Top 10 Favorite Novels

I used to be a big fan of Tim Powers, but somehow I was disappointed by Declare. I think that the story might have been stronger if told in chronological order, but it still seemed less imaginative than his previous work. My favorite is still Last Call. It's a bit convoluted, but the blend of Arthurian legend, tarot cards, and Las Vegas is fun.

I think I liked how it was way out there and very different from the usual alt-history stuff. I have enjoyed others, especially The Anubis Gates.

I haven't actually read Last Call but it is on my list.

Have you read Expiration Date? Earthquake Weather is a sequel to both Last Call and Expiration Date. It doesn't matter if you read Last Call or Expiration Date first, but you should read Earthquake Weather after reading the other two books.

In no particular order:

• Neuromancer
• Tim Powers' Earthquake Trilogy and Declare
• Dune
• The Once and Future King
• Book of the New Sun
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Wolf Hall/Bring up the Bodies
• American Gods
• Cryptonomicon
• Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

There are a bunch that aren't top ten that are quite good and have left their mark on me in some way.. The Inspector O series. Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Moby Dick.

I got bored halfway through Zen. BBC is running Wolfhall as a tv drama atm, its pretty good, might give it a read at some point. Also good to see some love for the New Sun.

By coincidence, I tried to re-read Zen last year, and I too got bored somewhere around the halfway point.

Good call on Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Great novel, Haddon's follow up A Spot of Bother is also good but nothing can top the original. Ender's Game, Gateway, and Forever War are classic sci-fi and on my short list too. The author's other novels are pretty good too but those are the best. Too bad Ender's Game the movie was a colossal fuck up. I tried to get into the post-Dune novels but never really liked any of them aside from the initial one.

I own a couple of Stephenson's books, namely Cryptonomicon and something else, and he tells a good story. But I think he is kind a mess as a writer in the same sense Stephen King is a mess as a writer. Cryto was a great book but goddamn did it have excess bloat in it and ridiculous asides.

I know I'm in the minority here but aside from the historical groundbreaking aspect I fucking can't stand reading Tolkein novels. Maybe I'm not old enough or something but I didn't give a shit about the Elvish word for something or other, yada yada. The language was just too archaic for me to get into. Fantasy wise GRRM is a great writer and his short stories, both volumes of Dreamsongs, have some fantastic stuff in it and deserve more praise. A Song for Lya is a classic. Stephen Erickson is another favorite of mine in fantasy. Not a great writer on his own, but his Malazan Book of the Fallen is a fantastic story aside from some of the late mid books where he meanders too much. His partner in the universe, Ian Esslemont, adds to the world but isn't quite as good. Crimson Guard is the best he wrote story wise. Jordan's Wheel of Time series I feel is a classic world builder. Jordan couldn't write women for shit, but he made a fascinating world. I like Patrick Rothfuss alot so far too, but its hard to tell based on only two novels in a series. Glen Cook is another favorite, Darkwar and the Black Company novels are fun. I read the first book of the Magician's trilogy and hated it - the main character was just too reprehensible for me to bother with wanting to spend more time on.

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky...ugh, tried reading both of them and it was just too old. I didn't care after 50 pages and thats all the time I will give a novel - give me Harry Potter or Hunger Games even. I love Bukowski though, his two books Women and Ham on Rye are fantastic. Just make sure you have a girlfriend or wife putting out if you're reading Women, the book is pretty much the author's biography of hard drinking and sleeping with anything.

Another shout out for a dystopian future trilogy, Pierce Brown and Red Rising/Golden Son are must reads. Kinda like Hunger Games except more sci-fi and more brutal. I'm a fan of the genre generally.

1. All the good Vonnegut novels... Slaughterhouse 5 is a classic
2. Patrick O'Brian... Master and Commander books
3. Catch-22 by Heller
4. Confederacy of Dunces O' Toole
5. Basketball diaries Jim Carroll
6. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Kesey also a classic imo.
7. The best 5 Mark Twain novels.... my favorite author.... by far.

Most of the fantasy with 9 volume novels and authors included in previous posts are probably described as guilty pleasures at best, but favorite novels????? Seriously? I am surprised you aren't including serial comic book authors.

We're listing "favorite" novels, so we are free from the burden of picking important literature over the books we enjoy the most. As for comic books, Alan Moore raised the bar for writing in the industry back in the mid-'80s. He is still generally considered the best, but quite a few subsequent writers have also done some great work with the medium. And there is a lot more to comics than just superheroes battling supervillains.

Feel free to lecture us about comics after you've tried some of the following:

Watchmen
Blacksad
Scalped
Usagi Yojimbo
Ex Machina
Hellblazer
Detectives, Inc.
Fables
Rex Mundi
Y the Last Man
FreakAngels
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Boy on Earth
We3
Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu
Sandman

Shellhead wrote: We're listing "favorite" novels, so we are free from the burden of picking important literature over the books we enjoy the most. As for comic books, Alan Moore raised the bar for writing in the industry back in the mid-'80s. He is still generally considered the best, but quite a few subsequent writers have also done some great work with the medium. And there is a lot more to comics than just superheroes battling supervillains.

Feel free to lecture us about comics after you've tried some of the following:

Watchmen
Blacksad
Scalped
Usagi Yojimbo
Ex Machina
Hellblazer
Detectives, Inc.
Fables
Rex Mundi
Y the Last Man
FreakAngels
Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Boy on Earth
We3
Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu
Sandman

Shouldn't this be its own thread, in the interest of avoiding the predictable 37 page comics discussion derail?

Pretty much my favorite of anything could be labeled as a guilty pleasure. My career, personal, and school life can have a pretty big emotional toll (as I'm sure is the case for everyone else) so entertaining escapism is important for me to maintain some shred of sanity. Plus this is a ameritrash website, so I can't say I'm surprised so many favorites are sci-fi/fantasy related.

Dune - Frank Herbert
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (I need to re-read Slaughterhouse-Five, though)
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon (I really want to take another stab at Gravity's Rainbow)
Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

I don't read a lot of fiction, and I haven't read a lot of quality fiction. I should probably change that.

Carter Beats the Devil is another one of my sleeper favorites. I have a signed copy. Great book.

I think Gravity's Rainbow would hit my top ten, but it might get bumped. It's been a long time since I read it.

Tim Powers has come up a few times in the What Book thread. I'll just say that I love Declare, it might be my favorite of all his books (I've read all of them, and probably all the short story collections).

I'm still living in boxes, and don't have Internet at the new house for a week, so still no list.

In no particular order:

Don Quixote - Cervantes
Macunaíma - Mário de Andrade
Dois Irmãos(The Brothers) - Milton Hatoum
Crime and punishment - Dostoyevsky
The Trial - Kafka
Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, also known in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner; novel) - Machado de Assis
Germinal - Émile Zola
Hopscotch (Spanish: Rayuela) - Julio Cortázar
Senbazuru (Thousand Cranes) - Yasunari Kawabata
Captains of the Sands (Capitães da Areia) - Jorge Amado