Top 10 of Any Genre

[Seak]

I always see top ten lists of favorite fantasy or sci-fi, but I looked and looked, and maybe I'm still too new to really figure things out, and couldn't find a thread about your favorite books of all time.

I'll start mine out. I'm thinking favorite individual books (of any genre you can think of) of all time. I'm usually a fantasy fan, but I really love some other books as well.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRRT
3. The Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut
4. Ender's Game - Card
5. A Song of Ice and Fire - Martin
6. Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury
7. The Silmarillion - JRRT
8. Magician - Feist
9. Watership Down - Adams
10. Wheel of Time - Jordan

[Randy M.]

MAINSTREAM:
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

MYSTERY:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

HORROR:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

S.F.:
Davy by Edgar Pangborn
Star Light, Star Bright by Alfred Bester

FANTASY:
The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll
The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietsche by Peter Beagle


And, of course, I reserve the right to create another list with entirely different entries whenever my whim commands.

Randy M.

[Seak]

And, of course, I reserve the right to create another list with entirely different entries whenever my whim commands.

Randy M.

I think that's what keeps me reading. I hope to be able to supplant something in my top 10 every time I start a new novel.

[Aurian]

This is too hard, since my top 10 seems to change on a regular basis.

I also consider trilogies as one unit because they are generally one complete story, just published in multiple books ;-)

In random order...


Symphony of the Ages (trilogy) by Elizabeth Haydon.
A Good Dog by John Katz
Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop
Queen of the Orcs Trilogy by Morgan Howell
Poison Study, Magic Study, Fire Study by Maria Snyder
Earth by David Brin
The Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer
Jurassic Park & Lost World by Michael Criteon
Book of Joby by Mark Ferrari
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

[AuntiePam]

The Dollmaker by Harriett Simpson Arnow -- this has been my number one book for many years. The story starts in Appalachia in the early 1940's and follows a hill country family to Detroit, where the father has found work in a steel mill. I think I'd get more people to read it but the dialect puts them off.

Heart of the Country by Greg Matthews -- historical fiction set in the American West. The hero is a misanthropic hunchbacked buffalo hunter. I'm gonna re-read this someday and see if it holds up.

Serena by Ron Rash -- a new favorite, about an evil woman (think Lady MacBeth but without her guilt) in a logging community in the Carolinas in the 1920's.

The Stand by Stephen King. I've read it three times, and I'm even coming to like the ending.

A Song of Ice and Fire -- yeah, it's cheating to count this as one book.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters -- rich historical novel with a great twist.

Eifelheim by Michael Flynn -- not quite time travel but with a time travel feel. What happens when aliens (the space kind, not undocumented workers) crash land in a Bavarian village in the mid 1300's.

Morality Play by Barry Unsworth. I've read a lot of historical fiction, but this is the first one that gave me a real understanding of the power of religion in medieval lives.

[Fung Koo]

Some of my favourite semi-recent reads, independent of genre (that I can think of today, and subject to change without notice):

You Shall Know Our Velocity! - Dave Eggers
The Swan - Roald Dahl
Mr. Norrell & Jonathan Strange - Susanna Clarke
G. - John Berger
Ender's Game + Shadow - Orson Scott Card
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Excession - Iain M. Banks
The Crow Road - Iain Banks
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Star - Arthur C. Clarke
The Rabbits - John Marsden & Shaun Tan
The Red Tree - Shaun Tan
Maus - Art Spiegelman

And on and on...

[Seak]

I'm in the middle of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and it's already one of my favorites. I'll have to update my list pretty soon.

A coworker just recommended The Road to me this morning. What are the odds? I guess I have to read it now, it sounds pretty good.

[Fung Koo]

There's about to be a movie version of The Road released. I'd recommend getting it read before it comes out!

[kged]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
If This Is A Man/The Truce by Primo Levi
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
1984 by George Orwell
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Prince of Nothing by R Scott Bakker
Samurai by Hisako Matsubara

[Seak]

There's about to be a movie version of The Road released. I'd recommend getting it read before it comes out!

Guess who's getting himself a Christmas gift?

[Forest Elf]

My 10 favorite books, fiction and non-fiction and in no particular order:

* A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare
* The Princess Bride - William Goldman
* The Meaning of Trees - Fred Hageneder
* Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
* The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth - Jonny Bowden
* The Madhatter's Guide to Chocolate - Rhett DeVane
* My Book House (12 volume set) - Olive Beaupre Miller
* Faeries - Brian Froud and Alan Lee
* Little Men - Louisa May Alcott
* The Complete Calvin & Hobbes - Bill Watterson


(This list does NOT include the published novels I wrote. It also does not include the one I just finished writing, which really really is my #1 favorite.)

[Overcast]

Lists are fun!

10) The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, despite its flaws.
9) A Game of Thrones by GRRM
8) Shogun by James Clavell
7) Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
6) Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
5) Do Androids Dream of Elictric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick
4) Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erickson
3) V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd
2) Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
1) A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

[FremenWarrior]

Some of my Favourite works of fiction:

10) A Scanner Darkly- Phillip.K.Dick
9) Sahara- Clive Cussler
8) The Hound Of The Baskervilles-Arthur Conan Doyle
7) A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess
6) Stormbringer- Michael Moorcock
5) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
4) Great Expectations- Charles Dickens
3) Dune- Frank Herbert
2) Gormenghast Trilogy- Mervyn Peake
1) 1984-George Orwell

[suciul]

In no particular order since it's hard for me to compare books between genres, but these are books I read at least 10 times across the years and still remain favorites and keeping only one mention per author since a lot of Dumas and Waltari are true and tried favorites of mine:

Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov
Masters of Rome by C. McCullough - 7 volume series
The Revolution Series by A. Dumas - Joseph Balsamo, Queen's Necklace, Ange Pitou, Countess of Charny
The Accursed Kings (Rois Maudits) by M. Druon - 7 book series
Pride and Prejudice by J. Austen
Use of Weapons by IM Banks
The Roman duology by M. Waltari - Secrets of the Kingdom/The Roman
The Gulag Archipelago by A. Solzhenitsyn - not exactly fiction but worth of a Nobel prize for literature and still the best indictment of communism ever
Arabian Nights - translation by R. Burton - 10+ volumes and still the best urban fantasy ever
Night's Dawn Trilog by P. Hamilton

Recent books that may make the list but only if I keep rereading them and enjoying them in a 10 year period for the standalones, and of course if the rest of the books are still keeping up the excellence for the series:

Anathem by N. Stephenson
2666 by R. Bolano
Les Bienveillantes/Kindly Ones by J. Littell
Shadow of the Wind/Angel's Game series by CR Zafon
PoN trilogy by S. Bakker (gotta see how the Aspect series turns out too here)
ASoIaF series by GRRM

[Overcast]

7) A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess

This is number eleven on my list, no doubt.