Favorite Books

[huckleberry {council}]

Wondered what books you all have gone back to over and over again, or what ones might have had some significant influence on you. Got a few fiction and non for me.

Fiction: Watership Down, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Les Miserable, Til We Have Faces, The Screwtape Letters, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Bourne Series (love the intelligence genre, and would love any good suggestions on that), A Manuscript Found in Saragossa, the entire Harry Potter series, but especially 4-7

Non: Complete Speeches and Writings of MLK, Jr., Divided by Faith, God and Politics, The Famly

[Vanstorm]

The only books I can specifically remember reading multiple times without being bored out of my skull are The Song of Ice and Fire Series, The Mistborn Trilogy, and Warbreaker.

Most books I remember well enough after one read that I don't have enough motivation to go back to them.

[Dai [sherpa]]

(love the intelligence genre, and would love any good suggestions on that)

You ever read any John le Carré? "Smiley's People", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"? Absolute classics. They're all Cold War era books, and the main guy is exactly the sort of cold logician you would expect to really be a spy. Compared to the Bourne movies (not read the books) they're light on balls-out action, rather they're all about the double-cross and the sneaky calculating back-stabbing.

What makes him doubly interesting is that he was in MI6 (British secret intelligence / NSA types) and worked on Operation Paperclip in the 1950s, as well as handling defectors and the like - so that lends a lot of realism to his novels.

[huckleberry {council}]

You ever read any John le Carré? "Smiley's People", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"? Absolute classics. They're all Cold War era books, and the main guy is exactly the sort of cold logician you would expect to really be a spy. Compared to the Bourne movies (not read the books) they're light on balls-out action, rather they're all about the double-cross and the sneaky calculating back-stabbing.

What makes him doubly interesting is that he was in MI6 (British secret intelligence / NSA types) and worked on Operation Paperclip in the 1950s, as well as handling defectors and the like - so that lends a lot of realism to his novels.

haven't read him. i'll definitely check them out. thx! the bourne books, as is usually the case, are light years better than the movies, although i do like the movies. the action is in there, but not at the pace of the films. i haven't read any of the "new" bourne books. after Ludlum died, there was another author who took on the series. i'm not too up on how that happened, or their relationship, but it seems Ludlum might have had a couple of writers putting out stuff under his name...something like that. oddly enough, there are great suspicions about Dumas for the same reasons. Count of Monte Cristo and Three Musketeers are must reads, i think. they're two more books where the movies simply cannot capture the story. in fact, the Three Musketeers movie with kiefer sutherland, chris o'donnell, oliver platt, and charlie sheen is a two hour film about one small part of the book. they're both pretty much "can't put down" books....which when you consider that they were written a weekly chapter at a time for the french newspapers, gives a lot of background to why each chapter is pretty much a gripping tale, with cliffhangers and climaxes constantly happening.

[J0an_of_Arc]

I rarely read a book twice, mostly because I always have a list of "to read" books. However, the one that comes to mind that I've read more than once is To Kill A Mockingbird. I love the classics, and I love short stories.

Now that I think of it, I've probably read more short stories than I have novels.

I read The Grapes of Wrath again over the summer, that one always moves me in many ways. I found myself asking my family such things like, " Do you REALLY need that new shirt?", or " Be thankful for salt! Your great grandfather had to steal salt from cow pastures when he was a kid!", which is true....

Next on my list is Night, by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. The book is a first person account of his experiences in Auschwitz.

The Zombie Survival Handbook is one that I"ve purchased several copies of for friends/family, but I've never read it. I need to do that.

Then of course there is The Bible......I've read it a time or two. I"d like to say that one has influenced me more than others.....

[Profit]

The Bible as well.

The Count of Monte Cristo once. Need to reread it.
The Princess Bride, multiple times.
The really old Forgotten Realms Books. The Avatar Trilogy I think, can't remember now but I read them a lot.
All the Drizzt stuff, love the way Salvatore rights.
World War Z many many times, and if you haven't gotten it yet the audio book is a must. All star cast.

[proxious]

"the confederacy of dunces"

[huckleberry {council}]

"the confederacy of dunces"

ah! can't believe i forgot that one!!! one of the few books that literally made me laugh out loud when reading it. i actually bought 10 paperback copies and gave them to friends, most of whom hated the book. dunces, one and all.

[bigstorm12]

i find myself going back to the dresden files by jim butcher, the descent by jeff long(nothing to do with the movie), and the ruins by scott smith. i read about two books a week and sometimes its nice to go back to these just to give myself a break.

[KrossMojination {council}]

Not surprisingly, since this has been covered in other book threads around here, but for me it's the Wheel of Time. I've read or listened to Eye of the World at least 10 times, because I used to re-read the series before any new book came out. I had even bought the first several books twice, since the original copies disintegrated over time. Besides Fantasy, I've ready Ender's Game a couple times, and The Long Walk by Stephen King 2-3 times as well.