my all time favorite book is: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and a close 2nd is Prodical Summer by Barbra Kingslover.

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby (for obvious reasons... it's all about me, for one. it's also all about obsessive record collecting)

as a teenager, my favorite book (actually, my bible) was The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

runners up include:
Love and Living, and Thoughts in Solitude - Thomas Merton
Reaching Out, and Life of the Beloved - Henri Nouwen
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
The Alphabet of Grace - Buechner
The Writing Life, and An American Childhood - Annie Dillard
Circle of Quiet, and Walking on Water - Madeleine L'Engle
The Four Loves, and Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
The Vampire Lestat - Anne Rice

I'll stop there, but these are core books that have changed or profoundly influenced my life in some way and will be a part of my life and who I am till death do us part.

I have a strong favoritisim towards C.S. Lewis, so my top 3 books rank as follows:

1 - The Great Divorce
2 - Mere Christianity
3 - The Screwtape Letters

Besides Lewis, I'm drawing a complete blank...but my drawing a complete blank is in no way indicative of the level of significance other books have had on me.

The bible is in a sort of league of its own...

Novel:

Dostojevskij - The Brothers Karamazov

Modern Theology:
Tillich's systematic Theology

Other non-fiction:
Alistair MacIntosh: Soil And Soul


Patrik

In no particular order:
- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs Chuck Klosterman
-The Idiot Dostoyevsky
-Silence Shusaku Endo
-High Fidelity Nick Hornby
-'Till We Have Faces C.S. Lewis
-Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
-Watership Down Richard Adams
-The Bourne Identity Robert Ludlum

i'm having a love/hate relationship with this thread. on one hand, i have a bunch of books i need to check out, but lately i've been hitting up the used bookstore and coming home with more than i can read. i have quite the list to tackle before i can take on any more, sadly.

oh yeah, the list...

jack kerouac - on the road
john irving - a prayer for owen meaney
mikhail bulgakov - the master and margarita
larry mcmurtry - all my friends are going to be strangers
anne lamott - traveling mercies
flannery o'connor - complete stories
nina cassian - poems

favorites...

-amen to the flannery o'connor mention!!! she's my absolute favorite. "the river" is my favorite of her stories.

-most of douglas coupland's work

-franny and zooey (j.d. salinger)

i'm gonna read the brothers karamazov very soon, and i won't be surprised if it jumps into the pile. i do so love the russians (yay bulgokov!).

and patrik, i reeeeeally enjoyed soil and soul. still digesting it. at patrik's recommendation, last year i read tillich's dynamics of faith. incredible book. patrik makes good recommendations.

we need to bring back the top 100 books thread...

nothing sad about it! it's great to swim in the possibilities of all the unread books in one's collection. I own a bit over 1,000 books. I have read, in my lifetime, just under 400. I do not own a copy of every book I have read. you do the math... (and please do not ask about my CD collection and the presence of shrink-wrap in it...)

I'm glad you liked them! Actually it's a rare thing that people enjoy what I recommend them to read, so I'm happy I can hit the nail occasionally...

Patrik

I am not sure who said that first quote, but I am in the same boat. I have been getting so many books lately(probably half of them bought and half of them rejects from the library my mom works in) that I feel like guilty for how materialistic I am. I need shelves! I don't know how many books I have read, nor how many I own. I think those might be interesting threads in themselves. I am going to guess and say I have about 500 books, and have read about 200. I will get back with more definite answers, though.


If you recommend some church fathers to me that think Elisha prefigures Jesus, I will be stoked!

Like Patrik said, the Bible is in a league of its own for me too.

After that, I guess the books I like the most are the ones that help me understand the Bible and the Christian faith more.

So I would say my favorite book at the moment is The Literary Structure of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis-Malachi by David Dorsey. It is really opening new worlds of meaning to me in the historical books of the Hebrew Bible. It is a little different, though, because it is not so much a book that I read as much as I consult different parts of it as I study.

As far as fiction, I don't think I have finished a work of fiction since my junior year of college (7 years ago). I usually get into a novel and my idealism and desire to broaden my horizons is overcome by how much I just don't care. I know that is bad, but it is true. I enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck when I was in high school, and East of Eden interested me a few years ago because of its relation to my thesis and the recommendation of a friend, but I have never made it past the first or second chapter.

As it turns out I have about 370 books, and I am really running short on my 4.5 bookshelves. The number I have read is probably closer to 100.

I have about 325 grown-up books and just shy of 100 children's picture books in my possession in this apartment. I also have boxes of books left at Mom and Dad's. I'm not sure how many have survived, as some of them were pitched to the curb for mildew (I am still mad), but they're there, someplace.

I love books. Nutrition books, cookbooks, music books, writing guides, thesauri, dictionaries, textbooks, parenting guides, psych explorations, poetry, plays, theology, mythology, self-defense, fiction, nonfiction, whatever and everything. Books. The world in my hands.

I haven't really chosen favorites.

My favorite books for illustration are either Tullé's Night•Day or Dr. Seuss' My Many Colored Days (ill. Johnson/Fancher).

My favorite children's story right now is Gilman's Something From Nothing.

My favorite non-classic teen fiction novel is Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli.

(Eliminates favorites in historical, adventure, juvenile fantasy, etc for brevity.)

My favorite grown-up novel-type book is CS Lewis' Til We Have Faces.

My favorite non-fiction book is fluctuating just now.

And I've just fallen in love with Rilke's Duino Elegies.

Right now, my vote would have to go to A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnely (If I keep bringing it up in posts, maybe someone will read it...) because it is just so d--- well written. It is based on the murder that inspired An American Tragedy and is just fabulously knitted together and so moving and agitating and heartwarming and insert superlative adjective here, etc. It will make you cry with fear, sorrow, joy, despair, love and the sheer knowledge that no matter how hard you try, you will never write a book as good as this.
So there.

Pride and Prejudice...hands down.

followed closely by Great Expectations.

(I'm a romanticist)

new found love....Virginia Woolf...in a modernist lit class this semester. I am sure I will love her even more.

Pride and Prejudice...hands down.

followed closely by Great Expectations.

(I'm a romanticist)

new found love....Virginia Woolf...in a modernist lit class this semester. I am sure I will love her even more.

i love, love, love a good book! i'll take suggestions!

Favorites, that's hard. ones i keep reading over and over:

the chronicles of narnia
the hobbit, LoR
hebrew love poems
the bible jesus read
pilgrim's progress
anything by george macdonald
hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy
mark of the lion series (yes, this is romantic fiction, but oh so well written!)
homegrown kids (great parenting book)
many more, and you'll get sick of reading this list!

books i like to read to my kids:
again, narnia
the complete beatrix potter
i love you stinky face
mercer mayers little critter books
all dr.suess books
well, too many to list, really