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On a similar theme I recommend The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard.
okay skimmed the thread and it’s clear that 98% of the books read by blokes are written by blokes. Bar George Elliot
You missed The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong
For a desert island I'll need a bit of epic escapeness, so...
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, reread recently and still fantastic.
American Tabloid by James Ellroy, just started Black Dahlia yesterday and will read the LA 4 and AT too. American Tabloid best of the bunch though.
The Druss books by David Gemmell. Can read these again and again, classics.
Dune - Frank Herbert
Learning to Breathe - Andy Cave
Let my people go surfing - Yvon Chouinard
It’s just not possible to pin down three books, three hundred, perhaps?
And, while most of mine are by men, a fairly significant number of my favourite books are by women, I’m currently re-reading ‘The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August’, by Claire North. I’ll work my way through all her books in order, as I haven’t read them for a while, then I’ll go back and read ‘A Madness of Angels’, by Kate Griffin, and work through the six books in that series, then I might go further back and re-read all the YA books by Catherine Webb, the actual name of Kate Griffin and Claire North. I haven’t counted them up, but she written about twenty books or so.
If I had to choose three, then possibly three of Robert Macfarlaine’s books.
Just skimmed this thread and I've got this to add, just backing up what has went before.
Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance twenty five years ago and it still has me focused on quality rather than quantity. Very pertinent in today's society.
Endurance by Alfred Lansing is certainly about greatest adventure/leadership story I've read.
Third book......no idea.....well actually many ideas, just can't decide. Just wish I could read more than the 10 minutes I manage most days, I tend to fall asleep!
Hey! My top two choices were written by women.
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Germinal by Emile Zola and Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.The book is brilliant and the film is gash!
I'm specifically thinking of desert island books here, books that I would be happy reading over and over. That means I'm not just thinking about good plot, character, dialogue, etc, but the sort of writing where each line can be a treat by itself. I'm also going to cheat by taking two 'complete works ...'
1: Complete Jane Austen: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
2: Complete Jeeves and Wooster: “It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”
3: Moby Dick: "As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."
edit: I've just noticed that Moby Dick features strongly in the 'worst books ever' thread. Oh well.
100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Papillon - Henri Charrière
100 Years of Solitude is a great choice. I might seem over to your island to swap.
Probably something China Mieville – The City and the City,
I read that around Xmas. It was awful. 150 pages in, halfway, I realised that apart from finding the body nothing had happened. Then things happen for a hundred pages or so. Then I realised that the main character hadn't actually found a singe clue to what was happening, and was just guessing. Then he spends the last twenty pages explaining what's happened. (Any book where characters tell each other what's happening is rubbish!)
One review I read of it (after I read it) suggested that it had been heavily edited, taking out some key passages, which may explain why a lot of the dialogue makes no sense at all. I'd re-read a passage wondering what I missed before finding that I hadn't missed anything, it just didn't make sense. Terrible book but loved by a lot of people it seems.
On Extended Wings - Diane Ackerman. Excellent recounting of her efforts to learn to fly and gain her pilots license. She had such a difficult time of it, it sort of inspires you into keeping going when things are a bit shit. She makes the technical and potentially boring details of flight beautiful and relatable.
Neuromancer - William Gibson. Woukd have the time on the island to properly read it and understand what it's all about!
but the sort of writing where each line can be a treat by itself.
Love this, and I do find this with both Austen and Wodehouse. Almost tempted to try Moby Dick ... even having read the other thread.
I've been pondering my top books since this thread began - still no closer to an answer!
If it truly was for a desert island, then it would have to be something philosophical to keep my spirits up, something practical to minimise the risks of starving or being eaten by some monstrous creature, and something comforting - Five on a Treasure Island from the distant past would seem suitable. 🙂
Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut
I haven't read that in over 30 years, so it goes
Right then. On a quick spin of the thread I've read a conservative 63 of the top threes, and that's not counting the honorable mentions or complete works (I've read some Jeeves, three or four Jane Austen etc, but not all) or ones I probably have but can't remember (Lem? Read all the scifi in headingley library when i was a kid, inappropriate as much of it was - ballard - surprised he's not come up. Being forgotten maybe? Which will include Lem but I can't name books), and it's not counting the ones I've started but not finished (Moby Dick come on down. Amazed Ulysses hasn't been mentioned, also not finished - and I've finished 2666 by Roberto Bolano...). Or indeed bought but not actually opened (Sapiens). So there. Not that I'm competitive or anything: 63 full ticks...
Picking only 3 is a hard one but these are mine
Endurance by Alfred Lansing- extraordinary story of bravery and resilience
Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte
The Plague by Albert Camus
Think Stig of the Dump should probably have been on there
I've just finished Neuromancer. Total head**** but a beautifully created world.
okay skimmed the thread and it’s clear that 98% of the books read by blokes are written by blokes.
It's a fair cop and something I noticed with my own reading and have been trying (a bit) to rectify. So that gives me an excuse to post a top three by women authors. Starting with Beloved. A book I bought because I thought I ought to read it then really enjoyed (if that's the right word). Then Shipping News (of course) and finally that Eleanor Oliphant thing that I picked up in Tesco on a whim and found to be much darker and much more powerful than I expected.