what are your favourite books?

Several picks in random order:

1)Tolkien "the lord of the rings" (well, back in my early teens I loved fantasy novels! I've read many of them but this is just insurpassable. Besides it's beautifully written while most fantasy stuff is RPG-derived, which means that the prose is often lacking... What struck me is that Tolkien created an incredibly detailed world, where everything, from the vegetation up to the races and their languages, is richly described. Plus, it' long and I love saga-like books)

2)Gabriel García Márquez "One hundred years of solitude": You've probably heard about this one already!

3)Dino Buzzati "the Tartar Steppe". In which Buzzati deals once more with the sentiment of waiting. Giovanni Drogo is sent to the "Northern Frontier" (nothing is said about the reign it borders) where nothing ever happens. He consumes his life waiting for an invasion of the legendary tartars and...read the novel!

4)Italo Calvino, everything that he's written (tough I've not read all of his works, still far from it): He wrote allegorical novels and his style is known as "magic realism": "a blend of fantasy, scientific curiosity and metaphysical speculation" (this is what Encarta states ;-)

5)Oscar Wilde, "the picture of Dorian Gray": quite famous novel!

6)Alfred Jarry "Ubu Roi". From the inventor of the phataphysics (the science of the hyphotetical solutions)a genial farce in the form of a play.

7)Friedrich Schiller "Kabale und Liebe" ("love and intrigue" but I didn't find the translation on Amazon). Yet another sarcastic, fable- like, play

8)Nick Hornby, "High Fidelity": pretty obvious ;-)

9)Milan Kundera, "the unbearable lightness of being": well, I liked the "concept" but the novel itself was a bit too long...

10)B.E. Ellis, "American psycho": I loved the setting. Yuppies' N.Y. back in the '80s.

11)Art Spiegelman, "Maus". ok, it's a comic book but it won the Pulitzer! Brillian portrayal of the Holocaust: the nazis are portrayed as Cats, the Jews as mice (Animal Farm docet).

What I'm reading now: "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins. Is D.F. Wallace any good?

Other great writers: Umberto Eco, H. Hesse, G. Orwell,... This should suffice ;-)

Knut Hamsun - Mysteries...about a guy who leads people a merry dance and uncovers their true character in the process. Could sort of be related to identity creation on the internet.

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces...the best anti-hero book ever, Ignatius J.Reilly may appear vile at first, but you'll like him by the end! It's a shame the author commited suicide, because he had great promise.

James Kochalka - Quit Your Job...if we can include comics then this is great, about a guy who finds a magic ring and has a talking cat...

Yukio Mishima - Thirst for Love...set in Japan in the 1950's, a widow 'lives' with her father in law, and falls in love with a servant.

maldoror-cause it was the first weird book i ever read my uncle oswald's diary, hard boiled wonderland,the sea the sea, corydon, ask the dust, to kill a mockingbird, nadja, everything by timothy ferris, einstein's dream , a farewell to arms, germinal, wind- up bird chronicles

"Tooth Imprints on a Cord Dog" by Mark Leyner "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain "Money" by Martin Amis "The Dark Stuff" by Nick Kent "Low Life" by Luc Sante "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury "The Call of Cthulu" by H.P. Lovecraft "Needs Must" by Kris Needs "Head On/Repossesed" by Julian Cope "Nine Stories" by J.D. Salinger "Handful of Dust" by Evelyn Waugh

"North"/"Castle to Castle"/"Rigadoon" by Celine ,"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun...yeah, anything by anyone who collaborated with the Nazis.

Tolkien still fave, don't care who complains (I know you're out there, Otis!). I'm actually mentioned briefly by Christopher Tolkien at the end of one of the manuscript collections due to a paper I wrote with a friend -- frankly, the only equivalent I could ever think of would be being thanked by Kevin Shields in an eventual box set or something.

Beyond that, it's odd, but I find myself hard pressed to name favorites, for all that I've read some fascinating books over time. Let's see..._Gravity's Rainbow_ was and is a mind-blower, especially given I was...what?...only just sixteen when I read it. As an * assignment* from my eleventh-grade English teacher at that. Astounding!

Dorothy Dunnett, amazing writer. Wilde more for his overall character than anything else, maybe, but still. And I must always name Roland Huntford's _The Last Place on Earth_, aka _Scott and Amundsen_. It's a brilliant piece of polemic that celebrates Amundsen's fierce drive (while acknowledging his flaws) while at the same time completely, totally destroying the image of Scott as somehow being the 'best of the breed' circa 1912. While the historical moment of the matter has long passed, the overall lesson of the importance of cold-blooded truth in place of politically motivated propaganda and self-image is shattering and strong.

Most novels these days fill me with utter boredom when encountered, so generally I steer clear in favor of nonfiction. I am reminded of the brilliant thought by mystery writer Bill Pronzini -- "The academic/ critical establishment considers anything that isn't about suburban sexual angst to be trash, or at best subliterary." Dear god, were truer words ever spoken? Must be part of the reason why I hated _Wonder Boys_ as a book concept (an academic who can't write his new novel -- oh, for CUTE!) and positively put out the bunting when the movie version failed despite all sorts of whining from Chabon on down. Something like Chris Ware's _Jimmy Corrigan_ simply smokes all that rubbish -- if it was a straight up text-only presentation, I probably wouldn't care at all, or anywhere near as much. Hurrah for visual media.

As the great Shirley Bassey sang, where do I begin? Survivor - Chuck Palahnuik (sp?) - @nd novel from figh-tclub author; tender, bitter, sarcastic and raucous; a look into idenity via cult consciusness. And the Ass Saw Tha Angel - Nick Cave - Gothic prose that sweaps its way over your body, embracing you in it's deathly pallour. Favourite section - 1 page description of the storm rolling in. House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski (sp?) - Reinvents the novel as we know it, whilst scaring you out of your skin for days. Lord of the barnyard - Toby someone - the funniest read since Confederacy of the Dunces; a southern-styled boogie through the life of a small-town huckster who reaps revenge upon the locals who've taunted him all his life. Raro - Benjamin Prado - Spainish-only novel that opens up the wounds insidde you like nothing else. To be read whilst smoking a carton of Gitanes.

I think I may have mentioned Trainspotting, Catch-22 and The Dead School before. They are probably my fave books. The Dead School was a book by Pat McCabe who also wrote The Butcher Boy. Its full of the nasty and surreal side to rural Irish life. Its like The Quiet Man by David Lynch. I love John Updike's "Rabbit" series even if it is full of "suburban sexual angst".

Oscar Wilde -'The Picture Of Dorian Gray'. Yukio Mishima -'The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea'. Milan Kundera -'Laughter and Forgetting'. Karl Joris Huymans -'Against Nature'. Patrick Suskind - 'Perfume'. F.Scott Fitzgerald -'The Great Gatsby'. William Goldman - 'The Princess Bride'. 'B is For Bear'

OK. I don't read many novels - most of the books which have really impacted on me are non-fiction.

Charles Dickens - Bleak House: He has a bad rep for melodrama but he is the Don as far as I'm concerned. Sharp social caricatures, bravura descriptive set-pieces, a penny-dreadful-writer's eye for a cliffhanger, and a boiling social rage. Psychologically of course he's not up to snuff by modern standards, especially his female characters, but it's a flaw I can forgive.

Alastair Gray - Lanark: The first book is visionary and apalling, a depiction of Hell frightening because it's so close to the real world. The second and third books are the real world, seen through the prism of, uh, suburban sexual angst (artistic angst too!), and mental crack up. The fourth book ties it all together rather oddly. The meeting-the-author chapter is my favourite bit of PoMo in all the fiction I've read.

Flann O'Brien - The Third Policeman: very funny, very creepy, very original. I've forced this onto people here before.

Tove Jansson - Moominland Midwinter: collectively, her Moomin books are the best children's fiction there is. Midwinter combines the adventuresome frolics of the first books in the series with the soul- searching Scandinavian bleakness of the final volumes. You can read it as a charming fantasy. You can read it as rousing polemic (bourgeois youth forced to confront the existence of those his society marginalises). You can read it as a psychologically convincing rites-of-passage story. But, especially if you have a kid, you should read it.

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina: when I read this I thought it was an astonishingly penetrating and convincing love story. I'd never been in love. So I wonder now if it is.

And a final massive shout-out to my favourite book of my sci-fi reading teens, Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun. The narrative voice is a weird combination of stripped down detachment and Mervyn Peake rococo, and the level of invention is incredible. Pretty much ruined Tolkienesque fantasy for me.

my (perverse) fave moomin book is the one they never appear in, moominvalley in november: lacan meets ingmar bergman/the moomins as petit objet a (even the texture of her illustrations has become spectral)

key scene in midwinter: where moomintroll "rescues" little my (who actually doesn't need rescue), and nearly dies because he doesn't think he has an audience to be a hero in front of, until at the last minute too-ticky realises and steps out of the bathing house

if kathleen hanna fought little my... I don't even need to finish

later for my famous theory on the connection between the puffin club and punk rock

'Comet in Moominland' - what a quest,thanks for reminding me ! 'The Land of Green Ginger'- Noel Langley Green - full of eastern promise - MY FAVE CHILDHOOD BOOK - still grips my shit. 'The Stainless Steel Rat'- Harry Harrison(respect due)- Slippery Jim diGriz had a profound influence on the teenage Racer. 'The Hungry Caterpillar'- fuck Nietzsche, this is philosophy !

Another Moomin addict speaks ...

I was in fact one of the last members of the Puffin Club in its old form, circa 1987. Shortly after that it either closed down or was restructured into something unrecognisable. I can still barely hold back the tears when I see Kaye Webb's obituary, these five years gone.

So come on Mark: out with your theory?

I saw this Coldplay video and it reminded me of the original Moomin series. Moomin is great, I think they have a Moominland theme park in Finland, I'd like to visit it one day.

When you say "the original Moomin series", do you mean the Polish one narrated in the UK by Richard Murdoch? The Japanese cartoon was an imposter if ever I saw one.

Actually it was a Japanese-Welsh co-production, and it's not often you can say that!

Blimey. Now even more guilty parties :).

Mark, were you joking about the Puffin Club / punk rock theory, or do you actually have it to hand?

Not joking (well, kind of joking), but I'm under attack by several allied divisions on another front (as you know), plus I can't find the orignal thing I wrote for Why Music Sucks. Like I said, later.

OK. Cheers.

"The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B" - J P Donleavy - Beautiful, poetic, heroic, touching, hilarious tale of a posh, young chap's growing pains.

"Catch 22", "Something happens"- Joseph Hellor - Comic genius & tragic genius.

"The Bridge" - Iain Banks - Surreal Masterpiece.

"The Passion" - Jeanette Winterson - Beautifully crafted magic realism with a Venice setting.

"Microserfs" - Douglas Coupland - Human life in Silicon Valley.

"Postcards from the edge" - Carrie Fisher - 80's trauma, bitingly funny. (shit film)

Robin> Yep, the one that wasn't a cartoon, that was on TV about 20 years ago. It was quite sinister!

Sinister indeed. The very inspiration of my childhood.

denis johnson's jesus' son, dennis cooper's books, plath's bell jar, bukowski's post office and hollywood, ballard's cocaine nights, nabokov's lolita,dick's do androids dream of electric sheep, wolfe's books have never let me down, ... the usual suspects. also delillo's great jones street is pretty rocking. victor bockris' biographies on lou reed and andy warhol are quite good as well.

just enjoyed reading steven berkoff's 'overview'.

ben macintyre's 'the napoleon of crime' was my favourite book of the '90s.

nicholson baker - minutae stuff reminds me of half-man,half-biscuit ?

have been reading up on the other books in this list when possible, cheers :)

Raymond Carver - I adore him. Cathedrals is probably best book of his to start with. The quote I have on my wall of his speaks volumes for how he writes: "There are significant moments in everyone's day that can make literature. You have to be alert to them and pay attention to them."

Jonathon Lethem - As She Climbed Acrossed The Table : Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy loses girl to cosmic void. An absurd sc-fi tale that pokes all sort of fun at academia.

Tim Sandlin - Skipped Parts : The first book of Sandlin's trilogoy. The story focuses on a young boy growing up with his insane and often intoxicated mother, as well as his budding sexual relationship with a young girl. These kids are like 13. Sandlin gets compared to Tom Robbins a lot, being both funny and heartbreaking.

nah, scratch nicholson baker.

'baby driver' by JAN kerouac - more engrossing than her dad's stuff

In the past few days
Paul Morley - Nothing. But I haven't finished it cause I was reading some of it out to someone last night and they walked off with my copy. Although, it has an interesting style, it's the style that I'm interested in, particularly the style, which interested me ( like David Mamet's dialogue (House of Games) but not as stilted) It has a resigned confidence that makes everything sound painfully true, even when he admits he's making it up. Thomas Sutcliffe - Watching - the book of the TV series (non- fiction). A canny box of observations about film techniques that avoids getting caught in theory; illustrated with examples from well- known films. The last two chapters on the freeze frame and TV in films alone make it worth finding. Coming to a seconds store near you.

simon reynolds. energy flash. i know its an obvious choice round here, but praise cannot be high enough for this book. i don't actually like music books very much. i would if they were like this though.

martin parr. boring postcards. read robins site for a good piece on this. just postcards of britain circa 58-78? beautiful.

edward platt. leadville. a biography of the a40, west london. or more specifically the people who lived alongside it in 1995-96. the mundane as wonderful.

victor pelevin. babylon. or the clay machine gun. probably my favourite author. subject matter: absurdity of post-soviet russia. effortlessly clever. effortlessly readable.

donald antrim. the verificationist. or the hundred brothers. brilliant books. no text breaks or chapters, just flows from beginning to end. has strange knack of seeming to stretch time.

Gareth, my codification = July 1957 to October 1978. But see my addendum for the truth about Frimley High Street and Basingstoke.

Well I have a tendancy to read pretty crappy books and glorify them, but it's always possible that someone might share my taste. I like Richard Russo. His novels "Nobody's Fool" and "Straight Man" are comedic yet strikingly detailed. His characters come to life. As for non-fiction I tend to read war novels, and one of the more moving books I have read is "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, a survivor of the Soviet concentration camps. It is an absorbing recollection of terror and human nature. I can't think of much else tonight. Hope I've been helpful.

I just heard a hip-hop track on iuma.com that referred
to the Book of The New Sun. That is so kewl - too bad
these guys suck, otherwise.

the good soldier - ford madox ford
mmmmmmm

mark you never explained your puffin club theory

Why is "favorite books" used as though it is synonymous with "favorite novels"?

Favorite novels:

The Healing and Mosquito by Gayl Jones. Jones uses some version (intentionally humorous, apparently, though I think that went past me) of Southern, African-American dialect in these books; and the narrators tend to circle back and repeat a lot. In other words, the language is pretty much in the foreground, so if you don't like that sort of thing, then you probably won't like this. But what she does with it all seems brilliant to me, and often very funny. It's been a few years since I've read these, so it's particularly hard to know what say at this point. One thing that is important to me is that I really liked the narrators, in each case.

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles. I enjoy the continual unexpected plot twists in this.

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. This is set in our world, after a nuclear apocalypse, but has more of a fantasy than sci-fi feel. It is maybe a bit static in a way, but I enjoyed it. Again, the language is a little bit opaque, though it doesn't take that long to get used to it.

In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif. Parts of this book are so beautifully written. Aside from that, I liked the main character (though at times I felt frustrated with her decisions), and I read this at a time when I was just getting into Arabic music, so the references to Oum Kalthoum and Fairouz were very welcome. It seems to me that some aspects of it are modelled on The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (another novel I liked, but not quite enough to list here).

All of Denton Welch's novels, for his funny mind and attention to sensual detail.

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat. Simply written, and very painful.

The Manner Music by Charles Reznikoff. A short novel by an American known primarily as a poet (to the extent that he is known).

In the Labyrnith by Alain Robbe-Grillet. I mention this for old time's sake. I used to really love this. I'm not sure I'd have the patience for it today. I just like, or at least liked, the cold beauty of it, the rhythm of the opening passage, and the particular trick he used of moving between describing the scene in a picture and to describing reality.

I have the very unliterary approach of tending to like novels whose narrators or main characters are people I can imagine wanting to be friends with.

My favourite book is not a novel: the 1001 Nights. I suspect that there are some art/architecture books where I've had as much or more pleasure from them as my favourite works of fiction too.

Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects
The Ego-Trip Book of Rap Lists
The Bible
The Collins English Dictionary
Flight 714 (Tintin)