Anonymous wrote:Thanks for these lists, which should provide plenty of suggestions for vacation reads.

To Kill A Mockingbird is the perfect book. Other all-time favs:
East of Eden
The Kite Runner
Death Comes to the Archbishop

Try the first three from recorded books if you have a long car trip. Gives them a whole new dimension.

Thought the first 2/3 of Kite Runner was phenomenal but thought it fell apart towards the end.

I feel like I need to go read Owen Meany again...

Glad to see that someone earlier mentioned Lolita. A creepy book, for sure, but so well written.

Just bought A Fine Balance and A Prayer For Owen Meany on my kindle. Both were nit available on kindle until recently. Due to this thread I was excited when they became available. Currently reading Owen Meany and like it.

Overall favorites:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. Beautiful! She was a genius.

Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

In college I loved The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) and
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

In high school I loved Catcher in the Rye

Just recently read Jane Eyre and loved it! I never did enjoy Wuthering Heights though, which is weird because I'm a classics fan.

Can't confine it to just one...

Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
Poisonwood Bible - Kingsolver
The Sparrow - Russell
Memoir from Antproof Case & Winter's Tale - Helprin
Persuasion - Austen
The Road - McCarthy
Cryptonomicon - Stephenson
What is the What - Eggers
Song Yet Sung - McBride
Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Murakami (well, pretty much everything Murakami has written)
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
Catch-22 - Heller
Brave New World - Huxley

Thanks to whoever suggested Gaiman's American Gods - that has just vaulted to the top of my wish list.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl by Steinbeck.

Anything by Tana French - especially her first novel - In the Woods.

AT THE CORNER OF WALL AND SESAME by Wendy Levitt. Doesn't matter what kind of mom you are... you can find yourself in here.

Tom Robbins (JITTERBUG PERFUME)
Kurt Vonnegut (surprised not to see him on more of the lists on this thread!)
Mark Helprin (WINTER'S TALE AND SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR AND ANTPROOF CASE)
Wallace Stegner (CROSSING TO SAFETY)
T.H. White (THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING)
Barbara Kingsolver (POISONWOOD BIBLE)
Tolstoy (ANNA KARENINA)
Patrick White (CHARIOT)
Philip Roth (come on, guys! try his recent books)
Margaret Atwood's THE PENELOPIAD

BACK WITH MORE SOON
THANKS FOR THIS THREAD!

My all-time favorite is Pride and Prejudice. Any other Austen novel comes in a close second. And I loved Possession and Atonement. And oh far too many to list, and many would be repeats of others' suggestions.

But for less classic and/or more genre reads that (I think) have not been previously mentioned, I love PD James and Elizabeth George mysteries, and I could not put down The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant -- a fascinating picture of Renaissance Florence. I also loved The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever, a collection of her short stories, is good too).

Anonymous wrote:Lolita
Of Human Bondage
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Oh - and I forgot Franny and Zooey.

All books I could not live without.

Lolita
Of Human Bondage
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

OP here...love that this thread is still going!

Funny...both threads I've started have had some serious staying power. I must have a special touch

My favorite is The Power of ONe.

Reading a really good book right now, The Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I forgot about Confederacy for Dunces. Laughed out loud!

Really? I don't get it. After a dozen recommendations, I finally checked it out, and was both bored and repulsed by the first 50 pages. I had zero desire to go further. Is it perhaps one of those books that doesn't get worthwhile til the second half or something?

that's because you are a fattist, discriminating against ignatius reilly. You and margaret mitchell should be banned.

Sorry to inform you that IR stays fat and equally repulsive throughout the novel so you need not pick it up again.