best book you've read

[Scorpio]

I rate Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy as my favorite piece of fiction.
Frank Herbert's Dune has to be greatest sci fi novel ever.
Truman Capote's In cold blood is the greatest crime novel.
William Peter Blatty's The Excorcist is the greatest horror novel.
Scott Turow's Presumed innocent is the best suspense novel.
In the true crime arena, helter skelter and Zodiac are probably my faves.
Charriere's Papillon is the greatest autobiography.

[Scorpio]

Read lovecraft which is excellent read most of the flashmans which are excellent as well.

I've read the Flashman books.
I consider ' Flashman ' the best entry.
It deals with the retreat from Kabul: a testimony to tactical brilliance.

[Robert]

Actually, Rob House's favourite book is "The Night They Raided Kosminsky's" by Rowland Barber.

[pinkmoon]

LOTR (again...)
Collected Lovecraft
Northwest Passage (Roberts)
Sword at Sunset (Sutcliff)
Any of the Flashman series...Oh,and G McD F's War memoirs "Quartered safe out here"

Read lovecraft which is excellent read most of the flashmans which are excellent as well.

[Steve S]

LOTR (again...)
Collected Lovecraft
Northwest Passage (Roberts)
Sword at Sunset (Sutcliff)
Any of the Flashman series...Oh,and G McD F's War memoirs "Quartered safe out here"

[Errata]

Oh... and of course A Light In The Attic.

[Beowulf]

Crime and Punishment

Coming from Rob House...priceless!

[belinda]

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

[Beowulf]

Difficult choice, and definitely not Ripper-related...

There really are so many...but fiction-wise probably Lord of the Rings which, (after the Hobbit at age 7), I came late to, and first read at the age of 17 - I've read it at least twice a year ever since, and still find something new in it every now and again

Non-Fiction would be an ecuminical matter...

All the best

Dave

I've read Lord of the Rings more times than I can count, but not lately, that was 'then'. However, none of the movies can hold a candle to Tolkien's writing, he's really a great writer. Read the Hobbit a couple of times, too.

I did read a book lately called Spindrift, by Jan Bryant Bartell. Man, I lived in it. I painted it. I just got back from Manhattan taking pictures of it. Me on the townhouse stoop where the author wrote about her life in the haunted townhouse in NYC Greenwich Village. I haven't been to the Village in years. That book gave me the motivation to train-trek over there from NJ. That really is my favorite, right now.

I love reading.

Other fav books have been: Patti Boyd's Wonderful Tonight.
Fatal Tryst/Gerald Tomlinson about the Hall Mills murders.
Gone with the wind/Margaret Mitchell.
I Claudius/Robert Graves.
History of witchcraft and Salem village/Charles Upham.
Little Witch/Anna Elizabeth Bennett.
Poltergeists fact or fancy/ Sacheverell Sitwell.
Cape May Ghost Stories and Shipwrecks and Legends round Cape May/Seibold and Adams. (Most anything by Seibold and Adams)
The 12 Caesars/Suetonius
Fall River Tragedy/Edwin Porter
Bambi/Felix Salten
Green Mansion/William Henry Hudson

[lynn cates]

Underground Man.

Hello Michael. Thanks.

"I am a mean man; I am a spiteful man. I think I may have a diseased liver." (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[robhouse]

Crime and Punishment

[Mayerling]

Top five fiction:

Complete Sherlock Holmes Canon
"A Tale of Two Cities"
"Madame Bovary"
"1984"
"The Secret Agent"

Top five history

"The Conquest of Mexico" (Prescott)
"Montcalm and Wolfe" (Parkman)
"The Proud Tower" (Tuchman)
"A Night to Remember (Lord)
The Complete Jack the Ripper (Rumbelow)

Biographies

"John Paul Jones" (Morison)
"Warwick the Kingmaker" (Kendall)
"Andew Jackson" (Remini)
"Jefferson" (Dumas Malone)

Essays

Collected (George Orwell/Eric Blair)

[Errata]

Spot on Errata. My spouse has, down the years, grown to hate my books, and as a result of successive weedings, I'm down to my last two or three thousand (cow)...nonetheless I continue to smuggle in the odd volume or six...She's older than I am and it's the least I can do in terms of keeping her mentally alert and active...

All the best

Dave

My fiance and I have a deal. We each get a room to do what we want. He has an office. His computer, his guitar, his books. Mine has four bookcases, two very large chests of drawers, wall shelves, and a couple of coffee tables. All filled with or covered with books. I can barely get in and out of my library, and there is certainly no room for a desk and a computer. So I sit on my side of the bed with a laptop. Though to be fair there is also an altar with a couple dozen god images on and around it. I just moved it in there because we needed the space for a table to eat at. I need a bigger room.

My favorite books are often bad books. Though not all. Any list would start with Shakespeare. The Hero and The Crown, The Red Tent, Illusions, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Shannara series, The Doomsday Book, Good Omens, The Daughter of Time, A Wrinkle in Time, The Last of The Really Great Whangdoodles, Arsenic And Old Lace, Beowulf, Dante's Inferno, Paradise Lost, Mists of Avalon, The Actor's Nightmare, and that just fiction, and thats also just the books I can see from where I am sitting.

[pinkmoon]

No favourite as such, but a few I've read more than once:

Stalingrad; Of Mice and Men; I know Why The Caged Bird Sings; Six Weeks; A Berlin Family; Bird Song; The English.

For any World War One enthusiasts, six weeks was the life expectancy of an English junior officer during the war, and so the book is titled Six Weeks; and is a look at the ideals of the public schools and their pupils' role and experience during the war.

For anyone interested in the development of England, The English (Jeremy Paxman) is a look at a peculiar people who are for the most part unlike any other people on this planet in character and outlook. The sort of people born to compromise: the Scots and Germans had a reformation; we had a falling out with the Pope on practical grounds rather than ideas. A people who guard privacy like our lives depend upon it and are fiercely independent. For example, I'm in the US at the moment and their idea of customer service is coming to your table every 5 minutes to ask if everything is fine. As an Englishman, this is not customer service; it's being a nuisance and it's wanton disregard for my space. Surely the idea is to make sure you're on hand and I'll let you know when I need something? Only the English could have developed a sport such as cricket and only the English could have developed a religion where the ministers recommend that you go to church now and again and providing you keep your nose clean everything will pan out fine - light on dogma; heavy on choice. It's an interesting book and a thinly veiled celebration of our traditions and outlook on life, and Paxman undoubtedly is from the school of: "to be born an Englishman is to win the lottery of life". English people may be surprised by the influence of the Church of England on our character - a case well argued by Paxman.

I've read stalingrad it's one of the best war books ever I think "a bridge to far "is the best war book I've ever read though

[Robert]

I once read a book. Green it was.