sunrize20

okay I forgot one

5. Of Mice and Men

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"It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way."
Ernest Hemingway

Joshua1181

Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
100 Years of Solitude - Marquez
East of Eden - Steinbeck
Icewind Dale Trilogy - R.A. Salvatore (fantasy series/guilty pleasure)
Me Talk Pretty One Day - Sedaris

astralis

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How to write a story

Lost in Some Story

Of Mice and Men
The World According to Garp
A Good Man is Hard to Find (I know, a short story, but one of the best of all time)
The Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Flies

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"Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds"--Douglas Adams

ClancyBoy

Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne
The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke
The Encyclopedia of Country Living - Carla Emery

The fourth one isn't a novel, it's a book of history and the philosophy of change.

The fifth is technically intended as a reference book written by a very nervous-sounding woman living in northern Idaho. It's a compilation of instructions, recipes, guides, etc. about how to live independantly off the land.
What makes it interesting is the way she wrote it. She reprinted every letter sent to her, her replies, her thoughts on everything, and bits of her own life. If you read the whole thing back-to-front like I did, you gradually piece together how obsessive-compulsive and miserable the poor woman is, and that her husband left her. Probably because she spent every waking hour for 20 years putting together a book the size of the Sears summer catalog.

It's the greatest unintentional novel I ever read.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

JayLampert

First post here so I guess theres no more appropriate thread to respond to...

In no particular order;

American Pyscho - Brett Easton Ellis

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

1984 - George Orwell

Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk

Thats straight of the tip of my fingers and is subject to variance.

(Films is easier, in order:

Pulp Fiction
Taxi Driver
Requiem For A Dream)

Capin

1. Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul -- Douglas Adams
2. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
3. Tipping the Velvet -- Sarah Waters
4. Bizarro Starter Kit (All of the stories EXCEPT Steve Beard's "Survivor's Dream")
5. Rubyfruit Jungle -- Rita Mae Brown

I've actually grown to hate that last one, but I've read it more times than I can remember, so I gave it an honorable mention.

enron1982

1. The Witching Hour By Anne Rice
2 In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
3 Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
4 It by Stephen King
5 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and CLay by Michael Chabon

mandax

I just finished reading that, and I found it absolutely hilarious. I definitely second that choice.

1.) 1984
2.) Oryx and Crake
3.) The Perks of Being a Wallflower
4.) The Catcher in the Rye
5.) Apathy and Other Small Victories

beached

My five favs in no special order are:
'Coming up for air' George Orwell
'A Wizard of Earthsea' Ursula Le Guin
'The loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' Alan Sillitoe
'The Secret Life of Plants' Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.. a very strange book.
and the Colleen McCullough series 'The First Man in Rome'.
I better stop now or I will think of more for sure...
well my all time fav is Orwell's Essays including the one 'Why I write'. All writers should read that one...

MelodyLeigh

I'm pretty random with my list, but meh, I love all genres.

1) Jurassic Park
2) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
3) Lord of the Flies
4) It
5) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Sayuri007

Not in any particular order:

1. The Secrets of Jin Shei by Alma Alexander
2. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
3. The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon
4. Memiors of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
5. The Robot Series by Isaac Asimov

actually, there are a lot more, but i guess i have to stop...

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"When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to become his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self" -Confucius

Mere Joy

1. The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
2. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
3. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
4. Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks
5. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

MelodyLeigh

OH MY GOSH.
I forgot all about that book.

It was my first scary book that I read and.. I almost wet myself at the age of 9.

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AlaskaJane

In no particular order:

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Pride and Predjudice - Jane Austen
Shadows of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler

and I could go on - why limit it to 5?

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AlaskaJane

If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up somewhere else.
David Campbell