Top 10 Favorite Novels

Another in our series of Top 10 lists. My semester at school is almost over and I'm eager to finally do some recreational reading. Interested to see what books are on your lists and get some ideas of books to read. As usual you can be the judge of whether you want to put a whole series or a single book from the series as one choice. Here's my list...

1. Ender's Game
2. Lord of the Rings
3. Wheel of Time series
4. Harry Potter series
5. To Kill a Mockingbird
6. Dune
7. Neverwhere
8. A Game of Thrones
9. High Fidelity
10. Mistborn

1. East of Eden - Steinbeck
2. Frankenstein - Shelley
3. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Verne
4. The Corrections - Franzen
5. The Foundation Trilogy - Asimov
6. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkein
7. 1984 - Orwell
8. Dune - Herbert
9. A Game of Thrones - Martin
10. The Stars My Destination - Bester

I'm sure there are many I've forgotten, and of course the order could easily change (except for the first two).

Great idea for a list.

1. Blood Meridian
2. The Sound And The Fury
3. Leviathan Wakes
4. As I Lay Dying
5. The Road
6. Catcher In The Rye
7. Watership Down
8. The Divine Comedy
9 Heart Of Darkness
10. The Hound of the Baskervilles


A short story list would be interesting as well.

Ach! How could I have forgotten The Road?

I read a lot, so it's really hard for me to come up with just ten books. The first five I am sure about, the other five would probably change if I spent a lot of time thinking this over.
1. The Sign of the Unicorn, by Roger Zelazny. Third book in the first Amber series, which features a machiavellian and dysfunctional family of near-immortal swordsmen and sorcerers who are capable of traveling to any alternate reality. The Sign of the Unicorn is especially enjoyable for several reasons. A minor character takes center stage for a chapter. There is a neat murder mystery. Family dynamics provide opportunities for enjoyable dialogue and complex intrigue. And the underlying dimensional travel concept allows for some great plot twists.

2. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin. Although Martin has done some excellent standalone novels, my favorite is the third book in the Game of Thrones series. After the slow buildup of the first book and some solid action in the second book, A Storm of Swords delivers some extremely exciting scenes, closing with shock after shock.

3. When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger. This is the first book of a trilogy, but stands fine on its own. It fulfills every promise of the cyberpunk genre, focusing on a rough neighborhood in small Mideastern country in the future. Big bold ideas that managed to predict certain aspects of our current society to an uncanny degree. The opening scene is a hilarious deconstruction of the James Bond mythos, and everything after is a mixture of Dashiell Hammett and William Gibson, only with very believable characters.

4. Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan. Second book of his Tokashi Kovacs run, but works just fine as a standalone cyberpunk story mixed in with military sci-fi. There are some really interesting ideas and plenty of action, plus some challenging ethical issues are raised. Morgan is angry and passionate about issues, and that gives his story plenty of energy.

5. Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. First of a loose trilogy of stories set in an Ancient China That Never Was, a lively and humorous setting. The two main characters are great. Master Li is a Chinese version of Sherlock Holmes, though extremely old and surprisingly decadent. Number Ten Ox serves as his Watson, but is also the strongest man in China.

6. Neuromancer, by William Gibson. This first novel of the Sprawl trilogy set the standard for all things cyberpunk.

7. Stormbringer, by Michael Moorcock. The end of the Elric saga is the highest of high fantasy, with battling gods and the end of the world. Moorcock has a facility of naming things well, and the brooding anti-hero Elric fights battles in physical, magical and ethical dimensions. There is a fantastic and very unexpected cameo by a hero from a very old literary work.

8. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This is one of the great first contact novels in science-fiction that also raises issues relevant to our own future here on Earth. Without directly swiping anything except for maybe Scotty, this novel has a pleasantly familiar texture to fans of the original Star Trek tv series.

9. The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. This is one of the scariest books that I've ever read, and it inspired both a great horror movie and an okay one. Jackson has a lovely way with language, and she deploys it in sneaky ways to build suspense.

10. The Age of Zeus, by James Lovegrove. I wasn't sure about putting this on the list, when there were better writers (like Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance) left off. And I haven't gotten around to re-reading The Age of Zeus yet, so maybe it won't stand the test of time. But the concept is outstanding, and the story is consistently interesting. Basically, our modern world has recently been conquered by recently returning Greek Pantheon. A wealthy inventor recruits a team of mercenaries to put on high-tech powered armor and wage guerrilla warfare against the gods, building to a violent final battle.

• THE SHINING by King
• BLOOD MERIDIAN by McCarthy
• THE ROAD by McCarthy
• DUNE by Herbert
• CRYPTONOMICON by Stepehenson
• THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by Irving
• WATCHMEN by Moore
• THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION by Chabon
• THE WIZARD/THE KING by Wolfe
• 1984 by Orwell

When Gravity Fails is a really top novel, has an argument for being the best cyberpunk novel even against Neuromancer.

1. Chasm City - Space Opera SciFi by Alastair Reynolds

2. The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe, I like the whole series but the first book is the best.

3. Metro 2033 - Some Russian, famous video game, I prefer the book a lot.

4. Eyes of the Overworld - Jack Vance

5. Various - Philip K Dick, Solar Lottery is one of my favs but there are many others.

6. Redemption Arc - also Alastair Reynolds - more space opera!

7. Lost Worlds - Clark Ashton Smith (short story collection)

8.Lord of The Rings

9. When Gravity Fails - George Alec Effinger

10. Neuromancer - Gibson

I tried to think of some serious novels for proper adults that I liked and then realised I haven't really dug any I've read.

Lets see if I can make this list

1. Dune(series) - Herbert
2. Neuromancer - William Gibson
3. Forever War - Joe Halderman
4. Song of Fire and Ice(series) - GRR Martin
5. Simarillon - Tolkien
6. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
7. Conan The Barbarian(Series) - Howard
8. Elric of Melniboné(First Saga) - Moorcock
9. I, Claudius - Graves
10. Grendel - John Gardner

Something like this...

Guignol's Band/London Bridge - Louis Ferdinand Celine
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
The Idiot - Dostoyevsky
The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
A Voyage to Arcturus - David Lindsay
Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler
The Castle - Franz Kafka
Edge of the Alphabet - Janet Frame
The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

In no particular order

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Heinlein
In the Woods - Tana French
The Stand/It - King
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Oryx & Crake - Atwood
All the Pretty Horses - McCarthy
Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan
The Scar - China Mieville

Bridge of Birds is really a fantastic book, and not something you'd normally see on a top ten list. Good pick, Shellhead.

I can't recommend it highly enough. The sequels were (may still be) out of print for a ling time, and got really hard to find.

All my books are in boxes for moving, but when I unpack them this week it will be a perfect time to write one of these.

In no particular order:

A Farewell to Arms - Hemmingway

Catch 22 - Heller

Lord of the Rings - Tolkein

Moby Dick - Melville

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemmingway

Tarzan of the Apes / Return of Tarzan - Burroughs

Fahferd and the Gray Mouser Stories - Leiber

War and Peace - Tolstoy

Atlas Shrugged - Rand

First three books of A Song of Ice and Fire - Martin

repoman wrote: In no particular order:

Catch 22 - Heller

Oh, yeah, I want this one too. My list is 11 books long.

In no particular order and not hard set:

Fermat's Enigma - Simon Singh
Black Hole -Charles Burns
Dune -Herbert
The Grifters - Jim Thompson
The First Law Trilogy - Joe Abercrombie
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby
Gateway -Frederick Pohl
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay - Michael Chabon
Flashman - George MacDonald
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

OK losers, read it and weep

The End of Mr Y - Scarlett Thomas
Declare - Tim Powers
Berlin Noir - Phillip Kerr
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The System of the World - Neil Stephenson
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
Dune - Frank Herbert
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner