Your top 10 favorite books

[stonemaybe]

I'm glad we seem to be including whole series' as one entry!!!

In no particular order:

Aubrey and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien (all 21 of them! eg Master and Commander)
Saga of the Exiles by Julian May
Northern Lights et al by Phillip Pullman
TCTC by SRD
Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Fevre Dream By GRR Martin
Trinity by Leon Uris
Tai-pan & Noble House by James Clavell
Perdido Street Station et al by China Meiville
Pern by Ann McCaffrey

[Starkin]

My top 10 Fantasy/Sci-Fi:

1. The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
2. TCTC - SRD
3. A Song of Ice & Fire series - GRR Martin
4. Hyperion Cantos series - Dan Simmons
5. The Dragonriders of Pern series - Anne McCaffrey
6. Dune Chronicles/Prequels/Legends - Herbert/Herbert/Anderson
7. The Realm of the Elderlings series - Robin Hobb
8. Lyonesse Trilogy - Jack Vance
9. Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series - Greg Keyes
10. The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

worthy mentions:
The Monarchies of God series - Paul Kearney
The Drenai novels of David Gemmell
Deathstalker series - Simon Green
The Dragonlance novels of Weis & Hickman (a guilty pleasure)
Salvatore's Drizzt novels (ditto)

General fiction:
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Animal Farm - Orwell
The Secret History - Donna Tartt

[aliantha]

I forgot about Phillip Pullman! His Dark Materials was such a cool series that I'm tempted to add it to my list (despite the movie hype right now).

But if I were going to add anything, I'd probably add The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce. I love the way he plays with the question of "is it magic or is the kid crazy?" His other books are good, too.

[A Gunslinger]

1. The Stand (Unabridged)
2. The Wounded Land
3. Wizard and Glass
4. The House With a Clock in its Walls
5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
6. Fatal Revenant
7. This Day All Gods Die
8. Godbody
9. 1984
10. Anatomy of Motive

[storm]

1. TCTC (especially the one tree)
2. Harry Potter (series)
3. Legend of Drizzt (all the drizzt books)
4. The Swan's War-Sean Russell
5. Kushiel's Dart-Jacqueline Carey
6. Farseer Books-Robin Hobb
7. LOTR
8. Belgarian- David Eddings
9. Prince of Nothing-R. Scott Bakker
10. Gap Series

Stuff i want to read:
His Dark Materials
Earthsea
The Dragonriders of Pern

[duke]

Ok, without putting much thought into it, here's my top 10 in random order.

1. Dickens - Pickwick Papers.
2. Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
3. SRD - Lord Foul's Bane
4. Golding - Lord of the Flies
5. Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
6. McCarthy - The Road
7. Lawrence - Women in Love
8. Nabokov - Lolita
9. Brett Easton Ellis - American Psycho
10. Bronte - Wuthering Heights

[matrixman]

In no particular order:

The Five Ages of the Universe / Fred Adams & Greg Laughlin
The One Tree / SRD
U2 at the End of the World / Bill Flanagan
Rendezvous With Rama / Arthur C. Clarke
Nineteen Eighty-Four / George Orwell
Flowers For Algernon / Daniel Keyes
The Secret History / Donna Tartt
Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings / Jorge Luis Borges
Broca's Brain / Carl Sagan
The Doubter's Companion / John Ralston Saul

[unicorngirl]

1. Mordant's Need
2. The Last Unicorn
3. A Canticle for Leibowitz
4. 1984
5. The City and the Stars
6. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
7. The Neverending Story
8. Hart's Hope
9. The Door Into Summer
10. Flowers for Algernon

I feel like I am leaving some books out, but these are the first 10 that come to mind.

[Orlion]

This is tough, but here it is in no particular order:

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever-Stephen R. Donaldson
The World of Null-A- A.E. VanVogt
The Republic- Plato
State of Fear- Micheal Crichton
Caves of Steel- Isaac Asimov
Paradise Lost- John Milton
The Illiad - Homer
The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahme
The War of the Worlds- H.G. Wells
Treasure Island- Robert Louis Stevenson

[Fist and Faith]

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
TCTC
Conversations With God - Neale Donald Walsch
Dune - Frank Herbert
Earthsea - Le Guin
Eknath Easwaran's introductions to his translations of the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
Gates of Fire - Steven Pressfield
The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse
Malazan - Steven Erikson
Neverness - David Zindell
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

[aliantha]

Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings / Jorge Luis Borges

Borges is awesome! He's probably my favorite Latin-American author. I had to read some of his stuff in Spanish in college, and I really enjoyed it. (Borges is another guy whose stuff would be labeled "fantasy" if he were an American writing in English. Okay, getting down off my soapbox again now....)

[krzycho]

1:The Star Diaries by Stanisław Lem
2:The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
3: LOTR
4: "Chronicles..."
5: The Wicher saga by Andrzej Sapkowski
6: Mason and Dixon- T. Pynchon
7: Catch 22- J. Heller
8:The Good Soldier Svejk- J. Hasek
9:Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
10: Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

[Mr. Broken]

1. The Stand
2. The Silmarillion
3. The Illiad
4. A Brave New World
5. The Shark Watcher's Guide (Guido Dingerkus is very under rated)
6. Dune
7. Slaughterhouse 5
8. Lysistrata
9. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
10. On the Road

[Cagliostro]

Actually, I need to own up and give my real list.

Bridges of Madison County
Superfudge - Judy Bloom



Ahh...I ran out of time at work to come up with more good'ns.

[Phantasm]

Here are the results of the Scottish jury, in no particular order ( in the style of American Idol results)

LIST*

1.Malazan series - Erikson (and I've not even read them all yet)
2.Covenant - SRD
3.Consider Phlebas - Banks
4.'Arry Potter - Rowling
5.His dark materials - Pullman
6.Riftwar, serpentwar, darkwar etc - Feist
7.Elric series - Moorcock
8.LOTR - Tolkien
9.The Hobbit - Tolkien
10.The Black magician trilogy - Canavan.

Looking back at that list, it stands out to me that there are only two "standalone" books in it. Consider Phlebas & The Hobbit - I think that must say something about how much I like those two.

I'm sure some other mentionables will pop into my overcrowded brain at some point, so I may be back with some honourable mentions at a later date.

(* - I reserve the right to amend/delete/change/fiddle about with or simply add to this list at any time)

[magickmaker17]

Hmm...I guess I'm gonna have to spend some time soon thinking about my own list, won't I?

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

ooh, to each his own, I suppose...I wasn't particularly fond of the way JK wrote DH. It read too much like something I'd read in a fanfiction before. And it bothered me the way she just seemed to be killing off characters because she didn't have any use for them any more.

[VON GAK]

Weird to see that in all the SERIOUS readers list's no one has included Jean Paul Sartre's The Road To Freedom trilogy, this was essential reading for anyone with a brain in the 60's and 70's.

[Montresor]

Weird to see that in all the SERIOUS readers list's no one has included Jean Paul Sartre's The Road To Freedom trilogy, this was essential reading for anyone with a brain in the 60's and 70's.

I only had a brain for the last two years of the '70s.

[Zenlunatic]

Well, since this is the "general literature" discussion, here are my top 10 (non sf/fantasy) books, not in order:

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
The World According to Garp - John Irving
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas - Tom Robbins
Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
1984 - George Orwell
The Good Earth - Pearl Buck
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

[Bokus]

In no particular order ...

1. TCTC - SRD
2. The Stand - King
3. Blood Music - Bear
4. Dark Tower - King
5. LOTR - Tolkien
6. Dune - Herbert
7. Dragonriders of Pern - McCaffrey
8. American Gods - Gaiman
9. Ender's Game - Card
10. Prince Ombra - MacLeish