Aren't we up to six?

A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
Tehanu
Tales from Earthsea (including Dragonfly)
The Other Wind

Heh, yeah, you're right. Tales from Earthsea is a sneaky one.

1) The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
2) Anything by Neal Stephenson
3) To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4) Animal Farm, George Orwell
5) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6) Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
7) Jennifer Government, Max Barry
8) Anything by Harry Turtledove
9) Anything by Mario Puzo (except The Fourth K)
10) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Animal Farm, Brave New World, Fahrenheit - only three books I enjoyed reading that school assigned. My nonfiction list will need a little more thought.

i'm gearing up to read The Stand again. i haven't done that in years.

:repuke:

-sm

1) Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
2) 1984 - Orwell
3) Naked Lunch - Burroughs
4) Hitchhiker's Guide (I've got the compendium, so I'm counting the whole series as one book) - Adams
5) Any of Terry Pratchett's <i>Discworld</i> novels
6) The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera
7) Air-Conditioned Nightmare - Miller
8) On the Road and/or Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
9) The Illuminatus Trilogy - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
10) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

so, maybe I tend toward the cynical...is anyone surprised?

This is truly not an easy question for me to answer.

I read voraciously. I tend to have a stable of favorite authors that I return to time and time again, like Harlan Ellison and Andrew Vachss, but as I think back a lot of the favorite books actually go back to my childhood ...

The Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
The Dark is Rising Sequence - Suzanne Cooper
Children of Green Knowe - L.M. Boston (and the sequels)

Other favorites include

1984 - George Orwell
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas Hofstadter (gotta read that one again soon)
Known Space Series - Larry Niven (up to Ringworld Engineers)
Quiller Series - Adam Hall
The original James Bond books by Ian Fleming. Those abominations that were written by other authors leave me cold.

I also have to confess a fondness for certain "Hairy Chested Men's Adventure Series" particularly Jerry Ahern's "Survivalist" and Axel Kilgore's "They Call Me the Mercenary". After I had been reading both sets for some time I discovered (via character crossover initially) that both series are written by the same author. I also enjoyed "Saigon Commandos" by Jonathan Cain, but still haven't managed to see the B-Movie based on the first book (which I believe stars Willem Dafoe).

Tough for me, too. I see a lot of common threads here, though, that jive with many of my faves.

1) Stranger in a Strange Land
2) Breakfast of Champions
3) Ringworld
4) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
5) Hitchikers Guide Series
6) LOTR Series, including The Hobbit (I have no idea why people insist on separating this one...)
7) The Stand, The Shining, 'Salem's Lot and most of the earlier King works.

moar!


eta: I'm getting The moon is a harsh Mistress ...because it is here a few times...and The Sirens of Titan because Perth said so, and Orson Scott Card likes it too.

I never put mine out there. It's hard to pick just a few. And I'm not sure how to rate them, since every book has a different feel.

1. Ender's Game - Card
2. Earth Abides - Stewart
3. Dune - Herbert
4. Cryptonomicon - Stephenson

Huh. I went back to see if/what I had already posted since the thread was so old... and I said this:

I don't even remember reading that (or starting to, anyway.) My memory's really going.

I can't really rank them, but in the top echelon are:

Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and The Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson
the Galactic Milieu trilogy - Julian May (except I'm finding that I like her other stuff a whole lot less, which is a shame)
Dream Park - Larry Niven & Stephen Barnes (anyone who ever did any RPG gaming will love this one)
The Talisman - Stephen King & Peter Straub

To my earlier picks add:

The Warlock in Spite of Himself
The Warlock Unlocked

both Christopher Stasheff

There are more in the series, but they're not up to these.