your favourite books ever

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what are they? (apologies if we've done this before - i'm sure we must have done - but i couldn't find it if so).

― toby, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Mine are probably very obvious, they are: Slaughterhouse 5, Down and out in Paris and London

― Davel, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The Buddha of Suberbia is pretty fantastic as well

― Davel, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

the Dharma Bums; Confederacy of Dunces; Great Gatsby; Mysteries; South of the Border, West of the Sun; Have a Nice Day and Quit Your Job.

― jel --, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

"Microserfs" Douglas Coupland, "Jack Frusciante Has Left The Band" Enrico Brizzi, "Lolita" Vladmir Nabokov, "Pride and Prejudice" Jane Austen

― Dom Passantino, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh and Hits of the Eighties, very useful for answering ILE birthday threads!

― jel --, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The 1001 Nights, Dhalgren by Sam Delany, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Seventh Heaven by Alice Hoffman, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, any Blandings book by P.G. Wodehouse, the Rabbit tetralogy by John Updike, Arc d'X by Steve Erickson, The Art Of East Asia edited by Gabriele Fahr-Becker, Fowler's Modern English Usage, the run of Lone Wolf & Cub collections, the complete Popeye dailies, The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, the tetralogy starting with Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima, lots by Philip K. Dick, the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, the Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, Crime And Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. That's off the top of my head but is more than enough already.

― Martin Skidmore, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

'Moby Dick'; 'Jude the Obscure', 'Alice Through the Looking Glass', 'Hard Times', 'World According to Garp'.

― DavidM, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

gravity's rainbow, philosophical investigations, selected non-fictions of jorge luis borges, green eggs and ham, thinking about music by lewis rowell, ulysses

― Josh, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

the dream songs too

― Josh, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Judging purely by how often I've gone back and reread them (at least three times each), these would be it:

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Roughing It by Mark Twain
Odyssey by Homer
The Hard Life by Flann O'Brien
Sonnets by William Shakespeare
Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Anabasis by Xenophon
Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven

― Little Nipper, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

The Master of Go. Butterfly Stories. Gravity's Rainbow. Go Now.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

peter carey's "oscar and lucinda", delillo's "white noise", richard yates' "revolutionary road", kenneth koch's "the art of love", mary oliver's "selected poems".

― dan, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow, Down and Out in Paris and London? I liked that, too.

Not being so good at list-ism, mine change all the time, but Moby Dick and Vanity Fair by Thackeray are right up there, along with my comfort reading, Stalky & Co. by Kipling.

― felicity, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

aaahh... An Insular Possession, Timothy Mo / The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin / The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker / History of the World in 10&a-half Chapters, Julian Barnes / Life After God, Douglas Coupland / Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving / Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse

― stevie mitch, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Inorganic chemistry by Cotton and Wilkinson.

― Julio Desouza, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.trentu.ca/jjoyce/sigla/JJQ_BG.GIF

― Lek Dukagjin, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

White Noise.

― OCP, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

All I can think of at the moment:

jane eyre - charlotte bronte
autobiography of malcolm x - malcolm x/alex haley franny and zooey - salinger room of one's one - woolf bastard out of carolina - dorothy allison

― Ms. S., Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

'Executioner's Song', 'Ordeal', 'Physician's Desk Reference'

― dave q, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

lights out for the territory/radon daughters - iain sinclair
wide open - nicola barker
leadville - edward platt
babylon/clay machine gun - victor pelevin
atomised - michel houlebecq
the verificationist/the hundred brothers - donald antrim

― gareth, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Absalom, Absalom, Dopefiend, Shella, A Scanner Darkly, Red Harvest, Pride and Prejudice, The Fall, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Nigger of the Narcissus spring immediately to mind.

Books are fun.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

todays list includes
girl with a golden eye,madam bovary,death in venice,billy budd,magic mountain,death in the afternoon,antony and cleopatra,jersulem,dorian grey, st gerad,earthly powers,medea,diary of an english opium eater, turtle island,libra and the reginalad stories

― anthony, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and Borges Non Fictions

― anthony, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

and Gullivers Travellers

― anthony, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

and Lunch Poems , and the FLounder and of there are so many and i get my library back today

― anthony, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

This is really too many, but "Alice in Wonderland", Paul Auster "Music of Chance", the Gormenghast trilogy, Borges "Labyrinths", Flannery O'Connor "Wise Blood", Paul Biegel "Gardens of Dorr", Edmund White "Forgetting Elena", Thomas Bernhard "The Loser", "Revolution in the Head" by Ian McDonald. "Great Expectations" too I guess.

― Andrew, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

GK Chesterton: The Napoleon of Notting Hill RF Laird: The Boomer Bible and as mentioned elsewhere Grant Morrison, Steve Yeowell and Phil Himinez et al: The Invisibles

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood, Pynchon - Gravitys Rainbow, Crying of Lot 49, DeLillo - White Noise, Graham Swift - Waterland, Last Orders, EL Doctorow - The Book of Daniel, Hermann Hesse - Steppenwolf, Nabokov - Lolita, Heller - Catch 22...

Shit... now I look at that it seems such an obvious and conservative selection. I'm off to read some early 20th-century Albanian fiction just to appear different next time this thread occurs.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Help me I am surrounded by lit majors!

_The Stand_ - Stephen King
_Roots_ - Alex Haley
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ - Mark Twain
_Johnny Got His Gun_ - Dalton Trumbo
_Going After Cacciato_ - Tim O'Brien
_Maskerade_ - Terry Pratchett
_Voyage of the Dawn Treader_ - CS Lewis
_Ordinary Jack_ - Helen Cresswell
_On A Pale Horse_ - Piers Anthony
_The Stranger_ - Albert Camus
_Candide_ - Voltaire
_Field Of Dishonor_ - David Weber
_Cryptonomicon_ - Neil Stephenson
_The Terminal Man_ - Michael Crichton
_The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ - Phillip K. Dick

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

First, is Gravity's Rainbow as good as they reckon and should i crack on with Underworld which i left 2 years ago? Being a slut with books these are the best ones Ive had a committed relationship with. Right now its From Hell, Jimmy Corrigan, A heartbreaking Work.. and Girlfriend in a coma that I'll never finish 1. Beautiful Losers - Leonard Cohen 2.Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole 3.Joe Gould's Secret-Joseph Mitchell trust me, they all rock.

― oliver neilson, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

ooh forgot 100 years of solitude

― oliver neilson, Tuesday, 2 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

maldoror by lautremont, brighton rock by gg, les enfants terrible by cocteau, dr faustroll pataphysician by alfred jarry, the masterpiece by zola, tender is the night by fitzgerald, pale fire by nabokov, others too.

― keith, Thursday, 4 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

le grand meaulnes, if on a winter's night a traveller, and, of course
Gravity's rainbow

― Matt, Thursday, 4 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Heh, childish glee

― Matt, Thursday, 4 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

keith
can we talk about fitzgerald ?

― anthony, Thursday, 4 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

No fair, having this discussion while I was away. *cries* Currently in the middle of a party, so I can just say LOTR and Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles right now and be done with it? Thanks, you've been a great audience. Oh yeah, and anyone telling me that 20th century realism is the only valid literary form is evil and not to be trusted, yah boo. ;-)

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 4 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

ned you are posting to ilx during a party which you are in attendance at!