give me your 10 books I must read before I die?

Question

thanks =)

Answer 1

The Holy Bible (King James Version): Whether you take it as the Word of God or as a collection of allegorical tales, words of wisdom, clever sayings, and amazing poetry, so much of Western thought and literature is based upon it that you owe yourself at least a functional knowledge, if not a deep understanding, of its contents.

Billy Budd (Fiction, by Herman Mellville)- Billy is pure innocence. He has no real comprehension of evil. Claggart is evil. Captain the Honorable Edward Fairfax Vere is a man driven to maddness by the responsibilities placed upon him. And the bonus is you can at least say you read something by Mellville.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Fiction, by Harper Lee)- It's a very good snapshot of race relations in the American South. Atticus is an amazing, amazing hero and Scout narrates it with a child's wisdom and clarity of vision.

Gospel (Fiction, by Wilton Barnhardt)- It took me three tries to get into this one. The first twenty pages or so were a struggle, but once I got into it, I couldn't stop. A Biblical scholar whose academic career peaked when he helped translate the Dead Sea scrolls in his youth is searching for a lost gospel scroll that will put him back at the top of his field of study. All I can say is it is amazing and I hope it's not heresy to say that God has a wicked sense of humor!

On Wings of Eagles (Nonfiction, but Ken Follett)-Two American executives were arrested by Iranian authorities in 1979 on the eve of the revolution. Their employer, billionaire, H. Ross Perot, the big-eared, squeaky-voiced guy who ran for president a few years back, hires a retired special forces officer to recruit a team from among his employees to go in and break them out of jail and bring them home.

The Jungle (Fiction, by Upton Sinclair)-A fact-based, fictional look at immigrant life (and death) in the Chicago meat-packing district of the early 1900's. If nothing else, it may improve your health by making you go vegan with its graphic descriptions of practices in the meat-packing plants.

Giants in the Earth (Fiction, by Ole E. Rolvaag)- An account of Norwegian immigrants trying to survive on the American prairies in the 1880's. Stark and beautiful, the man against the elements plot makes me proud of all the pioneers who settled this land. The death of one of the characters is especailly piognant.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Fiction, by Douglas Adams)-This is actually a four-book trilogy and there is not a page that isn't brilliant. Adam's manages to highlight all of the oddities and insanities of being human without making us feel insulted or the least bit bad about laughing at ourselves and every other human being on the planet.

The Riverside Shakespeare- His complete collected work. The man was brilliant and prolific. I don't know what more to say.

Your own personal collection of favorite poems. Mine would include "Birches" by Robert Frost, "A Woman's Beloved" by Marguerite Wilkinson, "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" by John Milton, William Blake's "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by John Keats, and others too numerous to mention.

Answer 2

Well, since I don't know every book, I can only tell a list of ten books I enjoyed very much. I'll only include one book by an author. Albert Camus: The Stranger F. S. Fitzgerald: Tender Is the Night Theodor Fontane: L'Adultera William Golding: Free Fall E. T. A. Hoffmann: Devil's Elixir James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Franz Kafka: The Trial Jack London: Martin Eden R. M. Rilke: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge Jean-Paul Sartre: Words There could be also a list given with some of the most influential books, which would obviously include the holy books of the major religions and those which started a new era in literature.

Answer 3

I couldn't name 10, because there are so many good books available.
It also depends on how long you have to live, (joke!)
There is one book I would recommend as it is very moving,
Before I die by Jenny Downham.
I think it should be a book read in school, as it shows how a sixteen year old copes with the reality of her own impending death. It IS VERY SAD at the end, but a beautifully written book.
It isn't a childish book in the least, give it a try, pick it up from your library and read it.

Answer 4

If This is A Man/The Truce - Primo Levi
1984 - George Orwell
The Lord Of The Rings - J R R Tolkien
Catcher In The Rye - J D Sallinger
Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel
The Diary Of Ann Franck - Ann Franck
Fight Club - Chuck Pahalunik
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Stalingrad - Anthony Beevoir
A Child Called It - David Seltzer

Answer 5

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Hamlet by Shakespeare
3. Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malroy
4. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
7. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Persuasion by Jane Austen
9. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
10. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Answer 6

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Scarlet and Black - Stendahl
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner - James Hogg
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Answer 7

1. Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
2. All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
3. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
5. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
6. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
7. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
8. at least one of Shakespeare's plays
9. The Odyssey - Homer
10. The Divine Comedy - Dante

Answer 8

Good question.
Mine are
1. The Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger
2. Dubliners- James Joyce
3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera
4. Wild Swans- Jung Chang
5. The Good Doctor- Damon Galgut
6. The Buddha of Suburbia- Hanif Kureisha- hilarious book about a half Indian boy growing up in London in the 70's.
7. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
8. Memoir- John McGahern- beautifully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1950's.
9. The House of the Spirits- Isabelle Allende
10. Less than Zero- Bret Easton Ellis

I love all of the above books, if you're stuck for something to read you should check them out!

Answer 9

The Time Traveler's Wife
The Stand
The Kite Runner
Watership Down
Les Miserables
Interview With The Vampire
Catch-22
The Art of Happiness
You: The Owner's Manual
My book-hasn't been written yet.

Answer 10

In no particular order:
To Each His Own, by Leonardo Sciascia
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Invisible Man, by T.S. Elliot
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley
The Lord of The Flies, by William Golding
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

Answer 11

De Profundis (Oscar Wilde), The Damned and the Beautiful (F Scott FitzGerald), Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh), The Loved One (Nancy Mitford), Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons), David Copperfield (Charles Dickens), La Nausee (Jean Paul Sartre), American Psycho or Lunar Park or Less Than Zero or in fact his entire opus so far (Brett Easton Ellis), Girlfriend in a Coma or Miss Wyoming (Douglas Coupland) and Lost Souls (Poppy Z. Brite). There are so many more than ten though this was hard to do and if you asked me tomorrow or even later today I'd probably give you a different list.