List your Top 10 Books!

[Mizango]

Black Holes and Warped Spacetime (childhood)
The Trouble with Physics
The God Particle
50 Math Ideas You Should Know
Go Dog, Go (childhood)
1967 Encyclopedia Britannica Ma~Mp (childhood)
1967 Encyclopedia Britannica R (childhood)
Wikipedia
The Barbarians of Gor (childhood)
Years Best Science Fiction 18
Exultant

Not in any particular order, just the top 10 favorites that came to mind from my childhood and recently.

No "Three roads to Quantum Gravity"? I expected you to have Lee Smolin 1-20.

[Max™]

YOU WOUND ME, DAWG!

I love Smolin, I really do, but I found out about him just recently, like literally the last year or two. Only really read the trouble all the way through.

Physics of the impossible - Michio Kaku

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells ( I want to meet Weena )

Kaku irritates me, as do most string fanatics though.

Go find The TimeShips

Amazon.com: The Time Ships (9780061056482): Stephen Baxter: Books

SF Hub: Stephen Baxter archive

http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o.../timeships.jpg

[Chicomagiko]

INPO,

Black Seas of Infinity
Andromeda Strain
The Stand(1990 version)
Ender's Game
Anything by Jim Butcher(Codex Alera, The Dresden Files)
A Song of Ice and Fire
The Gentleman Bastard Sequence
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies
The Necronomicon

There are more books but I always seem to remember what they were about and not what they are titled

[Dareus]

The Brothers Karamazov
The Catcher in The Rye
Dark Tower series
Fahrenheit 451
The Cleric Quintet
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Gene Wolfes "The Book of the New Sun" ( Caution: This book is a mindfuck)

Just a few books I've read recently that I really enjoyed. I would say that The Brothers Karamazov is constantly fighting for that number 1 spot however.

[wipers]

Any book dealing with Philosophy. Other than that I read the newspaper everyday. I'm currently reading Stephen Colbert and Philosophy (I am Philosophy and so can you)

[thestalkmore]

In some particular order, though not definite.
1) Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
2) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
3) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
4) Dubliners - James Joyce
5) Not a book, but a short story: "Bullet in the Brain" - Tobias Wolff

A bunch of others including 1984, Catcher in the Rye, Gatsby, Nine Stories, etc etc etc etc etc all go down here.

[Ghost_Wheel22]

Picking in no particular order from looking at my god-tier bookcase:

1. Five Easy Pieces (Richard Feynman)
2. Third Wave/Future Shock/Power Shift (Alvin Toffler)
3. Ender's Game/Series (Orson Scott Card)
4. Bio of a Space Tyrant (Piers Anthony)
5. Odyssey (Homer)
6. Book of Five Rings (Musashi Myamoto)
7. Chronicles of Amber (Roger Zelazny)
8. Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky)
9. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
10. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)

Next time I should stick to my Sci-Fi/Fantasy bookshelf to appear more nerdy.

[Beckwin]

in no order:

Love in the Time of Cholera, Marquez
100 Years of Solitude, Marquez
A People's History of the United States, Zinn
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway
1984, Orwell
Norweigan Wood, Murakami
Robin Hood, also King Arthur, by Roger Lancelynn Greene
The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, Marx (& Engels)
Tales from Underground, Dostoevsky
Catch-22, Heller

sort of a patched-together list. Marquez deserves special mention; I think he's the most talented writer we've seen in the last century or so. also I just finished Norweigan Wood a few days ago and can't believe I didn't pick up Murakami sooner- absolutely beautiful book.

[MysteryMithra]

You haven't lived unless you read Jurassic Park in one sitting.

[Heavencloud]

Survivor, fight club, lullaby, and pygmy by chuck palahniuk were probably the best books I've read.

[aduidarnenye]

I just read 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell' by Susanna Clarke. I think it is one of the best novels I've ever read. I highly recommend it.

On the pretentious side, I really enjoy all of Jane Austen's novels. I also like Anthony Trollope's 'Chronicles of Baretshire' books and 'Vanity Fair' by William Thackery. I did a lot of 19th century literature in university and developed a taste for it. I'm not particulary fond of 20th century stuff.

On the popular fiction side, I loved 'Bridget Jones' Diary'. I've read it and the sequel several times now. It feels really dirty to read but I love it. I like chick lit but that one is the best. I also enjoy all of Jilly Cooper's 'Rutshire Chronicles' as well. I did not like the Shopaholic series at all though.

I like the 'Wheel of time' series. I am looking forward to the next book on 27 October. I don't mind the length of the series, means more to enjoy. I don't like the silliness of some of the characters though. I also enjoy 'A Song of Ice and Fire', which I am currently re-reading, but I've noticed that while the action is much more violent than WoT, the storyline and characters are just as silly. I really enjoyed the 'Temeraire' series by Naomi Novik. The first couple of books were excellent. She can really write an excellent battle scene (much much better than Jordan or Martin) but her plot dragged a bit in the latter books. Gregory Keyes wrote a really good series 'The Born Queen' which I highly enjoyed.

One of my favourite sci-fi series is 'The Stainless Steel Rat' by Harry Harrison. I read them fairly young the first time, about 12 years old, and I think my life philosophy is based on this series (individual humanism or some such).

I also admit to highly enjoying the entire Harry Potter series.

[Pringles]

1. Sphere - M.Crichton
2. 1984 - G.Orwell
3. Dracula - B. Stoker
4. Out of the Silent Planet - C.S. Lewis
5. Democracy in America- A. de Tocqueville
6. The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells
7. The Killer Angels - M. Shaara
8. The Prince - N. Machiavelli
9. Rising Sun -M. Crichton
10. It -S. King

Also Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard for the soul purpose of I was able to get through this book without actually shooting myself in the head.

[Keria]

1- the forever war, joe haldeman
2- the black dahlia, james elleroy
3- the girl with the dragon tattoo, steig larsson
4- the talisman/black house, stephen king/peter straub
5- song of ice and fire series
6- pellinor series, alison croggon
7- neverwhere, neil gaiman
8- good omens, neil gaiman & terry pratchett
9- drinking coffee elsewhere- zz packer
10- really random, but this book i bought about russian criminal tattoos:

http://cn1.kaboodle.com/hi/img/2/0/0...AAAAAHQa9w.jpg

[Sanoske]

Has anyone here read much Phillip Roth? I keep meaning to pick up some of his work, as I hear good things.. but I keep forgetting. Figured I'd see if anyone has any input.

[Deftscythe]

Not going to post a list because my tastes are pretty much limited to sci-fi and fantasy, but ^5 to my fellow Butcher fans ITT even though Arcturus picked my least favorite Dresden.

Edit: Fuck it

In no particular order:
Jim Butcher's novels - I actually prefer Alera to Dresden, though I've read the hell out of both series.
The Dark Tower - Book 4 and below, didn't care for the last 3
Song of Fire and Ice - Still haven't read Feast; waiting for him to finish the series before I reinvest so I don't get burned like with the next two
Dune series - Gone too soon, Frank
Wheel of Time - See above
The whole Fool saga by Robin Hobb, beginning with Assassin's Apprentice

I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out.

[Max™]

Don't have most of those books I mentioned, sadly.

Moving and such lost most of them.

Piers Anthony's Xanthe series were fun, I liked Anne Rice til I saw Interview with a Vampire and heaved uncontrollably at the casting... if you're a fan of the books, you know what I mean. If you've read/seen one and not the other, stay that way.

Peter F. Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction/The Naked God books.

Uplift Saga
2001/2010/2068/isn't there a 3001? I need to read it.
Robots and Empire saga
Robot Dreams
I owe The Elegant Universe for helping me understand the same problems with string theory which Smolin pointed out in The Trouble With Physics.
God Invented The Integers is the only Hawking book I like, he's a great mathematician, stick to it.
6 not so easy pieces, Surely you jest, and all the other Feynman books are wonderful, go read them, you'll see why he's my personal hero.
Ender's Game was fantastic... the rest just didn't catch my interest
Necroscope, Vamphyri, the whole Wamphyri arc, gruesome, disgusting at times, arousing at others, the only kind of vampires I like anymore.

I got to page 6 in Wheel of Time and put it down, just didn't do it for me. Gimme a Gor book any day.

My gf remembers me reading The Catcher in the Rye when we met.

[Suiram]

The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor (the collection of short stories, not just the story w/ the same title)
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut (again)
Post Office - Charles Bukowski

Sorry that's only six, these are just the ones that struck me right away and I don't read much (as much as I feel one should, anyway).

[Stellar]

I recently finished "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. (Winner of multiple Chess and Tai Chi titles -- (The little boy portrayed in "Searching For Bobby Fischer))

A really good book that breaks a lot of paradigms with unorthodox approaches towards learning, focusing more on the psychology behind success and breaking it down into understandable theories. Aside from that...

Choke
Animal Farm
1984
Lullaby

See a theme.. Orwell and Palahniuk..

[aers]

Instead of listing 10 different scifi/fantasy series and books already mentioned I'm going to just say Jim Butcher is my favorite author and ^5 to the 3 other people in this thread who mentioned him.

[Deftscythe]

Instead of listing 10 different scifi/fantasy series and books already mentioned I'm going to just say Jim Butcher is my favorite author and ^5 to the 3 other people in this thread who mentioned him.

Fuck year. I used to think the only other Butcher fan on here was Elphaba(blech).

Psyched for the last Alera book in November, although I admit to a little trepidation since we've never seen Jim try to write an honest-to-god conclusion before, and he has a lot of threads to pull together. Even the best ending will be bittersweet though. I could read 20 books in this setting.