Best Books Ever Written Meme
May. 5th, 2017 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. I'm enjoying "Witches of Karres" -- it's not the book's fault that I keep going to sleep on the train. Has zip to do with it. I'm just tired. Or my mind keeps wandering and telling itself a somewhat erotic sci-fi story. The commute is not always the most conducive for reading -- for one thing there are lots of noisy distractions.
I do not know what I will read next. Was thinking of David Eggars "The Circle" until I tried the sample and read the reviews...and uh, no. Apparently Eggars is more interested in philosophizing and preaching or thematic writing than story-telling and character. So he'll probably annoy me. Also consider "Dark Matter" but again tried the sample, and got irritated half way through and started to skim -- it's one of those thrillers where the hero gets separated from his family, is told in first person, and he spends the entire book trying to get back with them. (I find those stories very frustrating and more "how do we solve this dilemma" than what or how do the characters relate to each other. Again it's plot and theme over character. Doesn't work for me. And the writer has an insanely sparse writing style. You can tell he's a script writer. Script writer's have sparse writing styles, because you sort of have to be sparse as a script writer. The actors and director want to be able to do something. Comic book writing is also rather sparse for the same reasons. It's story-boarding. Description is basically stage directions or layout of scene. Dialogue is simple, no accent, no inflection. Sparse. I know, I've read a lot of plays and scripts that are written like that. They tend to be rather boring to read. I need more attitude in a first person narrator. Personality.)
I do not have a shortage of books. I just keep hoarding them...then flirt with them occasionally, while going to buy another over here. (Ohhh...look, shiny, I'll go read this instead.)
2. Best Books Every Written Meme Anyhow, Good Reads came up with another book list, some of their selections once again make me wonder about the folks on Good Reads and people in general. But I've been wondering about people a lot lately. I think people have gone crazy, too much media. Everyone needs to take a month long vacation to some destination that does not have any access to internet, social media, news, phones, television or any of that stuff. Also maybe away from other people.
Best Books Ever According to Good Reads
At any rate, forget about that list, all it did was motivate me to write up my own list of best books ever written...many of which I have not exactly read. (So you are probably asking yourself this question right about now, how in the hell do I know it was the best ever written if I haven't bothered to read it? Well it appears to have lasting value, and I trust the folks who think it has...and I want to read it, and it's my meme. Go create your own.)
Rules of Meme, should you choose to play.
*. Come up with a list of books that you want to rec to people that you believe/think are the best books ever written (Granted this list may tell people more than you want them to know about you as a person...)
* It can be any book that has been written and published (this includes independently published books and self-published, it doesn't just have to be traditionally published works. But don't include fanfic published only on the internet. It needs to have been actually published as a book that is printed on paper.)
* You don't have to have read the book, but it does help if you know what it is about and whether you want to read it. You should be able to defend the choice on some level -- say you saw the movie? That helps. It's not the Best Books You've EVER Read, it's the Best Books Ever Written, after all.
* You can only include "one" book by an author. In other words, you can't take up ten entries with Harry Potter, or ten entries with Shakespeare Plays, or four entries with Tolkien books. You have to choose "one" work by that writer. Just one. (It's a lot harder than it sounds.) Although you can cheat and put "The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien" or "the Complete Works of William Shakespeare" if you so desire. Just don't have them take up more than one spot.
Okay, here's my list of best books written and everyone should try these, in no particular order because I hate ranking things
1. The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell
2. Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett
3. Metamorphoses by Franz Kafka
4. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
5. Dubliners by James Joyce
6. !984 by George Orwell (it's similar to Animal Farm but better written and more subtle.)
7. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (which I admittedly have not read but sections were read to me and I saw the mini-series)
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez
10. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
11. Pride and Prejudice (a comedy of manners) by Jane Austen
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ( I prefer it to Wuthering Heights, it has more tropes it establishes and breaks down and in some respects is a bit more feminist)
13. Hound of the Bakervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
14. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
15. Kindred by Octavia Butler (possibly the best book about slavery that I've read)
16. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
17. Beloved by Toni Morrison
18. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
19. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
20. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (possibly the best novel about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression ever written. And while I did enjoy East of Eden, this book is better.)
22. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (I know everybody prefers Lord of the Rings, but I think Tolkien said everything he needed to say in this book and far better. Also I couldn't make it through the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien got a bit preachy in Return of the King.)
23. Dune by Frank Herbert (I didn't like the other Dune books)
24. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (which I haven't read, except parts of)
25. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
26. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (one of the best novels that I've read about severe depression and mental illness)
27. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis (you really don't need to read any other Lewis book but this one, it says it all, and is rather innovative.)
28. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (My favorite of her series...I think this is the Snape book, and it is rather twisty.)
29. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl (It was close with The Giant Peach, but this one stands out.)
30. The Prince by Machiavelli (I've always read as a satire.)
31. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
32. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Doctor Seuss
32. Winnie The Pooh by AA Milne
33. The Imitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse. (although any of the Jeeves books will do)
34. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
35. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
36. Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
37. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
38. The Collected Poetry of Percy Blyshe Shelly
39. Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (which may be the only book you really need to read of his, it's short and a marvelous book about man against nature, and his own ego.)
40. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (About loving a book or work of art, and how it can bring people together)
41. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
42. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
43. The Odyssey by Homer
44. The Collected Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson
45. The Collected Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
46. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What She Found There by Lewis Carrol
47. Lonseome Dove by Larry McMurty (Considered Brokeback Mountain and Horseman Passed By).
48. The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett
49. Gone to Soliders by Marge Percy
50. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (I liked it better than Brave New World by Huxley)
51. Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegurt
52. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
53. Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
54. The Dairy of Anais Nin by Anais Nin (one of the earliest books of erotica is actually a coming of age story...)
55. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (possibly the most frightening ghost story written)
56. Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guinn
57. The Bible - St. James Version (it's important to cite which version)
58. Candide by Voltaire
59. The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Esprey
60. The Collected Stories of Collette by Collette ( contains the original "Gigi")
61. Watchmen by Alan Moore -- the graphic novel version of Citzen Kane for the superhero comic book reader
62. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
63. Greek Myths - The Complete and Definitive Edition by Robert Graves (because I couldn't find another one.)
64. The Works of Edgar Allen Poe
65. Curtain by Agatha Christie (yes, I know everyone prefers Then There Were None, but I liked this one better.)
66. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
67. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
68. The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
69. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson
70. The Blind Assassin by Margret Atwood (not a fan, but it is a work of art...and should be read, and in some respects its richer than A Handmaid's Tale...because it dwells on the hatred women feel for each other and how it destroys us. Also deconstructs how pulp sci-fi has an ingrained sexism.)
71. The Bone People by Keri Hume
72. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
73. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (it's a horror tale about college and how things can go wrong)
74. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (delves into who and what Merlin was and the mythology in a whole new way.)
75. The Collected Short Stories of Anton Chekhov (particularly "The Kiss")
76. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights - the collected stories
77. Plato's The Republic
78. Heart of Darkness and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad
79. Lord of the Flies by William Fielding
80. Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
81. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
82. Night Mother by Marsha Norman
83. The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
84. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (although Farenheit 451 was a close second)
85. Dinner at the Homssick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
86. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carr
87. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
88. Sister Ignatius Explains it All For You by Christopher Durang
89. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
90. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
91. A Town Called Alice by Neville Shute
92. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
83. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
84. The Immortal Life of Henerietta Laks by r Rebecca Skloot.
85. All the Presidents Men by Woodward and Bernstein
86. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
87. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
89. Swann in Love by Marcel Proust
89. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
90. Watership Down by Richard Adams
91. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
92. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
93. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
94. White Noise by Don Deliillo
95. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
96. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
97. The Outsiders by SE Hinton
98. Sunshine by Robin McKinley (best vampire book that I've ever read, and most innovative).
99. The Divine Comedy by Dante
100. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (flawed perhaps but resonates long after..and a good critique of our society without being preachy.)
So, what are yours?
Going to bed, fighting a sinus headache from hell.
I do not know what I will read next. Was thinking of David Eggars "The Circle" until I tried the sample and read the reviews...and uh, no. Apparently Eggars is more interested in philosophizing and preaching or thematic writing than story-telling and character. So he'll probably annoy me. Also consider "Dark Matter" but again tried the sample, and got irritated half way through and started to skim -- it's one of those thrillers where the hero gets separated from his family, is told in first person, and he spends the entire book trying to get back with them. (I find those stories very frustrating and more "how do we solve this dilemma" than what or how do the characters relate to each other. Again it's plot and theme over character. Doesn't work for me. And the writer has an insanely sparse writing style. You can tell he's a script writer. Script writer's have sparse writing styles, because you sort of have to be sparse as a script writer. The actors and director want to be able to do something. Comic book writing is also rather sparse for the same reasons. It's story-boarding. Description is basically stage directions or layout of scene. Dialogue is simple, no accent, no inflection. Sparse. I know, I've read a lot of plays and scripts that are written like that. They tend to be rather boring to read. I need more attitude in a first person narrator. Personality.)
I do not have a shortage of books. I just keep hoarding them...then flirt with them occasionally, while going to buy another over here. (Ohhh...look, shiny, I'll go read this instead.)
2. Best Books Every Written Meme Anyhow, Good Reads came up with another book list, some of their selections once again make me wonder about the folks on Good Reads and people in general. But I've been wondering about people a lot lately. I think people have gone crazy, too much media. Everyone needs to take a month long vacation to some destination that does not have any access to internet, social media, news, phones, television or any of that stuff. Also maybe away from other people.
Best Books Ever According to Good Reads
At any rate, forget about that list, all it did was motivate me to write up my own list of best books ever written...many of which I have not exactly read. (So you are probably asking yourself this question right about now, how in the hell do I know it was the best ever written if I haven't bothered to read it? Well it appears to have lasting value, and I trust the folks who think it has...and I want to read it, and it's my meme. Go create your own.)
Rules of Meme, should you choose to play.
*. Come up with a list of books that you want to rec to people that you believe/think are the best books ever written (Granted this list may tell people more than you want them to know about you as a person...)
* It can be any book that has been written and published (this includes independently published books and self-published, it doesn't just have to be traditionally published works. But don't include fanfic published only on the internet. It needs to have been actually published as a book that is printed on paper.)
* You don't have to have read the book, but it does help if you know what it is about and whether you want to read it. You should be able to defend the choice on some level -- say you saw the movie? That helps. It's not the Best Books You've EVER Read, it's the Best Books Ever Written, after all.
* You can only include "one" book by an author. In other words, you can't take up ten entries with Harry Potter, or ten entries with Shakespeare Plays, or four entries with Tolkien books. You have to choose "one" work by that writer. Just one. (It's a lot harder than it sounds.) Although you can cheat and put "The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien" or "the Complete Works of William Shakespeare" if you so desire. Just don't have them take up more than one spot.
Okay, here's my list of best books written and everyone should try these, in no particular order because I hate ranking things
1. The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell
2. Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett
3. Metamorphoses by Franz Kafka
4. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
5. Dubliners by James Joyce
6. !984 by George Orwell (it's similar to Animal Farm but better written and more subtle.)
7. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (which I admittedly have not read but sections were read to me and I saw the mini-series)
8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez
10. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
11. Pride and Prejudice (a comedy of manners) by Jane Austen
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ( I prefer it to Wuthering Heights, it has more tropes it establishes and breaks down and in some respects is a bit more feminist)
13. Hound of the Bakervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
14. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
15. Kindred by Octavia Butler (possibly the best book about slavery that I've read)
16. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
17. Beloved by Toni Morrison
18. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
19. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
20. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (possibly the best novel about the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression ever written. And while I did enjoy East of Eden, this book is better.)
22. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (I know everybody prefers Lord of the Rings, but I think Tolkien said everything he needed to say in this book and far better. Also I couldn't make it through the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien got a bit preachy in Return of the King.)
23. Dune by Frank Herbert (I didn't like the other Dune books)
24. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (which I haven't read, except parts of)
25. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
26. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (one of the best novels that I've read about severe depression and mental illness)
27. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis (you really don't need to read any other Lewis book but this one, it says it all, and is rather innovative.)
28. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling (My favorite of her series...I think this is the Snape book, and it is rather twisty.)
29. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl (It was close with The Giant Peach, but this one stands out.)
30. The Prince by Machiavelli (I've always read as a satire.)
31. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
32. The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Doctor Seuss
32. Winnie The Pooh by AA Milne
33. The Imitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse. (although any of the Jeeves books will do)
34. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
35. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
36. Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
37. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
38. The Collected Poetry of Percy Blyshe Shelly
39. Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (which may be the only book you really need to read of his, it's short and a marvelous book about man against nature, and his own ego.)
40. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (About loving a book or work of art, and how it can bring people together)
41. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
42. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
43. The Odyssey by Homer
44. The Collected Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson
45. The Collected Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
46. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What She Found There by Lewis Carrol
47. Lonseome Dove by Larry McMurty (Considered Brokeback Mountain and Horseman Passed By).
48. The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett
49. Gone to Soliders by Marge Percy
50. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (I liked it better than Brave New World by Huxley)
51. Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegurt
52. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
53. Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
54. The Dairy of Anais Nin by Anais Nin (one of the earliest books of erotica is actually a coming of age story...)
55. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (possibly the most frightening ghost story written)
56. Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guinn
57. The Bible - St. James Version (it's important to cite which version)
58. Candide by Voltaire
59. The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Esprey
60. The Collected Stories of Collette by Collette ( contains the original "Gigi")
61. Watchmen by Alan Moore -- the graphic novel version of Citzen Kane for the superhero comic book reader
62. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
63. Greek Myths - The Complete and Definitive Edition by Robert Graves (because I couldn't find another one.)
64. The Works of Edgar Allen Poe
65. Curtain by Agatha Christie (yes, I know everyone prefers Then There Were None, but I liked this one better.)
66. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
67. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
68. The Children's Hour by Lillian Hellman
69. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson
70. The Blind Assassin by Margret Atwood (not a fan, but it is a work of art...and should be read, and in some respects its richer than A Handmaid's Tale...because it dwells on the hatred women feel for each other and how it destroys us. Also deconstructs how pulp sci-fi has an ingrained sexism.)
71. The Bone People by Keri Hume
72. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
73. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (it's a horror tale about college and how things can go wrong)
74. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart (delves into who and what Merlin was and the mythology in a whole new way.)
75. The Collected Short Stories of Anton Chekhov (particularly "The Kiss")
76. One Thousand and One Arabian Nights - the collected stories
77. Plato's The Republic
78. Heart of Darkness and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad
79. Lord of the Flies by William Fielding
80. Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
81. Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
82. Night Mother by Marsha Norman
83. The Odd Couple by Neil Simon
84. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (although Farenheit 451 was a close second)
85. Dinner at the Homssick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
86. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carr
87. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
88. Sister Ignatius Explains it All For You by Christopher Durang
89. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
90. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
91. A Town Called Alice by Neville Shute
92. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
83. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
84. The Immortal Life of Henerietta Laks by r Rebecca Skloot.
85. All the Presidents Men by Woodward and Bernstein
86. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
87. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
89. Swann in Love by Marcel Proust
89. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
90. Watership Down by Richard Adams
91. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
92. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
93. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
94. White Noise by Don Deliillo
95. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
96. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
97. The Outsiders by SE Hinton
98. Sunshine by Robin McKinley (best vampire book that I've ever read, and most innovative).
99. The Divine Comedy by Dante
100. The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (flawed perhaps but resonates long after..and a good critique of our society without being preachy.)
So, what are yours?
Going to bed, fighting a sinus headache from hell.