I am astounded that no-one has suggested The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) yet.
It's on my to do list but put off by The winter of our discontent which I just couldn't get into (unfinished).
Lots of good stuff above. To add:-
'The Blackhouse Trilogy' by Peter May (don't be put off by his Enzo series - these are much better). still a light read, Rankinesque.
And a bit more left field - 'A prayer for Owen Meany' by John Irving
Some bloody fantastic books already mentioned so I can only add one to the list :- The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
Gotta say that Birdsong had perhaps the most profound effect on me though
Hated Birdsong, crappy chick-lit dressed up as something profound. Awful book.
For classics Orwell is great, and Hamlet is a good read too (although obviously not a "book" but rather a play). For non-classics more votes for Good Omens, American Gods, and a lot of Iain M Banks.
For classics Orwell is great
Agreed. I'd add John Wyndham too though he dated a little quicker. Orwell is a bit more timeless in prose style.
Hated Birdsong, crappy chick-lit dressed up as something profound. Awful book.
Hmm not sure I agree, although I focussed on the passages about the fighting underground (which I never knew happened) and it was that that made me want to find out more about the wars.
The screen adaption came across as a chick-flick though, agreed.
Lots of good stuff here. Three that I don't think have been mentioned yet:
Siddharta by Herman Hesse
Dhalgren by Samual R. Delaney
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller
[i]Dhalgren[/i] is an amazing book - good choice. Amazing to think that it was a bestseller, sold over a million copies. Reckon the publishers would have been happy if it sold ten copies, given the style and subject.
[i]Stars in my pocket like grains of sand[/i] is my favourite Delany book, though. Pretty much the last novel he wrote with a mainstream sort of structure (if not content), his writing moved in a different direction after that.
Hmm not sure I agree, although I focussed on the passages about the fighting underground (which I never knew happened) and it was that that made me want to find out more about the wars.
Thing is I already knew a fair amount about that, and WWI in general - so all the novelty was in the rest of the story. Which was basically a romance novel, fine if you like that kind of thing but I don't.
+1 for Bryce Courtenay- The Power of One
Alasdair Macleod- No Great Mischief
Bukowski- Pulp
Irvine Welsh- Trainspotting
Orwell - Burmese Days
Some great suggestions but I am astounded that no-one has suggested The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) yet. Perhaps the most perfect book ever written and as for the final page? Perfection.
One of the best books I've ever read and I've never forgotten the effect that final page had on me. I was on the number 73 heading in for college, it was all I could do not to read it out to the whole bus. I still wish I had though.
I also loved East Of Eden, I think it the equal of Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row.
As a rule I only read award winners (Booker, Orange, etc) - Currently on Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies by Hillary Mantel. Marvellous if you're into historical novels.
Also - as mentioned previously, anything by the three "Ians" [McEwan, Banks and Rankin].
My favourite book ever - Fugitive Pieces by Canadian poet Anne Michaels.
Worst ever - Sebastian Faulks - Charlotte Gray: overrated drivel!
Also - check out the BBC bookclub, read their current book and listen to the discussion with the author... that's got me into loads of good stuff over the years.
At Swim Two Birds Flann O'Brien
Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela
Junkie William Burroughs
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
Good call that.
I'd add Cannery Row by the same author.
Also The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (Czech Author)
Any of the Flashman books - raunchy, funny, historically enlightening adventures of a cad and a charlatan through all the key events of the British Empire 1840-1905 (incl Charge of the Light Brigade, Indian Mutiny, Afghan Wars, Sikh Wars, Slave Trade, Zulu War, Little Big Horn, Opium Wars with China and more..). Flashman even manages to best Sherlock Holmes
Adventures of Brigadier Gerrard - Arthur Conan Doyle. Not as famous as his other creation, but very funny books about a Napoleonic officer in the French army
Also The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell
And any of the Rumpole books by John Mortimer
there's a great app/website for just this called [url= http://www.goodreads.com/ ]goodreads[/url]. You can rate books you've read and it'll throw back suggestions. Reader reviews are worth a browse and there are also book lists. i.e top 100 books of various decades, best 100 books based in SE Asia etc etc. Worth a look for plenty of ideas.
plus one for the grapes of wrath , i am half way through it and gob smacked at how relavent it is in todays dog eat dog world of rampant capatalism.
Railway man - so much better than the film.
Irvine welsh books - reading them all is better than reading g a few (helps if you understand the Leith tongue 😉 )
Hated Birdsong, crappy chick-lit dressed up as something profound. Awful book.
+1 utter sh*te
Plenty of good stuff above but also:
Karl Marx by Francis Wheen
Alan Turing: Enigma by Andrew Hodges
Coming Up for Air by Orwell
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
Decline and Fall / Scoop / Vile Bodies all by Evelyn Waugh
6 Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton
When Genius Failed (the Rise and Fall of LTCM) by Roger Lowenstein (bit specialist this one, but good if you like business / finance type stuff)
Oh and the entire Aubrey Maturin series.
The Fruit Palace - Charles Nicholl.
Hated Birdsong, crappy chick-lit dressed up as something profound. Awful book.
+1 utter sh*te
Yep, I'll add another +1. Terrible book.
At the risk of getting flamed, I really liked most of the Harry Potter books - the first two or three are a bit, well, kid's books, but it gets darker and far more involved as it goes along, I think they're a great series. Tried Rowling's The Casual Vacancy too, and that was ace.
As someone with an interest in cycling, you owe it to yourself to read The Hour and Faster, both by Michael Hutchinson - laugh-out-loud funny and more useful information and trivia than you could shake a stick at.
The Road - Cormack McCarthy
Lots of the above, and:
Chickenhawk - Robert Mason
The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
"Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K Jerome
"Riotous Assembly" and "Indecent Exposure" as a pair, by Tom Sharpe, and follow up with "Vintage Stuff"
The "Flashman" series by George MacDonald Fraser
And Winston S Churchill "My Early Life"
Two i haven't seen mentioned yet:
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Catch22 - Joseph Heller
Trainspotting - Irvin Welsh
Indecent Exposure/Riotous Assembly - Tom Sharpe
Wilt - Sharpe again
Stig of the dump.
Anything by Nevil Shute, In the Wet is great.
Anything by HW Tilman.
An ordinary soldier by Doug Beatle.
War and Piece/ Anna Kerenina by the good Count Tolstoy
Everyone should read at least one of them. They are without doubt the two finest pieces of literature ever put on paper. Do yourself a favour and give them a go.
A few of my favourite that haven't been mentioned...
Fear and loathing in las Vegas
A clockwork orange
Brave new world
Good point 🙂
A Clockwork Orange is my favourite ever read.
Anything, just anything by Wodehouse, Conan Doyle, Seamus Heaney or Joseph Wambaugh.
Anything by Hemingway.
The short stories to start, then Fiesta.
The Young Lions - Irwin Shaw.
Jake Arnott - He Kills Coppers.
The Villian - Jim Perrin's biography of Don Whillans.
Les Mis.
The White Spider.
Jupiter's Travels.
As I walked out one midsummer morning.
Collected MR James.
Most of Ted Hughes.
Houseman - A Shropshire Lad.
Les Fleures Du Mal - Baudelaire.
Any Milligan.
Idle thoughts of an Idle fellow - JKJ.
Anything by Banks, but nothing will ever compare to the first time you read 'The Wasp Factory'.
🙂
Hmm, Clockwork Orange was good but not amazing. It doesn't rate that highly for me. And Catch 22 - yeah, good. But has anyone read any of his other shite? Something Happened is particularly awful.
Has American Psycho been mentioned, great book.
The Book of Splendour by Frances Sherwood.
I could not put it down, I felt immersed in 17th century Prague, smells, sounds, sights, facts and fiction skilfully interwoven, rich like really good chocolate.
Agree on Joseph Heller - Catch 22 is wonderful, but Something Happened is just good.
Er, huge Jane Austin fan btw.
P&P is just superb - the characters are so obviously real.
Her honesty is very refreshing too.
A Clockwork Orange is a perfect study of humanity in just over 100 pages.
cracking lists here, have we reached 100 yet? take it were going for a top 500? 😀
I'd add,
war of the worlds
day of the triffids
long walk to freedom
shogun. james clavell
+1 for Grapes of Wrath and Fahrenheit 451
Don't think anyone's mentioned:
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
also some short and powerful books:
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And a timeless comedy classic that had me in stitches:
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Louis De Bernières has been mentioned already, for his excellent South American trilogy, but the best book I've ever read is his "Birds Without Wings". Breathtaking, heartbreaking, joyous, philosophical, melancholic, it tells the story of the inhabitants of a small (fictional) Anatolian village during the early 1900s who are swept along inexorably by the tumultuous events of the period. I recommend it to everyone asking for a book, and even just thinking about it now - maybe 5 years since I last read it - is bringing up that feeling of... [i]saudade[/i] that we don't quite have a translation for.
Other than that, I'm thoroughly enjoying Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers at the moment. Always enjoyed the Iain (M) Banks books. I liked Money by Martin Amis, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, Snow Falling On Cedars by David Guterson, and The Human Stain by Philip Roth.
Some great books already mentioned,especially American psycho.&ian banks.
I'd like to suggest Homer's Odyssey and Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Both books struck major chords with me. 🙂
For the past two years all I have read is Brian Clough's bio someone left in the tearoom at work! 🙁
Just finished [url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making/dp/1782391991 ]Lawrence IN Arabia[/url] by Scott Anderson
A dense book covering a lot of ground but a great intro to the Middle East in WWI.
Not classic by any sense but I've liked Ben Aaronovitch's [url= http://www.the-folly.com/books/ ]Folly series[/url]. Potter for adults? ❓
[i]all I have read is Brian Clough's bio someone left in the tearoom at work[/i]
Reminds me, someone left Koushun Takami's Battle Royale here, so I er, borrowed it for my library.. Really good read!
Speaking of Japanese books
47 Ronin by John Allyn is a cracking read. (Damn you keanu Reeves, your film is shit! 😆 )
1Q84 and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Glad Hemingway finally got some love on the 3rd page!
The Old Man and the Sea
A Farewll to Arms
Definitely on-board with the Birdsong haters. I thought it was terrible. Try-hard chick lit desperately seeking to appear profound. Same goes for The Kite Runner (which was great in the first Act, then dreadful in the other 2).
American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
1984 - George Orwell
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
The Wind up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami
couple of classic war books:
Fields of Fire - James Webb
From the City From the Plough - Alexander Baron