The oldest title among the five:
The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.Read about all five books.
It's the story of the destruction of a city. It's really the first piece of war reporting.
--Marshal Zeringue
The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.Read about all five books.
It's the story of the destruction of a city. It's really the first piece of war reporting.
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of CholeraRead about Hamid's top 10.
A book I loved so much that I have never been able to bring myself to read it again. Romantic, glorious, and for me radiant with the possibilities of what a novel could be.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Because no one has ever written in more masterful a voice, and no one has ever been so funny while treating subjects so painfully grim.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
For his understanding of human nature, the scope of his imagination, and his ability to tell a story that never lets you go.
Minus 148° by Art Davidson (Norton, 1969).
In February 1967, Art Davidson, Ray Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Mount McKinley in Alaska, but on descent a monster storm trapped them at 18,500 feet. For six days they survived -- barely -- in a coffin-size ice cave, enduring 150-mph winds and temperatures that reached minus 148 degrees -- hence the title of Davidson's subsequent account. This finely crafted adventure tale runs on adrenaline but also something else: brutal honesty. Given access to all seven expedition members' journals, Davidson revealed that every "men vs. nature" tale has another dimension: men vs. themselves. His story of extreme mountaineering's good, bad and ugly spares no one -- especially himself. At one desperate point he volunteers to descend alone to "send in help." But: "I knew my reasons for a solo descent were flimsily constructed excuses to conceal my desire to save Art Davidson above all else." Before "Minus 148°," mountain tales glowed with heroism and self-sacrifice. Davidson's was the first to show the darker aspects as well.
--Marshal Zeringue
The Magic Pudding by Norman LindsayRead about the other titles on Pullman's list.
This Australian children’s classic is the funniest children’s book ever written. Lindsay’s illustrations are marvelous — full of the same wicked energy that drives his prose. I’ve loved it for more than 50 years.
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot -- I read this in the same 19th Century literature class. It deals with ethnicity, with Jewishness, in a way that was highly unusual and risky for a female, English writer.Read the entire list.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf -- I could really list any novel by Woolf. Reading her prose is like looking through calm, clear water. The language is so perfect. It does what great writing should: it illuminates, but it never gets in the way.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -- Gorgeous, poetic, verging-on-mad prose. An orgy of prose, really. I read it for the first time at an artist's colony where I was visiting while writing my first novel, and I remember feeling sad, almost nostalgic while reading it because I'd never be able to read it for the first time ever again.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.Read about the other four titles on Patterson's list.
The great American novel, which just happens to be from South America.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
Panoramic and brilliant. Forget the film, read the book!
Read the entire list.
--Marshal Zeringue
I, Claudius by Robert GravesRead about the other four titles on Perry's list.
One of the most extraordinary accomplishments in fiction based on history is Robert Graves's "I, Claudius." Graves wrote the "diaries" of the physically awkward and bookish Roman emperor Claudius in such a way that reading them is like spending the last hour of the evening listening to one's eccentric uncle talking candidly about how his day has been. Claudius speaks of the great figures of the Roman world 2,000 years ago as if we know them as well as he does. They are reduced from legend to humanity: immediate, vulnerable and very real. Claudius's forays into military tactics on the frontiers, political reform at home, and architecture and philosophy in general are the interests of an uncle we would never interrupt, for fear of hurting his feelings. Ultimately we become fascinated as well.
Jayber Crow by Wendell BerryRead the entire list.
Any book by this Kentucky farmer-writer will do, but this recent novel is a particularly moving part of his ongoing project: showing the meaning of and need for real human community. Once you're finished with this, continue on to his collected essays.
The Trial by Franz KafkaRead the entire list.
As far as I can remember, Kafka never once mentions the idea that his protagonist, Josef K, has forgotten anything of importance, but the possibility haunts every sentence in the novel. Why is he being persecuted for a crime he did not commit? Quite rightly one of the most influential novels of the 20th century.
The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth.Read about the other four titles to make the list.
This is the great epic of the first half of the 20th century about three generations of an Austrian family. Intimate and visionary and stunningly written.
He, She, and It by Marge PiercyRead about all six titles on Groopman's list.
Written as science fiction, this narrative is prescient, portraying a time when the Earth has become toxic and life itself may be extinguished. Under such conditions, human beings are forced to make difficult ethical choices, many of which could eventually be at hand, given the pace of scientific technology.
My favourite opening line of a novelRead the whole of Wagner's literary top ten.
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
—Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
My favourite novel that no one else seems to have heard of
Easy Travel to Other Planets by Ted Mooney.
X-RAY
Ray Davies
Less a memoir than a psychological thriller.
Read about the other titles on Bob Stanley's list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Micrographia by Robert Hooke (1665).Read about all five titles on Gribbin's list.
"Micrographia" is the first great scientific book written in English, handsomely illustrated (many of the drawings were by Robert Hooke's friend Christopher Wren) and easily accessible to the layman. Samuel Pepys got an early copy and sat up reading it until 2 a.m., noting in his diary that it was "the most ingenious book that ever I read in my life." Hooke described not only the microscopic world but also astronomy, geology and the nature of light, setting out ideas that Isaac Newton later lifted and passed off as his own. For centuries in Newton's shadow, Hooke is now rightly regarded as Newton's equal in everything except mathematical prowess. He was the rock on which the early success of the Royal Society of London was built--and he wrote much more entertainingly than Newton.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.Read the entire list.
The most exquisite rendering of a parent's love for a child.
1. The Sorrows of Young Werther by GoetheRead the entire list.
This beauty is a handy cautionary tale for anybody experiencing the agony of unrequited love. It's a one-sitting life-saver.
2. The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
His name makes him sound like a range of cardigans, but Cornell Woolrich was in fact a writer of highly-wrought suspense fiction, this one being a fine example. In his 1948 book Rendezvous In Black, the main character is called Johnny Marr, and at one point he has a fight with a man called Morrissey. A must-read for Smiths fans.
3. The Catcher In The Rye by JD Salinger
An obvious choice, but so what? It's a cracker. I wonder if prize panels these days would dismiss this as being 'somewhat slight'? I expect so.
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul BellowRead the entire list.
It's the first book I ever finished and then immediately started reading it again. I love the way it combines high and low elements.
One of my recurring dreams involves selling all my possessions, shutting down my cellphone and e-mail, and setting off around the country - and then the world - by train with a small suitcase full of great books. If I ever do this, I'd take things I had already read. And if I had to narrow this group to a list of 25, here is what they would be. I'm not sure they would all fit in one suitcase, but they'd certainly be worth packing two.Number One on his list:
1001 Nights | Anonymous (A.D. 850).Read the entire list.
Scherezade marries the King of Persia, who until that night has executed every one of his brides the next morning. To save herself and her country, she tells him a tale that does not end - never has there been such pressure on a storyteller, and never has a yarn-spinner risen so well to the challenge.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A schizophrenic masterpiece of a novel, Confederacy of Dunces focuses on the pompous, bombastic Ignatius J. Reilly — a fat, flatulent blowhard who lives with his mother, masturbates frequently and considers himself the intellectual superior of pretty much everyone around him. (Think of him as the Godfather of Internet Nerds.) More a series of inter-connected stories than a single plot, Confederacy loosely chronicles Ignatius's botched, waddling attempts to find love, get a job and lead a violent one-man revolt against the Modern Age. Around him swirl a group of twisted supporting characters as flawed and unique as Ignatius himself.
A large cult following surrounds Confederacy, due partly to the strange, off-putting charisma of its lead character — you'll never know anybody quite like Ignatius, we promise you — but also because of the tragic life and death of the book's creator, John Kennedy Toole. Unable to find anyone interested in publishing his masterpiece, Toole committed suicide in the late ‘70s. Only after his death would his mother finally get someone to read Confederacy. It was published in 1980 and praised unanimously as a work of comedic genius. Toole would be posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981, and Confederacy would go on to sell more than 1.5 million copies in 18 languages.
Read about all five titles on Cracked's Wit List.
--Marshal Zeringue
Paradise Lost by John MiltonEngland’s only great epic, the war’s most beautiful consequence, and its strangest.
Read about all six titles named by Purkiss.
Ficciones by Jorge Luis BorgesRead about all five books on Kandel's list.
Memory is the scaffold that holds our mental life together. One of its most remarkable characteristics is that it has no restraints on time and place. Memory allows you to sit in your living room while your mind wanders back to childhood, recalling a special event that pleased or pained you. This time-travel ability, often sparked by a sensory experience that opens the floodgates of memory, is central to much great fiction. It is described in the most detail in Marcel Proust's million-word classic, "Remembrance of Things Past," in which a madeleine dipped in tea famously prompts an onrush of images from the protagonist's childhood. But one of the most fascinating descriptions of memory in fiction can be found in Jorge Luis Borges's seminal short-story collection, "Ficciones," first published in 1945 in Spanish. Borges, who knew for much of his life that he was slowly going blind from a hereditary disease, had a deep sense of the central and sometimes paradoxical role of memory in human existence. This sense informs much of "Ficciones" but particularly the story "Funes, the Memorious," which concerns a man who suffers a modest head injury after falling off a horse and, as a result, cannot forget anything he has ever experienced, waking or dreaming. But his brain is filled only with detail, crowding out universal principles. He can't create because his head is filled with garbage! We know that an excessively weak memory is a handicap, but, as Borges shows, having too good a memory can be a handicap as well -- the capacity to forget is a blessing.
The Collected Short Stories by Katherine MansfieldRead about the entire list.
These are a belated discovery for me: I read them for the first time only a year or two ago. Together with Chekhov’s I would put them among the finest stories ever written. As fresh and modern-seeming, especially about women, as when they were first published, around the time of the First World War.
The Tale of Genji by Shikibu MurasakiRead Campbell's full list.
Genji is the son of a Japanese emperor. Although beautiful and extraordinarily gifted, he is destined to be kept from the throne by virtue of his birth to a low-ranking woman. The Tale of Genji is the story of his life and loves (of which there are plenty). There are at least two reasons why this book deserves to be number one on this list. It is thought to be the first novel ever written - it was produced just after 1000 AD. And the author was a woman - an aristocrat who, unusually for the time, was raised and educated by her father.
"I fell in love with Japanese fiction after reading Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto," [Campbell] explains. "I was 21 at the time and immediately went on to read many more of her books. For me they were about the chance encounters between strangers that can touch lives, and the miraculous events scattered throughout daily existence. Next I discovered Haruki Murakami, where characters disappeared, questions went unanswered, the bizarre was commonplace. I was very much influenced by these two authors and tried to capture something of what they do in Death of a Salaryman."--Marshal Zeringue
The Oxford Companion to Wine by Jancis Robinson
An exhaustive lexicon of all things wine. It's written by renowned experts and marshalled by Jancis Robinson, a Master of Wine.
Read about the other nine titles on the list.
Young Men in SpatsRead Ring's entire list.
Uncle Fred Flits By is P. G. W.’s greatest short story; this collection also includes the mock sci-fi The Amazing Hat Mystery.