What are the 5 best books you've ever read? (notebooks, comedy, ebook)

[DubbleT]

1. Harold and the Purple Crayon
2. The Giving Tree
3. The Secret Garden
Ok, maybe not THE best, but they will always and ever remain my favorites!
They are the books that made me love reading.
----------------------------------------------------
4. 5. 6. .....and the rest, subject to change on a whim!
Lord of the Flies
To Kill a Mockingbird
Green Dolphin Street
Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit
Hawaii, or just about anything by Michener
Alice in Wonderland
Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, etc.
The Handmaids Tale
The Time Travelers Wife
Dragon's Egg

[goldengrain]

Shantaram by gregory david roberts - a true story with all the impact that reality, albeit a strange and foreign one, has on the psyche. This is a large book and I cannot recommend it enough. It is both an adventure and inspirational.

Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav - another inspirational book, giving insights into your own life.

The above two I have loaned out, got rid of, repurchased, given away. They are that good.

[caligali]

Only five? That's *really* a tough one. I'd say:

1. Understanding History, Bertrand Russell
2. The Jungle Books, Kipling
3. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
4. Orlando, Virgina Wolfe

can I tie the last one?

5. Carl Sandburg, Complete Poems and Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I think in future millennia, the Whitman will be the "bible" of our era. I can't be the only one this has occurred to? I don't believe in anything supernatural, but there does seem to be some sort of great "oversoul" (a Jungian, shared "cloud" of supra-consciousness??), which great artists seem to tap into: Mozart, Whitman. I've even experienced it myself, in drawings I've made. I think Whitman was totally in touch with that..

Understanding History was presumably (according to one negative biographer) a "potboiler," written by Russell to earn income. But it has the most remarkable writing in it, and is really worth reading. It distills most of what Russell is about.

Willa Cather said that "there are only four or five human stories and they keep repeating themselves over and over." The Jungle Books is a "coming of age" story, and I read it at various junctures in my life, with great emotion.

[DrummerBoy]

A Soldier of the Great War

Catcher in the Rye

Crime and Punishment

A Confederacy of Dunces

Sometimes a Great Notion

[taigagirl]

Originally Posted by DrummerBoy

A Soldier of the Great War

Catcher in the Rye

Crime and Punishment

A Confederacy of Dunces

Sometimes a Great Notion

Great choices!!

[taigagirl]

I loved the following:

A Soldier of the Great War;

The Glass House;

The Help;

The Poisonwood Bible;

A Confederacy of Dunces;

Huck Finn;

To Kill A Mockingbird;

Water for the Elephants;

A Fine Balance;

East of Eden;

Of Mice and Men;

The Grapes of Wrath;

It's always hard for me to pick just one favourite book. I have too many. I have a huge pile of books to go through, and I am like a kid in a candystore, if I'm in a bookstore.

[peppermint]

I have to have a fiction and nonfiction list.

Fiction:
1. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
2. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien (yes, I'm cheating here)
4. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
5. Middlemarch by George Eliot

I would add that I love Larry McMurty, John Jakes, Jane Austin, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Shakespeare (though technically a playwright).

Nonfiction:
1. Doubt: A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht
2. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacobs
3. Clear Springs: A Family Story by Bobbie Ann Mason
4. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by David E. Stannard
5. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Of course, there are others: amazing books on history and science, books on the lives of the famous and average joes, and books on philosophy.

If I had to shake it down to just five, I think I'd be shaking a long time!

[caligali]

I'd like to put Middlemarch on my list, too -- maybe tied with Orlando.

[midge1021]

Just bringing this thread back up to the front again because I love it.

[M3 Mitch]

Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Moscow to the End of the Line (Moskva-Pitushki) by Evrofeev
Buddha's Little Finger (Chepaev e Pustotata) by Pelevin
Life of the Insects by Pelevin
Life of Arsenev by Bunin (in progress)

All in the original Russian...