What are your favorite and least favorites of the ones you have read?

[Dianna]

Favorites:

War and Peace
Uncle Tom's Cabin
A Tale of Two Cities
Les Miserables
Crime and Punishment

Least Favorites:

Tom Jones
Pride and Prejudice
Ivanhoe
The Idiot
The Plague

[Kate]

Dianna, I'm going to have to disagree with you on a couple.

Favorites

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
I, Robot
Foundation
Nicholas Nickelby
Pride and Prejudice
Absalom, Absaom
The Hamlet (funny Faulkner - who knew?)
Things Fall Apart
Smiley's People
Silas Marner
The Godfather

Least Favorite:
Crime and Punishment
The Green Man (one of many male mid-life crisis books on the list)
The Buddha of Suburbia
To Have and Have Not
The Piano Teacher

I'd have to say that I've either loved with a passion or hated with a fury. Perhaps that's why someone thought they should be on this list?

[Dianna]

I have just noticed that my favorite books are highly laced with history. I do love history.

Thanks for commenting on my post Kate. I noticed you hated Crime and Punishment and I was curious to know if you have read The Idiot and whether or not you liked it.

[Chloe]

Dianna, I may be biased because I have yet to read a Dostoevsky that I disliked, but I really enjoyed The Idiot. Not as strong as Crime and Punishment in story-telling, but definitely a great morality play and worth a read.

Regardless, here are my favorite/least favorite's off of the list.

Favorite:
Captain Corelli's Mandolin- Louis de Bernieres
Steppenwolf- Hermann Hesse
Stranger in a Strange Land- Robert A. Heinlein
Choke- Chuck Palahniuk
House of Leaves- Mark Z. Danielewski
God of Small Things- Arundhati Roy
Glamorama- Bret Easton Ellis
Neuromancer- William Gibson
Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
House of the Spirits- Isabel Allende

Least Favorite:
Plot Against America- Philip Roth
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich- Aleksander Sozhenitsyn
Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemmingway
All Quiet on the Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
Great Expectations- Charles Dickens
The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne

[Dianna]

Logan,
I have read Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Idiot. I liked Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov but I could not abide The Idiot. Maybe I should have come into it with the idea that it is a morality play rather than just a work of fiction. I don't know. I have not read any of your favorites except Stranger in a Strange Land, which was not one of my favorites; it was strange lol. I did not care for Great Expectations; I expected it to be better :)

Why did you not like the Scarlet Letter? It was not one of my favorites but I would not put it on the bottom of the list.

[Chloe]

The Scarlet Letter came into my life through an abysmal English teacher that I had in high school and we spent 3 months deconstructing every sentence and character nuance. I can't think of it without thinking of just how painfully boring it was. I'm sure I'm not treating it fairly and that I should probably pick it up for a second chance at some point down the road but I think I'll give it a couple more decades before I get to that point.

As for Great Expectations- I think there is something fundamentally wrong with me that forbids me from appreciating Charles Dickens. I've read nearly everything he ever wrote and just don't enjoy Dickens' style. I do have a soft spot for David Copperfield, but other than that Dickens just leaves me cold.

The favorites that I listed aren't for everybody- Bret Easton Elis can be especially lewd and gruesome (at the same time)and Danielewski's book is a massive head trip that made me fear my house for a while (I read it while living in a really rickety, really strange feeling house). I would most highly recommend Corelli's Mandolin and House of Spirits. I reread them at least every other year.

[Debbie]

It's so interesting to see the same books cropping up in both the favorites and the least favorites. I liked The Scarlet Letter, though I wouldn't call it a favorite. Dickens, though...blech! A Christmas Carol is the only one I like. The rest? Ugh.

Favorites:
Life of Pi
Memoirs of a Geisha
Cat's Eye
The Handmaid's Tale
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Color Purple
The World According to Garp
Breakfast of Champions
Slaughterhouse-Five
Cat's Cradle
A Clockwork Orange (the one with the extra chapter)
Stranger in a Strange Land
Catch-22
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Yellow Wallpaper
Little Women
Les Miserables
Wuthering Heights
A Christmas Carol
Sense & Sensibility
Pride & Prejudice
Emma
Robinson Crusoe

Least Favorites:
American Psycho
In Cold Blood
Lord of the Flies
The Catcher in the Rye
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations

[Debbie]

Oh, I forgot. The God of Small Things is on my list of favorites. The language is so beautiful and poetic that I just got lost in it.

[Alan]

I agree with Debbie's least favorites and pretty much with favorites. Haven't read Pi or God of Small Things yet; not likely to reread Little Women or Jane Austen. Franny and Zooey far outdo Catcher.

Whoever put Buddha in Suburbia on least favorite, hail! I saw it on the master list, dutifully ordered it from the library, and threw it aside in disgust. Death in Venice might make a least favorite list too. Of course, Buddenbrooks is worse.

My parents made fun of Dickens and Cooper, and although I tried to give them a chance, they were right. Gave away complete sets of both authors. Fortunately Great Expectations and Tale of Two seem to have dropped out of HS curriculum. Save me from The Giver, Silas Marner, and other HS punishments.

Like an earlier poster, I'd list favorites War and Peace, and Brothers Karamazov, also Foundation, and put The Iliad, Huckleberry Finn, Swann's Way and Thucydides up.

A lesser known book, James Salter's Light Years, isn't on most lists, but I suggest it.

[Charity]

Favorites: (so far)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Middlesex
The Secret History
Like Water for Chocolate
The Handmaid's Tale
The World According to Garp
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Bell Jar
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
The Catcher in the Rye
1984
Animal Farm
Little Women
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion

Least Favorites: (so far)

The Corrections
The Reader
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Mansfield Park


I own about 60 titles from 1001 that I have yet to read, so I'm sure that both lists will grow.

I'm currently reading Invisible Man and it has been very good so far. Is it a favorite? Too early to tell, I think.

I'm neutral on Everything is Illuminated because I've never actually finished it. I just couldn't really get into it and had to put it down (even though that is extremely rare for me). However, it has been a couple of years, so I might try to give it another go.

[Shakirah]

Oh yes Debbie, that book is truly wonderful. It touches me to the core. I read it quite a while back and forgot to update it on my shelf.

[[deleted user]]

I have a few:

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Emma by Jane Austen
Lady of Milkweed Manor by Julie Klassen

And the one I don't like:
The year my sister got lucky

[Judith]

A FEW of my favorite contemporary titles from the 1001 List (no particular order)

1.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
2.3.The Unconsoled, The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
4.5.The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
6.The Innocent, Atonement - Ian McEwan
7.The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
8.Dirk Gentry's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
9.The Cider House Rules - John Irving
10.The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
11.Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
12.The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende
13.Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
14.In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
15.To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
16.The Last Temptation of Christ - Nikos Kazantzakis
17.The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
18.The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
19.The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Eupery
20. 21. 23..Absolom, Absolom, Go Down Moses, The Sound and the Fury - Wm. Faulkner
24.Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
25.The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
26. 27.28. The House of Mirth,Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocense - Edith Wharton
29. 30.Howard's End, A Room With a View - E.M.Forster
31.The Golden Bowl - Henry James
32.The Hound of the Baskerfilles - Arthur Conan Doyle

Least favorites to be posted later, but thought I throw these out there for some reactions. I note I am listing some that have not been on anyone else' list so far.....

[Debbie]

Judith:

You have some excellent ones on your list. The Little Prince is such a lovely little book, but it made me a bit sad. As a teacher, I am very aware of some of the ways that adults suck the fun and creativity out of the children in our care, all in the name of standardization and compliance. Well, anyway...I could scream from THAT soapbox all day.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Hound of the Baskervilles are also in my favorites. I have seen the movie of A Room with a View and loved it, but I haven't read the book.

[Judith]

I know something of what you mean, Debbie, about smothering the creativity in the young. It happened to me without anyone's bad intentions being involved --- and probably the majority of others in our society. Sounds like you are trying to do otherwise in your contacts with the young. Accolades!

Read on!