Tell me about a book that you read recently and enjoyed or a book that is an all-time favorite. Don't try to guess my tastes; what is one book that changed your life?
This is the question that I posed to friends, strangers, students, parents, family, and professors, creating the following list of recommendations from all genres. Popular book organizers (like Shelfari, GoodReads, and LibraryThing) allow users to display what they have read, and the sites generate a list of recommended books based on (similar to) what you have read. However, sometimes you desire something completely different that is still a good read. Thus, I started collecting book titles.
This list has been in the makings for years, but it only officially took off this past spring in Wien. For the first time, I have transcribed my pile of recommendations--notes on post-its, ticket stubs, napkins, or whatever scrap was handy--to form a full list. These are books were read and loved by a myriad of different people, with a vast variety of interests and tastes. If you are reading this, please continue the list and leave a comment with a favorite book of your own!
This is the question that I posed to friends, strangers, students, parents, family, and professors, creating the following list of recommendations from all genres. Popular book organizers (like Shelfari, GoodReads, and LibraryThing) allow users to display what they have read, and the sites generate a list of recommended books based on (similar to) what you have read. However, sometimes you desire something completely different that is still a good read. Thus, I started collecting book titles.
This list has been in the makings for years, but it only officially took off this past spring in Wien. For the first time, I have transcribed my pile of recommendations--notes on post-its, ticket stubs, napkins, or whatever scrap was handy--to form a full list. These are books were read and loved by a myriad of different people, with a vast variety of interests and tastes. If you are reading this, please continue the list and leave a comment with a favorite book of your own!
I purposely have not sorted by genre, and only grudgingly separated the non-fiction books at the bottom. Yellow titles or authors refer to those that have been strongly recommended by multiple people. Enjoy.
The List
-Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
-Margaret Atwood, (esp Blind Assassin, Robber Bride, and Handmaid's Tale)
-Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being
The List
-Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
-Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
-Margaret Atwood, (esp Blind Assassin, Robber Bride, and Handmaid's Tale)
-Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being
-Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (also The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and the three-volume Baroque Cycle)
-Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach and Atonement
-William Gibson, Neuromancer (followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)
-William Gibson, Neuromancer (followed by Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive)
-John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance
-Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast novels
-Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
-Keith Donohue, The Stolen Child
-Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things and Good Omens
-Charles Dickens, Bleak House
-Ovid, The Metamorphosis
-Albert Camus, The Fall (and The Stranger)
-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
-Michael Ende, Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
-David Sedaris, Naked
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
-Michael Ende, Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)
-John Crowley, Little, Big
-Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
-Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
-Herman Hesse, Demian
-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt
-any & all Kurt Vonnegut
-William Goldman, Princess Bride
-Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
-Frank Beddor, The Looking Glass Wars
-Peter F Hamilton, Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
-Wayne Barlowe, God's Demon
-The Bhagavad Gita
-Cormac McCarty, The Road
-Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
-Jon Meacham, American Lion
-John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
-Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
-Eloise McGraw, The Moorchild
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
-Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
-Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
-Herman Hesse, Demian
-Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt
-any & all Kurt Vonnegut
-William Goldman, Princess Bride
-Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
-Frank Beddor, The Looking Glass Wars
-Peter F Hamilton, Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
-Wayne Barlowe, God's Demon
-The Bhagavad Gita
-Cormac McCarty, The Road
-Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
-Jon Meacham, American Lion
-John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
-Lois Lowry, Number the Stars
-Eloise McGraw, The Moorchild
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Non-fiction:
-Steven Beller, Rethinking Vienna 1900 [To counter Schorske's widely-read Fin-de-Siecle Vienna]
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love-Steven Beller, Rethinking Vienna 1900 [To counter Schorske's widely-read Fin-de-Siecle Vienna]
-Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea
-Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma
-David Sedaris, Naked
-Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Contributers: AR, MK, MW, BB, PW, KS, Mrs. S, KM, Prof. G, Prof. H, LS, LG, CR, DC, EB, PM, GN, BB, MA, KS, FP, KS, MS, SW, MD, DP, KC, and many others... THANK YOU!
Keep this list going, and comment with your own favorite texts or authors. What are some of your all-time favorite books? What's something that you read recently and loved? What book startled you or changed your perspective on life? What would you recommend (to anyone) from any author, any genre?
3 comments:
yay i'm excited that you put this up! :)
2 things:
1) i started "slaughterhouse five" today and i'm a little under halfway through and those i find it a bit confusing at times, i also find it very engaging. i was so bummed when my lunch break was over and i had to go back to work :P
2) fragile things is EXCELLENT! btw he has a collaboration that came out last summer called "interworld" which i heard was supposed to be pretty good but haven't read it yet, and there's another one set to come out this summer i think.
I would consider vetting this list a bit more... you have a lot of great titles here, but what about collecting "anti" recommendations as well? I still believe that some books can harm your brain, and I'm automatically suspicious of anything that has spent any significant time on the NYTimes best-seller list... when it's able to please the masses, it often means it's lowest common denominator reading material. Not to be too pessimistic, but I am particularly averse to the overly simplistic thinking advocated by many of the self help/pseudo memoir titles that are popular these days.
haha I like that idea. "Now, tell me some books that you read and really despised and think should never have been published..." My Side of the Mountain (from 5th grade) would make my list, but other than that there's few books that I really *hate* (just many that I wouldn't read again).
And Mr. Cynic, eh? I don't think that the masses *always* choose the basest reading material... only often. Look at the Oprah books. Though I despise her monopoly and how much people depend on her to know what to read, she's done some good. Usually her titles are decent if not really good. She's made Faulkner popular again, and Tolstoy and Steinbeck, not to mention many modern literary authors. Those all became bestsellers because of her. (Scary what one woman can do.)
As someone who has to cull through the NYT Bestseller list every week (two weeks in advance, actually! shh)... my complaint is not with the list itself or but with how publishers must rely on it even though the masses could care less what's at the top. People aren't reading much any more, so if an author does *not* make the Bestseller list, chances are you will never be published again. And after seeing all that goes on on the inside, that's not necessarily because the book is bad, but maybe just not marketed right. Make or break.
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