Name five important books. Important to you personally. (Or, you know, like, 3, or 7 if five is too many/too restricting.) (This is perhaps because i miss those "about me" sections we used to have on our bio pages.)

I've got :

I for Isobel (Amy Whitting).
The Alchemist (Paulo Cohelo)
Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)
Mother Tongue (Bill Bryson)
Bliss (Peter Carey)

I also really really liked "Tell me i'm here", by Anne Deveson. And thoroughly enjoyed Catch-22. And a ton of others... these are my favourites today though. :)

The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen
Poems I and II by Margaret Atwood
The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
Last Lists of My Mad Mother by Julie Jensen (play)
The Ladies of the Corridor by Dorothy Parker (play)
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
Revolution and the Word by Cathy N Davidson

I could go on all day. :)

oh hell yeah, ain't that the hard part.

like, stopping, i mean. :)

I've led a fairly sheltered life, so sometimes books were like a lighting bolt in my head - illuminating ideas that had been there, but I hadn't acknowledged them and were then imprinted on my mind. A few of them have actually changed the way I view life.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Tigana by Guy Kay
Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Roots by Alex Haley
The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor Gadon

I love to read, especially since I realized that reading sad stuff (="literature") didn't make me happy. So here's my list, it's all crap, but fun crap:

Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series (they're conveniently numbered, and full of fun jokes about dog barf)

Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, the first five books only -- small woman with flame thrower kills supernatural enemies -- excellent read after long day -- after book 5 or so, there is no more plot, well, you'll see... you might like it.

Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden wizard series -- this last one was one of the best, and the series on SciFi is pretty good, too.

Have read the first two in the Twilight series. As I'm reading, I'm thinking, "this is really crap, but cannot put down this book."

East of Eden-Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath-Steinbeck
Three Junes-Julia Glass
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret-Judy Blume
Crime & Punishment-Dostoevsky
Bless Me, Ultima-Anaya

Just kidding about the Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Although it was my favorite in the 4th grade.

This list changes daily, but there are a few that are always on the list.

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (any of his novels, really)

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Palace-Burner (poetry) Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt

a few newbies to my list:

Our Ecsatic Days by Steve Erickson

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

I just packed all my books last night, so I'm lonely.

I'm waiting for The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz on hold at the library and I'm really looking forward to it. I read its short story version in the New Yorker years ago. Amazing.

Some other recent favorites:

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

mamawho - I really liked The Poisonwood Bible, and I've heard such good rumblings about Tom Robbins. I'll have to check him out.

MNM - anything but Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. Jitterbug Perfume is great. So is Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas.

oooh suggestions! Thanks! I'm going to my Borders account now to wishlist those.

MNM - there's also a new Gaiman book in two months. :)

my flatmate loved half asleep in frog pyjamas.

LadyGray, i think it's totally acceptable to have kids and teens books in here. i was on the verge of including The Secret Garden, (but you all know i love that book already)

my most favourite teen book was "the changeover", by margaret mahy. and i also read Blubber many times over(Judy Blume). And almost everything by Robin Klein. particulatly "people might hear you" and the penny pollard diaries. at least, the first few.

important kids' books, to me, were The Church Mice books (graeme oakley), Joan Aiken's "A Necklace of Raindrops" story collection, anything by Jan Pienkowski, and Maurice Sendak's "Outside over there". Fabulous.

And of course, Roald Dahl, who had enough poisons, potions, villains, peculiarities, weirdos and malcontents to keep a child happy for decades. Even his short stories for adults are twisted and peculiar. Love him.

Ah yes, The Graveyard Book! I'd love another American Gods book. Anansi Boys was great, and I love the idea of old gods spawning children with latent talents.

Handmaid's Tale - Margret Atwood
Gate to Womens Country - Sherri S Tepper
Robert Heinlen
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Connie Willis (Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, etc.)

I forgot Terry Pratchett -- anything by him, but the Discworld books are the finest in the English language. Plan to use them to help civilize my son. Anyone else love Pratchett?

If we're doing kids books too...

Narnia (series) CS Lewis
Little House on the Prarie (series)
Anne of Green Gables
Behind the Attic Wall
Island of the blue Dolphins

mamawho - I actually like Fierce Invalids - it took about three readings to get there, but to me Tom Robbins is worth it.

My husband (boyfriend at the time) gave me a first edition signed "Still Life" for my 30th birthday. That's when I knew for sure he was in love with me.

I used to keep an extra copy of whatever TR novel I was rereading at the time just in case I saw somebody at a coffeee shop that looked like they's appreciate it. But that was back before I gave up cool.

wookie - I think I must have read Island of the Blue Dolphins fifty times when I was a kid.

The Girl Who Lived on the Ferris Wheel was another good one. Made me realize that what my parents were doing wasn't right - or normal.

T-Rex...love Terry Pratchett ever since I read 'Good Omens'. I just finished "The Hogfather" a few months ago. I have to try to find out what happens to Rincewind...the last book I read with him in it, he disappeared into another plane.

Sadly, Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I love Good Omens. Other Pratchett books are on my to-read list.

FolCat - I finally got through Fierce Invalids, and came to enjoy it. I don't think it's a good starting point, however. I have given so many copies of Robbins' away to people who I thought would like them. In another life, I want to be the Genius Waitress.

Roald Dahl's adult stories are tasty. Find a quiet corner and nestle in with The Roald Dahl Omnibus. It's all of them.

I should add The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I thought it would be fluff, but it's fantastic.

Whatever y'all end up doing...do NOT read "The Time Traveler's Wife". It's not a bad book, but I could kill Ellie for not warning me about it when she loaned it to me. Don't read if you're having bad PMS. I was WEEPING at the end, people. Weeping. And I'm not the crying type.

I have some books that I read again and again because they're so wonderful. Five are:

The Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins
The Ancestor's Tale - Richard Dawkins
The Harry Potter Series - JR Rowling (ok, that's cheating)

Do comics count? The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman is fantabulous. I have Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1&2. They're huge, leatherbound, and all the art and lettering has been retouched so that it really matched the author's and artists' vision. They're things of beauty.

mamawho - gah! I have to wait for Christmas for my second volume of Sandman...And the box holding my Vol. 1 got damaged in the move. Grrrr.

T-Rex - I love the Stephanie Plum books, but should she choose Ranger or Morelli (or is it even possible to choose)?

Also, what do you think of the Twilight books? I only recently heard about them and then found out they are geared to teens. I know a lot of adults liked Harry Potter, but I never was able to get into them. And if you haven't read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, you have to check them out. If ever there was a perfect man (and no, they really aren't bodice-ripper, romance types of books, though there is a fair amount of sex).

Oooh Mamawho - Roald Dahl makes me happy. I just love him.

I just read Twilight the other night to see what the fuss was about, and no offense to any fans, but boy did I hate that book. In my opinion it was poorly written, with precious little characterization or plot development, and the central relationship makes me crazy annoyed.

I realize this book has sold many, many copies, so I may be in the minority on this issue. And it was a fast read, I finished it in like, two hours.

Mine are:

The Neverending Story - Michael Ende
Eight Cousins - Louisa May Alcott
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Galapagos - Kurt Vonnegut
A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett
War and Peace - Tolstoy
The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

Yes, stopping is the hardest part!

I also love Roald Dahl.

Really, I'm going to go pack in a moment -

Vonnegut fans - have you read Armadeddon in Retrospect yet? It was released posthumously - it's somewhat like Man Without a Country. Good stuff.

Tolkien's Rings books and The Silmarillion

The late Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time

Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books (especially the Second Chronicles)

Anything by John Ringo (just finished his latest, The Last Centurion)

Wookie--I recently read Surfacing by Margaret Atwood and I think I liked it, though it really was a bit bizarre. How are her other books?

I'll have to add some of these books to my reading list. Thanks, guys!

Oh yeah, and I, too, thought The Secret Life of Bees would be fluff, but it was great. And The Poisonwood Bible. Great, too.

mamawho, I will have to go pick that one up. Although my love for all things Vonnegut is waning a bit lately. His books don't speak to me now the same way they used to. But I will still read it.

I love Margaret Atwood's books, all but Alias Grace and the Handmaid's Tale. I think they're fantastic and would recommend them. I also like Carol Shields, who is another Canadian woman writer who has a similiar style, I think, though no sci-fi books.

Am I the only person here who likes their fiction in the form of trashy romance novels? Particularly the historical, regency type ones or the bodice rippers? 'Cause I really do.

But, if we're talking about non-trashy romance novel fiction that I reread every so often, then The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams and pretty much everything by Jules Verne are on my downstairs bookshelf (Mr. S won't keep the trashy novels downstairs for the world to see--they're in the bedroom hidden away). And the Iliad and Odyssey are favorites. Ovid's Metamorphoses is also a favorite.

And I read a LOT of non-fiction. Recently I've read Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz, Rapture Ready by Daniel Radosh, The Taste of Sweet by Joanne Chen, Slavery by Another Name by Douglas Blackmon, and just about any history of science/biography of important scientists types of books I can get my hands on. And when I'm bored and haven't gotten to the library recently, I read my copy of McGee's On Food and Cooking.

Five desert island books for me:

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
Henry Thoreau's Walden
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

1. 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. American Theocracy - Kevin Phillips
3. The Ice Beneath You - Christian Bauman
4. The Key - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
5. Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison

I think that would be my top five. It's hard though.

Yeah, Terry Pratchett, one of the greatest brains on the planet attacked by prions. Puts to lie the reseach saying that people with a good imagination are less likely to get Alzheimers.

Twilight is crap. It wishes it were Outlander. But I couldn't get into book 2, where suddenly it's back to the future. I loved Twilight, though, just in a relative, not good as Outlander, kind of way.

HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE!!! Philosophy to live life by. Have used the idea of the SEP field to train people at work. Actually gave them the section to read...

Margaret Atwood is way too serious. I still think that Handmaid's Tale is coming true, just way more slo-mo than we thought it might.

T-Rex - keep going w/book 2 of Outlander. It gets back into the past and some really great situations. And can you guess which hunky red-headed Scot Pie 2 is named after? Hee!

KS - you should try Outlander if you like historical romances. Much of it takes place in 18th century Scotland and post WWII England. As I said, it's not traditional bodice-ripper stuff, but highly satisfying.

JTC - Moby Dick and Walden are both on my to-read list! I tried MD a long time ago, and got bogged down in the whale chapter. I probably should have forced myself to get through it. On a related note to Walden, have you heard of a book called "The Outermost House"? I believe the author's name is Harry Beston. Anyway, it sounded like a good companion book to "Walden".

Sadie - I *hearted* 100 Years! As soon as I was done, I immediately flipped back to the beginning and read it again. One of my favorite scenes in any book ever is in that one.

KS - I think I've read everything that Julie Garwood has written, and enjoyed every bit of it.

I loved Confederates in the Attic, too.

Atwood is ... a writer that you either love or hate, from what I can tell. You either "get" her characters or loathe them. I really liked Handmaids Tale and Alias Grace, was lukewarm on Orynx and Crake, but hated her Edible Woman and some of her others.

My suggestion for Atwood is to pick up some of her short stories, or try the ones I hated... if I didn't like the ones you liked, then maybe we just have opposite Atwood tastes.

Neal Stephenson and Tolkien make my top ten, but not quite my top five. I can never find Stephenson at used book stores, which makes me very sad.

For all you folks who like historical fiction and/or magic-type stuff, Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is awesome. Her collection of short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, is wonderful as well.

How on earth did I leave 100 Years of Solitude off my list?! I also love Garcia Marquez's short stories.

MNM, which whale chapter?

mamawho, I loved Jonathan Strange.

I was disappointed with the ending, though, because it kind of just stopped and I didn't want it to. And I really wanted to know what happened to his wife and some of the other characters.

I haven't read the Ladies of Grace Adieu.

JTC - It was so long ago, all I remember is that there was a section seemingly devoted to just describing the classifications of whales and whatnot. I pretty much gave up after that. The edition I was reading was very old...I had gotten it from a used bookstore, so it is likely that a newer addition may have not included that passage.

MNM - oh, it's still in there. I think JTC is being good-naturedly facetious. The whole damned book is a big whale chapter. I, however, love Moby Dick.

JTC- I could go on and on about how Thoreau was a fake who can take a flying f*ck at a rolling donut but you're entitled to your opinions.

Books that have changed my life (I've read other books by these authors but these books were the first)

Welcome to the Monkey House- Kurt Vonnegut
Skinny Legs and All- Tom Robbins
Alas Babylon- Pat Frank
Anne of Green Gable- LM Montgomery (any one read her collection of ghost stories? Creeped my tween shit out)
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
Dune- Frank Herbert

There are more but these writers come to mind whenever I'm at a bookstore.

MNM, it was a joke, as mamawho said. Nearly every chapter in the book is a whale chapter. ;)

The desultory discourses on whales and whaling practices are part of what make the book so fascinating to me.

MttM, sure Thoreau was eating dinners at the Emersons' home, etc. But I like his writing. He's a great American prose stylist, and he expresses grand ideas. It isn't at all important to me whether he actually lived exactly what he wrote about.

Also, MNM, I'd recommend the Norton edition of Moby-Dick. It's handy to have the annotations, especially for those of us who aren't steeped in biblical narratives.

well in that case I'm getting that edition and reading it! I didn't appreciate it then, but I think I'll feel differently now.

I can't remember many of the titles of the books that I have read.

Diary of a Mad Housewife by ??
Letters to Judy by Judy Blume I also read something similar to Diary of a Mad Housewife that she wrote and the two books are kind of merged in my memory

I recently started reading Young Adult fiction because when I was a young adult I read a shit load of romance novels and occasionally Dean Koontz or a similar author.

I just finished reading the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer. The first book Twilight has been made into a movie that opens this December. I also recently read The Last Unicorn.

The only books that I think I reread are Clive Barker's Everville and Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon. Both are SciFi/Fantasy/Horror that lead me to believe there is more to the world than what most people commonly think even if it is not always good.

Megan, I was the same way as a kid. I used to love Dean Koontz and Stephen King. So I never read any of the "classic" t(w)een books. For instance, I've never read a single thing by Judy Blume. I probably should read at least something by her.

Oh, sad. I used to love to read books. And now my brain and time are gone, all gone.
All hail to Terry Pratchett, however. When I have had Enough I love sitting in bed with a Terry Pratchett book until I feel better.
And a friend recently reading Bulgakov's _The Master and Margarita_ reminded me of how much I loved it - it was the only book I took with me on a many-months long overseas stay of indeterminate direction, back long ago.

My latest favorites are anything by Octavia Butler (feminist sci-fi, what's not to love?) and Ender's Game (just reread it when I gave it to SBT#1). I've read A Wrinkle in Time about 20 times.

I am also a fan of the fluffy lit - Stephanie Plum (I just saw that #14 just came out), vampires, Elizabeth George and Elizabeth Peters (the first 4 Peabody books rock!), Martha Grimes...on and on...they aren't the most important but they make me happy.

Being Good - Nick Hornby
Blind Assassin - Margret Atwood
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
Emily of New Moon - LM Montgomery

Behind the Attic Wall - scared the crap out of me when I was a kid in 4th grade. Wasn't the doll abused or something?

T-Rex, Pratchett is big in our house. Starting from when my brother was given a copy of "Pyramids" in about 1990 because the giver "liked the cover". He read it and laughed his arse off, gave it to me, i laughed my arse off. I own every book in the series up to The Fifth Elephant, because frankly, i felt they were getting a bit repetitive and lame. They lacked the depth and immersion of the earlier ones, just weren't as inspired. Came out each year in time for Christmas and all that.... turned into a big franchise. The last good one was Feet of Clay - although The Last Continent is still good-ish. Feet of Clay was great though. I really love the Death character, he's wonderful.

I've stood in many queues having them signed too... i asked him once to draw me the "Death of Rats", (because i like getting autographs with a drawing of a mouse with it, i collected these for a while), and he did. It's inside my copy of Masquerade. Many of the others are just signed, though. And i have a plethora of supporting documentation - Josh Kirby's art folio, nanny ogg's cookbook, science of the discworld, streets of ankh-morpork... discworld map... i have the graphic novel of Mort as well.

Someone back there mentioned the little Princess - I also loved that book. Frances Hodgson Burnett was very important to me. :)

Douglas Adams i loved also. I think i was losing interest in Hitchhikers after the third book. But then I just adored Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Really liked Good Omens, Neil Gaiman was one of my ex-boyfriends' favourite dude ever (ok, second favourite after Alan Moore), and I really liked the *dark* he added to Pratchett's usual style. Also liked how Pratchett kept it, sort of, light. Hence that bizarre photo of them together, I guess.

Bol - have you read Long, Dark Tea Time of the Soul? It's the sequel to Dirk Gently's. I haven't read those in years.

i'm pretty sure i have - such a long time ago though, so i can't really remember where one stops and the other starts.

Favorite books that I can read over and over:

Anything by Margaret Atwood - Blind Assassin and Edible Women in particular.
Bastard Out of Carolina (Sadie, I was so happy to see someone else loves this book.
Anything by David Sedaris - Barrel Fever being my favorite.
Favorite since I was a kid - To Kill a Mockingbird
Calvin Trillin's books - good vacation books
Any Jane Austen when I'm down and need an old friend.
Sorry - that was more than five.

Now all i have to do is buy all these books, and i can get some much-needed thinking into my stupefied mummy-brain. Sweet. Cos i am a bit scared i'm turning into a bogan. And without those little "bio" boxes, i don't know where else to turn for decent book recommendations. At least, from, like, people i know can read and have taste and opinions and stuff. :)

This is a nifty website, and comes highly recommended.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE/WWW/WEBPAGES/homepage.php

They ship books worldwide for free - yes, Bol, even to Australia. :)

I love to read, but these days I mostly read brain candy books. A lot of scifi, mainly. But not horrible scifi, because that makes me angry. Just not great literature. Whatever that means. I'm also perpetually in the midst of a mystery series. Right now it's Donna Leon's series about a detective in Venice. I like them because they're more ethically nuanced than most mystery series.

floor pie - I love Sarah Vowell. Love, love, love. Assassination Vacation is good, but my favorite is The Partly Cloudy Patriot. I highly recommend it for anyone feeling an ambivalent sort of love for the US these days.

mightyninjamom and mamawho - I already have a copy of the new Gaiman book! I know a librarian, and she got a prerelease copy for me at her librarian convention!

mightyninjamom - I really liked The Time Traveler's Wife, but also ended up in tears. And I'm not a big crier.

DonnaKat, I very much enjoy Jasper Fforde's whole Eyre series. They crack me up.

MttM and Leighbie - I never got into Anne of Green Gables, but I loved Emily of New Moon. I probably read those books thirty times each between the ages of eight and twelve.

Joe Mama - I also love Octavia Butler.

I also enjoy Pratchett's books, although they do get a bit repetitive after a certain number.

I like Margaret Atwood, but only some of her stuff. Yes to Handmaid's Tale, no no no to Oryx and Crake.

And I deeply loved Roald Dahl as a kid, especially Matilda, but I stumbled upon one of his collections of adult stories when I was maybe nine or ten, and they gave me nightmares for years, so I stay away from him now. Just thinking about that is giving me the willies.

Julia - No spoilers! No spoilers! And I have some big time book envy going on right now that you got your hands on the new Gaiman already!

Has anyone read any Joyce Carol Oates? I've read several of her short stories and they are creepy as hell. I don't know that I could withstand reading the suffering her characters go through in a full length book.

MNM, get We Were the Mulvaneys it's an awesome book that almost made my 5.

JTC- Believe me, I tried to read Walden and I really tried to like it. But his writing style just didn't work for me.

Did you know that his mom packed his lunch and walked it to him every day?

Sorry I'm late to the party. I love this question. I think it's been on here before, but even if so, lots of new people, and the rest of us have had time to read more books. Well, not me, but here it goes

Demian by Hermann Hesse.
Hokey ending, but insightful at the beginning

Jude the Obscure
I remember it powerfully changing my ideas about religion. But I must confess, It's time for a re-read

The Inner Male by Herb Goldberg
One central message is that even if you aren't going the sensitive male route, it is still vital to be emotionally literate.

1984 by Orwell
OK, most of us read this in high school, but the political situations outlined by that book keep reappearing, thanks in part to GWB.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
Scandalous for its time, its candid look into the violent underpinnings of male-female relationships caused it to be banned as obscene in Britain after its abortive publication in 1917.

I was really forced me to look more carefully at my own. I saw in myself some of the negative traits of Hermione Roddice, who used high cultural standards as a way controlling and dominating her social circle. If you thought Frasier Crane was bad...

Very late to the party...but the link's on the front page so what the heck.

As I've said countless times here before, reading for work saps my love of reading for pleasure. So I'm not as well read as I'd like to be. But here are a few faves.

Princes Bride - William Goldman. Every bit as charming as the movie, but better.

Journey to Ixtlan - Carlos Castaneda

The Alchemist - Paulo Cohelo. Was given to me by a friend during a dark period as a way to lift me up.

Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. Who says modern pop literature can't be trippy, mind bending fun too?

MNM and Mamawho...please allow me to name drop for just a second. For a brief period of time, I had the pleasure of working with Gaiman. So far it has been one of my professional highlights. He is not only incredibly intelligent, but a wonderful and engaging person.

DGB - you may be the only person I know who read Time Traveler's Wife who doesn't admit to crying at the end.

Also, *soooo* jealous that you've met Neil Gaiman! Everything I've read about him points to the same conclusion that you've just posted. It's just as well that I never meet him, because I'd be a blushing, stammering fangirl.

My secret wish is to be the heroine in one of his stories.

Consider me a heartless beast, MNM, cause not only did I not cry at the end of Time Traveler's Wife I thought it was um, not very good, and gave it to my Grandma cause I thought she'd like it more.

Also, I hate Neil Gaiman's books.

I think I might not have any friends here anymore. I am the wet blanket of this thread.

Sweet Jesus on a cracker, that is so not fair DGB. You're totally forgiven for name-dropping.

I'm an obsessive, addicted, compulsive reader, so narrowing my important books down to five is painful. But here are a few off the top of my head that I would consider life-changing or paradigm-shifting:

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
Watership Down by Richard Adams
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
The Alphabet and the Goddess by Leonard Shlain
The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty
...

Ha! "A few." I knew I shouldn't even start with this list. There's like twenty more I didn't even get to.

Gah. And now it looks like I only read sci-fi. Believe me when I say there's plenty of Twain and Steinbeck and Rushdie and Palahniuk on my shelves, too.

mcglory - it takes all kinds, no? I didn't actually like TTW...I didn't think it was bad, but it's not my type of book.

Not liking Neil Gaiman is understandable, if that's not your type of book as well. Don't worry about being a wet blanket!

atomic - have you read Haroun and the Sea of Stories? It's the only Rushdie I've ever read, but I loved it.

Here's my name dropping, I hung out with Rushdie for a day. He was cool and spent time making fun of other famous authors (ie his friends).

Glad you still like me MNM. The problem for me is that Gaiman should be my kind of book, since I LOVE fairy tales and especially adult fairy tales. I just find his lead characters to always be woefully underdeveloped, interesting only by virtue of what happens to them and who they meet, but not interesting in and of themselves. It's the same issues I had with Twilight.

MNM: I did, and loved it. I think Shalimar the Clown is my favorite of his, so far. I still need to read the Satanic Verses though. McGlory, that's extremely cool. He's always come across as having a really sharp wit in interviews.

mcglory - see? this is why i heart you, despite your anti-Gaiman stance...you've met Salman Rushdie and have a cool story about him (I'd read somewhere he was a pompous jerk) and you love fairy tales!

I started collecting fairy tales when I was in my early twenties, so my book collection skews toward the fantastic.

You know, you bring up a good point about Gaiman's characters...but I think that is why I actually like them. They are as dull and boring as I am. I've always enjoyed the fallout (in a book) when a character who is just going about their business is suddenly forced to believe in something they otherwise wouldn't.

Bah, you are not dull and boring. But I see your point, a lot of people argue that those cipher characters allow readers to project themselves and their own thoughts into the book.

I wrote a play about a man who meets Alice (from Wonderland) in the supermarket (in the cracker aisle) and though he originally thinks she's crazy comes to believe that she really is Alice. He is very unhappy and without direction in his own life and at the end of the play "sees" the White Rabbit and follows him out the door of the theatre. It's up to you to decide whether he really sees him or not.

COOL!!!! Is there any way I can read it?

and thanks for saying I'm not dull and boring. And I totally project myself into books.

Sure, I am flattered you ask. I will figure out where it is on my computer and email it to you. :)

MNM...I said I read Time Traveller's Wife. I didn't say if I cried or not. I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Atomic...I almost put Ender's Game on my list. But since I just read it for the first time a few months ago, I didn't feel like I should. That's some good readin'.

If I had to drop Walden because it isn't fiction, my fifth book would be Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. I highly recommend that book, which is about so much more than Vietnam.

p.s. Michael, Jude the Obscure may be the most singularly depressing book I've ever read. To see social institutions and conventions combine to crush a talented person like that is so bleak. I like Hardy's novels, but I can't read them without becoming incredibly morose.

DGB: Good thing you finally got to it, or we'd have to revoke your geek license. It's required reading, along with at least one Gibson novel, and "Snow Crash."

JTC, I loved loved The Things They Carried - read it because it was being taught in a political science class I was TAing. It is certainly about more than Vietnam, but it is also useful for thinking about Vietnam at the individual human level.

oh, no! This is the latest magically posting column (I guess its better than Mount that Cardboard)

LOL - this one and Vaccines are apparently timeless ;)