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Your favorite 10 books

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Little Mijarka
Member
#11 · Posted: 12 Mar 2008 05:40
My favorites are almost identical to a few others.

1) The Adventures of Tintin--Herge (ever read them??)
2) Wuthering Heights--Emily Bronte
3) Les Miserables--Victor Hugo
4) Great Expectations--Charles Dickens
5) The Lord of the Rings--Tolkien
6) Johnny Got His Gun--Dalton Trumbo
7) Rebecca--Daphne DuMaurier
8) Persepolis--Marjane Satrapi
9) Jane Eyre--Emily Bronte
10) My Antonia--Willa Cather

~Little Mijarka
Grey
Member
#12 · Posted: 12 Mar 2008 13:08
I don't have many favourites, because I love all books but the three below are the ones I treasure the most:

1.Tintin in Tibet - Herge'
2. Artemis Fowl (first) - Eoin Colfer
3. Howl's Moving Castle - Diane Wynne Jones
cigars of the beeper
Member
#13 · Posted: 12 Mar 2008 18:54
Another good book is Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey. In it you can learn all about the trilobites and their ancient world. They were actually as diverse as beetles are today, meaning millions of species. There is even a reference to Tintin in there. I suppose some of you who are British might have met Mr. Fortey, if you've visited the paleontology section of the British Museum.
IvanIvanovitch
Member
#14 · Posted: 7 Jun 2008 05:29
If only I could list my top fifty *sigh*! Okeydokey. Here goes (Tintin and the Bible are givens).

The Lord of the Rings--J.R.R. Tolkien
Ender's Game--Orson Scott Card
Flowers for Algernon--Daniel Keyes
Dune--Frank Herbert
Jonathan Livingston Seagull--Richard Bach
King of the Wind--Margeurite Henry
The Odyssey--Homer
The Sun Also Rises--Ernest Hemingway
Seabiscuit--Laura Hillenbrand
The Princess Bride--William Goldman

zaveri_tintin wrote:
i hate Harry Potter.

Me too, sort of. I don't exactly hate the series. It's revolting. I avoid it, that's all.
guarani
Member
#15 · Posted: 18 Apr 2012 02:02
Can't resist top 10 lists.

Restricting the list to literature, and making the point that these are my favorites rather than the best I have read, perhaps in order;

- Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges. A compendium of some of the notable short stories of the Argentine writer Borges, without question my favourite author (yes, over Herge as well). Short stories such as "The Aleph", "The Library of Babel", "The Immortals" simply had a profound impact on me.

-Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. It is the humanity in this book that elevates it. A novel where the bravest and most noble thing to do is to be a coward. The moment Snowden "spills" his secret still haunts me.

-The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A magnificent detective story set in an Monastery in late medieval - early renaissance Italy. The undercurrent of symbolism is masterful, the greatest work by the master semioticist that is Eco.

-Things Fall Appart by Chinua Achebe. This african writer gives an uniquely African perspective on colonialism. Describing the effect of the arrival of the european influence in a small tribal village. The book has an incredible rhythm, almost beat to it . It was quite interesting for me to read this just after reading "Heart of Darkness" by Conrad. Africa (in the latter case the Belgian Congo) is portrayed through an absolutely different lens, native and colonialist, in both works, quite the contrast.

-Brave new World by Aldous Huxley. I have always found dystopian novels fascinating. I find the method of alienating the masses through emotionless drug induced pleasure ("soma") in this book far more plausible, and even prophetic, than the control-through-repression of George Orwell's 1984. The tragic figure of the "Savage", who having lived outside of society and educated himself by reading the encyclopedia of human emotions that are the works of Shakespeare, comes across as intoxicatingly compelling. The fact that the title of the book is based on a line from Shakespeare's "The Tempest", one of my favorite of his works, just makes it all the better for me.

-Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Growing up this was a formative book for me. The absolutely beautiful and touching journey down the Mississippi of an uneducated boy on a quest to liberate the slave Jim from the bonds of oppression. Huck gives us all a lesson on the power of human dignity.

-One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Latin American literature is outstanding, and I don't say this just because I am from Latin America. This book is probably the best work of the most successful movement in Latin American literature; "Magical Realism". The mixture of the fantastical and the real create a dizzying effect in the epic tragic tale of the Buendia family in the fictitious Colombian town of Macondo. Perception becomes more important than fact. Fantasy illustrates the underlying truth better than reality ever could. To read this book is to delve into a very deep nerve of the Latin American psyche.

The complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Connan Doyle. Growing up I had the complete works edition with the original illustrations by Sidney Paget. I can't count the times I must have read all of the stories. Endless fun trying to solve each mystery and almost invariably, with a few exceptions, being beaten by Sherlock Holmes. Re-reading the stories as an adult provided the same effect as re-reading the Tintin Albums, the realization of underlying themes and hidden depth I had not noticed before.

I, The Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos. A magnificent psychological fictionalized-historical novel by my countryman the Paraguayan Roa Bastos. A "study" of the mind of the first dictator in the history of Paraguay, the Dr. Francia, just after our independence from Spain in 1811. The whole book jumps through different chronological times at whim, seems to involve different characters until you come to the realization that they are just different personalities inside the mind of Dr. Francia. An example of absolute power corrupting absolutely, even corrupting reality and altering history. A very challenging read but without a doubt one of the greatest works of Latin American literature.

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. By this point it is quite obvious I like short stories. Nothing more seductive in a cold dark night than to sit by the fire with a good glass of single malt whisky, or more appropriately amontillado, and a classic Poe story at hand. Reading until the blood curdles, the hair stands on end, and you can hear the beating of your telltale heart.
tintinsgf
Member
#16 · Posted: 18 Apr 2012 16:02
Let's see if I can get a top 10. Well, here they are. In no particular order.

Sophie's World (Jostein Gaarder)
Inkheart (Cornelia Funke)
Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne)
Twenty Thousand Leagues under The Sea (Jules Verne)
Orange Girl (Jostein Gaarder)
Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
The Number Devil (Hans Magnus Enzensberger)
Rainbow Troops (Andrea Hirata)
Edensor (Andrea Hirata)
The Land of Five Towers (Ahmad Fuadi)

And one more addition, which makes this list a top 11.

Bibbi Bokken's Magical Library (Jostein Gaarder and Klaus Haargerup)

All books I've listed above (except Twenty Thousand Leagues) were read by me in Indonesian, so I am sorry if the titles I wrote differs from the actual title (in English).

And yes, Rainbow Troops, Edensor and Land of Five Towers are Indonesian novels, yet as far as I knew, Rainbow Troops is now available in English (I think I remember that it is sold in UK, too). Land of Five Towers too is available in English, yet I am not sure if it is as widespread as Rainbow Troops outside Indonesia.

IvanIvanovitch:
zaveri_tintin wrote:
i hate Harry Potter.

Me too, sort of. I don't exactly hate the series. It's revolting. I avoid it, that's all.

Well, I am with IvanIvanovitch, I don't exactly Harry Potter, and I admit I love its universe (setting, the wizardry and so on). I tried reading Order of Phoenix, and all I got is a sad head ache. I admit that JK Rowling's a master author, but I just think her style doesn't suit me.
mct16
Member
#17 · Posted: 20 Apr 2012 02:23
I tend to go by authors, I'm afraid. If I read one book by a certain writer and enjoy it then I tend to look out for and enjoy more of his work. Here, therefore, are my top 10 authors and writers in no particular order:

Herge and "Tintin" - goes without saying.

René Goscinny always makes me laugh with "Asterix" and "Lucky Luke", but I've avoided reading the books that came after his death. I've also read books that include his other work and got many laughs out of them as well.

Raoul Cauvin, another Belgian comics writer who, like Herge and Goscinny, focuses on humour and is currently one of the best in the business. His series "Sammy" (set in Chicago during the Prohibition era) is especially good and I've collected most of them, as is his "Blue Coats" (set during the US Civil War) which, while raising the horrors of conflict, also provides good laughs as well.

Alan Moore, with "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta", which contain well-developed characters but also deal with many political, moral and social points. Every time I read them there seems to be something new to discover, like the issues they raise or the layout of the illustrations.

Alexandre Dumas' "Three Musketeers", its sequel "Twenty Years Later" and "The Comte of Monte Cristo". Griping reading. "Monte Cristo" was particularly enjoyable, especially the way in which his desire for revenge raises various other dilemmas. However, "The Vicomte of Bragelonne" (the last of the Musketeers saga and which includes "Man in the Iron Mask") was somewhat slow, plodding and not as good and I soon gave that up. I might try it again later.

Douglas Adams and his classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" with wonderful and wacky worlds and characters, not to mention the "42" mystery. I liked his first "Dirk Gently" novel, but did not care much for the sequel.

Tom Sharpe with his wild and anarchic humour, like the "Wilt" series and "Blott on the Landscape". I don't consider him exactly laugh-a-minute - his comedy is very dark and bleak - but it's quite fun the way his characters deal with the destructive situations they find themselves in.

PG Wodehouse's "Jeeves and Wooster" series had me in fits. The way Jeeves helps Bertie out, but also manipulates things in order to get some advantages of his own is great.

Switching to thrillers, I enjoy Frederick Forsyth, especially his early novels like "Day of the Jackal" and "Dogs of War", but I think he slipped a bit in later years: the central plot of "Fourth Protocol" and the resolution of "Icon" strike me as highly improbable.

JK Rowling's "Harry Potter". I'm surprised by some of the negative opinions above. Every time I started reading the most recently-published novel I was up all night. Rowling's books are among the few that I would say are literally "unputdownable". I kept saying to myself "One more chapter and then bed", but no: she cast a spell of her own on me and I was up till dawn and the last chapter.
hadtins
Member
#18 · Posted: 3 Mar 2014 18:16
My list would be like this
*Tintin -far and above all other books
*Kidnapped(R L Stevenson)
*Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea(Jules Verne)
*The Secret Garden (Frances Burnett)
*Feluda Series (Satyajit Ray)
*The Universe in a Nutshell (Stephen Hawking)
*Matilda(Roald Dahl)
*Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
*Charlie & The Chocolate Factory (Roald Dahl)
*The Life Of Pi (Yann Martel)

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