I went through 3 pages and couldnt find a topic on this anyways here are mine.

LOTR: Fellowship Of The Ring
LOTR: The Two Towers
LOTR: Return Of The King
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit
Romance of The Three Kindoms

:thumbsup: All good books there. :thumbsup:

I don't read much, but I've read this book three times through cos I love it to death! Its War of the Worlds, H.G Wells. I'm so excited about the movies, Pendragon's especially since its the most true to the books unlike Spielbergs action oriented version with Dakota and Cruise. :P

One of my favourite books has to be the Magician Series by Raymond E Feist.

Continually interesting fantasy fiction, which I felt, shat all over the LOTR series. If you like this sort of stuff, you really should read it.

Fucking THANKYOU. Probably the most fascinating classic I've ever come across. I mean, I'm at definite odds with the concept of idol and even Nietzsche's Superman, but figures like Mengde and the selfless Cao Hong compel beyond the pages.

I havent read all of it, on account of there being 2000+ pages and 120 chapters. Gan Ning has to be my favourite too, when he did that night raid without losing one man. He also kicks ass in the Dynasty Warriors series.

- Catcher in the Rye
- The Quiet American
- A Streetcar Named Desire
- Othello
- Murder on the Orient Express
- Homer, I Hardly Knew Me
- Will There Ever Be a Rainbow

To Kill A Mockingbird

On first reaqding I thought it dull and boring, how neive I was. Simply beautiful...

I purchased To Kill A Mockingbird yesterday, and I've only had the chance to read about 20 pages, but it's already completely grabbed me. It's really the only big name "classic" that I've yet to read - I'm annoyed that it's taken me this long to purchase/read it! Great stuff.

As for my fave books:-

The Catcher in the Rye:- Sallinger
Hearts in Atlantis:- Stephen King
Misery:- Stephen King
The Great Gatsby:- Fitzgerald
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius:- Dave Eggers

Those are my top 5, but there's others that could've easily taken up those spots. Such as Life of Pi, Vernon God Little, High Fidelity, For Esme With Love and Squalor, etc.

I recently saw TKaM on DVD, and it blew me away, I cant wait to read the book.

I have to read the book again. I wanna read it witht he appreciate that I have for it now.

When they explain the significance of the mockingbird it is one of the best parts of any book going round. It's such a poignant moment and even I could realise that in my immature state four years ago.

Yeah, I get where you're coming from, I read 1984 when I was 12 because I had heard it was awesome. I read it and thought it sucked hard, even though I had liked Animal Farm. I read it again recently and saw just how awesome it is. I also read Catcher in the Rye once, didnt like it, but I knew it had rubbed off on me when I found myself thinking and even speaking like ol' Caulfield because of it. I asked a teacher to explain it to me, and then I read it again and appreciated it for the awesome book it is.

I originally gave TKaM a miss because I read in a John Grisham interview that, in his Southern-based novels, he was aiming for a TKaM like story. I think Grisham lacks character development, interesting plot lines, good lines etc, so I thought that if that's somebody trying to imitate TKaM, then TKaM must actually be a real shit book, rather than a classic.

Any likeness to Grisham, whatsoever, was crushed by the 1st several pages with lines like this one:- "...four years later I was born, and two years later our mother died from a sudden hear attack. They said it ran in the family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at great length, then go off and play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to bother him" (Page 6).

It's similar to The Catcher in the Rye, in that it's not really the book, as a whole, that's good (the story etc), but it's all the little sections, the sentences, the language etc that make it so unique and exciting - if you get what I mean...

The humour of the book can't be passed over, either, as I've laughed out loud several times so far.

In conclusion, John Grisham's a lying tool.

Yeah, the whole innocence and identity theme of Catcher isnt what makes it a classic. It's the way Salinger gets into your psyche and draws Holden Caulfield out from your own self. Like he sees these emotions and you and makes Holden embody them. If you know what I mean...
Paragraphs like-
'Anyway it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxxon Hall. The game with Saxxon hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if Old Pencey didn't win.'
'Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.'
'That's something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compositions and somebody starts talking about commas. Stradlater was always doing that. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. '
'"Listen, where ya going on your date with her?" I asked him. "Ya know yet?"

"I don't know. New York, if we have the time. She only signed out for nine-thirty, for Chrissake."

I didn't like the way he said it, so I said, "The reason she did that, she probably didn't know what a handsome, charming bastard you are. If she'd known, she probably would've signed out for nine-thirty in the morning."

"Goddam right," Stradlater said.'

Awesome.

Mockingbird was so morally obvious. I mean, despite Lee probably having that exact agenda and why it's still on junior-school syllabi today, it became tedious at around the 60% mark.

Other novels suffer contexts that tarnish their modern relevance - Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle and James Baldwin's Another Country to name two extreme examples. Vonnegut's narrative's still somewhat amusing, though.

- Dan Brown Series [The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress, Angels & Demons]
- Matthew Riley Series [Scarecrow, Ice Station]

I'm shocked to see you disagreeing with the general populace!

I quite dug Mother Night. As for faves, let's see.

Fandom of the Operator- Robert Rankin.
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse- Robert Rankin.
The Wheel of Time series- Robert Jordan.

They would have to be the absolute favourites, but I will stop there as I could rattle on all day. At the moment I am enjoying The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Also anything by Ian Irvine, really. No respect.

I don't believe anybody hasn't mentioned this but...

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

...and the subsequent sequels. Abso-fucken-lutely brilliant in its telling and its strange gags that just seem to work - namely the trademark "life, the universe and everything" question and its even more notorious answer. This is an unsung classic of the 20th century.

Other than that, one of my favourite books is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. It's an entertaining read about occultism and the Apocalypse. A perfect collaboration between two great fantasy writers. I recommend you read it.

With your leave, I'll list my favourite authors rather than my favourite books, I think that'd be more helpful.

JRR Tolkien
Stephen King
George Orwell
Kurt Vonnegut Jr
E L Doctorow
Jane Austen
Irvine Welsh
Stephen Donaldson (The Gap Series but NOT the Thomas Covenant Chronicles)
John Steinbeck
Ayn Rand

I really, really, really recommend Kurt Vonnegut Jr and E L Doctorow.

From my experience with the movie, I thought the obvious morality was Lee's attempt at exasperation with his society, trying to highlight to the reader that these morals are obvious and known to all, yet not applied.

Harper Lee is a chick, not a bloke.

A woman, writing a book that awesome? Never.

:P

We had a big debate the other day in Legal Studies about the pros and cons of changing the NSW jury system to a majority verdict. Meaning some absurd figure like 8-4 would be enough to convict someone. I was, for some strange reason, by myself on this issue. I couldn't see one benefit. My teacher said what about the time and money you'll save not being locked up and sequestered for so long? And I replied you're willing to play devils advocate with someone's life to save some money?

Aaaaaanyway, this all has a point, when I thought of the majority verdict I immediately think of TKaM. How Tom Robinson was being crucified by the whole town and the only person on his side was Atticus. Imagine, with a majority verdict being 11-1 and sent to goal?

Yeah, well that was about two more paragraphs then I was meaning to write...

That brings to mind '12 Angry Men' by Reginald Rose, another awesome book. Surely a 7-5 majority doesnt mean no reasonable doubt exists...

I saw the play of that, last year, and if there's another season of it then I'd definitely recommend a viewing. Powerful stuff.

I too was surprised, Mykle, that a woman could do something that good :P I had to take a step back. 2 steps, in fact.

Sometimes I muse that publishing and bibliography will someday merge into a conservational superscience. Benjamin Constant's Adolphe could totally phase out Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

For the forests' sake.

Well I'm reading Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King at the moment. It's one of the best books I've ever read so far, it's pretty fucked up sometimes and halfway through the book everything changes and it's a completely different story (so far)...from what I remember from the movie it's very different.

HamburgerTrain:- Hears in Atlantis is one of my fave books ever. The Scott Hicks film simply doesn't do the entire novel justice, because it only plays out the 1st "story". Not in the least bit horror, and some of the best coming-of-age writing this side of Catcher in the Rye. It's the only book, with more than 200 pages, that I've read through twice. People who bag out King, as an airport writer, really need to read this text and see his skillz in full flight. Good shit, and it only gets better towards the end.

Yeah I just finished reading it. It was good but the story about Pete Riley had nothing to do with the rest of the book and I found it got quite boring after a while, the whole time I was reading it I was like...godamnit I just want to read about what happens to Bobby...But other than that yeah it was good, reading Willies story was...well wierd and Sully was pretty messed up as well. I didn't quite get the part how he was hallucinating with all the things falling from the sky but he ended up getting the baseball glove?!? Can you explain to me what happened there?

But the ending was really good when *Spoiler warning* Bobby and Carol meet up again and get the present from Ted */Spoiler warning*.

Dude, do you really have to put a spoiler in there? You've said the ending is good...do you need to elaborate on what that ending is? How many endings are there?

Think, people.

Nup. It's a similar sort of thing to the frog scene in Magnolia - I don't think it was supposed to make sense. I thought it was still cool, though. I suppose that it was some sort of metaphor for all the bull shit we have in our lives, or something.

The ending had me in tears :D

The Joy Luck Club

Have you read Death on the Nile?. Because in my opinion, it's better than Murder on the Orient Express. While Murder on the Orient Express was good, it's resolution disappointed me somewhat. This wasn't the case with Death on the Nile.

Death on the Nile has class too, but I liked the slow interrogative style of Orient Express, the way your mind ticks along with Poirot. Although, I do agree the ending was poor. If it's killer endings you're after, you need to read Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it'll leave you stunned.

Will do. I've been meaning to for quite some time now.

Well, I'm about a third to half way through Brave New World and I can safely say Chapter 2 is the best chapter I have ever read in any book, ever. Unfortunately it is quickly followed by Chapter 3, the worst chapter in novel history.

I guess the term novel is apt when speaking of Brave New World, as in, the novelty of Utopianism achieved through the destruction of human emotion, quickly wears off as Huxley is determined to leave the reader in the dark.

Hopefully, as I get further through, it will become clearer and thus, better

I've been reading the English translation of 'Ring'. It's the novel from 1991, which the movies were based on, and it's a damn good page-turner. It's not so much horror, but more thriller. Kick arse. I tried to get through both 'Catch-22' and 'The Quiet American', but I just couldn't be bothered with the big words.

Man give those big words a go you'll find such things rewarding and sometimes big words are just more apt.

By Koji Suzuki? That's what I'm reading at the moment too. :D However, most people I've talked to about it responded by saying: "There's a book?" <_<

Yeah, that's the one. It's a damn good book. The sequel, 'Spiral', has just been released, too.

quartz_donkey: currently I just feel like an easy read. I'm tired of reading the same page 7 times, as what was happening when I was reading 'Quiet American'.