5 Books Everybody Should Read

[QUOTE=walkingcontradiction]
last exit to brooklyn - Selby Jr
[/QUOTE]

not to bash you but why did you choose this book?

i personally felt that it was incredible in some parts (the slut getting hoe trained, & the closet gay guy after he started expirementing)
but the rest of the story had no real flow or connection in my opinion.

Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Red Badge of Courage - Blake
Neuromancer - Gibson
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
Dragon Tears - Koontz

And of course all of Palahniuk's books along with Vonnegut's. Those go without saying.

[QUOTE=Singularity]Chock - Palahniuk
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Almost Transparent Blue - Ryu Murakami
I Am Legnend - Richard Matheson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick[/QUOTE]

I have the Philip K. Dick reader, which is a collection of his stories. I still need to dive into that, along with the million other books I'm reading now and need to read after those are done.

I've been thinking about this for a long time and I think I may have come to a conclusion, but I may have to come back and change this later. Here it is, in no particular order:

The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Alternates: Geek Love - Katharine Dunn, Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Grits - Niall Griffiths
Sheepshagger - Niall Griffiths ( call me a fan, the guy is brilliant! )
Marabou Stork Nightmares - Irvine Welsh
Manifest for the communistic party - Marx and Hegel
Atomised - Michel Houellebecq

(thanks for all the tips, I see got some reading to do)

American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
Animal Farm - George Orwell

[QUOTE=Suicidal maniac]Atomised - Michel Houellebecq[/QUOTE]

Interesting pick. Assuming (or maybe moreso hoping) that some people look further into titles mentioned here, if you're in the States the US version of this book was entitled _The Elementary Particles_, which makes a shitload more sense than _Atomised_ and is moreso a direct translation from the original French title.
j(ay)

Well, actually I'm Dutch and I read the Dutch translation "elementaire deeltjes" but for the post I looked up the title for the English translation, so everybody would understand what I was talking about. I did figure the title "Atomised" didn't make much sense...
Personally, I hate reading translations, but I've got no feeling for French, so with Houellebecq I had no choice.

[QUOTE=Suicidal maniac]but for the post I looked up the title for the English translation, so everybody would understand what I was talking about.[/quote]

_Atomised_ was the title in the United Kingdom, _The Elementary Particles_ in the Not-Really United States of Texas.
Same book, 2 different titles. Go figure.
So, if any of the US’ers were searching for _Atomised_ they’d probably come up empty. That’s all I meant.

[url]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375727019/qid=1098172501/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-4354633-0013701?v=glance&s=books&n=507846[/url]

[Quote]Personally, I hate reading translations, but I've got no feeling for French, so with Houellebecq I had no choice.[/QUOTE]

Totally understand, I have no skill with Portuguese, so I am now currently relying on the translation of Saramago’s newest.

j(ay)

[QUOTE=jay]Interesting pick.

...

j(ay)[/QUOTE]

Why interesting?
This is a really, really great book!

Also everyone should read Houellebecqs other work. I almost cried with "Platform" or whatever the US title is

[QUOTE=Suicidal maniac]Why interesting?[/quote]

I didn’t mean it as an insult. I thought it was a, well, interesting selection.
I get a kick out of seeing some not-often mentioned books…and while I wouldn’t recommend this book to “everybody”, it did have some pretty good bits.

[Quote]Also everyone should read Houellebecqs other work. I almost cried with "Platform" or whatever the US title is ;)[/QUOTE]

I have _Whatever_ but haven’t read it…

j(ay)
“As soon as the genome had been completely decoded, humanity would be in a position to control its own evolution, and when that happened sexuality would be seen for what it really was: a useless, dangerous and regressive function.” (from the book in discussion)

[QUOTE=jay]
...
I have _Whatever_ but haven’t read it…

j(ay)
...
[/QUOTE]
Not his best, but good enough for a lost rainy sunday. It gives just that little push needed for a professional depression. :rolleyes:

The following are the best books I have ever read:

1) Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

2) Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

3) Diary - Chuck Palahniuk

4) 1984 - George Orwell

5) The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty

In no paticular order

Survivor - Chuck

Battle Royale - Koushun Takami

25th Hour - David Benioff

Ishmael - Daniel Quinn

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo

just thought i'd throw in at least one more must read:

johnny got his gun by dalton trumbo

the tenth chapter is an essay on war and a must read for everyone right now.

[QUOTE=Suicidal maniac]Grits - Niall Griffiths
Sheepshagger - Niall Griffiths ( call me a fan, the guy is brilliant! )[/QUOTE]

Sheepshagger was incredible. I can't seem to find anything else by him in the US bookstores. Looks like I'll have to order online for his other stuff.

I would recommend these 5 off the top of my head:

Lolita - Nabokov
The Demon - Selby
Kiss Me, Judas - Baer
The Magus - Fowles
American Tabloid - Ellroy

1. The Little Prince-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
2. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
3. Fahrenheit 451 -- Ray Bradbury
4. The Bell Jar-- Sylvia Plath
6. Good Omens- Neil Gaiman/Terry Pratchett

And of course Alice in Wonderland, I think everyone should read that at least once, hell, read it twice.

Wow...you guys all had really great lists. How the hell do you limit yourself to just five?

I've thought about this before...the five books and five CD's you would take with you to an isolated island or cabin or ???

1. On the Road (or) Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac (very tough call)

2. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

3. Slaughter House Five - Kurt Vonnegut

4. The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter

5. Fight Club (or) Diary - Chuck Palahniuk (another tough call)

CD's

1. Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chili Peppers

2. Heart of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

3, 4 and 5 Anything 3 CD's by John Coltrane

[B]On Duties[/B] ~Cicero
[B]To Kill a Mockingbird[/B] ~Harper Lee
[b]Anthem[/b] ~Ayn Rand
[b]The Count of Monte Cristo[/b] ~Alexander Dumas
[B]Mere Christianity[/B] ~ C.S.Lewis

1) Catch 22- Joseph Heller

2) A Clockwork Orange- Anthony Burgess

3) Hannibal- Thomas Harris

4) The Thief of Always- Clive Barker

5) Fight Club or Survivor or...they're all good! - by Chuck Palahniuk

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Norwegian Wood - Murakami
Sea of Fertility (tetrology) - Mishima
1984 - Orwell

[QUOTE=Acacia Void] I am an English major and have nothing better to do with my time than debate the greatness of novels.[/QUOTE]

we should all be so lucky

the beach by alex garland shall be added to my list, it starts off slow real slow but then it picks up real fast and gets chaotic. around the time it gets chaotic i became aware of the amount of detail in the story, and the idea of the story(communism) and i started over and i love it even more now

i have like 120 more pages now and it is amazingly cool

also on my second attempt i was able to completely and totally dissasociate leonardo decaprio from the main character richard(he played him in the movie adaptation i think)

A Clockwork Orange - A. Burgess
Perfume - P. Süskind
Lolita - V. Nabokov
Invisible Monsters - Chuck
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - O. Wilde

After long hard deliberation of what I think most people should read that basically share the same anglo-euro-experience that we do so as not to impose our cultural dogma onto them and also to select books that good readers would study and research enough to actually benefit from reading. Because in my opinion real books that 'everyone should read' are those that require an interactive process between the written word and the active mind of the reader and his or her body of knowledge and experience that they bring to the activity. It is not a passive event like pleasure reading is.

Therefore, after all of the hoopla here is my list - which is sure to change just as soon as I type it - in no particular order.

-CRIME & PUNISHMENT - Feydor Dostoyevsky
-PARADISE LOST - John Milton
-THE DIVINE COMEDY - Dante Aligheri
-1984 - George Orwell
-HEART OF DARKNESS - Joseph Conrad
-FRANKENSTEIN or PROMETHEUS UNBOUND - Mary Shelley

And I know that's over 5 and that technically 2 of them are poems, but I had a right bleeding hard time getting my list down to 6 serious books or novellas let me tell you! Knocking out short stories was very painful as well, I am still in pain from the knife wounds...

I am loving the suggestions from the rest of you - as if I need more books that I have to read - eh?- and btw C.S. LEWIS' SCREWTAPE LETTERS is a def #7 no holds barred!!

Let's get to reading people - we have a mission to fulfill!

you nailed it on the head. thanks jill

[QUOTE=Davros]Actually "On the Road" had a whole generation of people get up and see America for what it really was during the 1950s. The 50's climate was full of post-war conformity, McCarthism, institutionalized care, etc... Artists, poets and musicians had feelings which weren't taken as kindly for rational thought. On the Road brought Bohemia to the masses with wanderlust and life as the two important themes,[/QUOTE]

damn! well put! makes me want to read it again.

Hmmmm...off the top of my head at 6:32 in the AM.
1. American Psycho
2. Catcher In The Rye
3. You Shall Know My Velocity
4. Everything Is Illuminated
and cause it's a CP site
5. Diary

Oh My goodness...I forgot to add the Stand by Steven King...sorry chuck your out of there.

[QUOTE=adamvsid]Oh My goodness...I forgot to add the Stand by Steven King...sorry chuck your out of there.[/QUOTE][i]No way.[/i]

: demands a re-evaluation on lit choice :

The Sun Also Rises
Confederacy of Dunces
Slowness
Salt
Iliad

[QUOTE=framstedt]The Sun Also Rises
Confederacy of Dunces
Slowness
Salt
Iliad[/QUOTE]
Man, Confederacy of Dunces has been mentioned a lot lately by a lot of people. I have got to pick up a copy of this and read it... soon.

1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
2. 1984, George Orwell
3. Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk
4. Catcher in the rye, J.D. Salinger
5. The Contortionist Handbook, Craig Clevenger

For me 5 the most exciting books are the following:

1. Devil's discipline - Bernard Shaw
2. Fight club
3. CheGuevara - Paco Ignacio Taibo II
4. The Coma - Alex Garland
5. Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco

[QUOTE=JohannDeLippa]For me 5 the most exciting books are the following:

1. Devil's discipline - Bernard Shaw
2. Fight club
3. CheGuevara - Paco Ignacio Taibo II
4. The Coma - Alex Garland
5. Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco[/QUOTE]

I just finished The Coma, but I don't think it's a masterpiece.

[plotspoiler]
Maybe I didn't really get the idea. He was already in the coma at the beginning, wasn't he?
[/plotspoiler]

'Thus spake Zarathoustra', Friedrich Nietzsche
'Tao Te Ching', Lao Tzu
'The L.A. Quartet', James Ellroy
'The Silmarillion' (with Unfinished Tales), JRR Tolkien
'Les Misérables', Victor Hugo
'Les liaisons dangereuses', Choderlos de Laclos

OK, The LA Quartet is a 4 novel series (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz), but they are so connected that reading them separately is wasting much of the fun.

[QUOTE=franc tireur]OK, The LA Quartet is a 4 novel series (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, White Jazz), but they are so connected that reading them separately is wasting much of the fun.[/QUOTE]

I'll drink to that! His "American" trilogy is also awesome, with American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and the yet to be released book covering the years 1968-1972. I included American Tabloid in my original list of 5 too.

A million little pieces - James Frey

O.k I've already been nailed for wrong authors so:

1. A Prayer for Owen Meaney
2. Turbulent Mirror
3. Neverwhere
4. Silmarillion
5. Dune (once again, just read the whole damn series)

No particular order

Wait a second, this is a cool thread folks. there's a bunch o books on here I either haven't read in a long time, or never at all. thanks dudes and dudettes. (Sorry, I am very old and bad with slang)

Dear Jill,

Prometheus Unbound was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, not Mary Shelley.

Equal Opportunity bashing.

[QUOTE=the audacity!]Dear Jill,

Prometheus Unbound was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, not Mary Shelley.

Equal Opportunity bashing.[/QUOTE]
Oh thank god, I had just finished tying the rope. And the cat almost knocked the chair over. (this is where I insert the happy face EmoticonsTM, Copyright, Patent Pending), Seriously guys, I should not be on the Internet. They don't let people drive cars this drunk.

my 5 favorite books

1. Jonathon LIvinston Seagull - Richard Bach
2. 1984 - George Orwell
3. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
4. Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
5. Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
(favorite poem is "I saw a man pursuing the horizon")

Choke - Mr Palahniuk himself
Angels - Denis Johnson
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh

These 5 books are amazing, but I think this recommendation is all about how I feel now. In a couple weeks I'll probably have 5 completely different books in mind.

[QUOTE=Annie]These 5 books are amazing, but I think this recommendation is all about how I feel now. In a couple weeks I'll probably have 5 completely different books in mind.[/QUOTE]
You probably will... I'm the same way.

its really really fucking pissing me off that i cannot read anything by irving welsh

my only real reason is the way the slang is written,specifically how entire paragraphs will be jibberish.

i know the storys are amazing but fuck i cant do it

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]its really really fucking pissing me off that i cannot read anything by irving welsh

my only real reason is the way the slang is written,specifically how entire paragraphs will be jibberish.

i know the storys are amazing but fuck i cant do it[/QUOTE]
I'm feeling the same way. I tried to read parts of his books in the book store and I just can't get it. I hear if you read out loud it is easier to understand, but I am still intimidated.

Today the bookstore had a hard cover copy of Porno for $4.95, but should I read Trainspotting first? Will it make sense if I go back and buy it and read it, even though I have never read Trainspotting?

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I'm feeling the same way. I tried to read parts of his books in the book store and I just can't get it. I hear if you read out loud it is easier to understand, but I am still intimidated.

Today the bookstore had a hard cover copy of Porno for $4.95, but should I read Trainspotting first? Will it make sense if I go back and buy it and read it, even though I have never read Trainspotting?[/QUOTE]
You actually get used to the the way it's written after a while. To anyone looking over your shoulder it will look like you're reading absoute gibberish, but you'll know exactly what it says. It was a weird sense of accomplishment for me. Now, I haven't read Trainspotting, but I [I]have[/I] seen the movie. I couldn't remember the movie very well, so I was kind of inbetween knowing what happened in Trainspotting and having no idea. And I'll say the book made enough sense. It's my new favourite book for now. So I say buy it.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I'm feeling the same way. I tried to read parts of his books in the book store and I just can't get it. I hear if you read out loud it is easier to understand, but I am still intimidated.

Today the bookstore had a hard cover copy of Porno for $4.95, but should I read Trainspotting first? Will it make sense if I go back and buy it and read it, even though I have never read Trainspotting?[/QUOTE]

^^^Barnes & Nobel, right? Picked up the same book. Have TSpotting, too. Haven't read either. Yet. Will read them one weekend. That specific weekend just hasn't come yet. Sorry, can't help you with an answer. Can only say that I am pretty much in the same position