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Posted

the book that innspired the movie the ghost and the darkness

no longer in print. True story: The man-eaters of Tsavo by LT. Colonel J. H. Patterson, D.S.O.

Posted (edited)

For novels, a three-way tie between Tess, Persuasion, and Mrs Dalloway.

And not far behind, Wuthering Heights, Possession, Between the Acts.

For plays, Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Manfred, Arcadia.

Poems and collections of poems, almost impossible to rank, but certainly in the top, pretty much all of Keats, pretty much all of Milton, Tennyson's In Memoriam, Beowulf, Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Lais of Marie de France, Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present, D.G. Rossetti's 1870 Poems, Rochester's Poems on Several Occasions, Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems, Eliot's Four Quartets, Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, Coleridge's conversation poems, Hughes' Birthday Letters, Wordsworth ca. 1802-4, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Donne's Songs and Sonnets.

Nowhere quite to put The Mabinogion, but also a favorite book. And I'd best not even go into non-fiction or I'll be up all night.

Edited by AllisonAdler
Posted

I haven't read all the books I want to read. Hence, I cannot make a list yet.

Two of the good books I've read last year have to be-

"Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns", both by Khaled Hosseini.

Right now, I'm reading "Imperial Blandings" by P.G Wodehouse, and I love it, it's hilarious.

Posted (edited)

Hammer of The Gods.

Not really, probably LOTR or The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Edited by lzfan715
Posted

Tarzan Of The Apes/Return Of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

the book that innspired the movie the ghost and the darkness

no longer in print. True story: The man-eaters of Tsavo by LT. Colonel J. H. Patterson, D.S.O.

Cool.

Have you read any of Jim Corbett's books? Man Eaters Of Kumaon or The Man Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag?

Posted

Naming just one is extremely difficult!

...but my choice would be Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter

Posted (edited)
For novels, a three-way tie between Tess, Persuasion, and Mrs Dalloway.

And not far behind, Wuthering Heights, Possession, Between the Acts.

For plays, Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Manfred, Arcadia.

Poems and collections of poems, almost impossible to rank, but certainly in the top, pretty much all of Keats, pretty much all of Milton, Tennyson's In Memoriam, Beowulf, Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Lais of Marie de France, Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Hardy's Poems of the Past and Present, D.G. Rossetti's 1870 Poems, Rochester's Poems on Several Occasions, Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems, Eliot's Four Quartets, Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns, Coleridge's conversation poems, Hughes' Birthday Letters, Wordsworth ca. 1802-4, Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Donne's Songs and Sonnets.

Nowhere quite to put The Mabinogion, but also a favorite book. And I'd best not even go into non-fiction or I'll be up all night.

Gee Whiz, Allison... are you a literature lover? :D

Love Sir Gawain, William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and Chaucer, too!

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

and I read it a really long time ago but I remember loving it…

The Wanderer - Sharon Creech

I LOVE The Book Thief! I'm going to see if I can get a grant to read it in my classroom when I teach the Holocaust. I've read it about four times now. It's definitely on my top twenty book list. It's one of the best I've read in the past year.

It's a draw between...

1984- George Orwell

Servant of The Shard- R.A. Salvatore

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency- Douglas Adams

I want to read 1984. I just read Animal Farm this semester for my student teaching. I think prior to Animal Farm, I had only read a few essays by Orwell.

I can't pick ONE favorite book. I'll list SOME favorites. :D Novels only, or we'll be here for a while. :lol:

My Antonia by Willa Cather

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

McTeague by Frank Norris

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Strivers Row, Sometimes You See it Coming, Paradise Alley, and Dreamland all by Keving Baker.

I liked the Ya-Ya Sisterhood books...they're quite interesting because they're set in a different time period and a totally different region of the US than I know.

I have some young adult books that I've read recently that I like too (have to read those if I want to be able to encourage kids to read!)

Anything by Cris Krutcher.

Hoot by Carl Haissen

Roll of thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

Speak by Lori (?) Anderson (I don't think this one is a novel)

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

The Book Thief by Marcus Zuzak

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

Criss Cross by Lynn Rae Perkins

I loved Ann Rinaldi's books when I was a teenager. Loved them!

Edited by manderlyh
Posted
It's a draw between...

1984- George Orwell

That was my favorite until I started watching it happen on TV.

War and Peace could be my fave, I'm not finished yet. I've been at it for 25 years. :(

Posted

I don't have a favorite book of all time. I don't even have a favorite author. I would be up all night, however, listing my favorite books and authors. Many books have played a role in shaping my philosophy of life. For that, the five most important authors are probably these:

Camus: The Stranger

Kafka: The Trial

Sartre: The Age of Reason

Hesse: The Glass Bead Game

Onetti: The Shipyard

Posted

And I forgot a favorite book!

(slapface smiley...oh where are you?)

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I really didn't think I was going to like it when I read it in an American Renaissance literature class last year, but I LOVE IT!

I only have it in a Norton Anthology, but I've thought of buying a nice copy that I can lug around with me easier. :P

Posted

^you'd get along well with the assoc. dean of the college of arts and sciences at my school then, Aqua. She loves Moby Dick too. I pondered dropping the class when I saw a Norton Critical Edition of Melville's short stories on the book list. :lol:

Posted
For novels, a three-way tie between Tess, Persuasion, and Mrs Dalloway.

And not far behind, Wuthering Heights, Possession, Between the Acts.

"Possession" is in my top ten as well. Reminds me of another one of my favourite novels which is also set in the Victorian era:

"The Crimson Petal and the White" by Michel Faber:

Making Queen Victoria Blush

Reviewed by David Abrams

Imagine Charles Dickens writing pornography. Imagine Queen Victoria opening those pages, then fainting away in a dead heap.

If time and circumstances had only been a little different, "Boz" might very well have written something akin to The Crimson Petal and the White. Instead, we have Michel Faber to thank for delivering the kind of novel Dickens could only dream about penning. Faber packs the pages with sex, intrigue, repressed sex, intriguing repressed sex -- the sort of things which would have made Victoria shudder on the throne. Of course, 125 years later, Faber has the freedom to put some very graphic intercourse on his pages.

Put another way, if books were bosoms, this one would be heaving.

The story -- which resurrects the ghosts of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Zola and Thomas Hardy in plot as well as essence and style -- is clotted with seamy scenes of prostitution, madness, violence, poverty and religious agony and ecstasy. At 838 pages, it attempts much, and only rarely falls short.

...

Faber's newest tale is easy enough to summarize; it's the breathtaking way he handles plot, character and language that might leave most readers speechless with admiration. The author says The Crimson Petal and the White was nearly 20 years in the making. The wait was worth it.

The multilayered story requires plenty of time and attention to properly absorb -- not an easy task in today's short-attention-span culture.

...

It's not all about sex actually. Rather it's a story about a gifted young woman trying to make her way in a paternalistic society governed by hypocrisy and double-standards. :rolleyes:

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