Favorite Book

1.

1984 by George Orwell

By: beej     18 votes

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, is a 1949 English novel about life in a fictional, future authoritarian regime as lived by Winston Smith, an intellectual worker at the Ministry of Truth. Winston is degraded and psychologically tortured after he is arrested by the thoughtpolice under the instruction of the totalitarian government of Oceania, in the year 1984.

-Wikipedia

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2.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

By: beej     19 votes

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful upon its release and has become a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.

-Wikipedia

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3.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

By: beej     19 votes

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J. D. Salinger. First published in the United States in 1951, the novel has been a frequently challenged book in its home country for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst.

-Wikipedia

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4.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

By: beej     19 votes

The Princess Bride is a 1973 novel written by William Goldman and presented as if it were an abridgment of a work by S. Morgenstern. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. It combines elements of comedy, adventure, romance and fairy tale. It was made into a feature film in 1987 by Rob Reiner, and an attempt to adapt it into a musical was made by Adam Guettel.

-Wikipedia

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5.

Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley

By: beej     16 votes

Thank You for Smoking is a novel by Christopher Buckley, first published in 1994, which tells the story of Nick Naylor, a tobacco lobbyist during the 1990s.

-Wikipedia

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6.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

By: beej     17 votes

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (commonly known as A Christmas Carol) is a novella by Charles Dickens first published on December 19, 1843 with illustrations by John Leech. The first of the author's five "Christmas books", the story was an instant success, selling over six thousand copies in one week, and the tale has become one of the most popular and enduring Christmas stories of all time.

-Wikipedia

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7.

Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella

By: beej     14 votes

Shoeless Joe is a fantasy novel by W. P. Kinsella. It became much better known because of its film adaptation, Field of Dreams.

-Wikipedia

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8.

Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

By: beej     16 votes

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) is the first volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne. It is followed by The House at Pooh Corner. The book focuses on the adventures of a teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, a small toy pig, Eeyore, a toy donkey, Owl, an live owl, and Rabbit, a live rabbit. The characters of Kanga, a toy kangaroo, and her son Roo are introduced later in the book, in the chapter entitled "In Which Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest and Piglet Has a Bath." The bouncy toy-tiger character of Tigger is not introduced until the sequel, The House at Pooh Corner.

-Wikipedia

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9.

Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling

By: beej     17 votes

Harry Potter is a heptalogy of fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the eponymous adolescent wizard Harry Potter, together with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, his best friends from the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The central story arc concerns Harry's struggle against the evil wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents in his quest to conquer the wizarding world, after which he seeks to subjugate the Muggle world to his rule.

-Wikipedia

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10.

The Bible

By: beej     19 votes

Bible refers to respective collections of religious writings of Judaism and of Christianity. The exact composition of the Bible is dependent on the religious traditions of specific denominations.

-Wikipedia

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11.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

By: beej     18 votes

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the British author Mary Shelley. Shelley wrote the novel when she was 19 years old. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the revised third edition, published in 1831. The title of the novel refers to a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who learns how to create life and creates a being in the likeness of man, but larger than average and more powerful.

-Wikipedia

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12.

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

By: murderpunk     6 votes

American Psycho is a 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. It is a first-person narrative of the life of a wealthy young Manhattanite and self-proclaimed serial killer. The graphic violence and sexual content generated much commentary at the novel's release. A film adaptation was released in 2000.

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13.

Dark Tower Series by Stephen King

By: VigilAntics     11 votes

The Dark Tower is a series of seven books written by American author Stephen King between 1970 and 2004. The series incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy fiction, science fantasy, horror and western elements. They describe a gunslinger's quest toward a tower whose nature the books call both physical and metaphorical. King has described the series as his magnum opus; besides the seven novels that compose the series proper, many of his other books relate to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the series progresses.

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14.

Never Die Easy by Walter Payton

By: beej     14 votes

The autobiography of "Sweetness," Walter Payton. Written as Payton was dying of liver cancer, the book is not you typical sports autobiography, but more of a reflection of life.

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15.

By: Slagathor22     4 votes

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16.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

By: jambredt     9 votes

The classic fantasy novel that started it all. It counts as an entry as Tolkien wanted it as a solid book, but his publishers overrode him. The epic sprawling tale about fighting against impossible odds should be an automatic contender.

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17.

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes

By: beej     15 votes

Don Quixote, fully titled El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli. Published in two volumes a decade apart, Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears at the top of lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.

-Wikipedia

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18.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

By: beej     15 votes

Les Misérables (1862) is a novel by French author Victor Hugo, and among the best-known novels of the 19th century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a twenty year period in the early 19th century that includes the Napoleonic wars and subsequent decades.

-Wikipedia

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19.

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

By: VigilAntics     11 votes

The world the novel describes is a dystopia, presented satirically: humanity lives in a carefree, healthy, and technologically advanced society; however, art, science, religion, and all other forms of human expression have been sacrificed to create this "Brave New World". Warfare and poverty have been eliminated and everyone is permanently happy due to government-provided conditioning and drugs. The irony is that all of these things have been achieved by eliminating many things that humans consider to be central to their identity - family, culture, art, literature, science, religion (other than idolization of "our Ford", Henry Ford, who is seen as the father of their society), and philosophy. It is also a hedonistic society, deriving pleasure from promiscuous sex and drug use, in the form of soma, a powerful psychotropic rationed by the government that is taken to escape pain and bad memories through hallucinatory fantasies, referred to as "Holidays". Additionally, social stability has been achieved and is maintained via deliberately engineered and rigidly enforced social stratification.

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20.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

By: VigilAntics     9 votes

The theme of Atlas Shrugged is the role of the mind in man's existence and, consequently, presentation of the morality of rational self-interest.
The main conflicts of the book surround the decision of the "individuals of the mind" to go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world disintegrates, lacking those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, denying them freedom or failing to acknowledge their right to self-interest, and the gradual collapse of civilization is triggered by their strike.

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21.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

By: beej     17 votes

The Da Vinci Code is a controversial mystery/detective novel by US author Dan Brown, published in 2003 by Doubleday. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon as he investigates a murder in the Louvre, and discovers a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene.

-Wikipedia

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