It's impossible to argue with the guy.

Actually it's pretty easy. He's a self-opinionated fool. I probably am too mind you.

I'm currently reading Bill Bryson's Complete Notes (Notes from a Small Island and Notes from the Big Country). Laugh out loud funny and an entertaining look at life.

Agree about Bill Bryson being a good read and very funny, the only one of his that i've read that was abit disappointing was the one about australia, the rest are very good.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawlins has been life changing for me, I was an athiest anyway, his book turned me into a Fundamentalist Athiest, if there is such a thing!

The Earth chronicles by Zecharia Sitchin are a good read, 5 books in total and totally, totally mad stuff about aliens/god/ancient history, all nuts but far more beleivable than the bible imo, and a better read!

I've tried East of Eden a couple of times though, but just can't get into it. Is it worth perservering with?

Yes, depending on how far in you get. The fireworks don't really start until the Trask brothers meet up to discuss their fathers legacy. Dickens can be similar in format, where nothing much happens for a few hundred pages, then suddenly all of the plots and characters he's laid the groundwork for become fascinating.

Sunset Song – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
The Escape Artist – Matt Seaton
Psychovertical – Andy KirkPatrick
Spook Country – William Gibson
Kitchen Confidential – Anthony Bourdain
Gravitys Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson (currently reading Anathem which I'm enjoying)

Hmmm, not sure about ‘must reads', as I have my own favourite authors and books that I can keep going back to, and very few would be classed as classics or must reads, and I've not read any of the supposed classics like Steinbeck, but there are some I continually go back to that I would recommend as 'should reads'.
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, a heartbreaking story of the rape and murder of a little girl, whos' trapped spirit watches over her damaged and grieving family, and the monster who killed her. Curiously uplifting as well, I love the book, but I have to leave long periods between reads.
When The Lights Go Out, by Tanith Lee. I have read and re-read this book countless times, and now have a hardback copy to replace my almost deciduous paperback. A modern take on pagan ideas of sacrifice and rebirth set in an out-of-season South Coast town, wonderful characters, well written and haunting, I just love this book for it's utter Englishness and sense of place.
Bill Bryson-every home should have a collection of his books, funny, educational, and endlessly entertaining.
William Gibson-the man who invented cyberspace and cyberpunk, his latest books are indefinable, a kind of modern techno-noir writing that cannot be categorised but are describing a near future world that is happening as you read; Spook Country writes about Augmented Reality from a couple of years back that is already happening via the iPhone, for example.

HOUSE OF LEAVES

Danielewski's eccentric and sometimes brilliant debut novel is really two novels, hooked together by the Nabokovian trick of running one narrative in footnotes to the other. One-the horror story-is a tour-de-force. Zampano, a blind Angelino recluse, dies, leaving behind the notes to a manuscript that's an account of a film called The Navidson Report. In the Report, Pulitzer Prize-winning news photographer Will Navidson and his girlfriend move with their two children to a house in an unnamed Virginia town in an attempt to save their relationship. One day, Will discovers that the interior of the house measures more than its exterior. More ominously, a closet appears, then a hallway. Out of this intellectual paradox, Danielewski constructs a viscerally frightening experience. Will contacts a number of people, including explorer Holloway Roberts, who mounts an expedition with his two-man crew. They discover a vast stairway and countless halls. The whole structure occasionally groans, and the space reconfigures, driving Holloway into a murderous frenzy. The story of the house is stitched together from disparate accounts, until the experience becomes somewhat like stumbling into Borges's Library of Babel. This potentially cumbersome device actually enhances the horror of the tale, rather than distracting from it. The second story unfolding in footnotes, is that of the manuscript's editor, (and the novel's narrator), Johnny Truant. Johnny, who discovered Zampano's body and took his papers, works in a tattoo parlor. He tracks down and beds most of the women who assisted Zampano in preparing his manuscript. But soon Johnny is crippled by panic attacks, bringing him close to Psychosis.

'must-read' is nigh on impossible to justify – what one person takes from reading a book is just that – a personal experience, and without wanting to criticise the other posters on here, the most commonly quoted works do little for me. I can see the importance of Shakespeare, Steinbeck, et al, but can't say I personally got pleasure from reading them – to be frank, it often felt like a chore, or something I should have been doing – does this make me a pleb?

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn
Novel with cocaine by Agayev
The difference engine by Gibson/Sterling
The new men by CP Snow
anything by Primo Levi

Which Steinbeck books did you read Mitch? Most commonly people have read The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice And Men. I don't think they really represent the joy of his work. If you can, search out Tortilla Flat, which is hilarious. And not liking his work doesn't make you a pleb 🙂

aP, I've never read anything by Primo Levi, what would you recommend?

I read the grapes of wrath whilst at school, which is probably why it felt like a chore. I have a very varied taste in books (and not putting too fine a point on it, a f***ing enormous book collection). I dont know about anyone else, but other than one or two favourite authors (who have to remain nameless for fear of p*ss taking) who's books I buy regardless, I tend to 'impulse buy' (Waterstones staff start rubbing their hands whenever they see me coming), and also tend to buy books of a similar genre and then move on (before christmas it was travel writing about Australia, at present I'm 'into' anything about 70's TV / culture). Cheers for the tip about Steinbeck.

Nobody's mentioned Ernest Hemingway yet (I don't think)
I didn't as he's my all time favourite, but I can see why he's not for all. Deffo a man's author I reckon. Start with 'Old man and the sea' or short stories ('The short happy life of Francis Macomber') and if they do it for you away you go – 'For whom the bell tolls' (skip the political interlude in the middle if interest wanes) prob best for me.

+1 hemingway

the road by cormac mccarthy has the same punchy powerful style – good stuff

'The Sun Also Rises' is my favourite Hemingway – read it as a teenager and found it immensely moving, still find it very moving now.

2nd for 'Three Men In A Boat' – proof that what was funny back then is still funny now. I'll bet we all know a Harris and a George. 🙂

The collected Sherlock Holmes is still wonderful, and I loved Philip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy.

Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air' should really read Anatoli Bourkreev's version of the 1996 Everest disaster 'The Climb', if only to gain a more balanced perspective.

Paul Theroux's 'Great Railway Bazaar' is an almost perfect travel book, as is 'These are the days that must happen to you' by Dan Walsh.

Jim Perrin's biography of climbing hard man Don Whillans, 'The Villian' is also well worth a look.

'Must read'? Don't really believe in it as a concept… Could maybe try reading… Iain Banks, particularly The Crow Road and Complicity. Mark Twight, 'Kiss or Kill', best climbing writing you've never heard of. And Andy Cave's Learning to Breathe for the stuff about mining in particular. Pretty much anything by John Irving – Garp, Hotel New Hampshire – sparse, economic, beautiful prose.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, if Kevin Mcloud or whatever he's called had read this, he wouldn't have been quite so surprised by what he found in the Indian slums, I think. Jeanette Winterson, just beautiful and universal. Pretty much anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez especially 100 Years Of Solitude. Electric Brae by a Scottish writer and poet called Andrew Greig, the best writer you've probably never heard of and an amazing read and anything else he's written apart from the one about golf…

Best for reading on a campsite in the Lakes while the world explodes around you, Angry White Pajamas, by someone who's name I can't remember. Odd but gripping.

Oh, and I don't know what, but I just can't read Cormac McCarthy, I've tried to start All The Pretty Horses so many times and can't get into it.

I once read 1984 after having it recommended to me as a "must read". TBH I thought it was over-rated. Brave New World was better but not a "must read" IMO.

Nota must read but most of Christopher brookmyre's are good reads.

I think the 'must read book' is a valid concept in that certain novels give a context into which others fit or a cultural understanding of literature as a reflection of social shift. I suppose you can read 'just' for pleasure but in terms of appreciating literature there is mileage in getting a good grounding.

My two pence worth:

Wuthering Heights: Emily Bronte – The final, glorious fizzle for Romanticism
The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald – Devastatingly modern
1984: George Orwell – Leaves the heart empty
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde: Art criticism at its most poetic
King Lear: Shakespeare – Possibly the greatest piece of Literature ever written? Read it or you're a cretin. Not always enjoyable, but important.
Catcher in the Rye: Read it and be a teenager again!

and…

The Bible: Lots – If you don't know this then the classics remain a closed book. I'm fed up of reteaching students a common heritage that informs almost all of our accepted art forms.

Of course there are loads more and modern literature has its place but unfortunately a crass or basic grasp of literature does indeed make you a pleb.

Surprised anyone would choose Stephen King as an 'only book'. Good writing but do you re-read them finding something new??

Nope, I don't do that with any books, do you? IT is a great story, I can re-read a good story over and over again just like I can watch the same good film over and over again without learning anything new.

a crass or basic grasp of literature does indeed make you a pleb.

Don't be rediculous.

Of course there are loads more and modern literature has its place but unfortunately a crass or basic grasp of literature does indeed make you a pleb.

Isn't that bit like saying modern bikes have their place, but really you need to ride a Penny Farthing to have any idea of their merits or otherwise? Or you're 'a pleb'? 😉

Trainspotting, the book is so much better than the already great film.

As has been said, it's pretty hard to define what constitutes a "must read" – I mean, I love individual books by Steinbeck, the Brontës, Orwell etc, but I don't know if I could describe why they are necessary reading for somebody else. On the other hand, I could bore on for days about why certain books are necessary to me. 😀

Isn't that bit like saying modern bikes have their place, but really you need to ride a Penny Farthing to have any idea of their merits or otherwise? Or you're 'a pleb'?

no, literature is a reflection of a time and a place, and as human history shows, what has happened will happen again. To be able to see the future you need to understand where we have come from. If you are happy to spend your life watching X factor and big brother, fine, panem et circenses.

King Lear: Shakespeare – Possibly the greatest piece of Literature ever written? Read it or you're a cretin.

wow.

So does reading it make you more intelligent? I've read it but didn't think it was that great (and to be honest, most Shakespere leaves me a bit cold). I'm trying to understand where on the cretin scale this leaves me. Perhaps I'm just not intelligent enough but if being that smart stops you accepting that other people may have preferences that don't necessarily match your own, I'm glad I'm not.

+1 Trainspotting – brilliant read
+1 Stalingrad – jaw dropping in its magnitude and horror
Bernard Cornwell – Alfred books
Siegfried Sassoon – The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
RS Surtees – Mr. Sponges Sporting Tour
Thomas Hardy – 'The Woodlanders' and 'Far From the Madding Crowd'
Tim Moore – French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour De France
Lance Armstrong – Its not about the bike
Patrick O'Brien Aubrey Series

Currently reading Don Quixote by Cervantes – actually very funny, but also very, very, very long!

King Lear: Shakespeare – Possibly the greatest piece of Literature ever written? Read it or you're a cretin. Not always enjoyable, but important

I've never read it so I must be a cretin. If I read it now, will I stop being a cretin? Maybe, but you'll still be a d1ck.

Of course there are loads more and modern literature has its place but unfortunately a crass or basic grasp of literature does indeed make you a pleb.

Are you Bryan Sewell?

Monkeenutz – you sound like just the kind of intellectually snobbish teacher/lecturer that puts people off Shakespeare for life.

First exposure to Shakespeare was Julius Caesar at 11. Wrong play, uninterested teacher, not being taken to see it live beforehand, no explanation of context = classroom of bored, fed up Shakespeare haters.

Next year, we did Macbeth: Great story for kids, enthusiastic teacher, taken to see play, language and context explained, acted bits out in class, encouraged to ask questions. It was superb, really good fun and encouraged me to read more challenging stuff.

Why have a go at people just because they've not had that opportunity?

I love these threads (and the music ones) because the obvious love and enthusiasm for the poster's chosen books encourages me to pick up things I may never have thought of before.
Hopefully, someone might be inspired to try one of my choices.
That's the point, isn't it?

Oh, and I forgot 'A Clockwork Orange' by Harpurhey's finest, Anthony Burgess. Wonderful book.

The Cat from Hue by John Laurence though written about the Viernam war and is a perfect reflection of todays conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as a social commentary on how our lives are lived.

+1 for Lance Armstrongs book.

2 authors I haven't seen mentioned above – Chuck Palahnuik (for originality and humour), Norman Mailer (just brilliant).
Couldn't pick any particular book as a must read (for other people).