ADVERTISEMENT

Your all time favorite novels

Where should I start with Richard Ford? The Border Trilogy is a logical place to start with Cormac McCarthy. Probably don't start with Blood Meridian.

I mostly agree about Franzen/Chabon/Proulx, but I really liked Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

I liked Snow Falling on Cedars too.
I disagree. Blood Meridian is the single greatest book I’ve ever read. That book reached down inside me and left a mark and that’s what good books are supposed to do.
 
I disagree. Blood Meridian is the single greatest book I’ve ever read. That book reached down inside me and left a mark and that’s what good books are supposed to do.
My point wasn't that Blood Meridian is a bad book. Far from it. I just don't recommend Cormac McCarthy's bloodiest and bleakest book as a place to start exploring the author. It could put people off him altogether.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Hoopsdoc1978
@Marvin the Martian

I am finally rectifying the long-standing mistake of being the rare Asimov fan who hadn't bothered to read the Foundation trilogy yet. Halfway through Foundation and Empire now. It is every bit as good as his robot stories and then some.

Glad you like it. I greatly prefer it to robot, and I really like robot.

HBO was going to do Foundation but I think it got scrapped.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned A Confederacy of Dunces. Good book...fascinating backstory.

I should try it again. I tried it when it came out and was not impressed. But I was reading it based on a review that it was like Catch-22. That expectation I think soured me on its reality.
 
Glad you like it. I greatly prefer it to robot, and I really like robot.

HBO was going to do Foundation but I think it got scrapped.
It's recognizably Asimov, in the sense that it's impossible not to realize that the same person wrote both series, but seeing him explore the human side of things is a nice change of pace. I can see why many fans were perturbed when he merged the worlds.
 
It's recognizably Asimov, in the sense that it's impossible not to realize that the same person wrote both series, but seeing him explore the human side of things is a nice change of pace. I can see why many fans were perturbed when he merged the worlds.

Yes, I hated that. That is the sort of betrayal that usually requires Peter Jackson.
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned A Confederacy of Dunces. Good book...fascinating backstory.
Dunces isn't among my all time favorites, but it's a great book, and the story of its final, at long length, belated, posthumous publication has been enough to ensnare many readers (including me). The entire publishing business passed on it until after John Kennedy Toole's suicide, then the dead writer's mother finally persuaded the great Walker Percy to get it into print. Great acclaim ensued for the departed author -- and perhaps even greater embarrassment for the editors who rejected him in life. Long live Ignatius J. Reilly.
 
Dunces isn't among my all time favorites, but it's a great book, and the story of its final, at long length, belated, posthumous publication has been enough to ensnare many readers (including me). The entire publishing business passed on it until after John Kennedy Toole's suicide, then the dead writer's mother finally persuaded the great Walker Percy to get it into print. Great acclaim ensued for the departed author -- and perhaps even greater embarrassment for the editors who rejected him in life. Long live Ignatius J. Reilly.
I never imagined one of our book threads would give me opportunity to post a Jimmy Buffett song, but here we are.

 
I never imagined one of our book threads would give me opportunity to post a Jimmy Buffett song, but here we are.

I once briefly made it to the backstage party at a Buffet concert.

Buffet had played an auditorium show in Ann Arbor, and after the show ended we hung around as everything wound down. There seemed to be no security at all, and people were milling around up on the stage prepping the equipment for moving. We just walked right up on stage, pretended to move stuff around, walked through a door, down a hall, and there was the party. (No Buffet, but a buffet.) We went straight for this big galvanized tub of beers on ice, and I was reaching for a beer when an arm the size of a leg appeared across my chest.

"Who are you?" asked the owner of the leg-sized arm. I swear to you what I actually said was, "Fine, thanks. Who are you?" The two guys I was with knew this is a line Groucho says to Chico in Horsefeathers, so we were all laughing as we were forcibly expelled through a back door into the alley.

Jimmy had apparently left, said people hanging around in the alley. So we missed him.
 
For Whom the Bell Tolls
To Kill A Mocking Bird
Huck Finn
My Side of the Mountain
The Hobbit
I like your inclusion of My Side of the Mountain.

It's also nice that someone mentioned Hemingway. David Cowdrey, my best and favorite not-college teacher-- told me that The Old Man and the Sea was the greatest book ever written because there wasn't a single wasted word in it. Who else would write an extraordinary book about bullfighting called Death in the Afternoon? The Nick Adams Stories. To Have and Have Not. And his brutal short story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." (You think it's a tough time for young men in America, try a fatal time for a husband on safari in Africa.)

I haven't read all of Hemingway, but I've read a lot of Hemingway. He's a quintessential American author. I'd most like to have known him when he was among the American expats in Paris, though. What must that have been like?
 
Pretty much anything by Steinbeck, surprised I didn't see a mention ,might have missed if there was. Faulkner, some of Hemingway and Michener. Grew up reading my Grandfather's collection of Horatio Alger, Rover Boys , Tom Swift etc. Who knew in 1915 we would actually have Photo Telephones?
 
  • Like
Reactions: CO. Hoosier
It turns out Apple bought The Foundation now and has greenlit it. Good luck to them, it will be very hard to turn into a series.
 
It turns out Apple bought The Foundation now and has greenlit it. Good luck to them, it will be very hard to turn into a series.
Real-time update. I thought Foundation and Empire was excellent. Even better than Foundation. Which makes sense, since the stories involved were written later after Asimov had more time to fully develop the entire mythos of the universe he was creating.

I'm currently just a few chapters into Second Foundation, which I think promises to be the best of the lot. It already feels like the first one to be truly conceived as a single story, rather than a collection of them.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Marvin the Martian
Real-time update. I thought Foundation and Empire was excellent. Even better than Foundation. Which makes sense, since the stories involved were written later after Asimov had more time to fully develop the entire mythos of the universe he was creating.

I'm currently just a few chapters into Second Foundation, which I think promises to be the best of the lot. It already feels like the first one to be truly conceived as a single story, rather than a collection of them.
Just listened to the whole second foundation on tape. Very interesting...the idea of mathematical social scientists being able to use truly big data and a galactic backdrop to make very precise predictions about the course of history is fun. The idea that the manipulation of history by these same social scientists can only succeed if it the manipulation is secret is also really cool. Asimov wrote all this well before the revolutions of game theory, big data and behavioral economics were even launched...what a visionary! Most striking of all is Asimov's tremendous optimism about the possibility of scientific and human progress. There is nothing the least bit post modern in Asimov at all.

I have to say that where Asimov's plotting and world building is utterly amazing I find his characters and prose much less so.
 
Dunces isn't among my all time favorites, but it's a great book, and the story of its final, at long length, belated, posthumous publication has been enough to ensnare many readers (including me). The entire publishing business passed on it until after John Kennedy Toole's suicide, then the dead writer's mother finally persuaded the great Walker Percy to get it into print. Great acclaim ensued for the departed author -- and perhaps even greater embarrassment for the editors who rejected him in life. Long live Ignatius J. Reilly.

This book has also been in long-term movie hell. It has been proposed to star John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Divine, and Zach Galifianakis. It has been delayed by the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the murder of the head of the Louisiana Film Commission.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rockfish1
Just listened to the whole second foundation on tape. Very interesting...the idea of mathematical social scientists being able to use truly big data and a galactic backdrop to make very precise predictions about the course of history is fun. The idea that the manipulation of history by these same social scientists can only succeed if it the manipulation is secret is also really cool. Asimov wrote all this well before the revolutions of game theory, big data and behavioral economics were even launched...what a visionary! Most striking of all is Asimov's tremendous optimism about the possibility of scientific and human progress. There is nothing the least bit post modern in Asimov at all.

I have to say that where Asimov's plotting and world building is utterly amazing I find his characters and prose much less so.
I would agree that Asimov was definitely not a postmodernist. In fact, I think he defended modernism against the rise of postmodernism in his time, in that he almost religiously wrote from the viewpoint that rationalism could be used and counted on to lead to positive results.
 
I would agree that Asimov was definitely not a postmodernist. In fact, I think he defended modernism against the rise of postmodernism in his time, in that he almost religiously wrote from the viewpoint that rationalism could be used and counted on to lead to positive results.
I like that about him very much...I have decided I am very much not a postmodernist either.
 
I would agree that Asimov was definitely not a postmodernist. In fact, I think he defended modernism against the rise of postmodernism in his time, in that he almost religiously wrote from the viewpoint that rationalism could be used and counted on to lead to positive results.
Not a novel but you might be interested in the book History of the Idea of Progress by JB Bury...written in the 1920s but quite excellent. An excerpt
We may believe in the doctrine of Progress or we may not, but in either case it is a matter of interest to examine the origins and trace the history of what is now, even should it ultimately prove to be no more than an idolum saeculi, the animating and controlling idea of western civilisation. For the earthly Progress of humanity is the general test to which social aims and theories are submitted as a matter of course. The phrase CIVILISATION AND PROGRESS has become stereotyped, and illustrates how we have come to judge a civilisation good or bad according as it is or is not progressive. The ideals of liberty and democracy, which have their own ancient and independent justifications, have sought a new strength by attaching themselves to Progress. The conjunctions of "liberty and progress," "democracy and progress," meet us at every turn. Socialism, at an early stage of its modern development, sought the same aid. The friends of Mars, who cannot bear the prospect of perpetual peace, maintain that war is an indispensable instrument of Progress. It is in the name of Progress that the doctrinaires who established the present reign of terror in Russia profess to act. All this shows the prevalent feeling that a social or political theory or programme is hardly tenable if it cannot claim that it harmonises with this controlling idea.​
 
Last edited:
When it comes to literature, I don't prefer one over the other, but philosophically, I also like Asimov's approach.
Just finished reading Power at your suggestion. I liked the premise of the book and the thoughtfulness with which the premise is worked out. The premise is: what would the world look like if suddenly women possessed coercive power that men could not resist. The author Naomi Alderman follows the logic of her premise through to what appears to be a simple flipping of gender roles. Given that most stories are centered around the quest of an individual and the interplay of characters I think the book struggles a bit as it tries to tell us the macro story through the eyes of the individual characters. The characters are interesting and surprising...both Allie and Roxie travel a path from abused children to heroic women.

If I had a criticism of the book it would be that it doesn't sufficiently explore the asymmetries between male and female, matriarchal and patriarchal.

Really interesting book and quick read. Thanks for the recommendation.
 
Huck Finn is probably my favorite book ever. It really affected me when I read it at about the same age as Huck. I wanted to be Huck, floating down the Mississippi. Twain was incredible.

Every winter I try to read one of the Russian authors. Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Amazing, but you really have to concentrate. Once you learn all the characters' names, nicknames and everything else, the story is incredible.

The Plague by Albert Camus....awesome book.



more:
Twain: Letters from Hell, Huckleberry Finn
Poe: The Purloined Letter
Sherlock Holmes Stories
Graham Greene: The Quiet American
Robert Conrad: Heart of Darkness
Joyce: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

Don't forget Wallander https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wallander
 
  • Like
Reactions: iu_a_att
Just finished reading Power at your suggestion. I liked the premise of the book and the thoughtfulness with which the premise is worked out. The premise is: what would the world look like if suddenly women possessed coercive power that men could not resist. The author Naomi Alderman follows the logic of her premise through to what appears to be a simple flipping of gender roles. Given that most stories are centered around the quest of an individual and the interplay of characters I think the book struggles a bit as it tries to tell us the macro story through the eyes of the individual characters. The characters are interesting and surprising...both Allie and Roxie travel a path from abused children to heroic women.

If I had a criticism of the book it would be that it doesn't sufficiently explore the asymmetries between male and female, matriarchal and patriarchal.

Really interesting book and quick read. Thanks for the recommendation.
Another recommendation for you, which I might have mentioned many moons ago, but only briefly: M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts. It isn't nearly as politically subversive as The Power, but it attempts (and mostly succeeds) to be artistically subversive in the way it overturns standard literary tropes. Also, it's another quick and easy read which gives you a lot for minimal commitment. Bang for your buck, and all that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: iu_a_att
In no particular order,

The War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Resurrection (Tolstoy)
Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong)
For Whom the Bell Tolls ( Earnest Hemingway)
The Sun Also Rises ( Earnest Hemingway)
The Stranger (Albert Camus)
Godfather (Mario Puzo)
Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Haven't read many contemporary ones that I really like.

Do Iliad and Odyssey count?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: iu_a_att and Lucy01
Real-time update. I thought Foundation and Empire was excellent. Even better than Foundation. Which makes sense, since the stories involved were written later after Asimov had more time to fully develop the entire mythos of the universe he was creating.

I'm currently just a few chapters into Second Foundation, which I think promises to be the best of the lot. It already feels like the first one to be truly conceived as a single story, rather than a collection of them.
For some reason I never read that trilogy. I'm going to fix that - just bought Foundation. Of course, I have over 100 books teed up to read, but I'll move that one up toward the top.
 
Another recommendation for you, which I might have mentioned many moons ago, but only briefly: M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts. It isn't nearly as politically subversive as The Power, but it attempts (and mostly succeeds) to be artistically subversive in the way it overturns standard literary tropes. Also, it's another quick and easy read which gives you a lot for minimal commitment. Bang for your buck, and all that.
Have you read Phillip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials
includes The Golden Compass that was made into a comparatively crappy movie a few years back.
 
My favorite Series was by WEB Griffin The Corps.

It is a 10 book Series http://www.webgriffin.com/series_corps.html following a fiction character named nick named “Killer McCoy” (to his chagrin). He was a China Marine.... great story. I actually wrote to WEB and he responded about the series. I want to read his detective stories also and an OSS series he has written. Give him a shot if you haven’t.

A great storyteller that develops characters and makes you part of the action.

Semper Fi
Call To Arms
Counter Attack
Battle Ground
Line of Fire
Close Combat
Behind The Lines
In Dangers Path
Underfire
Retreat Hell
 
Obviously, for me, Tolkien tops the list. I reread the entire trilogy every couple of years, and include The Hobbit probably every other time. The entire collection together is my all-time favorite literary work.

In second place would be the only other novel I make an effort to reread regularly, Centennial. I like everything I've read from Michener - I'm still not through the entire library - but this one stands out as his best to me. Even the first chapter - 40 pages on the geological formation of Colorado - holds me enraptured.

Other books that immediately stand out, in no particular order:

Brave New World - In the argument over Huxley and Orwell, I've always sided with Huxley. His dystopia is scarier because it is more realistic. As Neil Postman said: "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."

An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears' masterpiece is a case study in the use of the unreliable narrator. Four people tell the same story, except not only do they disagree on the details, they disagree on what the story even is.

Trinity - I've read several Uris novels. They are all technically excellent, but Trinity was the only one that didn't make me feel that I was kind of, sort of, just maybe, getting lectured at a little bit.

Run - The first novel Ann Patchett wrote after becoming famous, the characters inhabit a world we lived in very recently. It's not a political novel, but the issues of race and community raised in it very much come from the optimistic vision of the possible America we all saw in the wake of the 2004 DNC (the novel includes a scene in which a character walking on campus notices an "Obama 2012" sign in a dorm window).

The Dispossessed - Probably my favorite science fiction novel. I picked it up for fifty cents at a garage sale, and sat on it for years before actually reading it.

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters - Every chapter in this novel is a self-contained story, but they are all tied together beautifully.

Hit Man - One of the funnest crime novels I've picked up, it introduces Keller, your boring, every day, professional assassin and stamp collector.

The Terminal Experiment - Not strictly speaking the best novel ever written, but still one of my favorites, because there is so much going on. The premise is a doctor who wants to pinpoint the exact moment of death after a horrifying experience at an organ harvest, but in the process also accidentally discovers the human soul. Sawyer tackles the thorny issues this raises head-on, and weaves in his protagonist's personal issues into a suspenseful murder mystery involving artificial intelligence. The "twist" resolution of the mystery is a bit obvious, but the journey there is so fun, it's worth it.

Are you a real Star Wars fan? Not just scifi, but Star Wars? Check out the Aftermath trilogy of novels by Wendig. Also, Zahn’s Thrawn novels. All worth reading if you’re a true Star Wars geek.
 
Another recommendation for you, which I might have mentioned many moons ago, but only briefly: M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts. It isn't nearly as politically subversive as The Power, but it attempts (and mostly succeeds) to be artistically subversive in the way it overturns standard literary tropes. Also, it's another quick and easy read which gives you a lot for minimal commitment. Bang for your buck, and all that.
I read that one fairly recently. Just kind of happened upon it. Interesting.
 
Huck Finn is probably my favorite book ever. It really affected me when I read it at about the same age as Huck. I wanted to be Huck, floating down the Mississippi. Twain was incredible.

Every winter I try to read one of the Russian authors. Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Amazing, but you really have to concentrate. Once you learn all the characters' names, nicknames and everything else, the story is incredible.

The Plague by Albert Camus....awesome book.
Agree completely with The Brothers Karamazov. One of the most fascinating novels that I have read. It was probably the 4th or 5th Russian novel that I read. By that time, I was much more aware of the formal names, informal names, middle names, nicknames, etc that many Russian authors use. It can be really confusing, and as you said, really takes some concentration, and the occasional “look back”, at least early in the book.

Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Dead Souls, Fathers and Sons, and The Idiot are some others I thought were really good. I have completed War and Peace once, and feel I got about half of what I should have. I tried a second time and got about 300 pages in, and shut it down. It’s interesting that you say you read one every winter. That is similar to what I do. Not sure I could read one in the middle of summer. I really have to be in the right frame of mind to tackle one.
 
@Marvin the Martian

After finishing the original Foundation series, I'm taking a break from Asimov. Should I come back to him and read the sequels? Is it worth the effort, or will it just feel like he was forced into it by his publisher?

Meanwhile, I'm going to read some Connie Willis (Passage), and some old Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash), before he became Wordy McWorderson, while I also wait for my holds on N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series to come through.
 
Has anyone read much David Foster Wallace, particularly Infinite Jest? It’s considered by some to be the novel of the century. I’ve had it for years, but still haven’t started it. I have enjoyed his short essays.
 
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT