Favorite Books

[hermit78]

Non-Fiction
The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi
The Undiscovered Self - Carl Jung
The Kyablion - The Three Initiates

Fiction
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Anything Kurt Vonnegut

 

[EyeSeeCold]

The Kyablion - The Three Initiates

Yes, I enjoyed this one too. It mirrored many of my thought processes, especially where it speaks about polarities and pendulum-like forces. It's too bad I've had to read it outside the context of a hermetic initiate.

 

[hermit78]

Eyeseecold, I am on the outside as well. But my search for meaning and knowledge led me to it, and I found it very agreeable. My schooling was in philosophy, and I think the Kyablion expanded and added to my perspective.

I have also enjoyed reading some William Walker Atkinson books.

If you have any suggestions, I am open to them.

 

[Dove]

All time favorite book is 1984, I credit it for changing my worldview... First of any book anyways.

His dark materials trilogy (aka the golden compass books)

Jack Londons white fang and call of the wild were my favorites around the age of 8.

Steinbeck/Sinclair...

H.G Wells is awesome.

Many more books I'd call favorites but I tend to forget titles/authors

 

[Coquelicot]

As a kid, I loved Robert Sawyer's Quintaglio Trilogy. Intelligent dinosaurs with fascinating culture and conflicts? Left a real impression. I'd only managed to acquire the last in the trilogy (which sparked my interest in psychology) and spent five years tracking down the rest. Worth it.

Otherwise, Le Guin's works are great, 'The Dispossessed' standing out for me. I've also enjoyed stuff from other SF writers like Asimov, Phillip K. Dick and Zelazny, but it was the short stories from Cordwainer Smith that started the whole SF thing.

I also have a thing for Raymond Chandler's novels, like 'The Big Sleep'? Gotta reread the series, since the plots are convoluted as anything but the style is lovely.

And just reiterating support for Catch-22 and Ender's Game. Some of my favourite books.

 

[Puffy]

Yeah, favourite books is hard. Problem for me is that my tastes have changed drastically over time, I can't think of anything from over 6 years ago that I still consider influential to me. But at the moment:

Dreams - Carl Jung
Totality & Infinity - Immanuel Levinas
The Practice of Everyday Life - Michel de Certeau
Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
The Third Mind - William Burroughs & Bryon Gysin
The Castle - Franz Kafka
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons (for turning me to comics)
The Acme Novelty Library - Chris Ware (for being the best damn comic I've ever read. )
I Ching (potentially in time, I love the concepts, but haven't used it enough to say just yet.)

It sort of irks me that none of my favourite authors are female. I mostly read non-fiction, the few fiction authors I've spent a lot of time with in a while being James Joyce, Franz Kafka, William Burroughs & J.G. Ballard... I read comics very widely though, in terms of multicultural and female authors, I just can't think of any - besides maybe Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel - who would stand out as favourites.

 

[TheHanarchy]

Oh, soooo many...... (I'm glad you made it plural instead of singular)

Secret Garden- Frances Hodgson Burnett
Man and Superman-George Bernard Shaw
Hamlet- ...duh.
Franny and Zoey- J.D. Salinger
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime- Immanuel Kant
Death and Trial of Socrates- Plato
Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
Life of Pi- Yann Martel
Dracula- Bram Stoker
Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
Transmetropolitan- Warren Ellis
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Watchmen- Alan Moore
Dune- Frank Herbert
The Hobbit- J. R. R. Tolkien
(Chronicles of Narnia)- C.S. Lewis
Sailing Around the World Alone- Joshua Slocum
Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
Uzimaki- Junji Ito

 

[Radiant Shadow]

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all-time favorite)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Brothers Karamazov, also by Dostoevsky
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (next to CaP)
Faust by Goethe
Macbeth by Shakespeare (It's technically a play but whatever. The "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy is amazing.)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

 

[redbaron]

That I've (re)read recently:

One Soldier's War - Arkady Babchenko
Triage - Scott Anderson
Deep Survival - Laurence Gonzalez

That I found great at some point in time:

White Fang - Jack London
Warlock - Wilbur Smith
Art of War - Sun Tzu (at least, an interpretation of the work of Sun Tzu)
Dracula - Bram Stoker

When I was a kid I loved Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl

I also have to admit to obsession with the Gotrek & Felix novels by William King (the first 7). His style of writing appeals to me a lot, and the protagonist Felix Jaeger is at once so human and so awesome that the books never fail to entertain me.

 

[RJT]

Anna Karenina
Notes from the Underground
Brave New World
The Trial

 

[phantom]

One of the things I love most about college is the excuse to buy lots of books.

I grew up on 20th c British fantasy - Tolkein, Lewis, L'Engle.
Watership Down was probably my favorite novel as a child.
(I also read lots of series about horses, but wouldn't recommend those as quality literature...)

I've also collected some series of more recent fantasy written for young adults.
Pellinor series by Alison Croggon - Highly recommend to anyone into epic fantasy. She's a fantastic writer and ought to be better known than she is (at least here in the States).
The Icemark Chronicles by Stuart Hill
the Tiffany Aching books by Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky and others) - these last two are very much in the category of light reading.

Since starting college I've become acquainted with more classics. A quick selection of favorites:
The Iliad
Ovid's Metamorphoses (a collection of Roman mythology)
Voltaire's Candide
I am in love with Dostoyevsky. My favorite book by him so far is Crime & Punishment.

But I mostly read a lot of philosophy these days, and other non-fictional works.

 

[Cavallier]

^Oh to be young and in college again...*sigh*

 

[Hayyel]

The Harry Potter series (HUGE Snape fan)

Abigail by Magda Szabó (it's about a a little girl who is placed into a school for girls by her father in 1943, and how she copes with the new situation. She eventually find out that her father hid her there because he is an important person in the war and he is afraid that the enemy will kidnap her and use her against him and the country)

The Paul Street Boys by Ferenc Molnár (a group of boys try to defend their playground from another group of boys, called the "redshirts". It's a a satire of European nationalism and a premonition to the First World War)

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Deception Point by Dan Brown

 

[Hawkeye]

I really liked reading Tigana. I found the book on my bookshelf and nobody owned up to it being theirs. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

 

[Rousseau]

What initially comes to mind:

Ender's Shadow (I accidentally read it before E's Game, so I guess that's why I like it better)

I read it afterwards, but even then, it is definitely one of my favourites.

Also,

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

 

[kvothe27]

-The Foundation Trilogy and Robot books by Isaac Asimov
-The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
-Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith
-Dune by Frank Herbert
-The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
-A Song of Ice and Fire books by GRRM
-Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
-The Adjusted American: Normal American Neuroses in the Individual and Society by Snell Putney and Gail J. Putney
-The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
-Existentialism and the Philosophical Tradition by Diane Barsoum Raymond
-A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig


I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

 

[jcr256]

Wanna recommend u all one of my favourites, yet not so much well known. U can find buch of stories which will grab u right into the story, and u won't be able to stop reading nor to move out of the bed. Pretty much scary, as well as a little bit erotic, that's what everyone loves, isn't it? ) Oh well, the book is Cozy Chilling Bedtime Stories by Gibey. There's a discount on it right now, so it's real must have!!!

 

[Mediocre Scott]

My current favorite books are:
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet
Six Character in Search of an Author - Luigi Pirandello
Enders Game - Orison Scott Card
The Hobbit - Tolkien
Hitchhikers series - Douglas Adams
American Gods - Niel Gaiman

 

[Cavalli]

Stand Alone Book: The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Series: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Short Story: The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr - George R. R. Martin
Non-Fiction: How to Kill: The Definitive History of the Assassin - Kris Hollington
Poems: All my favourite poems are from young people that I follow on Tumblr

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I don't know if these would be favourite now:
P. K. Dick Ubik
J.R.R. Tolkien Silmarillion
G. Orwell Homage to Catalonia
F. Nietzsche Also Sprach Zarathustra
J. W. Goethe Faust
W. Gibson Neuromancer

 

[Jennywocky]

Ah... Neuromancer.

 

[rjioej23]

austerlitz by w.g. sebald is the best book of the last 15 years.

 

[Salmacis]

Tool A Confederacy of Dunces

Was expecting to see this one pop up a lot more. Pretty solid list overall, Manic. I'll trust you on Jerzy Kosinski, and will be ordering one right now since you seem to have pretty decent taste.

For a quick top two :
-"Oblomov" by Ivan Gontcharov. Oblomov is a landowner in XIXth century Russia. Too lazy to love, too tired to work. From the depths of his favorite couch, he desperately tries to drive away his visitors : Greedy leeches, true friends, worried peasants from his lands... He might (I'm cautious as I might be the victim of a witch hunt, should I be wrong) also be an INTP antihero, as he has a tendency to postpone, overanalyze, is always lost in his thoughts, and is a very introverted and sensible individual.

-"Roots of Heaven" by Romain Gary. Takes place in Africa, in the 50's. The hero is supposed to put an end to elephant hunt, but this book is about much more than that: Colonialism and its consequences, environment, human nature. I don't usually care for those topics, but when it's exceptionnally well written and rich, well...

I'm not making a thread to introduce myself as I dislike meets and greets. So, there.

 

[Nebula]

The Vampire Chronicles (the majority of them)
Forrest Gump (better than the movie)
Stardust
Memoirs of a Geisha
Anna Karenina
Robinson Crusoe
Gnój
Fables for Robots
Journeys Out of the Body

Can't think of more right now.

 

[grayskies]

The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Gone With the Wind - Mitchell
Zoe - T. A. Ford
The Interior Castle - St. Teresa of Avila
Queen of the Damned - Rice
Servant of the Bones - Rice

 

[Dr_Chroot]

Hmm...

Crime and Punishment - Dosta-whats-his-name
1984 - George Orwell
Readings in the History of Christian Theology - William C. Plancher
Moby Dick - Herman Melville (do I need even to include the author?)
A History of Western Philosophy - W.T. Jones
The One and The Many - R.J. Rushdoony
Style: Toward Clarity and Grace - Joseph M. Williams
Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
A Religious History of the American People - Sydney E. Ahlstrom
Life's Ultimate Questions - Ronald Nash
Brothers Karamazov - I think is time to refer back to Dosta-whoever
The Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
Our Enemy, The State - Albert Jay Nock

Yep... I think that I have been on a gov't watchlist for sometime now!

(Especially considering how often I have contributed to this wiki page )

 

[TheManBeyond]

The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Kadath
The Whisperer in Darkness

Anything by Lovecraft <3

 

[QuickTwist]

I read 'The Things They Carried' in high school and I think I might just read it again pretty soon.

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

 

[Missfortune]

Favorite books?

I'm not sure I have one.

The Sound and the Fury maybe because of this:

When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

and Faulkner is my favorite author currently.

but there is another book called Battle Cry of Freedom which is darned good.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Re: Favorite books?

Some books off the top of my head:

Metro 2033
Ender's Game
Fight Club
Starship Troopers
Crime and Punishment
To kill a mockingbird
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich
Cancer ward
A clockwork orange
1984
Down and out in Paris and London
...
So on, so forth.

 

[Missfortune]

Re: Favorite books?

nice list. Solzhenitsyn is great. One day in the Life.. got me into him. I've never read Cancer Ward. What did you like about it? Maybe it should be next on my reading list...

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Re: Favorite books?

I read it seven years ago and I remember being dark and partially revealed the souls of characters as they deal with unfortunate circumstances of being in Russia at the time, conflicts with philosophy vis a vis their adaptations to the status-quo and their afflictions. At times it was also humorous.

 

[Absurdity]

Re: Favorite books?

Blood Meridian.

 

[TheManBeyond]

Re: Favorite books?

1984 is overrated i liked much more Harry Potter.
- Metamorphosis.
- The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
- 100 years of Solitude.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

Re: Favorite books?

1984 is overrated...

How so?

 

[TheManBeyond]

Re: Favorite books?

How so?

not sure if overrated was the right word but I was so hyped when I read it that i got kinda dissapointed maybe becuz it has made such an impact on culture that i wasn't that surprised by its thrill or overall "lesson".
So I guess i just meant it wasn't that impressive for the moment we live in, but sure maybe if I had read it when it was published or when i was 15 i would have been totally blown away.

 

[Missfortune]

Re: Favorite books?

1
- Metamorphosis.

Ovid or Kafka?

 

[Cheeseumpuffs]

Re: Favorite books?

I assumed he meant Kafka, but I guess that's premature of me.

I like 1984, Crime and Punishment, and The Stranger.

 

[TBerg]

Re: Favorite books?

The Dao De Jing isn't bad.

Neither is anything by Karen Horney or Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

[Missfortune]

Re: Favorite books?

I assumed he meant Kafka, but I guess that's premature of me.

I like 1984, Crime and Punishment, and The Stranger.

I thought that also actually, but had to ask just in case.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Re: Favorite books?

the devils of loudun (the movie's pretty cool but it just doesn't invoke the same depth of paranoiac horror)

the secret thoughts of cats - the infinite subtlety of cat expressions

 

[Cavallier]

I've merged your thread Missfortune into the other larger Favorite Books thread we have hanging around.

I think my taste in books has changed drastically in the last few years. I have trouble picking out a favorite.

I re-read Fahrenheit 451 a little while ago. I fell back in love with that book.

 

[Missfortune]

I've merged your thread Missfortune into the other larger Favorite Books thread we have hanging around.

I think my taste in books has changed drastically in the last few years. I have trouble picking out a favorite.

I re-read Fahrenheit 451 a little while ago. I fell back in love with that book.

Good idea about merging the threads.

F 451 is one of my favorites also.

 

[toosolidcuuj]

My favorite author is Orson Scott Card. Say what you like about his politics; his stories are gold.

 

[liamliam1234liam]

Well, four of his stories are, at least. It is no small feat to write three of my nine favourite books - two of which are in my top four - and yet not be close to one of my favourite authors. It is as if he put all of his talent into the Ender Quartet before collapsing. If he had written literally nothing else, he would be my favourite author, but each subsequent production dilutes his ability more and more.

1. Watchmen, Alan Moore (and Dave Gibbons)
2. Ready Player One, Ernest Kline
3. Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
4. Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card,
5. The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb (and Tim Sale)
6. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
7. 2010: Odyssey Two, Sir Arthur Charles Clarke
8. Rooftops of Tehran, Mahbod Seraji
9. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

 

[Ex-User (11125)]

revolution of everyday life-Raoul Vaneigem
society of the spectacle-guy debord
i read most works by aristotle(i mean yeah, the text is very difficult to read and dry. i struggled with reading his works, as they were mostly taken from lecture notes made by his students...nevertheless, aristotle's careful examination of the world, albeit dated, helped strengthen/rekindle my curiosity and fascination with everything)
also, i <3333 soren kierkegaard's works

fiction:

the confusions of young torless-robert musil: this book is very important to me. i read it at a time when i was beginning to notice how restrained i feel when talking to most people, and also how confusing everything is. at that time, before reading the book, i found some mathematical concepts from school really confusing and couldn't understand how one could arrive at a real solution after making assumptions or leaps...and then i read this book and the main character had the exact same thoughts!! the line "is there a gap in our reality?" still resonates with me. almost everything about the main character was similar to me; the detachement, the desire to observe and analyse without getting involved, the dire need to understand everything and the disappointment that comes with being unable to...etc. im pretty sure torless is an INTP. honestly i cannot describe how comforting it was to read this.
death in venice-thomas mann
no longer human-osamu dazai
dostoevsky's works
the woman in the dunes-kobo abe
un homme qui dort-georges perec
malina-Ingeborg Bachmann
great expectations-charles dickens<333
the melancholy of resistance-László Krasznahorkai
kokoro-natsume soseki

 

[Teffnology]

Power Broker by Robert Caro
The Prince by Machiavelli
The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas
Getting The Best of it by David Sklansky
Moneyball by Michael Lewis

 

[Polaris]

the confusions of young torless-robert musil

^ Thanks for this.

Also, +1 for Thomas Mann's and Kierkegaard's works.

 

[Alias]

The Harry Potter series.
LOTR.
3x Carlin by George Carlin.

There are a lot more but I can't think of them now.

 

[Yellow]

In no particular order, with only one mention per author for the sake of brevity, but really, I think I could list every book written by most of these authors and be honest in saying they are all my favorite.

Fiction
Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
The Solitaire Mystery - Jostein Gaarder
Mossflower - Brian Jacques
Kim - Rudyard Kipling
The Mauritius Command - Patrick O'Brien
Story of B - Daniel Quinn
Journey to the West - Anthony C. Yu's translation
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Slow Regard of Silent Things - Patrick Rothfuss

Non-Fiction
Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Full House - Stephen Jay Gould
Why Science? - James Trefil
Black Rice - Judith Carney
Republic - Plato
Phenomenology of Spirit - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard