The Best Books You Have Read

[Gerry]

The problem with you guys is that you probably read/started reading LOTR and Hobbit too late, after you saw loads of likewise literature and junk movies. Or these have spoiled your appetite, whatever. In itself, these are a very nice piece of literature.

Nope. Disagree. I'm with lb on this one. It's the only book I've started and never finished as well. Just couldn't be arsed after getting a third of the way through. I found myself skipping text as well as it was painful to read through. I think, after due consideration, that Tolkien is just not that good an author.

 

[ninelven]

If you have trouble finishing LOTR, you should try On the Road by Jack Kerouac... puts things into perspective.

There are really only two things that keep a person reading: genuine interest or expectation. The greatness (and the problem) with the LOTR is that it appears (like the rest of that genre) to be one of the former when, in fact, it is one of the latter. I've read it a few times, and the book, taken as part of its genre, really isn't that great. However, it excels at "non-greatness" probably because to do otherwise would have cheapened the message. If you don't learn anything about life from the book, then it is just an average fantasy novel. If you do, well it would be hard for a book to be much more valuable than that.

 

[_xxx_]

Nope. Disagree. I'm with lb on this one. It's the only book I've started and never finished as well. Just couldn't be arsed after getting a third of the way through. I found myself skipping text as well as it was painful to read through. I think, after due consideration, that Tolkien is just not that good an author.

And that's surely a matter of your personal taste. If you put the books in the context they had when they first appeared, I think the picture is a bit different. But that moment's gone, obviously

 

[digitalwanderer]

BTW-Everything Hunter S. Thompson & Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote, along with a whole bunch of others would probably be my vote.

"Lifehouse" by Spider Robinson is one that sticks with me a lot.