Okay, the allusion to Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a big fail, not to mention the grammar — should be “in”, not “for”. Doesn’t even make sense, in context of books, since it’s a movie. It seemed like a snappy title though.
That fucking traitorous militant asshole DuWayne was so kind as to tag me on a Facebook meme that has spilled over into the blogosphere (more grist for my “meme paper” mill, as though I’ll ever even start it!). The idea is that you get fifteen minutes to list fifteen books that have influenced you and/or stick with you. I’m sure I’ll end up missing a lot of my favorite books by doing this (I have a small library of over 100), but let’s just see what pops out of my head first to see what’s actually “stuck with me” and all that.
My main 15:
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (all 5 books)
Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien (all 5 books, including Silmarillion and Hobbit)
Dune – Frank Herbert (original cycle, not including his son Brian’s stuff)
Foundation – Isaac Asimov (all 4 original books)
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
1984 – George Orwell
Animal Farm – George Orwell
A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking
Cosmos – Carl Sagan
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (translated unabridged, though I’ve been meaning to read the original French one day)
Macbeth – Bill Shakespeare
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
Microserfs – Douglas Coupland
Runners-up, thought of after the time limit or beyond my 15 mins:
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
The Time Machine – H G Wells
War of the Worlds – H G Wells
Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
The DC Super Dictionary (sadly, I can only find a site containing “word of the day” entries from that dictionary, and can’t find the dictionary itself.)
Hardy Boys (grew up on ’em)
Choose-Your-Own Adventures (them too)
Atlas Shrugged NO
So, I guess I gotta tag some people now. Get to it, SBH and Cyberlizard!
Oh, and ReformedYankee, Jason Pickles, you don’t have blogs of your own, but you’re tagged. Best get to posting a comment boyeees. And I’d love to see D. C. Sessions’ picks, given that (from elsewhere on the blogosphere) I understand he is a bit more… tenured… on this planet than the rest of us. Also, Jodi, DuWayne wants you to put your list up too. Only he sort of doesn’t, because we’re Teh Enemie.
…because we’re Teh Enemie.
No, no NO!!! You’re just fucking Canuckistanians. Not so much enemies, as those who must be INVADED!!!11111!!!
I mean for fucks sake, Shakespeare made your list!!?!?? How un-American, how indicative that you live in Canadia….
[…] order to placate the teeming hordes begging me to participate (2 people make a horde, right?), here it is, my annotated list of the top 15 books of all time. […]
Shit! I just realized I forgot Shogun by James Clavell.
Brian Herbert’s Dune continuation stuff wasn’t all that bad.
H.G. Wells’ stuff and Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” probably should have made my list as well. “Hitchhiker’s Guide” didn’t make it because, although it was a great read and very funny, it didn’t really influence me all that much.
Interesting how many people have included Orwell’s “1984” so far.
I can’t help but notice that A Bear Called Paddington made your list, meaning not only do you sympathize with Great Britain (you Redcoat!), but you also sympathize with bears (the number one threat to America!).
The 1984 thing might be typical of this intellectual set. Or some of you might have studied it in school. (I didn’t.) I wouldn’t read too much into it, other than that it’s a good book and still crazy influential after so many years. I have to laugh about the whole “dystopian future” when the date’s a dead giveaway that it didn’t happen. (OR DID IT?) Then again, I also laugh about Star Trek’s Eugenics War happening in 1996, when Khan had almost the whole world subjugated before he got shipped off in the Botany Bay. Might just be that whole “it’s the fyoooture!!!” mindset in older sci-fi that fails utterly by not predicting timelines anywhere near accurately.
I suppose I just haven’t given Brian’s stuff a chance yet. It could very well be awesome. I have House Harkonnen on my bookshelf at home, gifted to me a few years back, and still haven’t touched it.
Well, I posted what was supposed to be my list, but it turned into a mini-autobiography. As it happens I posted my “original list” over at Traumatized by Truth, which ran to about thirty books. I narrowed it down to fifteen at my blog but tried to explain the significance of each of them, and it got kind of long. Looking at your list I see a lot of my favorites (Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, Foundation (were there four? I remember only three), the Hitchhiker’s Guide, The Time Machine), but I was sort of going for the influential thing. The Martian Chronicles probably should have been in there somewhere, but I didn’t think of it. Looking at Abby Normal’s list I see Lord of the Rings, I Will Fear No Evil, and A Clockwork Orange, all favorites, especially the last, but again, not necessarily influential. (I’m not sure how meaningful that distinction is; every book I’ve mentioned so far with the possible exception of The Hitchhiker’s Guide had some sort of influence on me, but so did Giles Goat-Boy.) Some were kind of easy; if I’d never read A Gnome There Was I might have missed out on the whole science fiction thing, which was a big part of my life for a long time. If I hadn’t come across Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark I almost certainly would not have gone to college at Claremont, and maybe not at all. Twain’s Letters from the Earth and Dwight Macdonald’s Parodies: an anthology shook up my thinking in interesting ways. And I actually learned a lot about reasoning from Sherlock Holmes (though I see he didn’t make my final fifteen), even if sometimes it was from his lapses.
Toaster’s totally on crack – B. Herbert/Anderson contribution sux donkey balls, set next to Frank Herbert’s work. It’s not absolutely vile, but it just doesn’t compare…
1984 is probably largely due to the age group, as much as to the intellectual set. I daresay that most of you read it in high school. I read it when I found it in a pile of sibling cast-offs, when I was about ten or eleven – didn’t get that far in high school. It was why I was driven to read Brave New World and why V for Vendetta sounded so interesting in the blurbs (the only time I have ever had actual nightmares, in my entire life) – a graphic version of 1984, is what it sounded like – just didn’t indicate exactly how graphic it actually was… But the thing that makes it stick, is that it is an exemplary example of anti-utopian literature (fuck you, I think it’s far more accurate than dystopian motherfucker!!!!@!!!11!) and it feeds hard into the American fetish for freedom of expression and civil liberties.
Fucking Canuckistanian –
I have always been a major Anglophile, when it comes to literature. And Paddington is extraspecially wonderful, because the books write about a prototypical Brit family. What I especially love, now that as an adult I am far more familiar with Brit culture, is that (at least at the time) that is likely exactly how your average upper-middle class brits would react to a talking bear…
And I take heart knowing that American driven globalization has gone to great lengths to destroy all that. I take a great deal of pride, knowing that American’s largely drove the growth of Eurotrash druggie layabouts…
So Up Your’s!!!!!, you lousy Canuck!!!!
I should also note that the only reason no Douglas Adams made my list, is because I am almost driven to tears, every time I consider that The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is the last we’ll ever read about Dirk Gently…
Seriously…
DuWayne: happily, no. Posthumously published is his semicompleted book “The Salmon of Doubt.” I have it on my bookshelf in fact. Sadly though, it’s only the first ten chapters, so you’d be left wondering what happens next to our man Dirk, even more than you’d already been.
sbh: I read a good deal of Sherlock Holmes, though so long ago I can barely remember them. A Clockwork Orange would be another of my Also-Ran’s.
See!!! SEE!!!! This is exactly why we’re invading – I am far too wise to read the beginning of a story that will never be finished, because the author is dead…..
Hahaha, oh DuWayne. You know you want to read it. I might even be convinced to send it to you, if you keep protesting like that.
I had a copy and refused to read it. Just like I refuse to continue the Wheel of Time series, until Jordan actually finishes it – because I am beginning to suspect the fucker’s going to die before he finishes that.
Oh man. Either you just edited Wikipedia to mess me up, or…
Oh. And sbh, sorry: I have on my bookshelf right now, Foundation, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Empire. This last one is apparently separate from the main cycle, dealing mostly with an empath named The Mule that totally messes up Hari Seldon’s psychohistory (because he’s just one guy, you see).
Also, bah. Hell on wheels. The Super Dictionary link is to a Livejournal that got suspended. Here’s one that’ll give you an idea what it was about. It was awesome. My first book ever.
http://strangevisitations.blogspot.com/2007/06/super-dictionary.html
No Fucking Way!!!!!!!!!!
The dude was obese – my ex called that one…
Right, yeah, Foundation’s Edge. I forgot all about that one. That’s my age showing; I read the others when I was young and obsessed with sf, but I think I was in college when Foundation’s Edge came out, and I didn’t have time to read it then. (I did read it eventually.) This is actually a little painful at the moment; up till recently (a few months ago) I had copies of virtually everything Asimov wrote, some of them first editions, all of them much loved. I had every issue of Galaxy from the first on, and a complete run of ASF from 1949 to the mid 1980s–decades of collecting. Bradbury, Clarke, Derleth, Niven, Bester, Gibson, Sheckley, Adams, Wells, Heinlein, Lovecraft. Avram Davidson. Clifford D. Simak. I can’t begin to remember them all. And I lost the whole damn collection. Well, almost the whole damn collection. I still have Asimov’s autobiography, some duplicate magazines, and a handful of the very rarest items that weren’t with the main collection. In the old days I would have just looked at my bookshelves to remind myself of the Foundation series. Didn’t Asimov eventually link up his robot stories with the Foundation series somehow? Or am I hallucinating that? Anyway, I’m only beginning to get to where I can think about sf rationally again.
Seems I have my Foundation books mixed up. Book 1 is Foundation (natch), 2 is Foundation and Empire (with The Mule), 3 is Second Foundation, and 4, published 32 years later (since the first bunch was supposed to be a trilogy and that’s it!), was Foundation’s Edge. All it took to figure that out was to take the bleeding books off my shelf, too. Ah, laziness.
I assume something devastating happened for you to lose such an extensive collection. Fire? My heart goes out to you.
Here’s a good bit of the history of where Asimov started blending together Foundation and the Positronic Robots series. http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Robot_Foundation_history_5.html
And just where the fuck is that Canuckistanian who’s fixing to marry you??? We want a motherfucking list Jodi!!!!11!11!!!
Sorry DuWayne 😛 I have a day job you know.
Lord of the Rings
Good Omens
The Hobbit
Animal Farm
The Crysalids
The Day of the Triffids
Macbeth
The Belgariad/The Mallorean
Unweaving the Rainbow
Myst
The Little Prince
Unfinished Tales
Annnnnnnd…….. that’s it, I can’t think of any more right now. When trying to write this list I realised a good chunk of my life was spent reading and rereading Lord of the Rings (and it’s bookends), The Belgariad/Mallorean, and Magic Kingdom for Sale which equals about 23 novels in all. Obviously I need to read new stuff…
Hmmm…Yet another list with nothing in common with mine and the first that doesn’t have anything that should have been on my list…
Although The Day of the Triffids was one of the first forays I made into scifi…
For years I had Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids, Out of the Deeps, and Re-Birth on my shelf in that order, with Re-Birth being my personal favorite. (I guess the proper titles for the latter two are The Kraken Wakes and The Chrysalids, but of course I had the American editions.) Re-Birth could have made my list, but I didn’t think of it.
That’s crazy — I had no idea they were released under different names in the States.
I’ve yet to read Day of the Triffids, though Jodi keeps suggesting it to me.
I actually didn’t know–or at least didn’t remember–that the titles I recall were US alternates until I double-checked just before posting–was it Out of the Depths or Out of the Deeps? And it turns out, no, it was The Kraken Wakes.
It’s been so long since I read Day of the Triffids that I’m actually not sure whether I’d recommend it or not, but I do remember enjoying it years ago. The Chrysalids (and I suspect that it’s always going to be Re-Birth in my mind anyway) is a stunning piece of work, well worth reading.
I’m going to have to get some of these back some time. The disaster that took my sf library was really stupid. As a result of a quasi-emergency we had to make room for family-members to move in; we put stuff (including the sf library) into storage for the moment; the person who was supposed to be making the payments fell behind; everything got sold at auction. Damn.
I shouldn’t complain. It’s just that discussions like this make me want to pull Foundation or Day of the Triffids back off the shelf and look at them again, and I can’t. And it’s frustrating.
I truly do understand your pain, sbh. There are two significant vacancies on my bookshelf where A Brief History of Time and the Hitchhiker’s Guide Omnibus Edition were loaned to someone and never returned, and removed from my collection by an ex girlfriend, respectively. It pains me to know I’ll have to buy them again if I ever want to reread them or refer to them outside of what snippets are on the web.
CL: I’d assume the book for Starship Troopers was better specifically because it wasn’t an abortion of an army-and-patriotism-and-America-fuck-yeah, all-action all the time, film. Like, it explores how Earth is the aggressor, not the poor put-upon victim in the entire war. I haven’t even read it, but from the one sidelong mention in the newscasts where I figured out Earth was the aggressor, it seems like that theme would have to have been a pretty heavy one in the book.
Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Patriotism and “protecting freedom” gets you into the situation, but once you’re there, the situation calls for a hell of a different approach, e.g. the aforementioned struggle for survival. What bothers me is the whole “protecting freedom” trope when actively engaged in a war of aggression. It seems remarkably prescient of Iraq.
One of the annoying ironies in my life is that I still have my copy of Dianetics.
A book by Heinlein that could have made my list (but again I didn’t happen to think of it) was a short-story collection called (I think) The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag. That had some mind-stretchers in it–a house folded through four dimensions for one, and the incredible “All You Zombies.” I always liked Heinlein’s version of Prisoner of Zenda, too, which I believe was called Double Star. Lightweight but fun. Glory Road is one of the few Heinlein books I never finished.
One significant author is missing from everyone’s list: L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics should grace everyone’s bookshelves. (I’m going to stop now before I projectile vomit)
I can’t believe I left off anything by Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land. Starship Troopers (MUCH better than that piece of shit abomination they called the movie). Glory Road (meh, not so much). Job was really good.
Jason, The whole “Earth first” thing was an underlying factor in the book, but at the unit level, in the infantry, it was all subsumed by the raw struggle for survival. You may have signed up for such noble ideals as “protecting freedom”, but when the shit hits the fan you’re only there for one thing: your teammates. You watch their back and they watch yours and hopefully you both make it back in one piece. Gave me something to think about with regard to soldiers.