Five books that you return to, often

SpeedoGuy

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Ok, NCBear. Five more...

Grant Speaks: by Everett Ehrlich: A humorous and fictional alternative biography of Union general and eventual US president, U.S. Grant. The clever and anti-stereotypical portrait or Grant and so many of his contemporaries during the civil war era combine to make this possibly the funniest book I have ever read.

Desert Solitaire: by Edward Abbey: Environmental writer and professional curmudgeon Ed Abbey recounts the adventures he experienced while serving as a back country ranger one lonely summer at Arches National Park in Utah. This book turned me to to Abbey's message about the restorative and rejuvinating power of wilderness as well as his wry writing style.

The Monkey Wrench Gang: by Edward Abbey Abbey's fictional and very funny account of several outdoors adventurers who unite to become amateur eco-saboteurs in the badlands of Utah. Bent on vandalism to preserve what they could of the rapidly vanishing wilderness, the saboteurs grow ever more bold in their exploits culminating in the inevitable confrontation with the law: The Bishop of Blanding.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: by Ken Kesey: Perhaps Kesey's best, its a classic story of a bitter and tragic struggle between the good hearted screw off, patient RP McMurphy, and the cold, calculating authoritarian Head Nurse Ratched in a mental hospital in Oregon. This book is one of my favorites.

Papillion: by Henri Charriere: Charriere's moving account of his banishment to, life as a prisoner at, and escape from France's notorious prison at Devil's Island in South America.
 
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headbang8

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OK, more than five

Middlemarch, George Eliot

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Nick Flynn

I Don't Want to Talk About It, Terence Real

Myra Breckenridge, Gore Vidal

Dad, William Wharton
 

jason_els

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Oh this is easy:

Big Secrets by William Poundstone

Bigger Secrets by William Poundstone

Aubrey/Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by John Tolkien

If you've never read them and then see people mentioning it time and again, Tolkien's works are held in such high regard because they change the people who read them in earnest. There's no other way to say it. To the literate, the movies are simply, scenes from the books. I can only describe them penultimately as the words on Britain's highest military honor:

For Valor


I equate them with the Bible in their ability to inspire and change people. Tolkien considered his work as ultimately Christian yet it goes beyond that. In the particularly secular setting upon which events of the books take place, there is nothing of doubt. In The Lord of the Rings, God isn't someone out there on a throne but an actual living being. There is no need to worship anything or anyone because the existence of the gods is a fact. There is no faith, merely acceptance. The gods live in the west and that's how it is. Watching only the movies, people miss so much. The eagles, the redemption of Galadriel, the resurrection of Gandalf-- all of them are footnotes to a much greater action of deus ex machina that somehow doesn't seem the slightest bit contrived.

As a teen I raged against my lit teachers who denied Tolkien a place in the world of literature and now, finally, I'm vindicated.

At the end of all my things, I want to be greeted by my dearest beloved dog, Tristan, and Pippin bearing a cloak of Lorien. That should tell you something about how dear these books are to me because they have such a part in making me who I am. I daresay many feel as I do.
 

conchis

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One hundred years of solitude_gabriel garcia marquez
The war of the saints_jorge amado
Fight club_chuck palahniuk
The possibility of an island_michel houellebecq
The night buffalo_guillermo arriaga
 

MCA

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1. Slaughter House Five -- Kurt Vonnegut

I read this book in one hell of an afternoon. Best book I blew threw in a few hours ever.

1a. Same goes for Catch 22, though.

2. The Lord of the Rings -- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

After the Narnia books, this was my fix as a child. I remember learning my present-day vocabulary as a child picking through these books.

3. A Song of Ice and Fire -- George R.R. Martin

Tolkien for the modern man. One part mystery, one part fantasy, two parts historical fiction. Bar none, Martin is the par-excellence modern fantasy writer. These books are his finest. There are no real peers within the genre. Now licensed by HBO for a future television series.


3a. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn -- Tad Williams

Martin has said this was his inspiration to ASoIaF. I read it back in late junior high, early high school and re-read it about a year ago. Some of the paragraphs in this set of books are wonderfully written. It both defies and refines the genre. Again, a gem in the common rubble of fantasy literature. There should be a series made on these... it wouldn't be nearly as hard as Martin's books (impossible?).

4. 1984 -- George Orwell

I read this because I thought I had to... I just had this feeling. The next two weeks of college were unbearable. This book changed my entire perception on what I saw around me. Honestly, it made me more jaded and made me less hopeful about humanity as a whole than I had ever been before. I started thinking about questions like the sustainability of mankind, "are we the last generation to live with common comfort?," etc. These are feelings much more common today (only 6 years later) with the wide-spread belief in global warming, etc... The book is, however, necessary reading. Its social ramifications are all around you, the song 2+2=5 by Radiohead being an obvious example, but there are countless others.

5. Dune (the whole damned series) -- Frank Herbert

Not to beat a dead horse about the whole Sci-Fi/Fantasy thing... but I don't recommend bad books. Promise. This is a highly literate critique on... everything and nothing. I like the History Channel as much as anyone, but if you don't really want to hear about the Berlin Wall again today, read some of the best escapist world building recorded in the annals of fiction. Herbert delivers so well that sometimes you don't ever figure his ideas out until 4 books later. A BRILLIANT series.
 

headbang8

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I read this book in one hell of an afternoon...Same goes for Catch 22.
Funny you should say that, MCA. I tried several times to read Catch-22 from the beginning, but couldn't get into it. One day, I had an essay due an opened it in the middle at random. From there, I was hooked.
 
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headbang8

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Beedie Tijii

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Just five favourites that come to mind. Probably only the first two are lifelong favourites, but all of the below have had a profound influence on me, and on the way that I think:

Nineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
 
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