BigFooty Top Book list - voting commenced!

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Inspired from the previous BigFooty Top TV/Movie threads that we've seen in the past I thought it would be good to do something similar in the book folder! I know there is the top 5 book thread already but I thought it would be a good idea to collate votes at one point in time and get a definitive list, as that thread has been going for quite a few years.

Noting that the book folder is a lot quieter than the other folders, I am hoping for a Top 50. I may have to change this depending on the response from the BF community. It may even extend to a Top 100 if there are enough people voting.

So, thank you to Kryptastic/benji for the voting format/rules which I have blatantly ripped off. They are as follows:

1) Create your list. Try to pick your favourites, don't worry too much if they're critically acclaimed or would likely appear on anyone else's list.

2) Order your list from 1-20 and post it in this thread, or if you’re not comfortable doing that, PM me your list. Make it clear what your order is, as it will be important for the tallying of the votes. If you only have 17 movies, just list 1-17. However, unordered lists and lists with less than 10 movies will not be counted.

3) You have around two weeks to collate and submit your list. Voting will end 23:59 AEDST on Friday January 30th, and all going well the countdown commencing on Monday February 2nd. Every book at #1 on a list will get 20 points, #2 books will get 19 points and so on until #20, which will get 1 point.
4) In the even of a tie, winner determined by the following criteria, in order: number of lists that book was included in, highest position of book. If still tied, they will be assigned equal rank.

________________________________________________________________________________________


Notes:
- A book series may be voted for as one entry, as long as the story is continuous. For example Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time or JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.
- Where one author has more than one series or story in the same universe they must be considered separate, for example Raymond Fiest's Riftwar Saga and Empire Trilogy would be considered two different entries. Similar to Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, even though there is some cross over, they are not considered continuous stories.
- You may vote for a single book in a series if you wish, for example you may want to vote for A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin, instead of A Song of Ice and Fire but you cannot include both the series and an individual book in your list.
- Comic books, magazines, newspapers, audiobooks/podcasts, plays, screenplays, etc are not included. Reference books such as encyclopedias, atlases etc are not included. Collections of poems are included as long as they were published as a book.
- Adding the author to your list will make it easier for me to collate :)

Any questions or queries can be posted in this thread or PM'd to me for a clarification.

Happy voting!
 
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1 Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2 One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
3 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
4 Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
5 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
8 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
9 The First Law trilogy - Joe Abercrombie
10 Nightwatch - Terry Pratchett
11 Dune - Frank Herbert
12 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
13 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
13 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
14 Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
15 The Secret Race - Tyler Hamilton
16 The Thrawn trilogy - Timothy Zahn
17 Foundation - Isaac Asimov
18 Time's Arrow - Martin Amis
19 High Society - Ben Elton
20 American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
 

treefingers

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  1. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  2. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
  3. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
  4. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
  5. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
  6. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
  7. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
  8. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
  9. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  10. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
 

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OK, I'm in.


1. Baudelino- Umberto Eco
2. Narziss and Goldman- Herman Hesse
3. The Moors Last Sigh- Salman Rushdie
4. Lord of the Rings- Tolkien
5. On the Road- Jack Kerouac
6. A Song of Ice and Fire- GRR Martin
7. Thud- Terry Pratchett
8. The Sun Also Rises- Ernest Hemingway
9. The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer- Neal Stephenson
10. To Kill A Mocking Bird- Harper Lee
11. Brave New World- Aldous Huxley
12. Howl- Alan Ginsberg
13. A Night in the Lonesome October- Roger Zelazney
14. Cannery Row- John Steinbeck
15. American Gods- Neil Gaiman
16. The Vlad Taltos Series- Steven Brust
17. Tom O’Bedlam- Robert Silverberg
18. A Chronicle of a Death Foretold- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
19. Our Man in Havana- Graham Green
20. The Man Who Was Thursday- GK Chesterton
 
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1. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
3. Another Country by James Baldwin
4. The Lucky Country by Donald Horne
5. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
7. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
8. Nineteen-Eighty-Four by George Orwell
9. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
10. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
 

WALDENPOND

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1.All the Pretty Horses-Cormac McCarthy.
2.The Outsider-Albert Camus.
3.True History of the Kelly Gang-Peter Carey.
4.Ulysses-James Joyce.
5.Walden-Henry David Thoreau.
6.Of Mice and Men-John Steinbeck.
7.The Collector-John Fowles.
8.Thus Spoke Zarathustra-Friedrich Nietzsche.
9.Black Jesus-Simone Felice.
10.The Fall-Albert Camus.
11.The Name of The Rose-Umberto Eco.
12.New York Trilogy-Paul Auster.
13.War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy.
14.Post Office-Charles Bukowski.
15.Underground-Tobias Hill.
16.The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck.
17.Ask The Dust-John Fante.
18.The Crossing-Cormac McCarthy.
19.And the Ass Saw the Angel-Nick Cave.
20.Cities of the Plain-Cormac McCarthy.
 
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1. I am Legend – Richard Matheson
2. The Bachman Books - Stephen King
3. The Stand - Stephen King
4. On Writing - Stephen King
5. The Thrawn Trilogy – Timothy Zahn
6. Enders Game – Orson Scott Card
7. Speaker of the Dead – Orson Scott Card (Haven’t read books 3 and 4 and don’t plan to)
8. The Collected Short Stories of Philip K Dick Volumes 1-5
9. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
10. A Song of Fire and Ice – George RR Martin
11. F1 Through the Eyes of Damon Hill: Inside the World of Formula One – Damon Hill
12. Boy & Going Solo - Roald Dahl (Separate entries? They have merged them in some editions)
13. Alone Against Tomorrow - Harlan Ellison
14. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
15. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
16. Hollywood Animal: A Memoir - Joe Eszterhas
17. Starship Troopers - Robert A Heinlein
28. Conan Chronicles - Robert E Howard
19. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
20. Batman: No Man's Land – Greg Rucka (The novel, not the comic)
 
Apr 28, 2008
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Not confident in this at all, but I'll have a go. Sure to be remarkably different in another 5-10 years.

1. Suttree – Cormac McCarthy
2. Dubliners – James Joyce
3. Absalom Absalom! – William Faulkner
4. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
5. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
6. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets – David Simon
7. Rendezvous with Rama – Arthur C. Clarke
8. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon
9. A Fortunate Life – AB Facey
10. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
11. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
12. Redwall series – Brian Jacques
13. Underworld – Don DeLillo
14. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
15. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
18. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
19. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
20. The Awakening – Kate Chopin

HM: Junky - William S. Burroughs, Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Old Man Goriot - Honore de Balzac, We – Yevgeny Zamyatin, To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee, South - Ernest Shackleton, WB Yeats' later poetry volumes

If graphic novels were included, I'd probably have Alan Moore's Watchmen in my Top 5 as well. Selected Poems of WB Yeats would also be Top 10 if compilations were allowed.
 
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Nov 9, 2006
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🐍🏆Ophidian Old Boys🏆🐍 and Mizzou
A few I read when at School from my memory of them.

1. A song of Ice and fire - George R.R. Martin
2. The Amtrak Wars - Patrick Tilley
3. The Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan (till about book 7/8)
4. The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
5. The Sword of Truth - Terry Goodkind
6. The Cardinals of the Kremlin - Tom Clancy
7. Sharpe's .......... (series) - Bernard Cornwell
8. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
9. Tomorrow, When the War began (Tomorrow series) - John Marsden
10. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
11. Asterix the Gual series - Authors x 3 (most read libray books by me at school) **** sorry just saw the rules. If this series not allowed - just leave this out and bump the rest up, so my list is 19)
12. The Saga of Recluse - L.E. Modelsit Jr
13. The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy
14. Shogun - James Clavell
15. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
16. Enders Games Series - Orson Scott Card
17. The Spellsong Wars - L.E. Modelsit
18. Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
19. The Belgariad Series - David Eddings
20. Coldfire - Dean Koontz
 
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1. Enchanters End Game by David Eddings
2. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
3. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
6. Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
8. Betrayal by Fiona McIntosh
9. Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind
10. A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones
11. Ravens Gate by Anthony Horowitz
12. Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb
13. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
14. The Golden Fool by Robin Hobb
15. Guardian's of the West by David Eddings
16. Willows for Weeping by Felicity Pullman
17. Lord Sunday by Garth Nix
18. Eragon by Christopher Paolini

You can probably tell which sort of series I enjoy from this list :p. Not a fan of the no multiple books in a series thing though.
 
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1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
2. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. World War Z, Max Brooks
7. The Road to Gandolfo, Robert Ludlum
8. The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
9. The First Casualty, Ben Elton
10. Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
 

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I'm not as well read as I should be, so there are a couple of personal favourites in there that I mightn't necessarily consider legitimately great.

1. Heller - Catch-22
2. Greene - The Quiet American
3. Camus - The Plague
4. Hemingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls
5. Eco - The Name of the Rose
6. Dick - The Man in the High Castle
7. Thompson - Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
8. Kafka - The Trial
9. Kerouac - On the Road
10. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
11. Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
12. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
13. Bukowski - Post Office
14. Jaynes - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
15. Golding - Lord of the Flies
16. Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
17. Conrad - Heart of Darkness
18. O'Toole - Confederacy of Dunces
19. Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
20. Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo

If non-fiction is out, scratch Campaign Trail and The Origin and sub in Gibson's Neuromancer and Blissett's Q at the end.
 
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Twenty books I love
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Adolf Hitler, My Part in his Downfall - Spike Milligan
My Traitors Heart - Rian Malan
All the President's Men - Woodward and Bernstein
Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 - Sue Townsend
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail - HST
What a Long Strange Trip it's Been - Dennis McNally
Beyond A Boundary - C.L.R James
Chronicles - Bob Dylan
True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist - Breyten Breytonbach
Tales of the City Series - Armistead Maupin
Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
The Fatal Shore - Robert Hughes
Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
Grimble and Grimble at Christmas - Clement Freud
The Club - David Williamson
The Godfather - Mario Puzo

Should be allowed to include Asterix and Tinitin too.
 
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1 Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien - you have too, it's too good a saga.
2 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell - a scarily prescient description of our age
3 Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon - where you'll find the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit, amongst other things
4 The Pale King - David Foster Wallace - he found something in all of us that we won't talk about, and you can't unlearn about it
5 V For Vendetta - Alan Moore - never has a clearer mirror been held up to us all
6 The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon - for the conspiracy nuts (I have the tattoo ;) - don't ever antagonise the horn )
7 The Man In The High Castle - Philip K Dick (you read it, and suddenly you're aware of another dimension and everyone in the book knows you read about them)
8 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (O Fortuna!)
9 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace - such a shame
10 Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (the horror, the horror, and they're all lying on a boat)

the first three are interchangeable, one being my favourite book as a child, another my favourite as an adult, and the other probably the most important book written for our times. HMs to Mason & Dixon - Pynchon; The Tempest - Willy; The Natural - Bernard Malamud; We – Yevgeny Zamyatin; ; Paradise Lost - John Milton

A few times I wondered, did i read the book or see the movie?:oops:

EDIT: reflected for a while, and realised The Pale King was waaaay undersold. #4 with a bullet.
 
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Top 10, but really could be in any order, and probably reflects all the reading I've doing for my kids over the last 10 years, as well as what I could find when I just ran out into the shed.

1. Miss Smilla's For Snow
2. The Shipping News
3. The Life of Pi
4. Moomintroll series (If I have to go with one, make it moominpapa at sea)
5. The weirdstone of Brisingham (although the underground scenes still gives me nightmares)
6. Crime and Punishment
7. The Get Smart Handbook
8. The life and death of St Kilda
9. To kill a mockingbird
10. The return of the native
11. The catcher ion the rye
12. The complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes
13. The Kraken Wakes
14. Cannery Row
 

Silent Alarm

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01 Robert Drewe - The Bodysurfers
02 Joseph Heller - Catch-22
03 John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men
04 George Orwell - The Road to Wigan Pier
05 Franz Kafka - The Trial
06 Bret Easton Ellis - Less Than Zero
07 John Steinbeck - Canary Row
08 Franz Kafka - Letters to Milena
09 Frank O'Hara - Lunch Poems
10 Henry Lawson - Selected Poems of Henry Lawson

I'm a very lazy reader but these are 10 worth being canonised.
 

The old campaigner

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1. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
2. Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
3. The Hobbit - Tolkien
4. Papillon - Henri Charriere
5. On the Road - Kerouac
6. 1984 - Orwell
7. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
8. Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
9. Dirt Music - Tim Winton
10. The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
11. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
12. True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
13. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
14. We of the Never Never - Mrs Aeneas Gunn
15. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
16. The Slave - Isaac Bashevis Singer
17. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
18. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
19. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
20. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe

It would not be the same if I did it again tomorrow, but this is it today.
 

swingdog

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Well, this sent me scanning the bookshelves - happy not to be going first thanks to everyone else acting as prompts. Mix of books I return to as well as books that bowled me over when I read them - not at all confident on order apart from the first one. With comments:

1. War and Peace - Tolstoy - stands head and shoulders above everyone else for a reason. Give yourself to first 100 pages to work out who's who and you'll understand why this is the greatest piece of literature. Only writer's house I've felt the need to make a pilgrimage to on a cold, snowy day in Moscow.
2. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Thompson - when I read it (at about 20) was a young journalist and thought "what? you can write like this?"
3. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Carver - arguably the greatest short story writer ever though Chekhov and Proulx can come close.
4. Cancer Ward - Solzehenitsyn - lesser known work but heart-breaking
5. Midnight's Children - Rushdie - the best of the big, sprawling Indian sagas
6. The Innocent - McEwan - tight-plotting and gruesome.
7. Independence Day - Ford - all the books in the Frank Bascome series are terrific but this has repeated instances of you reading and thinking "s**t, he's not going to say that, is he" and then, of course, he does.
8. The Civil War Volume 1- Foote - Shelby Foote's 3 volume narrative history of the US civil war is all good but you've got to start somewhere
9. Parting the Waters - Branch - same with Taylor Branch's history of the US civil rights movement. Read this if you go and see Selma and understand the stakes.
10. The Year of Magical thinking - Didion - Joan Didion's late 60s reporting from California is excellent but this is personal and as good an exploration of grief as I've read.
11. The Stranger - Camus - interesting to see this on a few lists. Thinking like Vonnegut and Salinger, it probably resonates more if and when you're a young male.
12. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter - de Beauvoir - she led the most remarkable life and observed it all keenly.
13. Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell - don't know why but this reportage has stuck with me more than his big titles.
14. Unreliable Memoirs - Clive James - how to make an Australian overseas homesick - read them the last 2 pages: perfect
15. Catch 22 - Heller - blew my mind as a 13 year old
16. All the Pretty Horses - McCarthy - again, a terrific series but the first one was the best, just ahead of The Crossing
17. Europe - Mak - excellent travelogue / history by little known Dutch writer
18. In Cold Blood - Capote - reading it now, you can see why it re-inventted journalism
19. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy - read this over a long, boring winter, unemployed in Adelaide - as with number one, just great writing
20. American Tabloid - Ellroy - read one and be amazed by the rhythms of the writing.
 

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