What are your top 5 favorite books?

I used to hate reading and just recently gotten into reading alot..so i'm always looking for new books.

not in any order:

1. The Bell Jar-- Sylvia Plath
2. On the Road--Jack Kerouac
3. Franny and Zooey-- JD Salinger
4. The Giver-- Lois Lowry
5. Catcher in the Rye--JD Salinger

it changes sometimes..but as of right now..those are it.

I don't even think I can produce a top 10 list of my favorite books! It's like choosing which of your children you love the most! Well...I'll try it out, but the list will be missing a whole bunch.

1. Harry Potter series
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3. Flowers in the Attic
4. Inkheart
5. The Book Thief
6. I am the Messenger
7. The Giver
8. Catcher in the Rye
9. To Kill a Mockingbird
10. The Shack

we all know there's too many favorites, so i'll just throw a few out there...


the sleeping beauty series
the giver
the red tent
the birth of venus
the girl who loved tom gordon

I'ma specify this list. And add detail. Because I'm a freak.

TOP 5 OF 08: no order
1. The Bell Jar
I just plain loved following Esther along her crazy trails. And I will swear to you that I have a Joan.

2. The Red Tent
Soo cool that someone else loves it too. I never read the bible, but this biblical fiction always gets me. I loved it to pieces. Delving into the bonds of women and the feminine perspective.

3. Charlotte Sometimes
One of the best "children's books" ever. I want to meet the children who grasped these identity issues.

4. The Magic Toyshop
I just like the way Angela Carter writes. She may have a few plot holes, but everything is so erotic and sensual that I just get over it.

5. The Magnificent Ambersons
Classic. Beautifully written. And tragic. And I cried like a baby.

Oh- these are books I read this year. Hopefully you got that, but it wasn't clear.

hmm kate there are a few on here that i'm going to have to add to my tbr list!

Here's a good thread that hasn't been used in a while.

What are your top 5 books? I know it might be hard to pick a definitive top five for book crazies like ourselves! Also..do you find that your top 5 changes alot or is it pretty consistent?

Like you, Jessica, I only started reading prolifically recently. So my top 5 are going to be ones I read in the last 3 months.

In no order:
-The Giver
-The Time Traveler's Wife
-The Lovely Bones
-Water for Elephants
-The Secret of Lost Things

I love all the books you have on there..minus The Secret of Lost Things because I've never read it before. I keep hearing alot about it so I might just have to read it.

Jamie wrote: "I love all the books you have on there..minus The Secret of Lost Things because I've never read it before. I keep hearing alot about it so I might just have to read it."

It was a really good random find. Found it on the clearance table at Barnes and Noble for $6 and could not pass it over.

My top 5 favorites (in no specific order) and my reasons why....

1.The Bell Jar
It was such an amazing experience reading this book. I got lost in it like I never had before when reading a book. I could feel myself gradually become depressed and slightly mad right along with Esther. Plath is such an amazing writer to be able to achieve that kind of a response from a reader.

2.The Crimson Petal and the White
This book literally draws you in. I fell in love with every single character. My only complaint is that it ended too soon. I could have gone on reading this book for thousands of more pages.

3. Abarat/Abarat Days of Magic, Nights of War
The illustrations that the author created for this series are amazing. I'm impatiently waiting for the third book of this trilogy to come out.

4.The Brothers Karamazov
I thought the philosophy and politics discussed in this book were fascinating. This is a fantastic intellectual classic.

5.Ella Enchanted
I first read this book when I was starting middle school, and it was the first book that I ever became obsessed about. Once I started it, I literally could not put it down. I snuck in some reading during my classes, I read it at the dinner table, and I continued reading it into the night until I finished it on the very same day that I started it.

The Bell Jar is one of my favorites too!

Looks like I'm going to continue the trend of having The Giver on my list haha. Here it is:

The Giver
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Wrinkle in Time
Walk Two Moons
Appetites: Why Women Want

And since five isn't really enough room...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
A Voice in the Wind

And I'm sure I have other favorites that aren't coming to the top of my head right now.

It's hard to pick five. Ugh.

1. Harry Potter
2. Of Mice and Men
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
4. Cat's Cradle
5. Revolutionary Road (JUST finished it, and it was incredible!)

Also...
To Kill a Mockingbird
Animal Farm

1. Jitterbug Perfume
2. Bell Jar
3. Power of One
4. Don't Lets go to the Dogs Tonight
5. Owen Meany

Hmm..

1. Great Expectation
2. Capitães da Areia
3. The Catcher in the Rye
4. Tender Is the Night
5. Invisible Monsters

Five really isn't enough room!

In no particular order:
-A Fine Balance
-Memoirs of a Geisha
-My Sister's Keeper
-Drowning Ruth
-The Lovely Bones
I love this thread!! lots of great ideas for to reads!

I feel a bit embarrassed, I see the Bell Jar on everyone's list, as well as On the Road, and I haven't read either. It's hard to narrow down five so I might go a little out of bounds.
-Catcher in the Rye
-VALIS (Philip K. Dick)
-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
-Beyond Good and Evil
-And, because I feel I should add a book to the list that is nonfiction, recently read and that others have probably never heard of but should: Tania Murray Li's the Will to Improve. (Critical Sociology/ Critical Development Students)- A Riveting Read.

Here are my favorite books, in no particular order, and why I like them so much.

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It is the most amazing non-fiction book in the world. I learned a lot from it, and enjoyed myself while doing so.

2. J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set. What can I say? It's a classic. The Hobbit (which I include in the series)was one of the first books I ever loved, and LOTR was my first literary obsession.

3. Idlewild and Edenborn by Nick Sagan. This series got me really attached to the characters, and it reminds me of good times.

4. 1984 by George Orwell. If all that was in this book was the Newspeak section in the back, it would still be one of my favorite books. It's a great example of distopian literature.

5. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. This book was the first Bradbury book I ever read, and he is now one of my favorite authors. His short stories are so wicked and so perfect. They set up a world so quickly. And the endings, the twists and turns, the plot! Always incredible. I love Bradbury, and that is mostly thanks to this book.

Do any of you find that your top 5 books change frequently?

Yes, mine do. Well... sorta. Harry Potter will always be in my top 5 books, but the rest of them change occasionally. I'll find new books to love, or I'll reread an old one and find that it impacts me differently than when I first read it.

I feel like mine do sometimes. It's just so hard because I never want to "bump" any of them off my top 5..but I just find new books I love just as much.

Mine don't really. They're pretty established... I can't imagine reading a better book that To Kill a Mockingbird, or loving a book more than A Wrinkle in Time or Walk Two Moons (overdue for a reread, now that I think of it).

Somewhat. Harry Potter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Of Mice and Men tend to stay up there. The others change... To Kill a Mockingbird should have been on there lol. Animal Farm is often up there as well.

Hmmm... I may have to read A Wrinkle in Time. I've heard such good things about it.