10 Favorite Novels
Submitted by sk on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:59
Tags:
- 1. "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller
- 2. "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain
- 3. "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
- 4. "Dune" by Frank Herbert
- 5. "Shogun" by James Clavell
- 6. "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler
- 7. "The Swiss Family Robinson" Robert Loius Stevenson
- 8. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens
- 9. "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett
- 10. "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien
- "Stranger In a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein
Author Comments:
I recently saw a list compiled by university level English professors that suggests that James Joyce's "Ulysses" was the best novel written in the English language. My own experience with Joyce (I'll admit it goes back to my freshman year of college) left me at odds with this determination. The nice thing about favorite lists, as opposed to the pretentious concept of best lists, is that I do not have to pretend that I am qualified to pick the best novels. Thank God! I can pick what I like. Note, I included the Heilein work because I simply could not bear to leave it off.
"The Swiss Family Robinson" by RLS???
Even escapism has it's place.
well said!
The point of my posting was to query the authorship of SWFR by RLS.
I misunderstood you at first too, but it seems you're right . . . at least according to Amazon.
You know, I never could get past the first 20 pages of Lord of the Rings, even though I'm usually an avid Sci-Fi reader. Can someone tell me what the appeal is and if I should give it another chance?
Actually, (sorry about this) I never picked up "Lord of the Rings" specifically because I never could get through "The HOBBIT". That, of course, was what I was referring to when I said I couldn't get past the first 20 pages.
I stand corrected regarding the authorship of S.F.R. It was actually Johann David Wyss. I urge all of you to give L.O.R. another try. It has been a delight to me for a couple of decades. The Hobbitt is of course a children's tale, but the story that followed is something else altogether.
It helps if you skip the songs and skim the parts where Sam and Frodo are just walking. The real appeal to me is the books which it has inspired.
Do you mean Heinlein's abridged STRANGER...(1961) or his unabridged STRANGER...(1991)? The latter is probably the best of the 'bloated' Heinleins, as I call them.
Since I first read Stranger in the early 70s I suppose I am refering to the Abridged version. I know what you mean about bloated Heinlein, see Time Enough For Love, but I always felt Stranger was concise enough for my tastes.
I preferred "Time Enough For Love" to SIASL - TEFL is a favourite of mine ("Farnham’s Freehold" by Heinlein is on the same theme of the Howard families).
I thought Catch 22 very funny but otherwise it was average.
Huckleberry Finn was great writing, but uninteresting.
Dune was amazing, almost on a par with Lord of the Rings (in my view).
Shogun is on my bookshelf awaiting my attention, but has been sitting there for 10 years so far, like so many others, alas.
I can recommend Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. (click the link to see the book reviews on Amazon (one reader compares it with "Catcher in the Rye") :