<p>i enjoyed the stranger-camus</p>
<p>The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.</p>
<p>Great thread guys! I think that's enough, lol.</p>
<p>Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is the best book I have ever read. Any thing else I could say would be an understatement.</p>
<p>That said, my favorites include many that have already been listed, but the few that really stand out are The Day of the Triffids, H2G2, and American Gods.</p>
<p>This week:</p>
<p>Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin
Children of God - Mary Doria Russell</p>
<p>Weird/awesome to a lot of Dostoyevsky love. Disappointing/strange (if this is the same CC population that has an average SAT score of 2300 haha) that so many rising seniors are reading HP/Twilight/The Kite Runner.</p>
<p>Some greats that haven't been mentioned:
A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses; James Joyce
The Iliad, The Odyssey; Homer
Don Quixote; Cervantes
Lolita; Vladimir Nabokov
Madame Bovary; Gustave Flaubert</p>
<p>leah377 -- try the red tent by anita diamant</p>
<p>and aminhamenina, i love don quixote!
:)</p>
<p>Try this: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence by Robert Pirsig. Very interesting theories, this guy shares some powerful theories through an entertaining novel. Good food for thought.</p>
<p>Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and the other series books)
Artemis Fowl series
The Gospel According To Larry (and the sequel, Vote For Larry)
A Short History Of Nearly Everything</p>
<p>That's all I can think of off the top of my head.</p>
<p>aminhamenina--- I don't think it's disapointing/strange that so many rising seniors (myself included.. however; my SAT score & grades are no where near the CC expectations) are reading those books... I have read some of these great classic books && appreciate them && think they are great for what they are. However; when I think of my favorites, I guess I don't think of the "best", I think of what I want to read when I want to escape from everything else.. What I want to read just to simply enjoy it, not to analyze it, not to write an essay on it, not to disect it and point out the themes and be focused on the little quirks that we have to be for the higher level reading we do for school and what not.
This summer for instance I read the Twilight series for the first time- read right through it, loved it, and didn't have to analyze a bit. Just escaped into Forks and got wrapped into the story....
I've also read Animal Farm & am reading A Tale of Two Cities. Animal Farm was good, for what it was, now is it something I LOVED, no, but it is very good for getting the message. A Tale of Two Cities I just began, but its a much harder read; therefore, I have to pay more attention, not only to remember this stuff to be able to do AP Lit stuff with it come August 12th, but, to understand the plot...
It isn't the same kind of reading.. So when I think of my favorites, thats why the "greats" don't come to mind...</p>
<p>aminhamenina - I'm actually surprised so many people love the classics. I mean someone said they liked Jane Eyre for God's sake! That was the most horrendous book I've ever read bar none. I'm an Honors/AP English student so I have to read these same books and I certainly appreciated Shakespeare, Orwell, Kafka, Steinbeck, etc, but I would never let them come within a mile of my favorite books list. I loved the HP series and books by Hosseini, Dan Brown, Tolkien, and King (though the last two authors there are somewhat more sophisticated than the others). The closest thing to classics that I truly enjoyed were Poirot and Holmes mysteries. I don't think it's a crime to enjoy modern works; in fact, many of them will portray society the way classics cannot. There is no shame, by the way, in being young at heart in one's reading interests. There are plenty of older-aged individuals who take pleasure in HP and the like. In case you think it matters, I have a 2300+ SAT.</p>
<p>^There's certainly no crime in loving modern books, and it doesn't indicate a lack of intelligence or well-read-ness (I'm sure there's a better adjective I'm not thinking of here). At the same time...the classics are (usually) classics for a reason, and I can see why a lot of people love them.</p>
<p>Anyway, a few of my favorites:</p>
<p>1984
Annie on My Mind
Asphalt Jesus
Divine Comedy
Everything David Sedaris has ever written
Harry Potter series
Into The Wild
Lord of the Flies
Musicophilia
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series
The Glass Menagerie
The Realm of Possibility
To Kill A Mockingbird</p>
<p>A Hope in the Unseen was the greatest book I've ever read. Bar none.</p>
<p>My holy trinity of authors, at present:</p>
<p>Kurt Vonnegut
Tom Robbins
Charles Bukowski</p>
<p>this is a great book to just laugh laugh laugh</p>
<p>The Growing Pains of Adrain Mole (Sue Townsend)</p>
<p>Great, Great, Great book. plenty of british humor (yes!)</p>
<p>ps: yes i like repeating things three times</p>
<p>Agree with Kayleigh9109 (#150) and nj<em>azn</em>premed (#151). Read enough classic lit in honors/AP classes; enjoy some works and suffer through others. However, none would (to quote nj) "come within a mile of my favorite books list." </p>
<p>HP remains a favorite, own all Stephenie Meyer's books and am looking forward to <em>Breaking Dawn</em> (Aug. 2), highly recommend Orson Scott Card's Ender series. Can't forget Tamora Pierce and her various series. Read and enjoyed <em>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</em>, Artemis Fowl. This summer a quick read was <em>The Thief</em> and the rest of that trilogy (Megan Whalen Turner). Did read Don Quixote for fun - good - but pleasure reading tends to be "mind candy" heavy on fantasy. </p>
<p>Like nj<em>azn</em>premed, I also have a 2300+ SAT (800s in CR and W), though I am not sure how that is relevant here.</p>
<p>A lot of awesome books have already been mentioned. I absolutely love A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Dear John by Nicholas Sparks, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. HP, Twilight, and The Host are all great reads as well.</p>
<p>Most recently: The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, The Green Mile by Stephen King, and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini are among the most captivating books I've read.</p>
<p>My 2 cents on the classics mini-debate: some are good, and a lot suck, have the most superficial or plots, and are incredibly boring. (That means you, Heart of Darkness). Just because you make your characters have names pulled from ancient mythology doesn't mean it's "insightful." People have a tendency to unduly revere antiquity but all these books were contemporary fiction at one point.</p>
<p>my personal favorite atm is My Sisters Keeper by Jodi Picoult. i also enjoyed The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. I love the HP series along with the Golden Compas trilogy. I haven't started the Twilight series yet, but plan to soon. I loved Wicked (gregory Macguire), the Sweeped series and many others.</p>
<p>1984
surprisingly (for me) the Twilight Series (Stephenie Meyer)
Conclave of Shadows books
Harry Potter
The Alchemist</p>