More Top Tens.

[layne67]

Interesting discussion here at aprilkat's journal on the Top Ten of our favourite movies. Now I know what my LJ-friends like to watch!

What about books? What are your favourite ten books ( or more )? Books that you'll always remember and some you can even quote the lines by heart.

Here are mine :

LotR by JRR Tolkien.
Katya by Trevanian. A psychiatric thriller with a very gothic feel.
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.
Dead Famous by Ben Elton. A mix of murder thriller and comedy. I stayed up all night reading it. A must-read for fans of reality TV shows.
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann. I'm still lugging the book around with me, reading certain parts from time to time.
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. An all-time favourite of mine. Since knowing James, Tristan and Siegfried, I've never look at vets the same way again.
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. I love the heroine so much so that Ayla was one of the names short-listed if my baby were to be a girl.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. A whodunit classic.
Coastliners by Joanne Harris. Romance and intrigue at a small French village. From the same author who wrote 'Chocolat'.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and its sequel Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beaumann.
Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Flowers in the Attic by Virginia C. Andrews.
Post Mortem by Patricia Cornwell.
Harry Porter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rawling. I think that's her best and I also think the movie adaptation is the best of the four.

So, what are yours?

Comments

[majblomma2000.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, very good list!!!

5 of your books are also favourites of mine! :D

Pillars of the Earth is my top favourite book. You know I'm also crazy about James Herriot and his fellow friends. *beams*
Love the Clan of the Cave Bear and LotR. I agree with you about the third of the Harry Potter books is the best but I didn't like the movie. I can't take what they've done to Ron.

I'm going to start reading Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco so I'm really looking forward to that. Jonathan Stroud is also a really good author. :) Eddings. And I've got some Swedish books and authors as well :)

[shirebound]

Ten?? Narrow it down to Ten???? Impossible. This is just off the top of my head, there are tons more...

The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Karen (Marie Killilea)
With Love from Karen (Marie Killilea)
The Source (James Michener)
Hanta Yo (Ruth Beebe Hill)
Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
Taran Wanderer (Lloyd Alexander)
Mister God, This is Anna (Fynn)
Death Be Not Proud (John Gunther
A Shining Season (William Buchanan)
Centennial (James Michener)
Maiden Voyage (Tania Aebi)
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
Harpo Speaks (Harpo Marx)
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (Maria von Trapp)
Roots (Alex Haley)
At Home in the Woods (Bradford Angier)
A Walk Across America (Peter Jenkins)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
The Bridge Across Forever (Richard Bach)
Through Deerhound Eyes (The Roil Literati)

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Stroud. I've read the first two books and I have the 3rd one which i haven't started yet. I'm reading 'Eldest' now, 'Eragon''s sequel :)

Have you read all of Jean M auel's Earth Children series?

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Roots and Centennial!

*bounces*

I love the books as well as the mini-series. Pretty powerful, both of them. I haven't read /heard of the others though.

*takes note*

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

THis is a hard one! :-)

1. LOTR (duh)
2. Maia by Richard Adams
3. The Stand by Stephen King
4. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
5. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
6. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (non fiction)
7. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

[cloudlessclimes.livejournal.com]

I love talking about books!

1.Beloved by Toni Morrison
2.Middlemarch by George Eliot
3.Possession by A.S. Byatt
4.Dance of the Happy Shades by Carol Shields
5.The Bookseller by Matt Cohen
6.Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
7.Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
8.The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
9.The Famished Road by Ben Okri
10.Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

and as an added bonus duo Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer

[majblomma2000.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Outsiders! I remember when I was younger I used to read it over and over again. I got it for a Christmas present and my dad took it because I wouldn't make my homework. :)

[majblomma2000.livejournal.com]

I have read the first two of Stroud but haven't read the third yet :) I must read the 'Eldest' as well! Yes, I've read all of Earth Children. :)

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

oh yes! I was obsessed with this book when I was about 12! :-)

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I loved Death Be Not Proud and Stranger in a Stranger in a Strange Land.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get my list down to 10. These are the books that I'd want with me if I were lost on a desert island:

Lord of the Rings
A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'engle
Ironman by Chris Crutcher
The Witches of Karres by James Schmitz
The Talisman by Stephen King
A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living by Rachel Peden
Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant
Dangerous Visions Sci Fi anthology, edited by Harlan Ellison
Wanderer of the Wastelands by Zane Grey
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Is that the same Richard Adams who wrote 'Watership Down'? I read 'The Hobbit' right after WD and hee, I think that that book somehow influnced me in thinking that hobbits looked like rabbits then heheh ( I was 12 at that time ) .

'The Persian Boy'! I read that only recently and Elijah is definitely Bagoas for me!

[layne67.livejournal.com]

You gave links!!

I've read Frankenstein and I love Eliot though I haven't read that book yet. If I were to buy one, which one would you reccommend?

I love talking about books too!

[layne67.livejournal.com]

I love those 2 books of Stephen King that you mentioned. I love all of his books actually - Misery is another favourite. I have 4 of his books on my bookshelves waiting to be read :)

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

yes, it is the same Richard Adams. I liked Watership Down but I ADORED Maia. (I need to reread it again, speaking of...lol!)

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

OMG, Harpo Speaks is one of my top books too!

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

I absolutely LOVE Girl of the Limberlost - I read my grandmother's copy as a girl, and she finally gave it to me for my very own!

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

My apologies, Layne, but I have been so crazed this week - and I couldn't seem to pin down my favorites. However, listed below are some books I couldn't do without in my collection (sometimes I cheat and put down an author's series). In no order:

LOTR - J.R.R. Tolkien
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Children of Violence series - Doris Lessing
Another Country - James Baldwin
All the Louisa May Alcott children's books
Traveling Mercies - Anne Lamott
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
All the Amelia Peabody Emerson books by Elizabeth Peters

[shirebound]

*grins* How I adore that book.

[shirebound]

I definitely count Death be not Proud as one of the most inspiring books ever. *sniff*

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

It's a book I can go back to again and again, and still love it just as much as I did the first time I read it.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, Traveling Mercies just wrecked me in a good way. What a great book.

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

Aaggh. I forgot to put the Persian Boy on my list, and I'd already reached 10 anyway. But I LOVE it, and The Charioteer as well.

And my Lamott selection was Traveling Mercies, but I can see why you would be enamored of Bird by Bird, as a writer yourself...

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have to add my two favorite Mary Renaults - The Persian Boy and The Charioteer.

And To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

And two of Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Member of the Wedding.

(I'll be thinking of more as the week goes on, I'm sure!)

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

It's so fabulous. I wish everyone would read it!