What are the 5 best books you've ever read? (poetry, letter, human)

[jjbradleynyc]

Catcher in the Rye
Watership Down
Lord of the Flies

Those are my 3 favorites. The other 2 were difficult for me to nail down.

[scatman]

I originally numbered them, but took them out. Too subjective....I like them all!!!!!

The Power Broker, by Robert Caro
Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life of Legendary Motown Bassist James Jamerson, by Doctor Licks
Profiles in Courage, by John F. Kennedy
Miles, by Miles Davis
Truman, by David McCullough
The Great Deluge, by Douglas Brinkley
October 1964, by David Halberstam
The Prince, by Machiavelli
Giant Steps, by Kareem Abdul Jabbar
The Fall and Rise of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Loose Balls: Easy Money, Cheap Fouls....., by Jayson Williams
Loose Balls: The Short Wild Life of the ABA, by Terry Pluto
I Maybe Wrong, But I Doubt It, by Charles Barkley
Good Is Not Enough by Keith Wyche
The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama

[earthfaries]

I know it's more than five, but the best books I've ever read are the Eragon books, Twilight books and Harry Potter books.

[Giesela]

I don't know about "favorite". There are different types of favorites, some decidedly mundane comfort food re-reads, some "litrature" (said in highbrow tony accent

When I cast around in my mind for something literary that stuck with me, had an impact (vs. something I would read over and over or enjoy in an entertainment sort of way)
what always comes to mind is a book I read for a class in college. Very powerful and a pretty easy read (as in keeps your interest).

Germinal - by Emile Zola

Germinal (1885) is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Widely considered Zola's undisputed masterpiece and one of the greatest novels ever written in the French language, the novel - an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s - has been published and translated in over one hundred countries as well as inspiring five film adaptations and two TV productions.
The title refers to the name of a month of the French Republican Calendar, a spring month. Germen is a Latin word which means "seed"; the novel describes the hope for a better future that seeds amongst the miners.

[ArmyPoohFan317]

Finding 5 best books is hard, because I love most books I read! But I'm listing a few that I really enjoy

Last of the Breed: Louis L'amour
The Bible
The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers
Lucky: Alice Seabold
C.S. Lewis' books (all of them! I love The Screwtape Letters, Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, etc)
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained: John Milton
In Death series: JD Robb
Stephanie Plum series: Janet Evanovich
Jane Eyre
Sense and Sensibility
PTSD Sourcebook
Chosen Soldier: Dick Couch
On Killing:Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

My all time favorite...
A House at Pooh Corner: A.A. Milne

[Newdaawn]

My favorite in the past couple of years was "The Saga of the Mitford Sisters" by Mary Lovell. True story of 6 sisters in England coming of age in the 1940s. Fascinating, to me, anyway. One of them was a friend of Hitler and the youngest sister ended up living in the US.

[cellogurl23]

Willa Cather wrote that there are only four or five human stories, and they keep repeating themselves over and over. With that in mind, I think I would answer this difficult question with the following:

Fiction:

1. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
2. The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
3. Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Henry Miller (trilogy)
4. Orlando, Virgina Wolf
5. My Antonia, Willa Cather

Non-fiction:

1. Understanding History, Bertrand Russell
2. The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler
3. The World is Flat, Thomas Freidman
4. Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris
5. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins

Poetry:

1. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
2. The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg
3. The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
4. Sonnets, Shakespeare
5. Collected Works: Keats, Shelly

[Strodiggs]

This one is easy...

Think & Grow Balls!: How To Shrink Your Fear & Enlarge Your Courage

Just type in the name of the book in any search engine and you'll find it. I have never been the same since I picked up my copy. I keep it on my desk as a reference manual on how to deal with anything.

I agree with all of you. This really is a great book!

[mhcLyon]

John Grisham's books are great, some better than others, of course. I often felt sad after reading the last page because there was no more to read.

The Crown Family Saga includes Homeland and American Dreams by John Jakes. (He wrote North and South and the Kent Family Chronicles)

Hawaii by James Michener

Cape Cod, Back Bay, and Harvard Yard by William Martin.

None of these are classics but enjoyable and I recommend them. Hard to nail down the best when there's so many great books.

[mhcLyon]

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara is very good. The kind of book that places you in the midst of things and gives you the perspective of soldiers at Gettysburg.