Book Nominations!

[Travis*]

A true reference masterpiece of the era, Insects that Feed on Trees and Shrubs (Johnson and Lyon)
I didn't want to influence voters but remind anyone who might have forgotten it.
I'll post my full list later

[MatthewV]

The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Briece.
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee?

[dethwing]

"The Holy Bible (Old Testement), Aliens and Magicians "

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke?
I was also told to ignore he "Atlas Shrugged" things. Is that serious or not?

[Courk]

Atlas Shrugged seems to be an actual book by Ayn Rand. It's even called a masterpiece by amazon.com.

I think the one you should ignore is the World Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand McNally. That was a joke, since Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged and Rand McNally is a company that makes maps...

As for the other one *shrug*

[JDTAY]

Darnit, I not only forgot All Quiet On The Western Front, I forgot To Kill A Mockingbird too. I really should take more than a half hour to do my nominations next time.

[Hitchhiker]

People here haven't read Atlas Shrugged? That's just criminal. What are they teaching you young'uns in school these days?

I am not participating. It'd just be too depressing to watch books like Catch-22 and Snow Crash lose out to something that the GL hordes have read.

[Courk]

I'd never heard of "Atlas Shrugged" until this thread. The title did make me laugh.

[doormouse11]

Illusions Richard Bach
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
Neuromancer William Gibson
All Tomorrow's Parties William Gibson
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut
Choke Chuck Palahniuk
American Gods Neil Gaiman
The Neverending Story Michael Ende
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats T.S. Elliot
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Sphere Michael Crichton

My screennamesake..
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Charles Dodgson

[Dragon Phoenix]

I’ll mainly stick to books in English, that at least some people here might know.

Small gods – Terry Pratchett (although most Discworld novels would do)
Good omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (amazingly funny)
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman (London as you do NOT know it)
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (book 1) – Douglas Adams (nuff said)
Dune – Frank Herbert (my fave overall)
The moon is a harsh mistress – Robert Heinlein (vintage SF)
Second foundation – Isaac Asimov (the best of the classic SF trilogy)
The Da Vinci code – Dan Brown (within the limitations of its genre excellent)
Riotous assembly - Tom Sharpe (persiflage on South Africa during apartheid)
Men of men - Wilbur Smith (although most of his work is great, my fave story teller)
The sum of all fears – Tom Clancy (best example from one of my fave genres, the technothriller)
Syrup – Maxx Berry (hilarious take on the advertising world)
Bridge in the Fourth Dimension - Victor Mollo (bridge as a comedy subject – awesome)
Anno Domini – Barnaby Williams (similar themes to the Da Vinci code, written in 1996)
Book of heroic failures – Stephen Pile (an overview of unsung heroes for which matters went wrong)

Exceptions to the English language rule:
Und Keiner kommt davon (no-one escapes) - HH Kirst (writen in the fifties, a disturbing novel of WW3 which sees Europe destroyed in nuclear exchanges)
Het leliethater (the lily theatre) – Lulu Wang (impressive account of a young girl growing up in Cultural revolution China).

Maybe more later.

[mith]

The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien (What's the ruling here? They were published as three books originally, but divided into six, and intended as one; if we're going by amazon, you can buy the whole thing as one book, so it could go either way. I prefer to nominate it as one, but if not, I'll nominate all three)
Ender's Game - Card
Good Omens - Prachett/Gaiman
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
Dune - Herbert
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Hofstadter
The Three Musketeers - Dumas
The Princess Bride - Goldman
Animal Farm - Orwell
I am Legend - Mattheson
Small Gods - Prachett (happens to be the only one I've read; I'll get to them someday...)
Heir to the Empire - Zahn
The Player of Games - Banks
Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Dick
Sideways Stories from Wayside School - Sachar (I couldn't resist. I have fond memories of those books.)

That's either 18 or 20. Will also be nominating Wheel of Time, Narnia, and Dark Tower books, as soon as I decide which ones. Possibly a Harry Potter as well. I'm sure I'm forgetting some good books.

[dethwing]

[mith]

Yes, I read that, and I was asking for clarification because the amazon part seems to confuse the issue.

[dethwing]

That was only a suggestion for determening what counted as a book.

[mith]

I think you're missing my point.

This is a book.

This is a series.

But they're both The Lord of the Rings.

I'm asking because this is a fairly unique problem. Most series are not intended to be a single book(for example, The Illuminatus! Trilogy), whereas:

[zorT Kitty]

*agrees with mith*

[Coyote]

*agrees with Hitchhiker* (back up in post #45)

But I'll participate anyway, in spite of *insert standard rant about how much I hate 'top ten' sort of lists*, because simply by participating in this thread, we can bring things like Catch-22 and Snow Crash to the attention of other GLers. For instance, while I've read Catch-22, I'd never even heard of Snow Crash before. Now that I've heard of it though, and know that Hitchhiker believes it worth reading, there's at least a fair chance I'll seek it out, which never would have happened otherwise.

So--my list, even though most of these will never even come close to the top 25:

First off, Non-fiction (and dethwing, I must say here that, in the interest of fairness, I think this poll should really seperate this class from the Fiction class.)

Godel, Escher, Bach Douglas Hofstader
The Nature of Light and Color in the Open Air Marcel Minnaert
Mathematical Recreations and Essays W.W. Rouse Ball
A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking
Intelligent Life in the Universe Carl Sagan & I. S. Shklovskii
Chess Problems, Introduction to the Art Lipton, Rice, & Matthews
(Hey, I had to slip that one in--and it is one of my favorite books!)

And now Fiction--a much larger selection here, but then, Human imagination has always outstripped Human knowledge.

The Three Musketeers Alexander Dumas
Lord of the Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
Jailbird Kurt Vonnegut
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
Friday Robert Heinlein
Inferno Dante Alighieri
The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin
Last and First Men Olaf Stapledon
The Worm Ouroboros E. R. Edisson
Candide Voltaire
Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut
All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Remarque
Job Robert Heinlein
Cyrano de Bergerac Edmond Rostand

Ummm...and five others. I've read lots of other books besides these, of course, and some I've read more than once, for example Ringworld by Larry Niven, or Legacy by R. A. Salvatore, or Fountains of Paradise by Arthur Clarke--but while I thought they were all good books, they didn't have quite the impact on me that the books in the main list had. How much longer am I allowed to come up with five more titles? (I'm sure some others will come to mind in time.)
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[Dread Pirate Westley]

I was going to only nominate The Princess Bride, but upon further consideration, I can make an exception for Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
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[mathgrant]

[mudbuck]

No Lynn Flewelling? *sniffle*
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[casinopete]

ugh. Sorry for the edit. This requires more thought.

I will leave up:

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr - A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

:for now, and remake my list.

[Mackay]

*also nominates A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich*

(good idea, cp) =]

[Naboo]

My choices are (in no particular order):

1) 1984 - George Orwell
2) Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
3) Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
4) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
5) The Pearl - John Steinbeck
6) The Dead Zone - Stephen King
7) The Outsider - Albert Camus
8) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
9) Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
10) Heart of Darkness and other Stories - Joseph Conrad
11) I Robot - Isaac Asimov
12) A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
13) The Body Artist - Don Delillo
14) On the Road - Jack Kerouac
15) Orientalism - Edward W. Said
16) The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
17) Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
19) A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzenheim (Thanks cp!)
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller (are play's allowed, btw? If so then I'd also like to include...)
20) Hamlet - William Shakespeare

That's about all I can think of at the moment.

[The Ragin' South Asian]

1.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn- Twain
2.1984- Orwell
3.Oh, The Places You Will Go- Seuss
5.Mahabharata- Vyasa (translation by Rajagopalachari)
5.Catcher In the Rye- Salinger
6.The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Twain
7.Brave New World- Huxley
8.White Fang- London
9.Animal Farm- Orwell
10.Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!- Seuss
11.Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy-Adams

[dethwing]

Sorry, but I no longer have the time nor the inclination to carry through with this. If anyone wants to pick up the pieces and count nominations and so forth, feel free. Sorry for the dissapointment (Or do I flatter myself...?)

[Coyote]

We could just keep the whole thread around as a 'recommended reading' collection. Nothing wrong with that idea, is there?
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[The Cheshire Man]

The Bible -- God
Ender's Game -- Orson Scott Card
Paradise Lost -- John Milton
Phantastes -- George MacDonald
Animal Farm -- George Orwell
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain
The Great Gatsby -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Catcher in the Rye -- J. D. Salinger
The Phantom Tollbooth -- Norton Juster
The Martian Chronicles -- Ray Bradbury
Understanding Comics -- Scott McCloud
The Sandman vol. II: The Doll's House -- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman vol. VII: Brief Lives -- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman vol. VIII: World's End -- Neil Gaiman
The Sandman vol. IX: The Kindly Ones -- Neil Gaiman
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -- Ken Kesey
Hamlet -- William Shakespeare
In Memoriam -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Odyssey -- Homer
Oedipus Rex -- Sophocles
Till We Have Faces -- C. S. Lewis
And Then There Were None -- Agatha Christie
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
Wicked: The life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West -- Gregory Maguire
The Wee Free Men -- Terry Pratchett

It would be fun to do one of these with short, public domain poems. Mainly because we could actually post the poems in the thread.
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smile

[mith]

Depending on how I feel after tomorrow, I may take over running this. We'll see how much time I have.

[mith]

Oops, forgot about this. The Master's post in the movie thread reminded me.

I'm willing to organize this, if there's still interest. I'll put together the nominations so far.

[mith]

Oh, and for anyone posting nominations after this point, could you:

Post the full title of the book, no quotes, no numbers; hyphen, last name of the author only (for example: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams)
Post any comments about the books after the full list.

Would make things easier, since I'm copy pasting into Excel.

[mith]

Right, assuming I haven't screwed up somewhere, we currently have 24 books with 3+ nominations, 29 with 2, and 191 with a single nomination. I'll put the list up at some point so someone can double check it, as I'm sure I've missed at least one case of someone leaving off or adding an extra "the" (and similar things).

[mith]

Oh, and I am currently counting The Lord of the Rings as one book; that's still open to discussion, though. If you've just nominated a part, but don't want to nominate the whole, please post saying so.

[dethwing]

I nominated only Fellowship. If you're going to count it as the whole trilogy then I'll change, since the rest is crap.

Swap to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

[casinopete]

mith,

My count (before deth's alteration) gives 23 books with 3 or more nominations, and 32 with exactly 2. deth's change would make that 33 with exactly 2.

I expect you grouped one I have missed, but perhaps overlooked a couple labeled differently by nominators?

Stephen King's Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass was nominated by Jedo and Antrax.

Dante's Divine Comedy was nominated by Persona, and the Inferno portion of it by Coyote.

Maybe you missed the dictionaries? or aren't taking them seriously?

[casinopete]

hmm.

Maybe you got your "extra" 3+ by throwing Jedo's Last Command in with Heir to the Empire you and dethwing mentioned?

[Antrax]

I remembered an important nomination:
16. The Stranger - Albert Camus
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[Mackay]

My Name Is Asher Lev - Potok

(read it yesterday. Smeggin' brilliant.)

[Mackay]

Hitchhiker's post could be counted as three nominations, even though she isn't participating in the actual poll...?

[casinopete]

Farenheit 451 - Bradbury
The Good Earth - Buck
Ender's Game - Card
Speaker for the Dead - Card
Fountains of Paradise - Clarke
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Donaldson
Idoru - Gibson
Neuromancer - Gibson
Lord of the Flies - Golding
Dune - Herbert
The Glass Bead Game - Hesse
Les Miserables - Hugo
A Doll's House - Ibsen
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
The Master of Go - Kawabata
Tigana - Kay
Gone With the Wind - Mitchell
The Chosen - Potok
My Name is Asher Lev - Potok
The Fountainhead - Rand
Cyrano d'Bergerac - Rostand
Franny and Zooey - Salinger
Hyperion - Simmons
***A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsyn
Diamond Age - Stephenson

*** I nominated this earlier.

Near Misses:

Brothers Karamozov - Dostoevsky
Jitterbug Perfume - Robbins
Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut

[mith]

I'll add these, and then post what I have. I'd missed Dante, but had Dark Tower IV. I suspect the one you're missing is And Then There Were None = Ten Little Indians (= 12 Little Indians, according to dethy ).

[casinopete]

Had it, actually - might have missed it had Courk not corrected him inthread, though. fnord.