Although I've been having a very good time going through everyone's book lists, I'm lazy at my core. I have a little group project I'd like to create, but I want to make you guys do some work.

I'd like you to post your personal, current Top 10 books as a response to this post. You can define "Top 10" with fair creativity, but they ought to be books you've reviewed or at least rated with 5 stars. It can be any mix of books you love, books you think everyone should read, books that affected your life, or just books that kept you happy on long plane trips. You don't need to explain or justify your choices -- that you chose them is enough.

I'll go through the list and post them to individual shelves in the group under your user name.

If enough people are interested in this, I'll also create Bottom of the Barrel -- ten books (max) that you read to the end and hated deeply, madly, and truly.

Top 10:

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay
Chocolate by Joanne Harris
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Lies of Locke Lamore by Scott Lynch
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The entire Harry Potter series, which I consider seven volumes of one work, by J.K. Rowling

The first shelves are up.

In no particular order:

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein
In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
The Plague - Albert Camus
On the Genealogy of Morals - Friedrich Nietzsche
White Noise - Don Delillo

Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg
Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey
Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in the Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot by Robert Arthur
The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies

The Great Gatsby-Fitgerald
The Brothers Karamozov-Dostoyevsky
The Open Society-Popper
The Mismeasure of Man-Gould
Henderson the Rain King-Bellow
Breakfast of Champions-Vonnegut
The Piazza Tales-Melville
Ficciones-Borges
Agee on Film-Agee
The History-Herodotus

I love readings your lists. Here's mine in no particular order. I'm sticking with just fiction:

1. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
2. MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
3. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoevsky
4. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
5. MOBY DICK by Herman Melville
6. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
7. SONG OF SOLOMON by Toni Morrison
8. UNDERWORLD by Don DeLillo
9. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
10. GO DOWN, MOSES by Faulkner

Sticking to fiction, in no particular order:

- Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
- Matthew Kneale, English Passengers
- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
- Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White
- Ian McEwan, Atonement
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
- Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Honourable mentions:
- Diana Wynne Jones, Charmed Life
- Stephen Fry, The Liar
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House
- half a dozen Guy Gavriel Kay books
- some Dostoyevsky classics, which I expect to re-enter my top-10 once I start rereading them (soon!)

Don't worry -- since everyone's list is now on a bookshelf, if anyone wants to change a book on it, let me know via message and I'll remove and replace Within Reason -- remember that bit about me being lazy.

I think we all know how arbitrary our lists are - how can we pick just ten out of all our favorites? There's bound to be a bit of dissatisfaction in having to limit ourselves.

But you said "personal, current" top ten, and so I think of this as just a snapshot of how I'm feeling today about my books.

I included different age groups and genres in my list, but it might be fun to do top ten lists for specific types of books, such as mysteries, or non-fiction. Then it would be easier to compare with everyone else's lists.

In no particular order. This list is very much "current," as some of these would go, others be added, depending on my mood. But this is it, as of a hazy Wednesday afternoon in the summer:

- Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
- Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
- Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
- Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca
- Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan (although, damn, that was close, and I could just as easily pick two others of his books: Tigana or the Sarantine Mosaic.)
- Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier
- Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
- Charlotte Bronte, Vilette
- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Top ten from my profile, and I'm sticking to them, in no particular order...

Walden-Thoreau
American Gods-Neil Gaiman
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle-Haruki Murakami
Collected Fictions-Borges
Jane Eyre-C. Bronte
The Landmark Thucydides-Strassler translation
All The Pretty Horses-Cormac McCarthy
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas-Hunter Thompson
Alice in Wonderland-Lewis Carroll
The Tempest-Shakespeare

Dear, Lovely people -- the discussion is wonderful, but I'm moving it to its own thread so I can find the book lists people are posting.

Wuthering Heights
The Wings of the Dove
The Little Prince
Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales
The House of Mirth
Daniel Deronda
I Capture the Castle
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Tess of the D'Ubervilles
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

It seems that I cannot count and I put up 11 books. I yanked off James' Portrait of a Lady, though it pains me. Okay, I'm now within the rules again.

In no particular order, subject to vast changes:

1. The Book of The New Sun-Gene Wolfe
2. All The Pretty Horses-Cormac McCarthy
3. Little, Big- John Crowley
4. David Copperfield- Charles Dickens
5. The Brothers Karamazov-Dostoevsky
6. The Civil War: A narrative- Shelby Foote
7. The Great War & Modern Memory- Paul Fussell
8. Collected Poems-Ted Hughes
9. Selected Poems-Seamus Heaney
10. Lord of The Rings-Tolkien

Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence • Bantock, Nick

The Guns of August • Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? • Dick, Philip K.

Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics • Zukav, Gary

The Count of Monte Cristo • Dumas, Alexandre

Lonesome Dove • McMurtry, Larry

Dune • Herbert, Frank

The Poisonwood Bible • Kingsolver, Barbara

Cat's Cradle • Vonnegut, Kurt

The History of Love: A Novel • Krauss, Nicole

INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace
BLEAK HOUSE by Charles Dickens
WISE CHILDREN by Angela Carter
The Ripley Series by Patricia Highsmith
HOLLYWOOD FROM VIETNAM TO REAGAN by Robin Wood
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole
The Barchester books by Anthony Trollope
THE COMPLETE CALVIN AND HOBBES by Bill Watterson
THE COMPLETE THE FAR SIDE by Gary Larson
THE HORSE'S MOUTH by Joyce Cary

The books without which life cannot be sustained. Others come and go, but these are the basic essentials.

My list is, unsurprisingly, rather full of action and escapist literature, with only three really, you know, thinky-type books. But I'm a plebeian. I also had to leave out comics, plays, and short story collections, which I consider too different, but which meant leaving out some of my favorite authors (Hammett, Claremont). Number 1 is my favorite of all time, but the rest are in no particular order (and, you know, today's favorites).

1. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- Farewell My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- Devil In a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
- 1984 by George Orwell
- All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
- Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
- Captain From Castile by Samuel Shellabarger

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Moominpapa at Sea - Tove Jansson
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Till We Have Faces - CS Lewis
The Infinity Concerto - Greg Bear
Towers in the Mist - Elizabeth Goudge
A Hat Made of Sky - Terry Pratchett
The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Wm Shakespeare

I'm going with Jackie's comment about "this is how I feel today", although you can count on the Twain being a constant.)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick
God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, jr.
Blackburn by Bradley Denton
The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost (duh)
Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel
The Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley
Best Short Stories of Jack London by Jack London (duh, again)
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
The Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin

I thought I did this somewhere?

Count of Monte Cristo
War and Peace - Tolstoy
The Amber Chronicles - Roger Zelazny
The House of Niccolo and The Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Last Call - Tim Powers
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrid Undset
Gormenghast Vol 1 and 2 - Mervin Peake
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami

Gosh, it's so fluid. My top ten today might be completely different tomorrow. I'll give this a shot.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison

3. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

4. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

5. The Geography of Love by Glenda Burgess (I got an advance copy and was blown away.)

6. Hiroshima by John Hersey

7. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

8. King of Morning, Queen of Day by Ian McDonald

9. Bellwether by Connie Willis

10. Eifelheim by Michael Flynn

The top two are cast in stone. The rest are subject to change.

If we can add honorable mentions then I'm honorably mentioning:

Huckleberry Finn-Twain
Ideas and Opinions-Einstein
The Long Goodbye-Chandler
The Killer Inside Me-Thompson
Complete Stories-Babel

American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
The Pillars of Hercules by Paul Theroux
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nuns and Soldiers by Iris Murdoch
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Cerebus: Church & State by Dave Sim and Gerhard
American Tabloid by James Ellroy

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Love Poems - Pablo Neruda
Pale Fire - Nabokov
Lolita - Nabokov
The Power of One - Bryce Courtnay
The Notebook - (N. Sparks) Yeah, I know, I know...
The Good Earth - Buck
The Complete Far Side - Gary Larson
The Prophet - Gibran
One Hundred years of Solitutde - GGM

in no order:

Cyrano de Bergerac
Sonnets from the Portuguese
The Last Lonely Saturday by Jordan Crane
The Essays by Francis Bacon
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Notes from Underground
Einstein's Dreams
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
The complete works of Ben Franklin
Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

You know with my reading list, this was hard. Many came from my teen years, including Bacon and Franklin. Crane, J.B., Underground, Dreams--were in my 30's. These were writing that made me think, laugh, cry, and changelle how I look at the world. So helped form my current value system today and the person I am. Poe? sheer enjoyment!

Honorable mentions:

THE MOSQUITO COAST by Paul Theroux
HERSELF SURPRISED by Joyce Cary
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
THE REIVERS by William Faulkner
Most of Dickens
Most of Faulkner, pretty much

Top 10 books I want to reread.

Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
The Makioka Sisters - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec
Lanark: A Life in 4 Books - Aladair Gray
Immortality - Milan Kundera
The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice - Irmtraud Morgner

An Alternate Top Ten:
Proving how mercurial/disloyal I am.
And maybe even more meaningful to me than my first list!

1. In The Fall-Jeffrey Lent
2. Fiasco-Thomas Ricks
3. War is A Force that Gives us Meaning-Chris Hedges
4. A Problem From Hell: America in The Age of Genocide-Samantha Powers
5. The Road-Cormac McCarthy
6. Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy
7. The Portable Rumi- edited, translated- Coleman Barks
8. War Music-Christopher Logue
9. Selected Writings of Emerson- Emerson
10. The Life you save may be your own- Paul Ellie

This is tough! But I've been thinking a bit about it lately because of another discussion so...

1. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
4. Thunderwith by Libby Hathorn
5. Eucalyptus by Murray Bail
6. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
7. Scatterlings by Isobelle Carmody
8. Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
9. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
10. English Passengers by Matthew Kneale

That omits a great many books that are equally worthy, and I haven't settled on a definitive list yet. I've had to exclude picture books!

Other possibles for my Top 10:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling
The Collector by John Fowles
Darkfall by Isobelle Carmody
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Polymer by Sally Rogers-Davidson
I Capture the Castle by Dodi Smith
The Army of Five Men by Shaun Hick

That's another ten right there! Oh this is too hard...

2 thumbs up on "the complete calvin and hobbes" - my 8 year-old daughter and i are reading (re-reading) it together every night before bed... GREAT SUMMER READING!!!

1. EAST OF EDEN - john steinbeck
2. THE HUMMINGBIRD'S DAUGHTER - luis alberto urrea
3. ANA KARENINA - tolstoy
4. JUSTINE - lawrence durrel
5. YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS - joyce carol oates
6. TROPIC OF CANCER - henry miller
7. SIDDHARTHA - hermann hesse
8. THE FOUNTAINHEAD - ayn rand
9. THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO - alexandre dumas
10. THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH - norton juster

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