BigFooty Top Book list - voting commenced!

[FredLeDeux]

Spike Lee?

 

[Mr Eagle]

5. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

I had forgotten about this one! I'd never heard of it until my Dad recommended it. But it does seem to pop up for mention around the interwebs from time to time.

Spike Lee?

Glad I'm not the only who saw that Mind you, that could be an interesting read...

 

[FredLeDeux]

Glad I'm not the only who saw that Mind you, that could be an interesting read...

The mind really boggles at what might have happened if he'd had a crack at The Milligan's greatest work, Puckoon.

 

[cats23]

Great thread idea fpcookie ,have noted quite a few books for future reading.

So hard to name twenty, but here goes;

1. The Chronicles of Narnia-C.S. Lewis
2. Animal Farm-Orwell
3. Brave New World-Huxley
4. The Quiet American-Graham Greene
5. Lord of the Rings-Tolkien
6. V For Vendetta-Alan Moore
7. Nineteen Eighty Four-Orwell
8. A Somg of Ice and Fire-George Martin
9. The Somnambulist-Jonathan Barnes
10. Watchmen-Alan Moore
11. The Twits-Roald Dahl
12. American Gods-Neil Gaiman
13. Dune-Frank Herbert
14. The Day of the Triffids-John Wyndham
15. To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee
16. Only Forward-Michael Marshall Smith
17. The Teachings of Don Juan-Carlos Castaneda
18. 2001:A Space Odyssey-Arthur Clarke
19. Cosmos-Carl Sagan
20. A Scanner Darkly-Phillip Dick

 

[johncat]

Spike Lee?

Ah you got me! Duly noted and edited.

 

[FredLeDeux]

Ah you got me! Duly noted and edited.

Sorry, really should have tagged you, but it was too surreal.

 

[JD11]

I hate the idea of ranking them, but whatever:

1/ The Go-Between - Leslie Hartley
2/ Arcadia - Tom Stoppard
3/ The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemmingway
4/ Johnno - David Malouf
5/ Facial Justice - Leslie Hartley
6/ Post Office - Charles Buckowski
7/ The Gambler - Fydor Dostoyevsky
8/ Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett
9/ Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
10/ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson

Literature is such a trek to get through. I've never made it past modernism/minimalism save for a few seminal works.

 

[BEaston]

Only a few more days to go!

List is looking good

 

[Palmer Stoat]

1 The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
2 Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
3 One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4 The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
5 Middlemarch, George Eliot
6 Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
7 The Honorary Consul, Graham Greene
8 The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
9 Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
10 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
11 The Seville Communion, Arturo Perez Reverte
12 What the Crow Said, Robert Kroetsch
13 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
14 Endless Love, Scott Spencer
15 Waking the Dead, Scott Spencer
16 Fingersmith, Sarah Waters
17 Sister, Jim Lewis
18 The March, EL Doctorow
19 Tent of Miracles, Jorge Amado
20 Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, Ben Fountain

 

[Troubadour]

ok, time to stir up the literati with some pulp.

1. Les Norton series - Robert G Barrett
2. Shogun - Clavell
3. Charlie Parker series - John Connolly
4. Harry Bosch series - Michael Connelly
5. Spenser series - Robert B Parker
6. Myron Bolitar series - Harlan Coben
7. Courtneys of Africa - Wilbur Smith
8. Shardlake series - CJ Sansom
9. Reacher series - Lee Child
10. Elvis Cole series - Robert Crais
11. Marching Powder - Rusty Young
12. A Time to Kill - Grisham
13. The Winner - David Baldacci
14. The Enemy - Tom Wood
15. Jesse Stone series - Robert B Parker
16. Gabriel Allon series - Daniel Silva
17. Murray Whelan series - Shane Maloney
18. Parker series - Richard Stark
19. LoTR
20. Frost series - RD Wingfield

 

[WALDENPOND]

13. The Winner - David Baldacci

I actually really enjoyed this.

 

[thegerman]

Here I go

1. Brave New world
2. To kill a mockingbird
3. 1984
4. Charlie and the chocolate factory
5. One flew over the cuckoo 's nest
6. Boy in the striped pyjamas
7. Huckleberry Finn
8. American psycho
9. War of the worlds
10. The secret garden
11. Charlotte's web
12. All quiet on western front
13. Oliver twist
14. Bram stoker's Dracula
15. Lord of the flies
16. Animal farm
17. In the company of heroes
18. The power of one
19. Berlin: the downfall
20. The dark tower, Stephen king

 

[Bryce_Jersey17]

1. Jack West Jnr. series (Seven Ancient Wonders, Six Sacred Stones, Five Greatest Warriors)
Matthew Reilly
2. The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
3. Bridge to Terabithia
Katherine Paterson
4. Chronicles of Narnia (All 7)
C.S.Lewis
5. His Dark Materials (Northern Lights/Golden Compass, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass)
Philip Pullman
6. The Keys to the Kingdom series (7 books)
Garth Nix
7. Child of Vengeance
David Kirk
8. The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance)
Christopher Paolini
9. Child of Vengeance
David Kirk
10. The Simple Gift
Steven Herrick
11. The Chrysalids
John Wyndham
12. Animal Farm
George Orwell
13. Angels and Demons
Dan Brown
14. The DaVinci Code
Dan Brown
15. The Importance of Being Earnest (A play, I know. But a great read)
Oscar Wilde
16. The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
17. Horus Heresy Series
Various Authors
18. A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
19. Knight Crusader
Ronald Welch
20. Dragonspell Chronicles
Donita K. Paul

 

[BEaston]

Ok folks the voting period has now closed!

The countdown will begin Monday morning and I'm pretty sure it will be a Top 40 so I'll announce it all over a week or so.

Will create a new thread for the countdown.

Hope you all had fun compiling your lists

 

[Teriyakicat]

Thanks again fpcookie. I enjoyed reading everyone's lists. Good luck with compiling the top 40!

 

[BEaston]

The countdown has commenced!

http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/threads/bigfootys-top-50-book-list.1087163/

 

[Cursed Cat]

bit late as voting has already commenced, but for the record:

1 Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
4 The Illearth War - Stephen Donaldson
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (looking forward to the 'sequel'!)
6 The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
7 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
8 the Border Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy
9 the Jack Irish books - Peter Temple
10 Revolution in the Head - Ian MacDonald

 

[Teriyakicat]

bit late as voting has already commenced, but for the record:

1 Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
4 The Illearth War - Stephen Donaldson
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (looking forward to the 'sequel'!)
6 The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
7 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
8 the Border Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy
9 the Jack Irish books - Peter Temple
10 Revolution in the Head - Ian MacDonald

Damn!! Wish I'd thought to tell you personally, Cursed_Cat. You'll have to make sure you check in on the Cats board more often!!

 

[jim boy]

ok, time to stir up the literati with some pulp.

20. Frost series - RD Wingfield

Never read any of the Frost series, but that is because Wingfield is first and foremost a radio dramatist. Some of his work on that medium is outstanding, Frost is good, but Outbreak of Fear is sensational. Hunt it down.

 

[Northworth]

1 A Song of Ice and Fire - George R R Martin
2 Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
3 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
4 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
5 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
6 I know this much is true - Wally Lamb
7 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larson
8 The Brethren - Bob Woodward
9 Odd Thomas - Dean Koontz
10 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
11 Riftwar / Empire Series - Raymond E Feist
12 Dune - Frank Herbert
13 High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
14 Lost Moon - Apollo 13 - Jim Lovell
15 Farseer Series - Robin Hobb
16 Murray Whelan Series - Shane Maloney
17 Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
18 Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
19 Godfather - Mario Puzo
20 My Life - Bill Clinton

 

[WALDENPOND]

1 The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

Just started reading this through hearing so many recommendations. Is there any particular reason you have it at number one?

 

[Palmer Stoat]

Just started reading this through hearing so many recommendations. Is there any particular reason you have it at number one?

I first read it when I was 17, and I've read it four times since. I actually find it more dispiriting with each reading. I think you tend to embrace desolate writing more when you're young -- at least that's my experience. For this reason, I'm not sure it's still my number one. It may be too bleak and too bursting at the seams with hatefulness. I suspect if I read my favourite handful of books back to back so that a direct comparison could be made -- ie not between books read years apart -- it would be surpassed by another two or three novels that are a bit more 'lovable'.

Still... It's undeniably a masterpiece and undeniably great, for mine. I love the language -- I don't think Faulkner is an 'elegant' writer, everything is too superheated and sweaty for that, but he's a monstrously gifted wordsmith, and that's most evident in the jumbled stream of consciousness sections (Benjy's and Quentin's). I love that -- in true modernist fashion -- he enlists the reader as detective. You have to engage with the novel so strenuously in order to decode it, cos otherwise it won't make a lick of sense. I also love the disorienting chronology; I don't know if up to that point any major novel had experimented with time like that. I didn't mind reading the book and -- courtesy of the stream of consciousness and the jumbled chronology -- thinking 'WTF is going on here?' It was exciting and risk-taking and incredibly confident writing. And the evocation of place and person and the sensory world in the first two sections is a tour-de-force. Plus, I like just how 'interior' Quentin's section feels, and the family drama described (elliptically, obsessively) in the Benjy and Quentin sections is, for me, teeth-grindingly sad and infuriating.

I get how people won't like TSATF. A lot of them won't think it's worth all the effort. But I've never, ever forgotten Benjy, Caddy, Quentin, Jason, and their parents. Or Faulkner's virtuoso performance in telling their story, upending convention, seemingly upending intelligibility at times, and yet for all that giving you one of the most withering, and beautiful, and cruelly clear-sighted descriptions of a family drowning in desolation, meanness, and despair.

Any masterpiece, to be a masterpiece, has to colonise a tiny part of your imagination. TSATF does that for me.

 

[WALDENPOND]

9. Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

18. The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster

On 9. I just read the tragic story surrounding the author of this novel. Really interested in reading it though.

On 18. Just skimming through early this morning and I remembered....this is such a good book/trilogy.

 

[BEaston]

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

Interesting how my list has changed since then, either due to new entries or reconsideration on where something might stand.


1 Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2 One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
3 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller [NEW ENTRY]
4 A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin [NEW ENTRY]
5 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson [-2]
5 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut [NEW ENTRY]
8 The Road - Cormac McCarthy [NEW ENTRY]
9 Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan [-5]
10 No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy [-3]
11 Dune - Frank Herbert
12 The Broken Shore - Peter Temple [NEW ENTRY]
13 The First Law trilogy - Joe Abercrombie [-4]
14 Discworld - Terry Pratchett [-4]
15 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick [NEW ENTRY]
16 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [-3]
17 Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut [-3]
18 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell [-6]
19 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [-6]
20 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [-12]

 

[chargers 09]

Interesting how my list has changed since then, either due to new entries or reconsideration on where something might stand.


1 Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2 One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
3 Catch-22 - Joseph Heller [NEW ENTRY]
4 A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin [NEW ENTRY]
5 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson [-2]
5 The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
7 Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut [NEW ENTRY]
8 The Road - Cormac McCarthy [NEW ENTRY]
9 Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan [-5]
10 No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy [-3]
11 Dune - Frank Herbert
12 The Broken Shore - Peter Temple [NEW ENTRY]
13 The First Law trilogy - Joe Abercrombie [-4]
14 Discworld - Terry Pratchett [-4]
15 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick [NEW ENTRY]
16 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams [-3]
17 Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut [-3]
18 Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell [-6]
19 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien [-6]
20 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell [-12]

We have similar taste by the looks of I- have read most of those or are on my to read list. Have you tried the Dark Tower series by Stephen King? Just stared it and quite like it.


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