TOP 5 BOOKS EVER.............?

[enprovence]

Desperate for some new reading matter, what are you TOP 5 BOOKS EVER?

Will rack my brains and add mine too..........

sorry was meant to be .
I know hmm causes arguments.

what's your top 5 CotedAzur..? Let me give my unbiased opinion on your choices

"Thread title being "Top 5 books ever?", it was a surprise seeing "Tractors" on anybody's list, whatever the list is called.

It didn't make me laugh at all, by the way. Except maybe a pained grimace at the state of the world where that book makes it to the bestsellers' lists."

We're all different though aren't we? It would be incredibly boring if we all had the same opinion about everything. More of my favourites include William Jones by T.Rowland Hughes and Iesu Tirion by Lleucu Roberts, but I didn't think that it was that likely that many people on the thread would have read them. I am also quite a fan of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Goethe.

But I still stand by Tractors as one of my recent choices as I read it when I hadn't read very much for pleasure in a long time (too busy with a job, 3 children under 4 and an OU course) and it made me smile. And believe me, it took quite a lot to make me smile at the time.

I smiled when she called the car "crap car".

That's all I remember about it, tbh.

Well, I have an unusual taste in books, so my favorite books present a rather target-rich environment if you are inclined to have a go

The Atrocity Exhibition
Dune
Brave New World
Cryptonomicon

... In no particular order.

I don't think anyone here is "thick" or unimaginative, actually. My reasoning was similar to abeautifulbutterfly's.

To her list, I would also add:

• publishers' huge marketing efforts that convince the public that awful authors' awful books (1000 Splendid Suns, Memory Keeper's Daughter etc) should be read and even remembered as "good" books
• influence of book clubs, with a bias towards easily read books with a subject that get people talking, leading to an influx of superficial books with deep subjects

I haven't read any of your choices Cote, so I wouldn't be able to to comment

NO I don'T know those Cote, although it's an easy trick to put 4 random books up after claiming that everyone else's choices are "mainstream".
I can honestly say I'm that it's okay to criticize someone's choice of book. After all it's very personal. It's like saying you're suprised someone likes yellow.

Do remember that a lot of the reasons books are popular are because they are actually good. Many of the "mainstream" books are not actaully the writer's first book. It's true that you shouldn't blindly follow marketing campaigns but who are you to say that a book has or hasn't touched somebody?

Those are not "random"! If you were to use the Internet connection you obviously have to Google a few, you would see that they are actually widely acclaimed books and that my choices that sadly seem random to you are actually quite consistent with each other.

Whatever your tastes or faith in the "bestsellers'" books of the moment, one would hope that you would have at least heard of Brave New World (ever heard of Aldous Huxley) and even Dune, which has consistently been rated as one of the 100 best books of all time in Amazon and certainly the best sic-fi book of all time. You would not have heard of The Atrocity Exhibition but it's author J. G. Ballard was until recently considered Britain's #1 living fiction writer.

There is of course an element of taste in all this but it is not all as subjective as "I like the color yellow". Bestseller lists are like pop music charts - for the most part, songs are not there because they are really good. In fact, most are quite bad. There are surely reasons for this and I would be interested to talk about them.

Well, I live abroad so I am immune to "Top 100 bestsellers" and other such mArketing campaigns as they cannot reach me here
And I loathe sci-fi as a genre and avoid it at all costs...

I'm pretty suprised that Crime and Punishment is not on your list TBH.

It tells me that
a) you haven't read it
b) you didn't get it or
c) our tastes differ

None of which are good enough reasons for me to believe I am on a higher literary plane than your good self, which whether you like it or not, is what you appear to be implying when it comes to your choices.

How, for example, does Brave New World compare to the work one of the greatest literary minds produced in Russia?

What did you think of 'And Quietly Flows the Don?'

I take it you realise that the Top 100 list on Amazon you mentioned is a marketing campaign, right?

The Amazon list I referred to was compiled through readers' votes. Slightly different than corporations creating buzz with big marketing budgets, putting the new product on every shop window etc.

I read Crime & Punishment a long time ago bout I wouldn't put in in my top 5. I also read quite a bit of Shakespeare and like Macbeth for example but it wouldn't be in my top 5. Neither have shook me to the core, changed my life, and/or left me in awe, thinking the author is a genius.

I don't think I am on a higher plane but do think there is a strange phenomenon going on whereby "pop" books are considered exceptional. Whereas nobody would claim "Like A Virgin" or whatever is one of 5 best musical pieces of all time, we get for example, "Book Thief" on these threads.

I would be interested on talking about this but it's not going to happen if you insist that one book is as good as the other, just like colors.

I don't like reading translations, by the way, but that is not the only reason I am not really interested in books written by Russian authors about some long gone period.

"I would be interested on talking about this but it's not going to happen if you insist that one book is as good as the other, just like colors. "

No, please re-read my arguments. I have not said this. There are a lot of shit books out there.
I've said you cannot claim to know someone else's preferences better than they do themselves. So if a person claims to prefer yellow, on what basis can you possibly refute that?

What I think is crass is to specifically target a person's choice and claim that you cannot believe they've chosen that way because you personally would have made a different choice.

Our ability to enjoy books are based on our life experience.
I speak Russian and lived in St Petersburg. Considering that this is where Crime and PUnishment is set, and that Dostoyevsky's painstaking details about the streets and scenery are spot on, I would say that my life experience has had a huge influence on my enjoyment of this book.
I am certain there are lots of cultural references in Crime and Punishment that could go straight over a person's head if they could not speak Russian or had not lived in St Pete's themselves.

When you sneer at someone's literary choices, without knowing the life experiences that could have led them to be moved by a particular book, you do not show yourself to be well-read, merely narrow-minded.

{If you don't like reading translations that significantly narrows your access to different world views, but I digress...}

Good translations are possible and quite common between similar languages like English, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. I don't mind reading these. However, English translations from originals in Russian and Japanese, for example, have left a bad taste in my mouth. And I have no idea how people read and enjoy translations from Turkish, Orhan Pamuk's books in particular. So much is lost in translation of some of his books that what you get is basically the plot.

I understand what you are saying re life experiences shaping the way we view/enjoy books but that is not an excuse for counting some of the dimmest excuses for books in a list of "5 best books of ALL TIME". As I have said before, I know that my taste in books are different to most so I don't expect people to like my favorites (if they have heard about them at all). But nobody can say that they are dull and badly written (Memory Keeper's Daughter), for a teenage audience (Book Thief), with glaring mistakes in cultural references and even spelling (1000 Splendid Suns), or just plain simple superficial (Tractors).

People may have enjoyed these books. Good for them. But no, they cannot possibly be in anyone's list of top 5 books of all time, whatever their experiences.

Not that any of these books are mentioned in anyone's "top 5" lists on this thread. I have seen them in other similar threads, though.

Well, we'll just have to disagree then

" I know that my taste in books are different to most"

And yet you were shocked that I hadn't heard of the top 100 on Amazon...it sounds to me that your taste is pretty mainstream if everyone likes the same books as you.

"But no, they cannot possibly be in anyone's list of top 5 books of all time, whatever their experiences. "

How do you know?
YOu declared you didn't think Dostoyevski was a genius, and yet if you can't speak Russian you have to confess that a lot of the cultural references, inlcuding the political backdrop within which it was set, must have gone over your head.
What if that has happened to you with other books?
What if other people know a lot about a subject you are ignorant of, which is why a particular book struck them as being good?
What if they just enjoy light reads and a character in one of the books reminds them of their ex-boyfriend?
Who are you to judge?

The Kite Runner
Thousand Splendid Suns
Time Travellers Wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
Brick Lane
We Need to Talk about Kevin

But I also love reading John Grisham, Sophie Kinsella, Harlan Coben, Martina Cole, Karin Slaughter, Patricia Cornwell, Marion Keyes...... Am I the only one that reads these sorts of books on here? And also enjoys them.

Adn I loved State of Fear by Michael Crichton and also I really like Nelson DeMille. So there.

And I like Spider Man but wouldn't put its comics in a list of "5 best books EVER".

Sakura - Either you have not read what I wrote or you have not understood it, because I haven't said people should not enjoy superficial books and light reads, and all these questions you are asking have nothing to do with the question of which books to choose for our personal "top 5 books EVER". As in, of all time. In the world.

"And yet you were shocked that I hadn't heard of the top 100 on Amazon...it sounds to me that your taste is pretty mainstream if everyone likes the same books as you."

I wasn't shocked about that. I was shocked that you thought my list was "random", made-up, a "trick"

That one of the books in my list is consistently rated "#1 sic-fi book of all time" does not mean "everyone likes the same books" as me, obviously, since most of the world prefers books about feelings and avoids books about science and the future like the plague. Like yourself.

sorry, I can't believe anyone would choose sci-fi in their top 5

And re your other questions:

I said it myself that translations into English from very different languages like Russian and Turkish were bound to be bad, so yes, I would say that could be one reason why I am not impressed by the few books translated from Russian that I have read.

I have not "declared" that "Dostoyevsky is not a genius" and don't appreciate having mildly moronic sentences put into my mouth.

Re his Crime & Punishment, I did not find the ideas raised to be singularly exceptional. Poverty, contemplation of murder, etc. I read it over 20 years ago so wouldn't be able to give you specific examples. If you feel that impression means the glory of this work of genius went "over my head", by all means, hold onto the thought that I am a bit of an idiot

Re your theory that I may have missed cultural references in other books - Would you like to hear about just how familiar I am with, say, 1000 Splendid Suns' cultural references?

That book was written in English by an American guy who left Afghanistan at the age of 8. The mistakes and misconceptions in it are frankly shocking. He doesn't even know the number of times azan (call to prayer) is heard per day (5, not 1) and misquotes the single most important phrase in Islam. Maryam studies the Quran but thinks her name means "tuberose" and seems totally unaware that it means "Mary, mother of Jesus". She apparently doesn't see that there is an entire chapter in the Quran that talks about "Maryam".

1000 Splendid Suns is like a book written about the US by a Saudi guy, in Arabic, that only talks about how everyone has sex all the time and gets fat eating McDonalds, mentioning only the Statue of Liberty. Similarly, all the author talks about is how women are mistreated in Afghanistan and the only monument he talks about is the Buddha statues Taliban blew up, possibly because that is all he knows about Afghanistan.

I have grown up in a Muslim country and suffered through years of religious education. My late grandfather was a Hajji. If you are really intent on this idea that I maybe didn't get this book because its references went over my head, do let me know and I can continue to show you just how wrong you are.

Actually, I would dare say that the only way anyone would consider it a good book (let alone one of the 5 best of all time) would be if she completely missed these wrong cultural references.

That is because you are prejudiced about what constitutes sci-fi.

Have you read any J, G Ballard?

Anna Karenina -Leo Tolstoy

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

The Sea, The Sea- Iris Murdoch

Tess of the Durbervilles- Thomas Hardye

Judgement Day- Penelope Lively