YOUR favorite books

[velochic]

I will have time over the holidays to get in some recreational reading and was wondering what others' favorite books were. I really enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible, Life of Pi, and Lovely Bones, which I've read over the last year. Any others in this genre that you recommend? I also love modern classics... you know, the ones everyone had to read in high school, like The Grapes of Wrath (an all-time favorite), etc. I just haven't had the chance to read much since dd became a rambunctious toddler, so I'm looking forward to spending three weeks with dh's family in Turkey, where there will be lots of kids to play with and lots of aunts and uncles to occupy her. I'm ready for a bit of *ME* time. Help me out, guys and gals. What are your all-time favorites??

[anothermama]

oh one of my favorite topics!!!!!!!!!!!

On the list of classics, my ALL TIME favs are
Jane Eyre, The Great Gatsby, The Bell Jar, and Ethan Fromme. (If you can't tell, I have a thing for tragic stories...).

Recently, the books that have moved me have been
The House of Sand and Fog (coming out as a movie this month so read it QUICK!!!), Icy Sparks, and She's Come Undone. I'm a sucker for those Oprah books....they always are good for me.

In the middle, I've always been a HUGE HUGE fan of Jack Keroac. If you've never read "On the Road" READ IT! It's so amazing. Also, I enjoy Raymond Carver for short stories and I just love Salman Rushdie. I would recomend his book "Midnights Children". It's an epic....it's told so beautifully.

[Daffodil]

Some of my all-time favorites:

Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty
Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
The Living - Annie Dillard
anything by Mark Helprin or Russell Hoban

I'd also recommend anything by Nicholson Baker. The Mezzanine, his first book, is probably a good one to start with. (Though there was another thread recently where someone said that everyone they recommended this book to ended up hating it; I can't imagine why.) All his other books are sort of just exactly like that, and also sort of completely different. Vox and The Fermata are explicit erotica, and The Everlasting Story of Nory is about a nine-year-old girl and is sweet and funny and perfectly appropriate for a nine-year-old to read. But the erotic ones are sweet and funny, too, in their own way.

Some other books I've read in the last few years and liked a lot:

The Birthday of the World - Ursula K. LeGuin
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Villette - Charlotte Bronte
Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

[ErikaDP]

Some of my recent favorites(fiction):

The Secret Life of Bees
The #1 Ladies Detective Agency(first in a series of great books)
The Dogs of Babel
Blanche on the Lam(first in a series of great books)
The Buffalo Soldier
Blue Shoe
The Time Traveler's Wife
Good in Bed
Life of Pi
Lovely Bones
Midwives
The Corrections
The Emperor of Ocean Park
The Nanny Diaries
America's Dream
Cane River
Under the Tuscan Sun
A Year in Provence, Encore Provence & French Lessons
The Davinci Code
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Eragon(the last two I read with my son and I enjoyed them)

And I just started reading these five books-

Autobiography of a Fat Bride
Love
Our Lady of the Forest
The Hornet's Nest
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- all are "so far so good"!

Wow, making this list reminds me of some of the great books I have read this year.(and this isn't even all of the fiction books!)
Enjoy your "Me Time" you deserve it!

[Irishmommy]

Moving this to books and media.

[anothermama]

OOO! YES!! I forgot about "Good in Bed"

That book is GREAT....I swear it's written about me.

[cathe]

oooooo - just when I was running out of books to read. I'm logging on the my library website right now to start requesting these books.

Some of the ones I have liked recently are:

The Secret Life of Bees
I Captured the Castle
The Last Miracle at LIttle No Horse
Tender at the Bone

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them right now.

[Harper]

All time favorites:

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Bastard Out of Carolina (Dorothy Allison)
In the Time of the Butterflies (Julia Alvarez)

More recent favorites:
Bel Canto
Motherless Brooklyn
Interpreter of Maladies
Midnights Children
Love (Toni Morrison's new book. Very Good)

[alsoSarah]

Double click! Eeek!

[alsoSarah]

There are too many, but I'll start with

Fast Food Nation
Franny and Zooey (Salinger)
High Fidelity (Nick Hornby)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
Ordinary Love and Goodwill, or A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
The Handmaid's Tale, or The Robber Bride (Margaret Atwood)

If I'm set on 'ultra-fluff cycle':
Bridget Jones' Diary
Animal Husbandry

[mojomom]

My favorite classics are- The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Also blieve it or not Cyrano de' Bergerac- is a favorite of mine, it is actually quite funny.

Also loved - The Book of Ruth( Oprah book)
-Mystic River. I read this before I knew they were making a movie of it.
Gap Creek(another Oprah book)
I also like Fannie Flagg's books- She wrote the book fried Green tomatos is based on. She also wrote Daisy fay and The Miracle Man. Welcome to the World baby girl and another good one which I think I remeber as being called Under The Rainbow. Very entertaining kinda like the lines of Ya Ya books. Have fun and enjoy!

[Joi]

yayyyy To Kill a Mockingbird and High Fidelity!!!

I also love..

The Griffen and Sabine series (Nick Bantock)
The House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
Geek Love (Katherine Dunn)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
Permanent Midnight (Jerry Stahl)
The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler)
Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)

There are more.. I know there are but my brain id fried.

[cathe]

I LOVED Geek Love. I have never found anyone else who has read it. It was totally original.

I also liked The Donkey Show a lot (and so did my dh who rarely reads fiction). I read an advance reading copy but the actual book just came out.

Another one that was recommended on another thread that was awesome is Middlesex.

[velochic]

OMG! There are so many here that I have loved or are on my list of books to read! It's great to get the confirmations (of ones I've loved) and recommendations (of ones I'm sure I'll love).

Thank you (and keep 'em coming!!)

[PM]

Particularly nice choices, Daffodil! And everyone else!

I read mostly short fiction; it's nice - especially with a child around - to start and finish stories.

My favorite novel is A Life by deMaupassant. Recently I read Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.

For some passionate, intellectual reading how about some of the Russian authors like Dostoevsky, Pasternak, Pushkin or Tolstoy?

I forgot to mention the great Kyrgyz writer Aitmatov! If you want to read about the country I live in, read one of his books! Some of them seem hard to find, though - like Djamila.

[velochic]

Parismaman, great choices, thanks! Short stories are a great way to get in some reading. I'll check out your suggestions.

My undergrad degree is in Slavic Linguistics and I took about 4 literature courses. I've read (in Engish and Russian) about all the Russian literature that I can take in a lifetime. But you're right, they certainly are what I would consider to be the most intellectualy stimulating of world literatures.

[PM]

I'm envious that you've read in Russian. One of my all-time favorites writers is Ivan Bunin. I would kill to be able to read his stuff in Russian! As an ex-translator I really have difficulty reading translated prose. Last week I bought a book from a fellow expat - a collection of Chekhov's - and I had to give it back to her because the stories were translated so poorly (I had two copies of some of the stories, and I compared).

[velochic]

Parismaman - you are so right about translations. It's totally different. My minor was Russian Translation and the two literature courses I took where we read in Russian and translated showed me how difficult it really is to get the tone of the author right. That's one of the nice things about Nabokov: he wrote in both Engish and Russian, so his work is particularly popular with English readers.

Bunin is a great author! Being Parismaman, you've probably read his work, "In Paris" (I think that's what it's called). I've not read any Bunin, but I think he won a Nobel, didn't he? He's mostly a poet, isn't he?
.

[PM]

Yes, he won the Nobel, though many thought the award was politically motivated. He is not highly regarded. I don't understand why.

BTW One book, which my dh gave me once, that I truly enjoyed was a collection of letters written among Pasternak, Rilke and Tsvetayeva. I don't know the title in English.

[burritomama]

my favorite Russian (aside from ParisMaman) is Chekhov. Check out his short stories.

I agree with Atwood recommendations - my fave is "Cat's Eye."

I just finished Jon Krakauer's book about Mormonism - "Under the Banner of Heaven" - lots to think about there. very compelling narrative and history.

Also - just finished Carol Sheilds' last book (sniff sniff) "Unless" - very powerful and somehow quietly powerful book about motherhood, creativity, women and, well, for lack of a better word, justice. Highly highly recommended. I read it in one weekend even though I had much else to do.

So many books, so little time.