fantastic pieces of work!
The Broken Bridge was brilliant. It's actually classed as a young adult book, as were the Dark Materials, but it's a great read for any age imo and has a twist at the end that made my jaw drop!
DOn't mind the Potter books but nothing special. She's clever in that every theme from Children's tales are included eg orphan, boarding school, bully, baddy, special powers, friends, adventures, wise adults.
Was told to read Catcher in the Rye when I was a teenager at School. Hated it perhaps for that reason.
Most hated book most likely On the Road - rich kid gets drunk and listens to jazz until he runs out of money and has to wait until mummy and daddy send some more.
Books I've gone back to again and agian include Shoeless Joe comes to Iowa - WP Kinsella. all of his stuff is good. Also the Sword of Honour trilogy and Brideshead by Evelyn Waugh.
I recently read Northern lights. enjoyable and will get the other two some time but not in any top ten and even Philip Pullman said that on Radio 4 this morning
Personal favourite authors (in the sense that I'll buy any new release) are probably James Ellroy, Hunter S Thompson, John Irving and Gore Vidal. 'On The Road' was the rite of passage book for me in my teens / early 20s (along with going to see Oliver Stone's 'The Doors')...
Try and read every day before I go to bed - too many good books out there to ignore...
What do you do with them then? Eat them?
essential reading imo
Just reading "What's left?- where the left went wrong" by Nick Cohen
Don't buy them, then don't have to read them ?
how could i forget ellroy! american tabloid is genius.
and very true last comment, charlie, very true......
Dune - Frank Herbert
HHGTTG - Douglas Adams
Sky Sports football yearbook - Glenda Rollins
Actually, now would be a good time to read them again!