Books books books

[rabidsamfan]

Now this article raises an interesting question for me. If I were asked to make a list of the top ten books I'd ask straight away my top ten or the world's? Do I choose the books which have influenced my thinking the most or the ones which I reread with the most delight? Do you want "literature" or just pleasure reading. The website for the book under review doesn't help. Although it does give me a list of titles I mean to read, and incentive to go out and buy the book for the summaries.

And even if I came up with ten titles, putting them in order would be... well, difficult.

If I were to ask the question, I'd say, name ten books which you think will still be of interest to readers in fifty years...

Here are mine. Mind you, I'm restricting myself to books I've actually read!

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Even though I like Tom Sawyer better, myself.)
The Lord of the Rings (Because I can't imagine it going out of style!)
The Canterbury Tales (Because they make the middle ages real!)
The Sherlock Holmes stories. (Because a good mystery is always worth reading.)
Shakespeare. (As if I have to explain that one!)
Les Miserables (Utterly absorbing, actually, once you take the time to start reading it.)
Homer (Both the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's hard to argue with that many centuries of storytelling goodness. I'd add in the Aeneid by Virgil, but I must shamefacedly admit that I haven't read it. Although the new translation by Robert Fagles has gotten the kind of reviews that tempt even a lazy soul like me.)
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess (Ah, my love of children's books overcomes me.)
The People of the Deer or Never Cry Wolf (Farley Mowat taught me to love the arctic tundra.)
A Christmas Carol (Never mind that it was meant for a bit of holiday fluff, if you ask me it's the best, tightest writing Dickens ever did.)

Mind you, that's a very different list than it would be if I'd asked myself which books I wished would still be of interest to readers in fifty years. Guadalcanal Diary anyone?

Edited to add

Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant http://www.librarything.com/work/120877
Flight of the Doves by Walter Macken http://www.librarything.com/work/572133
Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis http://www.librarything.com/work/118690
Night Calls by Katherine Eliska Kimbriel http://www.librarything.com/work/99031
The Wind off the Small Isles by Mary Stewart http://www.librarything.com/work/1491824
Slakes Limbo by Felice Holman http://www.librarything.com/work/98837
The Lottery Rose by Irene Hunt http://www.librarything.com/work/107039
The Grass Widow's Tale and Never Pick Up Hitchhikers by Ellis Peters http://www.librarything.com/work/424523 and http://www.librarything.com/work/151899
The Chimes of Alyafaleyn by Grace Chetwin http://www.librarything.com/work/239235
Graveyard Reader edited by Geoff Conklin for the story "The Graveyard Reader" by Theodore Sturgeon http://www.librarything.com/work/1733867
2041 edited by Jane Yolen for the story "A Quiet One" by Anne McCaffrey and a few others. http://www.librarything.com/work/184388
The Nargun and the Stars by Patricia Wrightson http://www.librarything.com/work/494242
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce http://www.librarything.com/work/5512
Cat of Many Tails and The Siamese Twin Mystery by Ellery Queen http://www.librarything.com/work/256802 and http://www.librarything.com/work/558585
The Chestry Oak by Kate Seredy http://www.librarything.com/work/1126892
The Complete Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper (and Fuzzy Bones by William Tuning) http://www.librarything.com/work/96164 and http://www.librarything.com/work/198598
Flight 116 is Down by Caroline Cooney http://www.librarything.com/work/1937365
Busman's Honeymoon (the play version) by Dorothy Sayers http://www.librarything.com/work/80359
Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Mercedes Lackey http://www.librarything.com/work/2237430
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (Particularly when read with Captains Courageous by Kipling as a chaser.) http://www.librarything.com/work/3825 and http://www.librarything.com/work/27010
Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon http://www.librarything.com/work/26509

Comments

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

Good list! :-)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I added a second one since you commented. Couldn't resist.

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Ah - Busman's Honymoon - the best Lord-Peter-story ever. And besides, one of the most moving love stories I've ever read.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It is good, isn't it? You should try "The Grass Widow's Tale" sometime. A love story, but of a different kind. (And a good mystery as well.)

And if I were in a German train station in the mid-seventies and I wanted some hot food, what kind of thing might be on sale there?

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

I read two George-Felse-books so far (in german); one about Dominic Felse, falling in love and saving "his" lady by proving her innocence in a case of murder, and another one, set in the british folk singer scene. Both were great (and of course I love and adore her "Cadfael"-series and got all the BBC-movies last year, as a present for my birthday). And I just discovered that you love Joy Chant's amazing book Red Moon and Black Mountain. I do, too... it was published in german in the early 80s, and I still think it is one of the most wonderful fantasy books I know.

Well... after that was decidedly before the victory of international food... you would get sausages, served with bread rolls and mustard. And fries. And something called Currywurst - a sausage, cut in slices, served with a tomato sauce, spiced up and dusted with lots of curry. Tastes great and is - to my biggest regret - completely WW-incompatible. *weak grin*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

The George Felse books I reread even more often than the Cadfaels. If you can get your mitts on "The House of Green Turf" do -- I was just going through my favorite bits in it again. George and Bunty are there, but they're sort of playing background to another romance that is absolutely one of the most amazing things she wrote.

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

Okay: I read Death and the Joyful Woman and Black is the color of my true love's heart. And I will order The House of Green Turf as soon as possible (Oh, and I found out that there actually is one Brother Cadfael-book I don't know!).

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Death and the Joyful Woman is good, even though it repeats the plot a bit from Fallen into the Pit. Then again Fallen sort of falls outside the timeline for the rest of the books. It was the first Felse mystery she wrote and she didn't get back to them for long enough that if you try to figure out when Dominic was born you get a different answer for that one than the rest of them.

The Grass Widow's Tale is the best one for Bunty, and one of my all time favorites. And if you go beyond the Felses, do try to find Never Pick up Hitchhikers. I can't think of another book that makes me grin quite as much while I'm reading it.

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

Aha! Ten is impossible! Good try, tho ; )

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Ten is ridiculously difficult... I couldn't even manage to keep the second list to twenty!

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

What? Tom's Midnight Garden is out of print and difficult to get?? My family has the old, lovingly and well-read copy, but this makes me mourn that I don't have my own. That book started me on my life-long fascination with grandfather clocks. I've never had one, but whenever I see one, I have to look at it.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

It comes and goes in paperback. I'm not sure if it's out of print at the moment -- and I've got my copy -- but it isn't in my mental list of titles that will reliably be there if I want it either.