It’s nice that it’s nice that have featured my bookshelf
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If you’d like to know my five favourite books, have a look at this piece on It’s Nice That, which features exactly that.
The ones I chose were somewhat arbitrary. If I had decided to really think about it and give a weighted points allocation based on longevity, style, ideas, presentation etc. I’d never have got back to the nice people at INT.
So those five were selected, but many others were left out, for example:
The Song Of Ice And Fire saga.
Adventures In The Screen Trade
The Biographical Dictionary Of Film.
But I do like to learn from this blog, so what are your favourite books? Classics, pulp fiction, novels, cook books, instruction manuals, porn and those books you used to find by the till at Borders all welcome.
‘The Master and Margarita.’ Mikhail Bulgakov.
‘The Third Policeman.’ Flann O’Brien.
‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ Michael Chabon.
‘Empire’ Niall Ferguson.
‘The World as Will and Representation’ Arthur Schopenhauer.
‘If This Is A Man’ Primo Levi.
And probably Catch 22 and most of Hemmingway too, I guess.
Nothing too cultured for me.
Dean Koontz: Life Expectancy.
Stephen King: 11. 22. 63.
James Herbert: Rats.
Richard Laymon: The Woods Are Dark.
and so on. Basically anything that scares the shit out of me. Or drags me into another world. I suppose most psyches would call that ‘escapsim’.
Read my novel. It’s right up your street.
I love a bit of Stephen King but would find it hard to choose one in particular. It, maybe. Or Misery.
Just re-read Catch-22 myself. I always find Slaughterhouse 5 worth going back to. Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle was fantastic reading, particularly if you have even the slightest interest in London’s history.
I really like ‘wine: a life uncorked’ as well, such a pleasurable read
‘The Great Gatsby’. Oh, and ‘The Great Gatsby’.
More of a TV watcher than a reader but…
“The Third Policeman” Flann O’Brien
“Dubliners” James Joyce
“Monte Cassino” Sven Hassel
It’s as hard as listing favourite albums or films. Ones that spring to mind as unreserved recommendations:
Paul Theroux – My Other Life
Evelyn Waugh – Brideshead Revisited
John Updike – the Rabbit books
Robertson Davies – the Cornish trilogy
Alasdair Gray – Lanark
Magnus Mills – The Restraint of Beasts
Pat Barker – Regeneration
And recently:
Jennifer Egan – A Visit From the Goon Squad
Thanks for all these excellent recommendations.
Hi Ben.
Like you, my actual favourites change all the time. But here are some that spring to mind, all brilliant in their own way:
-A Visit From The Goon Squad as mentioned by Neil, above, is as good as everyone says it is.
-Jay-Z’s Decoded
-Opposed Positions by Gwendoline Riley
-The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
-Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? – Jeannette Winterstone
-The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
-The Road by Cormac McCarthy (tough going if you’re a parent)
-Anything by JM Coetzee, especially Disgrace
-If you have young kids, Awesome Man by Michael Chabon is the best kids’ book I’ve ever come across
The Secret History by Donna Tart
Shantarum by Gregory David Roberts
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
The girl with the dragon tattoo
All pretty bestsellery/ mainstream, but sometimes I just fancy a well-crafted, absorbing read.
calvin & hobbes – everything ever written by bill watterson
Ah, The Secret History – brilliant book. Good shout mumble.
I don’t keep that many books. I tend to have a clear out every now and again, but i have a section on my bookshelf for my top 10 that never leave
Iain Banks – Wasp Factory
Michael Chambon – Kavalier and Clay
Michael Marshall Smith – Spares
Michael Marshall Smith – Only Forward
Graham Greene – Our man in Havana
Willaim Boyd – Any human heart
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse 5
John Kennedy Toole – Confederacy of Dunces
Joseph Heller – Catch 22
Joseph Heller Something Happened
Most are resonably well known, the aim is oneday to write something that might be able to live up there with them but it is unlikely