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Just curious, but what, in the following categories, are your favorite books.

Symbolic Book: The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald

Inspirational Book: To Kill a Mockingbird

Novel: Needful Things by Steven King

Overall Favorite: Harry Potter series I love those books, the movies are a bit ehh though which is a shame.


Feel free to reply!

Anything by Stephen King, truly.
I'm reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy right now, which is also great.
And other than that, 1984 has to be one of my favorites.

Nothing specifically in those catorgories but I'm big on myths,legends,history and cryptozoology.

For novels: I love Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gainman, funny stuff there! I also collect a lot of R.A. Salvatorre's Drizzt novels.

Here's a few of mine.

For Symbolism: Bram Stoker's Dracula and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Novel: Atlas Shrugged

Overall Favorites:
Survivor
Choke
I am Legend
Notes From Underground
The Brothers Karamazov
1984
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies

I'm also a huge fan of the Drizzt novels, Noodlesoup! Sadly, I have fallen off the trail of that story. I do love that series though. I'll be sure to bother you with discussions of it, sometime!

Gosh! I've never even considered classifying novels into symbolic, inspirational, etc. I don't have any favourites, anyway.

I don't read much fiction, but when I do it's Golden Age (1930s-40s) detective stories more often than not. Edmund Crispin is probably my favourite UK author in this category, and Ellery Queen makes an equally good showing for the US. They are (were) outstandingly good writers as well as great whodunnit craftsmen.

(Yes, I know Ellery Queen was a pen name for a writing duo. Edmund Crispin wasn't his real name either. Never mind.)

Dorothy L Sayers and Freeman Wills Crofts also come in for very high praise. Ngaio Marsh is excellent when she's writing proper whodunnits, but -- especially in her later books -- tends to go less detective-story and more mainstream novel, which I don't like. I'll read Agatha Christie for the sheer excellence of her craftsmanship, but her writing style is plodding.

I also enjoy the odd bout of good solid "hard" science fiction, and occasionally a well-written fantasy, but they're not so easy to find. There's lots of quantity, but you've got to search hard to find the nuggets of quality. I agree, RA Salvatore stands head and shoulders above most of the sea of modern fantasy writers.

I've been struggling to plot out a fantasy-mystery, and just the other day came up with what will probably work as the central idea (the motive for the murder). Hooray! Now I have no more excuses for not writing the thing, except I need to do some research.

Roald Dahl.
his works cover all the bases.


by the way, iv'e an obscure family connection with Dorothy L Sayers.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=i ... gle+Search

There are way too many. The Orwell novels as mentioned already, 1984 and Animal Farm, were brilliant. Mockingbird was too.

A particular Roald Dahl short story held a special kind of magic for me. The Wonderful Story for Henry Sugar tells the story of a man who learns an old mystic semi-psychic technique for seeing through cards, etc. I wasn't too much into magic at the time, so that's not what the appeal was - I just found it fascinating and so believable.

I recently read Life of Pi by Yann Martel which exceeded my expectations.

Someone mentioned the Hitchhiker's Guide which I enjoyed, although the sequels overdid it a bit, I felt. His lesser known two Dirk Gently novels are good though. Just as eccentric, perhaps.

Also mentioned was I Am Legend which was a really good read and then to watch the film tear to shreds the original text and only use the most basic of framework as a concept for the film... They should have changed the title and only credited it as an inspiration. The title itself doesn't even hold the same relevance in the context of the film. It was a brilliant end to the book and the film was slated for its sudden, somewhat odd ending.



What is classified as symbolic?

Symbolic novels are they have a special meaning to you or they have a different meaning than just the story. The Great Gatsby explains the cruel pointless existence we all share. (Happy stuff I know)

Wouldn't say favorites as i don't like to commit to decisions off this nature.

Symbolic-the history boys-Alan Bennett, as a history student this covered basically all the revisionist material I had to cover.

Inspirational-The catcher in the rye usually gives me a bit of a boost each time I read it.

Symbolic Book: Crime and Punishment

Inspirational Book: Any collection of short stories by Raymond Carver or Anton Chekhov

Novel: The ones I re-read most... several by Graham Greene

Overall Favourite: Anything by Philip K Dick, a genius IMO

Honourable mentions: Anthony Burgess, Michael Moorcock, Peter Straub, Conan Doyle (of course!), Rex Stout...

Starting to sound like an Oscar's acceptance speech, I could keep going, I'll stop there.

I love the Orwell books also; Conan Doyle is also great. I'm a big fan of Palahniuk, Gaiman and Pullman to mention more modern authors. Oh, and I love Haruki Murakami's work.

Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath.

Anyone who isn't moved by the final scene, isn't human.

I love James Herbert books, and have to agree with Ian, I love the Harry Potter series, much better than the films!

When I was a teenager I had a mental list of REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT books. Practically holy books to me. Probably they did change my life in some way, but I couldn't say how. Every now and then I would revise the list, and it was a big thing for a book to be added or moved up or down the chart.

I can't recall the exact order any more, or the ones lower down on the list, but the big five were generally:
1984 (how often has this turned up in this forum now?)
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm (basically riding on the coattails of 1984)
The Jungle Books

Like a lot of teens, I was a sucker for any sort of dystopia, or anything that ended with people dying in despair or civilisations collapsing into savagery, or anything like that. My tastes are a bit wider-ranging now, but I have far less time for reading.