Top 5 Favorite Books

Posted by Luke on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 · Comments 

Following up on our Top 5 Favorite Movies, the Fools here share with you their Top 5 Favorite Books of all time. I knew The Bible would make the list several times, so I asked them to think of five favorites besides The Bible.

In alphabetical order, we are…

Casey

  1. The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis – One of C.S. Lewis’s lesser known works, but excellent nonetheless.  Theology + Science-fiction = Total Awesomeness!
  2. Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Including the Hobbit) by J.R.R. Tolkien – Tolkien was a genius!  The movies were favorites as well.
  3. David Copperfield by Dickens -  I love to despise Uriah Heep.
  4. The Chronciles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis – The part with Aslan on the stone table gets me every time.
  5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen Covey – This book has had a great impact on our family’s mission.

David

  1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Both touching and deeply disturbing, witty and brilliantly composed.
  2. The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully – This clever, book-length essay is composed entirely of footnotes.
  3. White Noise by Don Delillo – A professor of Hitler Studies grapples with his fear of death.
  4. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger – A thought-provoking novel composed almost entirely of dialogue.
  5. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl – A collection of fascinating, shocking, and very disturbing short stories.

Honorable Mentions: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Kris

  1. Cinderella, all versions, though I grew up on Charles Perrault’s with the pumpkin and glass slipper. I haven’t read it in a while but read Perrault’s version enough in my first twelve years of life to make up for the last sixteen.
  2. Phantastes: A Faerie Romance by George MacDonald
  3. The Hobbit. First read in 5th grade and, oh, I still live and taste it.
  4. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  5. 101 Famous Poems Edited by Roy Cook. This is my “bathroom book” and I have read each poem dozens of times; both in and out of the privy :-)

Lou

  1. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks. An awesome series of 21 fantasy novels. All of which I read in about 6 months, twice, before I read #2 below.
  2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien. No other comments needed here. Obviously, the Lord of the Rings closely followed…my precious!
  3. War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells. Terrific book, terrible 2005 Tom Cruise movie!
  4. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
  5. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, Richard Carlson. Simple ways to keep the little things from taking over your life. The anti-OCD!

Honorable Mention: Rules of The Red Rubber Ball, Kevin Carroll. Kevin was the creative catalyst for Nike. What a job!! This guy could make Archie Bunker cheer.

Luke

In order of publication:

  1. Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hard to choose only one, but Self-Reliance is a good place to start.
  2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce. What style!
  3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. A great story, well told.
  4. The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis. A surprising little book that might blow your mind.
  5. Hyperion, Dan Simmons. Technically Sci-fi but as terrible and awe-inspiring as anything in the Bible.

Honorable Mention: Not a book, but Barry Hannah’s story “Constant Pain in Tuscaloosa” (Airships) is the finest short study of voice and human complexity in the English language.

Nicole

  1. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess — Questions of free will; beautifully written with unique forms of speech created by Burgess: Nadsat!
  2. Stiff by Mary Roach — Wonderful Non-fiction regarding cadavers and science! Mary Roach writes science wonderfully with humor.
  3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov — Comically narrated by Humbert Humbert and VERY controversial.
  4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley — He seriously wrote this in 1931!! Amazingly written and some SCARY science fiction.
  5. The Hanged Man by Francesca Lia Block – I am a huge fan on FLB and I adore her style of writing; you can feel her words.

You

Our favorite Fool of all. What are your favorite books?

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  • Oh jeez. I finished reading Pale Fire by Nabokov yesterday. I think it's (maybe) better than Lolita. I'm still reeling from it. Mind-blowing.
  • Kim
    Kris, I thought of a couple more good books... "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen. Also, anyone that's a parent has to adore the book "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch. That story gives my tear ducts a workout every time!
  • Rainu
    Well.... this is going to be tough for me...

    1) The Grand Inquisitor by Fydor Dostoevsky (awesome. seriously... .Techinically the most potent chapters of The Brothers Karamazov)
    2) Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age (ditto)
    3) Dear Senator by Essie Mae Washington-Williams (the story of a biracial young woman whose father was the South Carolinian Gov. Strom Thurmond... )
    4) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (made me cry... the story of two women in Afghanistan and their struggle to survive....)
    5) Emerson and Thoreau... (I can't decide... but I like reading both and contrasting them.... it's very interesting... student to teacher yet... differences in viewpoints... idk... and you can pair their viewpoints on certain things too... )
  • Emerson and Thoreau, I know! Tough call. I've got my reading list filled for the next few months with all these great responses.

    Has anyone read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis? I hear it's hilarious.
  • James Piiparinen
    1. The Belgariad by David Eddings They now have these five books broken into two so I say if they can do that I can combine them all.
    2. Averno by Louise Gluck Beautiful book of poetry involving the Persephone and Hades myth.
    3. The Selected Poems of Po Chu-I, simple, elegant and beautiful.
    4. The Great Fires by Jack Gilbert what an amazing book.
    5. Carta Marina by Ann Fisher-Wirth the book of Finnish based poetry I am working on I hope is half as beautiful as this book when all is said and done.
  • 6! I want to add a 6th book!

    Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" should be put into the hands of every high school student upon graduation.

    Of course, anything by Sagan is cherished.
  • Jill
    From an 11-year-old boy's perspective: he couldn't choose five individual books & wanted to list his Top Five Favorite Series of Books instead.

    Percy Jackson 1-5
    Harry Potter 1-5 then 7 (he didn't like 6 that much)
    The 39 Clues 1-4 (he's on book 4 right now, there are at least 7)
    Inkheart 1-3
    Dragon Rider (a single book!)

    Next series on his reading list - The Hobbit.
  • 1. Mere Christianity
    2. At the Back of the North Wind
    3. Phantastes and Lilith
    4. The Lord of the Rings
    5. The Chronicles of Narnia
  • Nicole Rae
    man oh man! Keep your lists a-comin' people! I mean, I know it'll never be as awesome as mine...but, hey, we're all into different reads.... ;-)
  • Oo yes great call with Lolita. And Brave New World. I almost put that on my list. Huxley knew what was up.
  • This is becoming quite a list! I'm considering changing American Gods to The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which is a rather astonishing little book. [EDIT (01.05.10): I removed American Gods and added The Great Divorce. American Gods is still an amazing book that has a place in my Top 10.]

    Also Catcher in the Rye or Franny & Zooey, which I've read a minimum of 5 times each. Tough call!

    Mastering Regular Expressions ... Going on my list now. :P
  • You better be serious about this!
  • Jon
    Quickly . . .

    1. The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger.
    2. The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
    3. A handful of Stephen King books (yes, yes I'm cheating on this one)
    4. Farenheit 451 - Bradbury
    5. The Road - McCarthy
  • I'm cheating a little bit, because I can't narrow it down to 5:

    - Absolutely anything by CS Lewis, particularly Mere Christianity and The Great Divorce. No other writer has influenced my life the way that he has; I feel like I carry him around with me everywhere I go.

    - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It's probably the most well-crafted novel of all time. My dad bribed me to read it when I was 13, and I've never looked back. It is probably the reason I became an English major.

    - Middlemarch by George Eliot. She's basically a genius novelist; every time I read it I'm blown away.

    - To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. My grandparents grew up in south Alabama during the same time period; I can't read it without feeling like I'm walking around in their shoes.

    - Stories by Katherine Mansfield, particularly The Doll's House, just beautiful story-telling.

    - The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, excellent book about what it means to be a Christian, definitely worth the work it takes to read it.
  • Jill
    To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (all-time favorite)
    A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
    Oh, the Places You'll Go - Dr. Seuss
    The Violent Bear It Away - Flannery O'Connor
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

    I like these for their deep simplicity. Any of them can be read as a simple story or can stir up debates and discussions on several issues.
  • So many books that I've either never read or even never heard of!

    Jill, I love that you put the Dr. Seuss book. It was a tie between that book and Cinderella for me. Both made such an impact on the young Kris...
  • Chad
    Great lists, guys!

    Just off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
    Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
    The Language of God by Francis Collins
    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
    and... maybe... Mere Christianity? Really anything by Lewis...

    That's a pretty good representation of my readings, but I'd probably have different lists depending on the day!
  • "Mastering Regular Expressions" (you should expect a programming book from me), Ecclesiastes from the Bible, "1984" by George Orwell, "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac, and "Naked Pictures of Famous People" by Jon Stewart.
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