What are you top fifteen Favorite Novels / Series?

[BJ Swabb]

Hey yall so I want to know what is your favorite 15 novels or series that you have read. Here are mine.

1. Inheritance Cylce by Paolini
2. Fablehaven & Dragonwatch by Brandon Mull
3. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
4. Peter Pan by JM Berrie
5. Carrie by Stephen King
6. Game of Thrones Series by George R R Martin
7. The Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
8. Inkheart by Comelia Funke
9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
10. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
11. Harry Potter by JK Rowling
12.Beauty & The Beast by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumount
13. The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan
14. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
15. Percy Jackson by Rick Roirdan

 

[pmmg]

Well...My own, of course.

Ones not from members here....

Watership Down
Game of Thrones (only read the first one)
Elric Series (first six, stopped after that)
Dune (First one)
Huck Finn (Never thought I would like this one)
Illiad (Imma throw in Gilgamesh here as well)
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lolita
By This Axe I Rule (which is a short in the Kull series), I might put others like Conan's Red Nails in their too.
Red Badge of Courage
Scarlett Letter
Darf Force Rising (Star Wars Sequel, that would have made better movies).
Kingdom Come (which was a Superman TPB, but top of the line I thought).
LOTR (I am not a fan of Tolkiens style, but his story cant be ignored)
The Bible (endlessly fascinating)
Hamlet (Read a lot of Shakespeare, Hamlet is probably his best).

Kind of grasping now....

Truth is, so many are just kind of all blurred together. I tried to pick one that shaped my own approach to story telling.

 

[Rexenm]

Fifteen? Nice….

Brave New World
Lord Of The Flies
Tomorrow When The War Began
Christmas Carol
Sphere
Oath
Evil Genius
Redwall
Catch 22
Lilith
Animal Farm
Secret Garden
Wizards First Rule
Assassins Apprentice

That’s fourteen, but you can throw in Potter.

 

[skip.knox]

War and Peace
Lord of the Rings
O'Brian's books (Aubrey and Maturin)
True Grit
The Once and Future King
The Plague
The Long Goodbye
The Moonstone
Lord Jim
Between the Woods and the Water
Brighton Rock
The Glass Key
Steppenwolf
Goedel, Escher, Bach
A High Wind in Jamaica
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Buddenbrooks

OK, sure, that's seventeen. But I already cut several.

 

[pmmg]

Did you real all of War and Peace?

 

[BJ Swabb]

War and Peace is a hard read. It took me a long time to get through that book. Won't do that again.

 

[skip.knox]

Did you real all of War and Peace?

Three times; once aloud. LotR I have read I dunno how many times. Twice aloud (The Hobbit included). Genuinely great works are worth a second viewing.

 

[skip.knox]

War and Peace is a hard read. It took me a long time to get through that book. Won't do that again.

To me, a hard read is the book that is badly written. Most of the DNF books I've encountered were hard reads because it's hard to read while simultaneously throwing the book across the room. <g>

Some books, though, are slow reads. They require backing up, even study. One Hundred Years of Solitude was like that for me. I call it "chewy" prose. Some books you can just bolt down, but others require much chewing.

 

[Mad Swede]

Now there's a challenge. In no particular order:

Trollvinter (Moominland Midwinter)
Pappan och Havet (Momminpappa and the Sea)
Bröderna Lejonhjärta
Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige
Som elefanterna bär sina betar
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Once and Future King
Ringworld
A Fire Upon The Deep
Farewell My Lovely
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Red Harvest
The Horse and His Boy
A Spell of Empire

I could add a lot more, but these are the ones that sprang to mind first.

 

[Finchbearer]

1Q84 - Murakami
Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world - Murakami
The wind up bird chronicle - Murakami
Persuasion - Austen
Pride & Prejudice - Austen
Jane Eyre - Brontë
The Neapolitan Quartet - Ferrante
The Hobbit - Tolkien
1984 - Orwell
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
In Watermelon Sugar - Brautigan
Piranesi - Clarke
The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood
After Dark - Murakami
Restless - Boyd
ACOTAR - Maas

Oh there’s probably lots I’m not thinking of! Many of these I could read again, and have.

 

[Ban]

I have neglected my fiction reading over the years, so I'm certain this list will change in time when I ween myself off youtube and video games, and add in more fiction alongside my non-fiction reading. Sticking purely to fiction (no myths, sagas, folktales, etcetera), my current list would be:

1. Call of the Wild
2. White Fang
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz
4. Ben Hur
5. The "A song of Ice and Fire" series.
6. Butcher's Crossing
7. Watership Down
8. All Quiet on the Western Front
9. Heart of Darkness
10. Frankenstein
11. The Shadow over Innsmouth
12. At the Mountains of Madness
13. Dracula
14. The Asterix comic books (They count!)

And to add in a Dutch work I'll say: 15. The Dark Room of Damocles.

 

[BJ Swabb]

Huck Finn (Never thought I would like this one)

Yes Huck Finn is really good. Wasn't sure if I would enjoy it either as a lot of it is taking place on the Mississippi River. Still really good though.

 

[BJ Swabb]

Scarlett Letter

I haven't read this yet, but seen the movie. I really want to read it though. I love learning about the Holocaust. I recently went to a Holocaust museum here in St. Louis a few months back. Was in there for four hours straight.

The Hobbit - Tolkien

I forgot about putting this on my list. It's really good too, though I Tolkien could have made it longer like the rest of his books.

Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world - Murakami

I never heard of this one. What is it about? This is intriguing me to look this one up.

Frankenstein

Classic as is Dracula and the Invisible Man. Nothing like a great monster novel. It would be cool if there was a Van Halsing Novel out there. I love his character.

 

[Foxkeyes]

War of the Worlds
Day of the Triffids
LOTR
Dune
The Time Machine
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
The Road
Abarat
Blitzfreeze
Huckleberry Finn
Red Storm Rising
Hardy Boys
The Hobbit
Salem's Lot

 

[BJ Swabb]

The Time Machine
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Three real good novels as well. Jules Verne is one of my favorite authors. I had Journey on my list but I switched it to keep the 15 on there.

 

[BJ Swabb]

Salem's Lot

Another great classic!

 

[Ban]

I forgot about putting this on my list. It's really good too, though I Tolkien could have made it longer like the rest of his books.

I liked that it was concise. The biggest hurdle I have with adding fantasy to my reading list is that thick tomes are standard. Even the Hobbit still clocks in at just below a hundred thousand words. More fantasy novellas please!

 

[Finchbearer]

Hard Boiled Wonderland is about a man who becomes trapped in his mind at the end of the world, but I’ll let you read the synopsis for it because it describes it far better than I could, you’ll see why,

A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following.

Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.

 

[Finchbearer]

I forgot all about day of the triffids!

 

[Finchbearer]

Ok, I logged into my goodreads after a hiatus for no good reason and here are more;

A Gentleman in Moscow - Towles
I’m thinking of ending things - Reid
My year of rest and relaxation - moshfegh
The winternight trilogy - Arden
The Villanelle series - Jennings
Wild Swans - Chan