Books You Should Read Before You Die

Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

1) the holy bible

2) the little prince

3) the giving tree

4) hope for the flowers

5) the godfather

6) song of the bird and one minute wisdom

7) green eggs and ham

8) i'm just here for the food

9) the prophet

10)heroic leadership

11)the spiritual excercises of st. ignatius of loyola

NB: any lonely planet guide book, any frank miller graphic novel esp. dkr, the crow, go rin no sho, the art of warfare, and sadhana (de mello).

p.s. i did read majority of the books on flashlock's list. most of them before uni. i liked them a lot but i prefer the books i've listed.

 

ergh.. War and Peace.. I found it incredibly dull. very long winded and all the characters names are so similar that they all kind of merged into one.. Absolutely hated it.

 

AK is a bit more action packed, but I found War and Peace much more profound and meaningful.

Horses for courses and all that.

 

I may have missed the profound meaningfulness by struggling to care at all about anything that was going on. I found it an incredibly dull, lifeless and flabby book.

but as you say, might just not have been my cup of tea...

I also thought fairly similarly about LoTR, which i found to be terribly written (although an interesting story) dull, un-energetic, completely deviod of passion or decent characterisation and generally meandering.

And i'm sure a lot of people would disagree with me on that one.

 

Not me. LOTR is the biggest pile of poo ever written.

 

Uncultured heathens, the both of you!

 

Well, there are worse books (war and peace for one), but it is pretty bad.

 

True, there are worse written books; but the size of the poo-pile grows in direct proportion to the degree to which the book is overrated.

 

True, In which case it is one of the most overrated books of all time (although how many of the people who rate it highly have actually read the damn thing is questionable)

 

I agree. I got half way through the first one and was completely overcome by the tedium of it. It reads like a weather forecast. Every other sentence is a dull description of the direction that the wind is blowing and a reminder of the fact that there are some scary looking mountains about.

 

I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb
Fall On Your Knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald
Zazoo - Richard Mosher
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

The life of Pi is a nice book

 

I agree with you on the whole LoTR thing - I hate the novel as a literary work. But, I do like War and Peace.

Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - R.L. Stevenson
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Jyce

I have many more on my list, but those were my summer reads.

Em

Edit: just found a huge list - http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.22845/Books

 

yeah the movie was great, though it really doesn't compare to the book.

i know that phrase gets said about pretty much every film version of a book, but they just cannot get across all that crazy stuff going on in the mind that the book talks about. i'm glad they didn't attempt to, either.

 

Yeah I think in most cases the movie never outdoes/lives up to the book. For me at least. And the movie was fricken spectacular.

The one exception to this rule was Fight Club based on the book written by Chuck Palahniuk. I just could never get all that excited about the book. But I think the movie was brilliant in a lot of ways.

 

yeah i haven't actually read the book, but i did think the movie was fantastic

 

The Film of "The Shawshank Redemption" is better than the short story ("Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption") despite being almost a word for word transcription of the book. The little changes make it slightly better. In fact there are a few Steven King books ("the Shining" and "the Green Mile" spring to mind) that are equals or even slightly better than the source material - maybe Steven Kings work translates to film really well?

Of course the LoTR films are far better then the books too.

In general I agree that books are better than films made of them though.

 

Heheh ... I loved LOTR. It's still one of my favourites ... it was one of the first English language books I read and I've re-read it many times over.

I see other great books listed here such as "Zen & The Art of Motorbike Maintenance" ... brilliant philosopher is Mr. Pirsig, and so sad about his son Chris.

I have to agree about the choice of "Green Eggs and Ham" as well lol, absolutely inspiring.

How about the Carlos Castaneda series about his adventures as the student of the brujo Don Juan?

"Pickwick Papers" by Charles Dickens (not QDikkens with 2 "k"s and a silent "q" the famous Flemmish author!), is the only Dickens I actually enjoyed, a very dark writer for me.

Salams and cheers.

 

Two classics there - I can't believe I missed them off my list!

 

Really?

I thought it was really rather average, I doubt it would be all that renound if it weren't for the assasination attempts and so on...