<p>Lord of the Flies...</p>
<p>Kite Runner and the Thousand Splendid Suns were wonderful! I loved them!!</p>
<p>I loved The Golden Compass and the other two books in the series. I think I read the trilogy in about a week.</p>
<p>Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Anything by Ian Frazier (Great Plains, especially)
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford</p>
<p>This is a lot, but ah well.</p>
<p>Life of Pi- I'm a big different religions/animals sort of person, so I fell in love with Pi.</p>
<p>Everything is Illuminated. Great book, it seems like one that you could read over and over and understand in different ways.</p>
<p>The Book Thief- Easy but good "young adult" book. Even if it's not for adults, it's really really really worth reading. I love how it's written (narrated by death) and some of the descriptions make you pause and think "wow, that is a beautiful sentence." I love those sorts of moments.</p>
<p>The Time Traveler's Wife- I'm not usually big into romanctic fiction, but this one was amazing. It all connects very well. Made me cry (this doesn't happen much with me).</p>
<p>The Lovely Bones- Didn't much like the really weirdness at the end, but I loved the description of heaven and basically everything else about the book.</p>
<p>Hitchhiker's Guide- Hilarious. My kind of humor.</p>
<p>Almost any Discworld Novel- Again, hilarious. Especially loved Small Gods.</p>
<p>Golden Compass/Dark Materials Series- I love the first and the last the most. Very creative, but somehow not out there so much that it gets annoying. Characters stay very realistic, I think.</p>
<p>Narnia books- Love love love love love. Read them when I was little and still love love love them- you can ignore the relgion in them, or embrace it. (I'm not Christian myself but sometimes those books make me wish I had a definite religion to call my own.)</p>
<p>Back to seriousness- Middlesex! It's a book that gives you something to think about. </p>
<p>Jane Austen books- Love some more than others. The descriptions of some of those characters make me stop and smile. Or stop and frown- she describes people's personalities very well, she must have been very observant.</p>
<p>Jane Eyre- Had to read it in middle school and that was too early, but now I am old enough to really love it. The romance is claaassssic.</p>
<p>And there are so many more. And so many more that I have to read. GAH.</p>
<p>Harry Potter
Blink was good too
most of Dan Brown books
Pride & Prejudice
Tom Sawyer was cute</p>
<p>For non-fiction: The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin</p>
<p>Loved every chapter.</p>
<p>(Though I thought Harry Potter books were very uninteresting, so maybe I have different tastes in books.)</p>
<p>East of Eden was absolutely exhilarating.
His Dark Materials was great too.
And of course, Harry Potter.</p>
<p>I thought the Harry Potter books were okay- loved them when I was younger (around 11), but now I like them a lot less. Still had to finish off with the seventh book, but now I don't think I'll read them again for a long time, if ever.</p>
<p>1-4, read ten times each (when 11)
5- read twice
6-once in English, once in Spanish (they still remain really good books to read in Spanish!)
7- read once</p>
<p>Although I think they're great in the way that they have encouraged tons of kids to read and all that stuff, they are nowhere near well-written enough or creative enough to be one of my favorites.</p>
<p>(Same with the Twilight series- despite her cult following, they are seriously not written well and there are too many cliches. I haven't read the latest one, but I borrowed the first three and read them and thought they were sort of icky- I'm glad I didn't pay the money to buy them myself! Too fluffy, if you know what I mean.)</p>
<p>The Harry Potter series,the Twilight series,ANYTHING by Jodi Picoult</p>
<p>The Stand, by Stephen King.</p>
<p>my sister's keeper by jodi picoult. actually, anything by her is pretty amazing and impossible to put down.</p>
<p>Moby Dick!
Crime and Punishment!
The Brothers Karamazov!
and A Passage to India, 1984, all sumptuous.</p>
<p>An American Hedge Fund
Reminisces of a Stock Operator
King Leopold's Ghost</p>
<p>The Road.</p>
<p>The. Best. Book. Ever. Written.</p>
<p>haha rmadden, i think you are the only one for the jungle...</p>
<p>but okay. east of eden by john steinbeck. is an amazing work.
and the catcher in the rye is great.
and short stories?? Cathedral by Raymond Carver and Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin, as well as the collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio by sherwood anderson.</p>
<p>these may not all be impossible-to-put-downers, but the novels i mentioned are impossible-to-forgetters once you finish reading, as is the short story Cathedral.</p>
<p>Brain Candy:</p>
<p>Less literary merit: The Devil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, Memoirs of a Geisha, the Princess Diaries (and I'm not ashamed to admit it, dammit), Harry Potter, obviously, the Prince of Tides, I Am Charlotte Simmons</p>
<p>More literary merit: Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and anything else by Vonnegut, Alias Grace, The Color Purple, Pride and Prejudice, the Great Gatsby, Lolita, 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, To Kill a Mockingbird</p>
<p>Not Brain Candy but still sooo worth it: pretty much all other literature, haha</p>
<p>Not Brain Candy and NOT worth it: The Scarlet Letter (hatehatehatehate), Antigone (old-school Greek or new-school version...both suck)</p>
<p>Harry Potter! </p>
<p>Also, anything by Tamora Pierce... her books are YA, but sooo good, especially some of her later stuff (with a few exceptions). I love YA fantasy books that deal with the same issues adult books deal with but in a more epic setting.</p>
<p>And I can't forget my latest obsession, Lois McMaster Bujold, especially her Vorkosigan series (starting with Shards of Honor and ending with Diplomatic Immunity). I don't read sci-fi and I count this series in my top 5. She stays true to the characters and doesn't get too wrapped up in the world she created (<em>cough</em>Ender's Game<em>cough</em>1984<em>cough</em>). These books are true masterpieces.</p>
<p>Also, of course, as others have said, there are the classic choices: Gone With the Wind, Pride and Prejudice (or anything by Austen), The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird.</p>
<p>And then there is the Twilight series... hard to put down, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth. This is what happens when you have a catchy writing style but a misogynistic, cliche, badly thought-out story... and yet I still own them all and am planning to purchase number 4. I am hopeless.</p>
<p>oh and if you want history and drama in graphic novel form...Persepolis!</p>
<p>A Confederacy of Dunces</p>
<p>I read alot. In fact, too much. I've never <em>enjoyed</em> a book as much as this one. I had never physically laughed out loud at any novel before this. I had never been so ecstatic reading. (I'm the kind of person that reads because I know it's good for me, not because I enjoy it, but that changed recently, when I read Freakanomics, ACoD, Guns, Germs and Steel, and A Clockwork Orange.)</p>