Heh. Let's see...

[agilebrit]

If we can get this going around as a meme:

The thebookyoucrew has decided, in all their pretentious wankerness, that they are the be-all and end-all of literary judgement. They invite all and sundry to post their list of favorite books (or something), and then these people will decide whether or not you're "worthy" to join their community.

So, in the interests of getting myself banned as quickly as possible, I put together a list of 20 of my favorite books.

1. The Bible
2. Lad: A Dog -- Albert Payson Terhune (anything by Terhune is gold)
3. Taliesin -- Stephen Lawhead (plus anything else he's ever written)
4. Guards! Guards! -- Terry Pratchett (ditto Terhune and Lawhead)
5. The Way Things Ought to Be -- Rush Limbaugh
6. Give War a Chance -- PJ O'Rourke (ditto...um, you get the idea)
7. Pat, the Story of a Seeing-Eye Dog -- Col. SP Meek
8. Smoky the Cowhorse -- Will James
9. A Princess of Mars -- Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy -- James B. South
11. Alice in Wonderland -- Lewis Carroll
12. Gone With the Wind -- Margaret Mitchell
13. Animal Farm -- George Orwell
14. Executive Orders -- Tom Clancy
15. Martin the Warrior -- Brian Jacques
16. All Creatures Great and Small -- James Herriot
17. The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
18. Hank the Cowdog -- John Erickson
19. The Hobbit --JRR Tolkien
20. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- CS Lewis

Now...I'm not daft enough to actually join this community and put this list up there, but frankly, it would be an honor to be banned. Looking at my list, I have three political screeds, seven sci-fi/fantasy, seven animal books, four that are either overtly or covertly religious, and only three that were written in the last decade or so. Several of them are arguably classics. And I tend to pick authors and buy everything I can find by them. In the interests of variety, I only put one book by each favorite author on the list.

I'm sure this list isn't nearly highbrow enough for these people. However, I read for entertainment or information; I'm past the point of needing to read boring tomes for school, so I don't anymore. I did read some great books in school...but I own very few of them. *thinking* Let's see if I can remember some that made an impression:

1. Lord of the Flies
2. Hamlet
3. Brave New World
4. Romeo and Juliet
5. Julius Caesar
6. The Lottery
7. Macbeth

um...um....yeah. Dude, that's just sad. Lots of Shakespeare there. Not a lot of anything else. Now, whether that says something about the quality of literature I was given to read in high school and college, or whether that means my brain is a sieve, I'll leave open for debate. Of course, I graduated from college nearly twenty years ago, so the fact that I'm retaining stuff from high school is fairly remarkable.

Comments

Comments on your list, craftily avoiding the task of making one of my own

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think I'd put Parliament of Whores before Give War A Chance. Also All The Trouble In The World and Eat The Rich. I like PJ better when he takes a thesis and runs with it. (Which reminds me, his new one, Peace Kills, is sort of meh, partly because of the lack of overarching thesis.)

I read Animal Farm while listening to The Wall and loading up on sugar and caffiene. It's interesting how he's the conservative movement's all-time favorite communist.

We got all the Narnia books and my wife read them to the kids at bedtime. She did the same with the Hobbit and the trilogy. I have to say that I liked the Trilogy more than the Hobbit and The Horse and his Boy best of the Narnia. I borrowed all the Hitchhiker books from the library for my eldest, who will soon be 10. He devoured them. They had Long Dark Teatime but I had to buy a used copy of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency because it was out of print. Harumph! Have you read Last Chance To See? With all the animal books, it seems right up your alley.

I only read Hunt For Red October from Clancy, and while it was certainly a good read, it struck me that he was coming from it from a very war-gamer point of view, and it seemed like he had the AWACS plane, the F-14 Tomcat and the USS WhateverTheHunterKillerSubWas as characters rather than the people controlling them.

I probably wouldn't do well on the list either; I know Programming Perl would be high on my list. That and Harlan Ellison's Deathbird Stories.

Re: Comments on your list, craftily avoiding the task of making one of my own

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Parliament of Whores...honestly, anything by PJ rocks my socks, but I just love the title of "Give War a Chance."

Orwell was a commie? *is confoozled* But I thought Animal Farm and 1984 were anti-communist books...

I have all the Narnia books too, but I was too lazy to go down and actually pick my favorite one. I haven't read the LotR Trilogy yet; still working on it. I think I might have Last Chance to See but haven't read it yet either. I've got about 40 books downstairs waiting for my attention...and about 15 up here next to me. Including my recently published Mom's book. *headdesk*

I love everything by Clancy, but Executive Orders is far and above my favoritest, because it's such an indictment of the press. I want the fictional Jack Ryan as my President. *shamelessly fangirls* Clancy definitely gets into the techie part of the equipment that he writes about, but I love his characters as well, and how he weaves them into his books, and how they encounter each other through time.

Lad: A Dog probably isn't my favorite Terhune book, either, but it's the one that defines him and probably the one he's most famous for. Picking one favorite book by my favorite authors? Nearly impossible. LOL Looking at the list, I pretty much picked titles at random (or the first book in a series) from them.

Re: Comments on your list, craftily avoiding the task of making one of my own

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Give War A Chance: That is a great title. PJ has lots of great titles.

Orwell: Orwell was a commie, but he was such an honest, freedom-loving and dictator-hating commie that he left the Spanish Civil War one step before the Stalinists who wanted to put him into a show trial. He's certainly an anti-Stalinist. There's a book by Christopher Hitchens called Why Orwell Matters that, while somewhat ill-written, explains a lot about what Orwell believed and why. (Christopher Hitchens is the conservative movement's favorite living communist; his demolition of Fahrenheit 9/11 is so great and I think I found the link to it from National Review.) Communist or not, his "Politics and the English Language" should be taught to every high schooler in America, and his "Shooting An Elephant" makes me understand Pilate's position.

I understand the phenomenon of unread books very much. I've yet to read my wife's published dissertation. Last Chance To See has Adams travelling to the habitats of several endangered species and writing about why they're endangered. The bits that really struck me were the mating call of the kakapo, a small flightless bird from a small South Pacific Island, and the impossibility of echolocation for the river dolphins of China. I strongly recommend you place this higher in the stack.

I'll have to look at Lad: A Dog some time.

[whirligigged.livejournal.com]

Er...Am feeling rather dumb and inexperienced right now. I'm still snatching books from the YA section at the library and bookstore right now, (not to mention the Spider-Man comics *blush*) 14-year old that I am, so...yeah. >.< I did just finish reading The Hobbit about two hours ago, for summer reading. It was a lot more enjoyable the first time I read it, when I didn't have to. And didn't have the looming threat of writing mini-essays on the book once I was done reading it. Still, it's excellent. Didn't read the trilogy, it looked boring, and by the time I decided that I'd heard enough people rave about it that I finally decided to read it, I'd lost two of the three books. And...I have to agree that The Horse and His Boy was the best of the Narnia series. No one else seems to have read it, though. And then The Magician's Nephew. And I swear I was going to read the Bible. It's just that my grandparents got me the version for teenagers, instead. I don't care to read the analysis and morals of it, just the actual thing. Er, I've seen Alice and Wonderland the movie. *sheepish grin* I'm just sad. I'll read these books later in my life, when I've gotten to the point where books over 500 pages that don't happen to be Harry Potter stop seeming as daunting as they are right now. Did read Romeo and Juliet. *feels special* Not all the way through, but...a lot. In school. But I own it, too! I swear!

Perhaps I'll try and read one the books you two smarter people mentioned, lol. Which one would you recommend?

And thank you for the offer for help! It's very confusing on this site. Especially the first day, I was making all sorts of blunders. I don't have Yahoo IM, unfortunately, but...oh, well. I also took a look at the elephant things, I've seen those before! I love those, they're so colorful and fun looking. I can't collect things myself, though. I was collecting glass animals for about a year, but I got tired of it. They are pretty to look at, though, I just don't have any shelf space for them, and keeping them anywhere else would put them at risk of breaking.

Those book crew people sound like awful snobs. I looked at the community...what is with them...? ass-clowns prigs.

Happy Friday the 13th. Nothing bad happened to me! Hurrah! Hence the happy icon.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

If you like animal books (I collect them, too), then I can strongly recommend anything by Terhune, Meek, or Hinkle. They're pretty easy reading, not too long, and excellent storytelling--and out of print (they're OLD), so you have to either find them used or at the library. And Hank the Cowdog? There are 44 books in that series, and I own them all. You can start anywhere in the series; it's not necessary to read the first ones in order to figure out what's going on. In fact, a lot of the books on this list are probably in the YA section of your local library.

Lawhead has a YA series as well, which I can recommend unconditionally (I own all his books as well). He writes a lot of Celtic historical fantasy novels, and weighty Christian historical tomes as well. I love all his books, and got the idea of Spike's faith being challenged for "Mustard Seed" from them.

You might know Edgar Rice Burroughs better as the author of the Tarzan series (yes, they were books before they were a Disney movie). The Mars books are a guilty pleasure for me, since they're full of Sues and Stus, but hey...good storytelling again, high adventure, lots of fun. Same thing with the Jacques books--you know exactly who's good and who's evil, and they're a fun read as well.

I couldn't get through Tolkien's trilogy when I was in high school either; it was boring to me back then. Maybe when you're older you can revisit them and they'll have more meaning for you.

Heh. You got me talking about books...

[alliterator.livejournal.com]

Okay, I feel sad now. I've only read seven books on your list (although I've heard of practically all of them). My twenty books would probably be filled with the entire oevure of Terry Pratchett and Jasper Fforde (which I completely recommend - I just finished his latest Thursday Next novel, Something Rotten, and it is The Best).

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of those books are out of print and reflect my obsession with out-of-print dog and horse stories, so you don't need to feel bad about not having read them. They're probably only interesting to someone like me--I have an entire six-foot-tall bookcase filled with ONLY old dog fiction; and in addition to that I have one shelf dedicated to Albert Payson Terhune, another for Thomas C. Hinkle, one for Joseph Chipperfield, and still another for Col. SP Meek. So, yeah...I read a lot of animal books. Man, I can't believe I left Old Yeller off the list....

Jasper Fford...*sighs and adds to list of authors to check out*

[alliterator.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you like classic books, the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde is for you. The first in the series in called The Eyre Affair. The main character, Thursday Next, is an agent of SpecOps-27, the LiteraTecs, who investigate literature related crimes. This is, of course, an alternate universe where books have high importance and Shakespeare plays are shown like the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[vampirepuppet.livejournal.com]

I love dog and horse stories. I read most of Terhune's stuff--all that the library stocked, anyway--when I was young and I recommend it for any age. Although he tended to be repetitive, and I got to the point where I skipped right past his pages-long rants about stupid people mistaking harmless animals for mad dogs, for instance. His strong suit was that he had a great way of making the dogs so "real." Lad, Wolf, and Gray Dawn were my favorites.

I don't think many people know about S.P. Meek. Well, my high-school library had probably 10 of his books, and I read every one. He did "Mary Sue" the dogs (I remember Dignity the springer spaniel, who possessed nearly human intelligence and was a great hunter and working dog, and also a winner in the show ring), but they're fun books. Probably hard to find now, I suppose.

The first book review I ever wrote for school was about Smoky.

I would rather read a good dog or horse book than just about anything else.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Meek's books are increasingly hard to find; the few I don't own come up very rarely on eBay, and when they do, they go for bigger bucks than I'm usually willing to spend. Terhune had his pet peeves and usually managed to inject them somewhere in each of his books.

I don't know if you're familiar with Joseph Chipperfield or not; he was a British author and I'd never heard of him until I started hunting for dog books on eBay. He wrote about German Shepherds, mostly, and had some other books about wild animals as well. I recommend him, if you can find his books. And another author of both dog and horse books was Arthur C. Bartlett.

LOL No, I don't have a huge collection. At all.