Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 11:35 AM

Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan (whimsical and beautifully innocent encapsulation of the "hippie" experience)

A Separate Peace - John Knowles (a "Catcher In The Rye"-type book, but more nuanced and beautifully written)

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (if one points to an example of THE great American novel, this book is in that category)

Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo (one of the greatest - if not the greatest - anti-war books ever written)

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Nabokov turned a taboo relationship between an older man and a young girl into a work of art)

Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn, The Rosy Crucifixion - Henry Miller (Miller makes beautiful writing look effortless)

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Becca72
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 12:13 PM

I've read several on that list but one I really loved was 'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 12:28 PM

I've read all but the first three of the list in the OP, and I think it's a pretty good representative "popular easy reads" list; including incidentally War & Peace, which despite it's length is in fact a very easy going read.

My personal favourites are pretty much anything by Dostoyevsky, anything by Jane Austin and anything by Charles Dickens, oh and CS Lewis too.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 12:33 PM

Frick!!! Forgot my new favourite author: George RR Martin! Mr got me the 7 vol box set of his A Song of Ice and Fire (serialised on HBO as Game of Thrones) and I wish it had been twice the length. Desperately thirsty for vol 8 to come out in 2014, ugh so long to wait...

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 12:59 PM

Why, Eliza, something in common indeed; Mansfield Park would top my list for sure. I often wonder, with lists like this, why it is somehow thought that only one work by any writer should figure; be that as it may, my next three would be Emma, Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice.

Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, Right on Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters, Snobs [Julian Fellowes], Huckleberry Finn, Middlemarch, Felix Holt, Silas Marner, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie, Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Puck of Pooks Hill, Rewards & Fairies, The Way of All Flesh, Washington Square, Anna Karenina, Paradise Lost, the William books, the Flashman books, Damon Runyon's Broadway stories, Gaudy Night, Watership Down, Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies, Put Out More Flags, The Loved One, I Claudius, The Return of the Native, The Woodlanders, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Hand of Ethelberta, Treasure Island, Mr Johnson, Lolita, Portnoy's Complaint...

Just for starters. Shall think in 5 minutes, oh how could I have missed out...?

No Tolkein; can never get to the end of three sentences. Likewise C.S. Lewis...

~M~

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 01:12 PM

I knew it ~~ Richardson's Clarissa is imcomparable.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 01:14 PM

Oh ~~ & Wuthering Heights

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 02:46 PM

Michael, I went through a long phase of absolutely adoring all Thomas Hardy's books, but curiously I suddenly found them infinitely depressing and fatalistic, although naturally his descriptions of rural life still delight me (especially in The Woodlanders). Jude The Obscure and Tess are enough to make one lose the will to live! But a great author nonetheless. (Studied him at Uni)
I read Jane Austin over and over again, why do we do that? I'm almost word perfect with Mansfield Park yet I go on and on reading it. The book is falling to pieces!
I have to add that many of Agatha Christie's whodunnits are very re-readable, but I suspect it's because they project one into a past age of 20th Century Britain. I have whole shelves of her, and do get stuck in frequently. I don't know what I should do without books, they're the love of my life!

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 04:10 PM

"why do we do that?" ~~~

Why, because the parsonage-bound Miss Austen happened to be one of the greatest of plotters, marvellous creator of character [Mrs Norris is quite a respectable upper class widow, and probably the most horrible villain in all literature - without actually doing anything, how she makes your flesh creep!], writer of some of the wittiest dialogue ~~ and an incomparable moralist. I once had a colleague who said Jane Austen didn't compare as a moralist with Dostoevsky; but admitted my point when I said that any fool [exaggerating a bit, as I admitted] could strike off great points of moral involvement at the agonies of a murderer trying to come to terms with his conscience over about 1000 pages; but it took real genius to make the reader really agonise with empathy at the moral dilemma of a young woman trying to decide which of two young men's gifts of gold chains she should wear to a ball; she somehow makes it a vital point which fills all one's ethical horizon.

No-one else could ever quite pull this effect off. But she did it again & again: oh, the moral agony of poor Emma (& of us, is the vital point), just because she has been a little bit rude to a poor-old-thing of a middle-aged woman who has fallen on hard times...

She is just incomparable.

~M~

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 06:29 PM

I agree with all you say Michael, and I would add that it's also the sheer elegance of her prose which captivates. I find it such a pleasure to revel in her style, which is restrained yet powerful. It's heartening to hear that she's still extremely popular with today's generation of readers.
Regarding Dickens, I lived, ate and slept in his novels from the age of about ten. I studied them for my A Level and at Uni. I was quite a 'buff' with quotes and knew every book inside out. But like Hardy, his style very suddenly ceased to please. Do you suppose that as we mature and grow, our literary 'needs' change? And yet, as I posted above, I still read Enid blessed Blyton!! Maybe I haven't grown up much after all!

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 09 Oct 13 - 09:07 PM

Looking over the list in the opening post reminds me that it's time to reread Catch-22.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 04:40 AM

Oh yes, Eliza, one's tastes change. I didn't care for Dickens much when young, but now think him one of the greatest of novelists. I have read all his novels. And I had the same experience re Hardy, & have now read all his too. (I mentioned The Hand Of Ethelberta in my list ~~ not one of his famous titles, but I recommend it as being actually, & uncharacteristically, funny; not one to rob one of the will to live like Tess & Jude: and wonderfully plotted. There is a marvellous scene where the butler at the sideboard is the father of the chief lady guest, but they are the only people there who know. Try that one if you haven't before.)

Additions: David Lodge's novels, esp Small World & Nice Work. Oh, and Asimov's Robots are topp sf IMO. And having mistyped 'top' reminds me of Nigel Molesworth, the Curse of St Custard's: Down With Skool & How To Be Topp. Oh, & I'll have Catch-22 too.

Regards
~M~

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 04:49 AM

I seem to remember 'Fotherington-Thomas is wet and a weed'. Is that from How to be Topp?

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 04:53 AM

Drifting a bit about Jane Austen ~~ hope nobody minds; but I have never come across a proper defence of the common, but much mistaken, denunciation that the Napoleonic Wars were going on all around, but they quite pass her by. Not true. She didn't say "There was a war going on", because she was writing about her own time for contemporary readers, so they knew that, thank you. & as the events are all viewed thru the consciousnesses of female characters, they are not directly involved. They were, in short, not what she was writing about. But they are always there: a lot of the plots still turn on the fact of this war happening. Why is there a militia regiment [equivalent of our TA], called up to arms & billeted at Meryton to play havoc with all the young women of the district, before moving to Brighton Camp, the main HQ as Aldershot & Catterick are now, mentioned in The Girl I Left Behind Me. Why was the militia of Mr Western's county 'embodied', convenient for him so join as a young man? How did Admiral Croft & Captain Wentworth get so rich on 'prize money', before 'this new peace' brought them conveniently ashore for the Admiral to rent Sir Walter Elliot's house?

Just a few instances; but the wars are a sort of running background leitmotiv throughout...

~M~
~M~

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 07:18 AM

Why just Brits? Do you think we Yanks can't write?

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 09:24 AM

Being big a fan of Fantasy I must put Tolkiens works on my list and also agree with CS on George RR Martins epic. Another favourite is David Gemmel. I think his fist published work was 'Legend' and still find that hard to top. The absolute must have author for me though is Terry Pratchett.

Before I give the impression that I am exclusively into Fantasy I must add that most of my recent reads have been Historical fiction and a lot of Bernard Cornwell's works have pride of place on my bookshelves. In my younger days it was Adventure with the likes of H Ryder Haggard (currently re-reading the Quartermain stories), CS Forester, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

I have just discovered eBooks and am like a kid in a sweet shop :-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 10:07 AM

Guest 2 back: What mean, "just Brits"? On my list you will find Dreiser, Mark Twain, Henry James, Damon Runyon, Nabokov [if he counts as American], Philip Roth, Heller ~~ & I now add Anita Loos.

So stop moaning, eh?

~M~

& somehow I forgot CS Forester; how could I? I have read every one, even The General & Brown On Resolution.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: kendall
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 02:01 PM

I wasn't referring to the books, I read it that only Brits should post. I don't moan.I kick ass.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Claire M
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 02:33 PM

Hiya,

Nothing wrong w/ being exclusively into fantasy – I mostly am --, but our tastes do – & will -- change. I had cds when young that I never want nor need to hear again due to them being played so much, or perhaps they just weren't that good in the 1st place, but I just *thought* they were ??

I suppose it's the same w/ books. I tend to borrow books off friends w/ similar tastes, only buying if/when I've no other way to get them; I'll never re-read them so don't see any point paying.

I love [i]Wintersmith,[/i] love it. TP & I seem to have same fav band, & you can just tell songs inspire him. Even knew another folkie who was a dead ringer for him; when I told said man his response was that he didn't like fantasy stuff @ all. I was a bit disappointed.

Ook ??

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: kendall
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 04:22 PM

I'll add a few. Not in order of importance.
Silver lock John Myers Myers
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Moby Dick
The Odyssey
The Count of Monte Cristo
Tale of two cities
Les Miserables
All of C S Foresters books.
Beowulf
Doctor Zhivago
Lonesome Dove
A Biography of Winston Churchill by Lord Moran.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Elmore
Date: 10 Oct 13 - 06:47 PM

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, Middlemarch by George Eliot, The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner, Hard Times by Dickens, Chronicles of Barsetshire by Trollope, A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny, Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence, Creole Belle by James Lee Burke, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Stand by Stephen King.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 01:24 AM

Thanks for reminder ~~ Trollope another writer I didn't care for until comparatively recently ~~ maybe 20 years ago in my 60s; but now admire greatly & have read all the works of. Would nominate The Way We Live Now as probably the greatest of them.

~M~

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 02:28 AM

Why "just Brits"? Because this is a list of the favourite books of a selection of well-known British figures for the BBC. It's a list compiled by 'Brits' for 'Brits'. I don't think the OP was referencing who he wanted to post, just the context of the list.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Spleen Cringe
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 08:57 AM

In no particular order and with many grave ommissions...

Harry Crews - A Feast of Snakes
Michael Malone - Handling Sin
Carson McCullers - the Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Haruki Murakami - The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
William Wharton - Frankie Furbo
John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
Ed Sanders - Tales of Beatnik Glory
William Boyd - Any Human Heart
T. C. Boyle - Drop City
Walter Tevis - Mockingbird
China Mieville - The City and the City
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are not the Only Fruit
Carlos Ruiz Zafón - The Shadow of the Wind
Pat Barker - Regeneration

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Elmore
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 09:46 AM

Thread drift. In high school the used to assign us books to read which we hadn't the life experience to begin to understand. I suppose getting to know the names of the great authors was of some use.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 10:39 AM

Quite agree, Elmore. I ploughed through John Milton with nary a flicker of interest. Even Shakespeare is difficult to present to pupils too young to get anything from it. That way, you can put people off for life!

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 10:45 AM

It's not easy to communicate in writing here without some misunderstanding.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 10:46 AM

That Guest was me.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 03:11 PM

Somerset Maugham was, at one point, the world's best selling author, but he's gone out of fashion.
He once described himself as being top of the second division of great writers!
I am very fond of his "The Razor's Edge".
The 40s film version of the book is worth seeing can be viewed on Youtube.

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: Airymouse
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 06:57 PM

I'm not allowed to list, but I think it's permissible to post a question: Are there any Brits (=Britons?) who like something written by Beatrix Potter, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad or Henry James?

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 11:00 PM

Yes indeed, Airy: you will find works by all of these (Huck Finn, Secret Agent*, Washington Sq) except Ms Potter on my lists above; but only because she slipped my mind [perhaps due to my having eaten too many soporific lettuces?], so add her now. Esp Tailor of Glos & 2 Bad Mice -- apart form the obvious Peter & Benjamin, of course!

~M~

*Drift but perhaps relevant, brought to mind by rereading an old Hitchcock thread. Hitchcock's film Secret Agent was based on Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories. When he filmed an adaptation of Conrad's The Secret Agent, he called it Sabotage. Perverse or what!

Subject: RE: Brits 21 Favourite Books -- Yours?
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 11 Oct 13 - 11:50 PM

Again, anyone is invited to list their faves Airymouse! The OP is just reproducing a list *by* well-known British folk for the BBC and not a prescription on who can respond to it here at MC.