i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

Wow, my bad. Fell down on the job there. Sorry.

1. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Funnier than anything else he wrote and crafted with amazing skill. The best constructed book I have ever read.

2. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I want to choose more, especially by Pratchett, but I'll limit myself to this collaboration.

3. Diaspora by Greg Egan. One more word against this guy's characterisation, and there will be serious trouble.

4. 253 by Geoff Ryman. Quite unlike any other book I know.

5. Spares by Michael Marshall Smith. Very scary stuff.

Sexist taste in authors? Hmm.

1. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte. Yes, it's long. Yes, it's somewhat depressing. And I don't even like Mr. Rochester as a romatic hero. But I still love this novel. It took me a year to read it for the first time as I was a 7th grader and the long carriage ride section lost me everytime. But I haven't had a problem with it since.

2. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton. I love this book. Love it, love it, love it. And my mom had to force me to read it. What was I thinking?

3. Let the Circle Be Unbroken, Mildred D. Taylor. An excellent book from a wonderful series. This book introduced me to the novel. One of the best books written about the depression era South ever.

4. The Color Purple, Alice Walker. And the movie holds up very nicely next to the book. The first book that ever made me cry. Bawl, in fact.

5. Black No More, George Schuyler. If I could live in any place during any period of time, I would be in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. And as much as I love that period and the artists who flourished during that period, I love this book for complete skewering everything and everyone who was anyone during the Harlem Renaissance. This book is everything that good satire should be.

Tell me more about #5!

OK, so far it's this, but I reserve the right to change it completely at any time:

1. Imajica, by Clive Barker
2. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
3. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
4. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
5. ...this one I will get back to you on...

Hmmm, let's see.

1. "The Little Country" -Charles de Lint
2. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" -Douglas Adams
3. "A Ring of Endless Light" -Madeleine L'Engle (who is one of my all-time favorite authors ever!)
4. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" -L. Frank Baum (he's such a children's writer, but I get lost in that world every time I read those books.)
5. "Big Trouble" by Dave Barry. (It's *really* zany, and if you're a regular reader of his columns, you'll note the jokes are familliar, but it was great anyway.

beta!beta!beta!

Pick just five? You are eevil, two e's.

#1 Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency , by Douglas Adams. Once again proving that aussie_nyc and I have a thousand things in common and should probably hang out sometime.

#2 The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip. The woman has an amazing, magical way with imagery and descriptions. Its almost too beautiful to read, but I do. Over and over and over ...

#3 The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart. Its about an ancient china that never was, but should have been ... I re-read it yearly.

#4 American Gods by Neil Gaiman. 'Nuff said.

#5 The Domesday Book by Connie Willis. I love her, love her, love her. This book never fails to yank a tear from me.

here you go -
1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque - for some reason, I really love war novels, movies, documentaries, etc. This is far and away my favorite of the novels, as well as a great piece of Lost Generation literature.
2. The Cigarette Girl by Carol Wolper - a very light, very frothy, very Cosmo novel. I can read it in about 3 hours. I love it because it makes me happy, no matter how I'm feeling before I start.
3. Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons - Gibbons is an excellent purveyor of modern Southern literature. This could very easily be written off as simply women's literature, but it's so good: empowering, sweet, romantic, smart, well-written. I wrote my college entrance essay on it.
4. Griffin and Sabine and the rest of that series by Nick Bantok - wonderful, surreal story, beautifully written, beautifully presented.
5. Empire Falls by Richard Russo - I am in love with this book. That is all.

Again, I'm racking up the points for fuddy-duddydom.

1. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky. This will take a good long while to read, especially to read close. It is worth doing. Damn.
2. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne. I am the only person in the world alive today who apparently likes this book. I think it's bloody brilliant. People think I'm strange, and not quite right.
3. Miss Lonelyhearts, Nathanael West. Okay, this is probably closer to a novella, but it's still a lovely, light, sad read.
4. Plowing the Dark by Richard Powers. Or Galatea 2.2. Or Gain. Really, if you've read one.... This guy's fuckin' brill. Cooler than me.
5. The Dragonlance Chronicles, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman. Okay, I was a gamer when I was a kid. I prolly still would be if I knew any gamers in Chicago. And yes, I read mountains upon mountains of cheesy fantasy and loved it. Kender are cool.

But Min, I've told you, if you're looking for a book, go find a copy of Swordspoint. Not only is it a good book, it's got piles of fantasy boy-on-boy sex.

Maybe "piles" is the wrong word to use in that sentence. Ah.

Finally a Top 5 that I can answer in my sleep.

Hmmm. Glancing through all the other lists, I am surprised that none of mine have shown up on other people's lists, yet.

Anyway, here it goes...

Note: As with all my Top 5 lists, don't ask me to order these. These are just a Top 5, the order changes with my mood.

1. Master and Maragrita, by Bulgakov - all time bestest novel. Soviet Atheist Russia and the Devil in which it doesn't believe. The story of a poor prisoner-philosopher and the fifth procurator of Judea the knight Pontius Pilate, the oppressed writer in Soviet Russia who lives for his mistress who saves him more than a few times, oh and a giant vodka drinking cat. The book that reminds us that "Manuscripts do not burn."

2. Pale Fire, by Nabokov - Single most genius work I have ever read. And reread. Still need to make it through a third time. A book that can make your brain explode and love it at the same time. Like the Bulgakov above, forces you to question, "What is a novel? Where does the story come from? Am I reading what I think I am reading?" (A nice companion piece to Nabokov's translation of Evgeny Onegin - see below - which consists of two volumes, one of the text and footnotes at ~350 pgs, and his commentary on the translation at more than two and a half times that length!)

3. The Plague, by Camus - First novel to physically shake me to such point that I couldn't stop reading a chapter, even though I knew it would end badly, and make me break down in tears. Stupid hope in the face of an existential world void of compassion besides what people bring to one another! The beauty and horror present in this novel have emblazoned it forever on my list of top books.

4. War and Peace, by Tolstoy - (almost Anna Karenina, but since I haven't actually finished that one, gotta go with the Tolstoy I have read.) Unfortunately no Levin in W&P, but it tries to bridge the genres of historical chronicle, treatise and novel... In my opinion successfully.

5. Yevgeni Onegin, the verse novel by Pushkin - The despicable central character who destroys the happiness of a provincial family, kills his only friend, and crushes the heart of a young woman, has given rise to Opera, plays and a movie or three. This truly grandiose story of boredom, snobbery, love, betrayal reminds us that even if people change, the world doesn't wait, and you are destined to be miserable forever! Ok... that didn't sound like a great plug, but trust me. This Romantic (capital R) novel-poem is devastatingly wonderful - facades and falsity of St. Petersburg, dilapidated country estates, duels, the superficial rich and the emotional provincials.

Hmmm. Can you see a theme in my list? Genre blending. Don't like my novels to be too much one thing or another, I guess.

Please remember that this is not about the all-time best novels. I'm defining my favorite novels as the ones I read over and over and over again. (Don't judge me! You don't know me! You've got saggy ovaries!)

My Top 5 All-Time Favorite Novels

1. The Stand, Stephen King. I've read this book an embarassing amount of times, and have gone through many copies. I appreciate how I can pick up this book, flip to a random page, begin reading, and instantly become immersed. Great beach/bath book.
2. The Thief of Always, Clive Barker. The copy of this book that I have has the creepiest illustrations ever. Ever.
3. Watchers, Dean Koontz. I love the idea of super-intelligent animals. Also, this was one of the first "scary" books I read back in grade school, followed shortly by It by Stephen King, which cemented my fear of evil clowns.
4. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien. This is the first grown-up book I can remember reading all by myself. This was in first grade, so in retrospect I probably didn't get much out of it. That would explain why I did so poorly at the Zork-style Hobbit game we had for our Apple back in the day.
5. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle. I haven't read this in a while, but I wore out a copy during third grade. I've only read her books for children, not any of her adult fiction.

1. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

2. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet.

3. Henry and June, Anais Nin. (Not exactly a novel, but it might as well be...)

4. The Indian in the Cupboard, by.. er....

5. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Heinlein.

1. The God of Small Things: Arundati Roy
2. A Passage to India: E. M. Forster
3. The Lord of the Rings: J. R. R. Tolkien
4. Foucault's Pendulum: Umberto Eco
5. Dune: Frank Herbert

Bless Me Ultima. Rudulfo Anaya. I had to read this book for a Chicano studies class of some vein (Chicano literature perhaps?) It was incredible. One of the few books I've ever had to read that I really enjoyed. I should re-read this one once I'm done re-reading Laura Esquivel's Law of Love.

Mists of Avalon. Marian Zimmer Bradley. This was my introduction to the genre. I loved the fact that this retelling of the Arthurian legend featured such strong female characters.

The Warlord Chronicles. Bernard Cornwall. 3 books of Arthurian politics and lots of great description of battles. Mmmm shield walls.

Good Omens. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Quite possible the funniest book I've ever read. I've bought and lost 2 copies of this book so far. Someday, when I have $, I'll buy yet another copy.

The Red Tent. Anita Diamant. I never expected the book to be as good as it was. As a sucker for period fiction, I expected to like it, but I didn't expect it to ever make a top 5 list. But it did, easily.

The Law of Love, and Isabelle Allende's Daughter of Fortune and Portaits in Sepia are close runners up.

Top 5 All-Time Favorite Novels
(aside from #1, in no particular order)
1. Lolita (Nabokov). Well, of course. Americana, fucked-up sexuality, and language to kill for. Utterly wrong, doomed obsession layered over, woven through, more references to ephemera and Poe than anyone will ever be able to trace.
2. Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand (Samuel R. Delany). It's hard for me to choose my favorite Delany; Triton and Babel-17 are certainly in my top-20 favorite novels. But this one is even more stunning and mind-blowing than the rest. I guess it's about gender, and multiculturalism, and semiotics and deconstruction, but it's also the kind of book whose language and world-building is so completely unique and assured that you're utterly convinced, converted, and happily-willingly-beautifully drowned. And the final party scene makes me cry every.single.time.
3. Bleak House (Dickens). Every book on this list is well over 300 pages, and there's a reason for that. I'm a size queen. If I'm going to read a novel, screw the neurasthenic suburban dysfunction of post-Cheever and -Carver wannabes and give me gritty, huge worlds with big-ass passion and rapturous language. That's Bleak House in the proverbial nutshell.
4. Wonder Boys (Michael Chabon). I bought this at the Strand at around...2 in the afternoon? Sat in Union Square until dark, walked quickly home, and kept reading until it was finished at 1 the next morning. It's a messy shaggy-dog of a book, sad and poignant and really fucking funny; sexy and morose and just wonderful. I've read it probably eight times in the past eight years.
5. The Philosopher's Pupil (Iris Murdoch). This is the book that sold me on Murdoch. I made my philosophy-teacher/mentor/model-of-My!Giles read it, and he liked it even though, and I quote, "I don't like books by women. Except yours." heh. Murdoch at her best has this sensual muscularity of intellect and emotion and the way the two intertwine that I haven't found anywhere else. Her descriptions are unerringly gorgeous, whether she's describing a complex thought or a girl's hair spreading across a pillow as she sleeps.

(I struck A.S. Byatt's Virgin in the Garden from this ongoing list when she attacked Martin Amis years ago. Now I'm double-striking her for her inanities regarding Harry Potter. That'll show her! It's a good book, though. It really is.)

::Waves::

Hi! I followed glossing here.

In no particular order, tomorrow's answers might differ significantly:

1. Stephen King's The Stand. Or maybe It.
2. Starhawk's Walking to Mercury -- which is the sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing.
3. Tanya Huff's Blood Price.
4. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. (Unabashedly romantic.)
5. Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock.

Other books I love -- Mercedes Lackey's Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone, anything by Maeve Binchy, Robert McCammon's Swan Song, Jacqueline Lichtenburg's Sime/Gen books, Peter Mayle's Provence books, and anything by Sherry Ashworth.

::Reins self in and stops typing::

In no particular order:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce (Semiautobiographical, but fictional enough imho.)
Ulysses, Joyce
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde
The Harry Potter Series Thus Far, JKR
The Satanic Verses, Rushdie

1. The Unforgettable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
3. Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac
4. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
5. Dune by Frank Herbert (the first five actually, Chapterhouse left me a bit cold)

You and your top fives. I have NO IDEA. Here is what comes to mind, but I won't be held accountable for this list. I won't.

Anna Karenina, Tolstoy. I read it in sixth grade. Yes, yes. Sixth grade. It was Really Good, and I still read it every once in a while to remind myself that I wasn't just smoking the Sixth Grade Crack they passed around at that school.

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand. Another of the few books I read semi-regularly. I'm not entirely sure why, as I am a commie bastard. Well, not really. But I'm not a member of the capitalism pep squad. I just really like this book.

The Promise, Trashy Romance Novel Writer With A Suitably Trashy Name. Yes. Oh, yes. Kilts and TIME TRAVEL. In this same kilts-and-time-travel genre, the Outlander series, by Diana Gabaldon, probably would rate if I could just get through it. I'm on book two of five. Really, though, there wasn't enough sex in the first one.

Scandalmonger, William Safire. Maybe because I was just thinking about it last night. But probably not. It's quite fascinating and very well-written.

The Lymond Chronicles, Dorothy Dunnett. Okay, this is seven books. But they read like one. Serious historical fiction (of the non-trashy variety) that will drive you batty unless you read Latin. Which I do, and in that case, they are excellent. The protagonist is superman. He is the best in the world at everything, ever. And I mean everything. Like, fencing, riding elephants, leading armies, and playing the lute. No one compares to Lymond.

In The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco. Yeah, that's six. But I don't care. I'm on a roll, and this book rocks my socks.

Also. The Stand, The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood), and that awful little series of books about the D&D game that somehow sucks the players into the world.

I always come up with lists like this and remeber at least 3 more books that I should have remembered I liked better but couldn't think of at the time. (that's what I get for being the avatar of Yomiko, I like soooo much stuff sooo much.) So here goes nothing:

1)'Psychoshop' by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny. To me it represents the epitomy of what sci-fi is about, opening up other worlds and giving you just a glimpse before whirling you on to the next one, full of in-jokes that are there if you can catch them; a world run by Macavity the Mystery Cat, where God sits on the doorstep waiting for you to hand him a bottle of scotch. and Bester and Zelazny both have a really quirky sense of humor.

2)'Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger. Sounds stupid to say it changed my life. But still, made me cry. One of the greatest books of all time, hands down. "when a body meet a body, comin' through the rye, if a body touch a body, need a body cry?"

3)'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey. I don't care if it's religious metaphor, it's an excellent book and offers an incredible world of insight into the human mind and heart. It doesn't give answers, but tells you to find your own. Maybe the line between sane and insane is just another measurement forced on us by other people to deny our humanity.

4)'This Alien Shore' by C.S. Friedman. Good sci-fi, a fascinating look into multiple personality disorder. I also love the way it fits into the universe that she's created for all her books. The planetary and cultural diasopra created by the events in one of the previous books leads to a stunning backdrop for Alien Shore.

5)'Callahan's Crosstime Saloon' by Spider Robinson. Yes! The Callahan Cronicles are a fabulous series, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes heartbreaking, ALWAYS engaging. I've read the omnibus edition like 5 times. :)