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Your TOP 5 Favorite Books

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4Justice Posted: Tue, Nov 6 2007 6:34 PM

 

Greetings all,

I've been lurking around for a few days now and finally took some time to register; I'm grateful for coming across such an interesting site. Introduce yourselves if you'd like and/or list your top 5 favorite books, as the title suggests.
A bit about me: I am a Kosovar, born and raised in Kosovo;  currently reside in the States. I am freshman, majoring in Economics and...

My top 5:
1. Orientalism by E.W.S
2. Don Quixote by Cervantes
3. Macbeth by Shakespeare
4. War and Peace by L.Tolstoy
5. Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky 

Looking forward... 

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1. The Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin

2. Democracy - the God that failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

3. The Silmarillion by Tolkien 

4. Human Action by Mises 

5. The Divine Comedy by Dante

 

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  1. The Idiot by Dostoevsky
  2. The Island by Huxley
  3. The Stranger by Camus
  4. Travels With Charley by Steinbeck
  5. Dharma Bums by Kerouac

2-5 could easily be replaced by You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe, East of Eden by Steinbeck, The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather, Eyeless in Gaza or Point Counter Point by Huxley.

Or the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I know I'm forgetting some that could knock any of the above off the list...Well, except The Idiot which IMHO is the best book I've ever read. 

Top 5 is really harder than it seems, top 10 1/2 I suppose... 

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 1)  Time Storm by Gordon Dickson

 2)  Space by (can't remember author

 3)  Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert (and nothing by his son)

 4)  Foundation Series Isaac Asimov

 5)  I can't remember even the title to this, since it was the first book I ever read, but it was about this cat that could travel through time.  I make special note of it because it was the first /actual/ book that I ever read, and I think most people hold something special to the book that got you to read. 

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1. Godfather

2. Idiot

3. Murakami (all)

4. War in the mind

5. Google.com :))) 

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NON-FICTION

01 Ludwig von Mises - Human Action

02 Richard Cobden - Russia and the Eastern Question

03 Werner Herzog, edited by Paul Cronin - Herzog on Herzog

04 François Truffaut - Hitchcock/Truffaut

05 Henry Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson

FICTION

01 Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

02 Anthony Burgess - The Wanting Seed

03 Gilbert Keith Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

04 Jaroslav Hasek - The Good Soldier Svejk

05 Boris Vian - I Spit on Your Graves

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Paul Grad replied on Sun, Nov 11 2007 9:12 PM

My favorites are 1) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by (I forget who).

                        2) You are the World by J. Krishnamurti

                        3) The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts

                        4) Island by Aldous Huxley

                        5) La Noia (The Empty Canvas) by Alberto Moravia (Davidson translation)

                        

                        

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Dynamix replied on Sun, Nov 11 2007 9:28 PM

In no particular order...

1. Language In Thought and Action - S. I. Hayakawa

2. Knowledge of the Holy - A. W. Tozer

3. World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17 - G. Edward Griffin

4. Shogun - James Clavell

5. Human Action - Ludwig von Mises 

"Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears." - Gian Carlo Menotti

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Well, based on how much time I spend reading or re-reading them (not in order):

  • The Bible
  • Sherlock Holmes (the entire canon)
  • Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series
  • Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series

 Lane

Lane Lester Heading off to college soon... or know someone who is? Get my ebook on saving lots of money at YourCollegeForLess.com
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Kent C replied on Thu, Dec 6 2007 12:05 PM

Steppenwolf (Hesse) 

Siddharth (Hesse) 

Narcissus and Goldmund (Hesse) 

Demian (Hesse) 

The Counter-Revolution of Science (Hayek)

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Nick replied on Thu, Dec 6 2007 12:49 PM

1. Lord of the Rings - Tolkien

2. The Divine Comedy - Dante

3. King Lear - Shakespeare

4. Metallica & Philosophy

5. Harry Potter Series - Rowling

 ...tried to stay away from history/politics since I'd need many more than just five.

"I'd like to introduce Mises hopping [sic] into the debate." -Bob Wenzel
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1. For a New Liberty (Rothbard)

2. The Road to Serfdom (Hayek)

3. The Creature from Jekyll Island (G.E. Griffin)

4. Economics in One Lesson (Hazlitt)

5. Catch - 22 (Heller)

"The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this–that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot."
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