<p>the kite runner
the secret life of bees- sue monk kidd
the shadow of the wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The House of Spirits-Isabel Allende
Like Water for Chocolate-Laura Esquivel
anything by jane austen
A girl with a pearl earring-Tracy Chevalier
Bridget Jone's Diary- Helen Fielding
Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons
anything by agatha christie
anything by edith wharton</p>
<p>those are just a few of my favorites. i love to read, so i have a lot of other titles also.</p>
<p>Michael Crichton and Robin Cook???? Give me a break. Talk about lack of substance...</p>
<p>tell no one - harlan coben
as the crow flies - jeffrey archer
picture of dorian gray - oscar wilde
death of a salesman - arthur miller</p>
<p>the fountainhead or atlas shurgged - ayn rand</p>
<p>Mead, point that nose a little lower. I can see into your nostrils and they ain't pretty. The guy is interested in medical drama, hence Robin Cook. And Michael Crichton rules.</p>
<p>Ahhh, so many good books, so little time! I love to read, so here goes...
In the Time of the Butterflies ~ Julia Alvarez
The Bookseller of Kabul ~ Asne Seierstad
Interpreter of Maladies ~ Jhumpa Lahiri
Love in the time of Cholera ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The House on Mango Street ~ Sandra Cisneros
Lolita ~ Vladimir Nabokov
The Poisonwood Bible ~ Barbara Kingsolver
The Virgin Suicides ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
Their Eyes Were Watching God ~ Zora Neale Hurston
The God of Small Things ~ Arundhati Roy
The Bell Jar ~ Sylvia Plath
The Ariel Poems ~ Sylvia Plath
The Lovely Bones ~ Alice Sebold
Atonement ~ Ian McEwan
Savage Inequalities ~ Jonathan Kozol
The Feminine Mystique ~ Betty Friedan
A Very Long Engagement ~ Sebastian Japrisot
Everything is Illuminated ~ Jonathan Safran Foer
We Were the Mulvaneys~ Joyce Carol Oates
Blonde ~ Joyce Carol Oates
Siddartha ~ Hermann Hesse
The Beet Queen ~ Louise Erdrich
I could go on, but this is long enough I think :)</p>
<p>I like franny and zooey by salinger</p>
<p>I have affection for The Catcher in the Rye. I guessed maybe I could relate the characters to myself.</p>
<p>oh yes, "Everything is Illuminated" but I like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" better than "Cholera" by Marquez.</p>
<p>And if anyone took the time to read "Ada" by Nabokov, they would get over "Lolita".</p>
<p>Not that you aren't allowed to love what you love, of course!</p>
<p>I'll have to wait and see on "One Hundred Years of Solitude"... haven't read it yet, but am planning on it :)
I've never actually heard of "Ada"... I'll have to pick it up one of these days. So many books to read, yet so much work... oh well</p>
<p>ladylazarus --</p>
<p>"Ada" was bestowed upon my best friend and me by our gay (we didn't realize at the time...) high school librarian who had come to treasure us as true seekers of the rare and beautiful. He did us a great, great service, because it was he who made me realize there is no time in this world to read best-sellers given all the important books out there awaiting us.</p>
<p>I read "Solitude" first (it was written first, yes?) and was quite disappointed, even bored by "Cholera", although I think my opinion is in the minority.</p>
<p>My next goal -- to read the "great books" -- but that means I need to unplug my computer semi-permanently...;)</p>
<p>Anything by Tobias Wolff will hit you right in the gut. He's good at doing that. I like In Pharaoh's Army, the short story collections (The Night in Question, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World...), and Old School better than This Boy's Life. Old School specifically is set at a prep school, since you like the scholarly thing, as are some of his stories.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, two friends asked me to lend them books last week, I gave them: Siddartha (Hermann Hesse), Till We Have Faces (CS Lewis), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), Franny and Zooey (Salinger), and the collected Hemingway stories. I would also recommend Dostoevsky and Annie Dillard.</p>
<p>Sorry, couldn't resist:</p>
<p>
[quote]
i'm able to appreciate JD salinger's "catcher in the rye" more after reading it (Rebel by Choice)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Heehee.</p>
<p>The ultimate:</p>
<p>Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</p>
<p>Other good ones:</p>
<p>1984
Brave New World
Animal Farm</p>
<p>If you're looking for something with doctors and really psychological, you might want to check out Monster, it's a manga about a neurosurgeon who saves someone's life only for them to become a killer. Very powerful plot. There's also an anime for it.</p>
<p>A good non-fiction book about a doctor is My Own Country by Abraham Verghese. He wrote a moving story about his infectious disease practice in East Tn. at the time aids was being recognized (early 80's) and how it connected with his own struggle as an immigrant to usa and a young doctor in training. He has a second book, The Tennis Player, that was good but not as great as the first book, to me anyway.</p>
<p>Angela's Ashes by Frank Mccourt
Contact by Carl Sagan
Fourth State by Jeffery Archer</p>
<p>Catcher in the Rye is the most overrated book of all time (although Ulysses can give it a run for its money.</p>
<p>Maybe in 1950 the fact that adults could be "phonies" or hypocrites or imperfect or all-around jerks was something new in childs-eye-view literature, but now being "mad at your dad" is the subject of every other book and tv show.</p>
<p>Anyways, Catch-22 is probably my favorite.</p>
<p>perks of being a wallflower, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, a clockwork orange, catcher in the rye...</p>
<p>more comprehensive:</p>
<p>catch-22 - one of the funniest books ever. i was cracking up on the subway and people must have thought I was retarded but it didn't matter
candide - very funny
the great gatsby - hey, it was great
1984 - scary because it happened before and is happening now. think north korea. at least in 1984 they have enough power to put a tv in every house, let alone a real tv.
ethan frome - i actually hated it when I first read it; it takes a certain perspective and appreciation that's either had or not had
huck finn - probably one of the single most moving moments in literature is in this book</p>
<p>i'm currently reading alot of james joyce and the jury is still out on this one. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I liked, Ulysses I'm still trying to crack for a first time. I won't say that anything this hard to read isn't worth reading, but it makes me wonder how something so inaccessable can be considered by so many to be the best of 20th century English-language literature.</p>
<p>Someone else said anything by Edith Wharton, as I think, did I.</p>
<p>But now I have to make a disclaimer that the uninitiated must be told that Ethan Frome is very atypical Edith Wharton. Very good Edith Wharton, but atypical.</p>
<p>By reading the posts here, it's pretty obvious that everyone has different tastes in books. (ie. I personally felt that Frankenstein was way too tedious) Here's my recommendations.</p>
<p>A good non-fiction doctor book is "White Coat" by Ellen Rothman.
Robin Cook is a good medical-fiction writer -I haven't read any of his books for a while so I can't really remember which books were really good.
Dan Brown is a good author but in my opinion, after a while, his books get to be pretty predictable.
"Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane is a great book. Takes place during the 1950s on an island where the criminally insane are sent. "Mystic River" by the same author is also very good.
"Dolares Claiborne" by Stephen King was also a great book. It's one of the few books by Stephen King that is actually realistic and is told from the point of few of an abused woman.
If you like mystery/forensic type books, Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwall are both excellent authors.</p>