54 replies to this topic

[ACE]

Apart from the Bonds and Bond related books...

A non-exhaustive list of my favourite books;
i) at the moment
ii) from what I can remember
iii) taking a single book only from one author
iv) and in no particular order
is as follows:

This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Graham
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguru
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Espedair Street by Iain Banks
Regeneration by Pat Barker
Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Waterland by Graham Swift
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C S Lewis
Elegies by Douglas Dunn
Somerset Skies by Don McCullin
Letters from London by Julian Barnes
The Isles by Norman Davies
The Kingdom By The Sea by Paul Theroux
Give War A Chance by P J O'Rourke
Over Here by Raymond Seitz
Adventures In The Screen Trade by William Goldman
The Undeclared War by David Puttnam
My Indecision Is Final by Jake Eberts & Terry Ilott

Edited by ACE, 08 September 2005 - 06:43 PM.

[Qwerty]

Almost anything by Agatha Christie lately.

[DLibrasnow]

Only one by each author?

Hmmm...tough because my all-time favorite author is Alistair Maclean

WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL by Alistair MacLean
NIGHT PROBE by Clive Cussler
DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Arthur Conan Doyle
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne
COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS by Agatha Christie

Some childhood favorites:
VALLEY OF ADVENTURE by Enid Blyton
SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransom
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE by CS Lewis

[Qwerty]

If only one, by Christie, it's Evil Under The Sun so far.

[Bond_Bishop]

Very hard to list but here are some of my favourite books (except Bond)

Angels and Demons - Dan Brown
Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
Deception Point - Dan Brown
Atlantis Found - Clive Cussler
Treasure - Clive Cussler
Valhalla Rising - Clive Cussler
And then there were none - Agatha Christie
Murder at the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
Harry Potter novels - JK Rowling
Lord of the Rings Trilogy - JRR Tolkien
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels - Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
Star Wars: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Survivor's Quest - Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: The Unifying Force - James Luceno
Rainbow Six - Tom Clancy
The Cardinal of Kremlin - Tom Clancy
The Haunting of the Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
The Bourne Supremacy - Robert Ludlum
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Those are some of them

[ACE]

Only one by each author?

Doesn't have to be. Just what I've done. Go on, knock yourself out, DLibrasnow.
Puppet on a chain? Bear Island? Santorini? HMS Ulysses?

[Mark_Hazard]

Almost anything by Agatha Christie lately.

Just in case you didn't know, check out the short story "The Rajah's Emerald" in the collection "The Listerdale Mystery".

[Qwerty]

Almost anything by Agatha Christie lately.

Just in case you didn't know, check out the short story "The Rajah's Emerald" in the collection "The Listerdale Mystery".

Yep, I know of that little 'Bond' bit.

[Mark_Hazard]

Almost anything by Agatha Christie lately.

Just in case you didn't know, check out the short story "The Rajah's Emerald" in the collection "The Listerdale Mystery".

Yep, I know of that little 'Bond' bit.

It's amazing the people that don't - did you also know of a short story by Kipling, in his collection "The Day's Work".

[Qwerty]

Don't know of that one!

[spynovelfan]

Off the top of my head, and in no order, a few books that have left a lasting impression on me:

TRISTRAM SHANDY - Sterne
THE PRIVATE MEMOIRS AND CONFESSIONS OF A JUSTIFIED SINNER - Hogg
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER - De Quincey
UNDER THE VOLCANO - Lowry
THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET - Durrell
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA - Marquez
PERFUME - Suskind
AGAINST NATURE - Huysmans
EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER - Machado de Assis
A HERO OF OUR TIME - Lermontov
OBLOMOV - Goncharev
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT - Dostoevsky
THE GREAT GATSBY - Fitzgerald
THE SUN ALSO RISES - Hemingway
SEVENTEEN MOMENTS OF SPRING - Semyonov
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE - Salinger
FUNERAL IN BERLIN - Deighton
A DANDY IN ASPIC - Marlowe
THE BERLIN CONNECTION - Simmel
ESPEDAIR STREET - Banks
ROYAL FLASH - MacDonald Fraser
THE HUMAN FACTOR - Greene
THE TANGO BRIEFING - Hall
THE PIOUS AGENT - Braine
COCKPIT - Kosinski
AMERICAN PSYCHO - Easton Ellis
THE PRIVATE SECTOR - Hone
ENDLESS NIGHT - Christie
MY UNCLE OSWALD - Dahl

[Jim]

D.H. Lawrence: The White Peacock, Kangaroo
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night, The Great Gatsby
W. Somerset Maugham: The Moon and Sixpence, The Painted Veil
Steinbeck: Tortilla Flat
Orwell: Burmese Days, Animal Farm
Kafka: The Trial, The Castle
Graham Greene: The Ministry of Fear, Brighton Rock, Stamboul Train, The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, The End of the Affair, The Fallen Idol, The Captain and the Enemy, The Comedians, Travels with my Aunt (bit of a Greene kick at the moment)
H.G. Wells: The History of Mr Polly
Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies, Bridehead Revisited, Scoop, Black Mischief
E.M. Forster: A Room with a View
Robert Graves: I, Claudius
Suetonius: The Twelve Caesars
William Faulkner: Intruder in the Dust, Go Down Moses
Keith Waterhouse: Billy Liar
Camus: L'Etranger, La Peste
B. Traven: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Thomas Mann: Confessions of Felix Krull, The Magic Mountain
Compton Mackenzie: Sinister Street
Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay, Point Counter Point
Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
T.E. Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities
Conrad: Nostromo
Kipling: The Light that Failed
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

Pretty much required reading, all those.

[spynovelfan]

Required reading! Yes, indeed. There's a few there I should have remembered (I did struggle with picking one Greene. I don't think THF is his best book at all, but it did make the biggest impact on me, for some reason).

I'll add Buckeridge's TROUBLE WITH JENNINGS to mine.

[Loomis]

"Earthly Powers" by Anthony Burgess;

"The Magus" by John Fowles;

"The Diary of a Nobody" by George and Weedon Grossmith;

"The Secret History" by Donna Tartt.

Can't be bothered to come up with a longer list.

Good call on "My Uncle Oswald", spy. As well as "Cockpit", of course.

[Loomis]

I'll add Buckeridge's TROUBLE WITH JENNINGS to mine.

Never cared for Jennings. Always saw it as an inferior ripoff of Richmal Crompton's William books, which I loved.

[spynovelfan]

"The Magus" by John Fowles;

I'll second that. An immature book in many ways, and frustrating in others, but it made a huge impact on me when I read it aged 21 or 22. Kind of like Salinger at 15. I've always supposed it's about the Gurdjieff set, but haven't checked that - they made an apparently not very good film with Michael Caine, I think. And, of course, THE GAME with Michael Douglas completely rips it off - quite effectively, I think. Also like Fowles' THE COLLECTOR, which fits in with my slightly psychotic-looking list.

[spynovelfan]

I'll add Buckeridge's TROUBLE WITH JENNINGS to mine.

Never cared for Jennings. Always saw it as an inferior ripoff of Richmal Crompton's William books, which I loved.

Yes, I liked them, too.

Sometimes rip-offs are better than the originals. A lesson I've learned in life.

[Max Zorin]

Er, lets see here...

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Sphere by Michael Crichton
The Tailor of Panama by John LeCarre

There's more, but these are the most current ones I've read. (Except for the Doyle, Vonnegut, Crichton and Puzo...I just really like those.)

[Genrewriter]

Where Eagles Dare-Alistair MacLean

Stephen King: The Shining, Danse Macabre (his nonfiction examination of the horror genre), the Dark Tower Series, Desperation

Michael Caine's autobiography

Temporary Insanity-Jay Johnstone

Any anthology of Bloom County comic strips

For Whom the Bell Tolls-Ernest Hemingway

[Gabe Vieira]

America the Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction - Jon Stewart and Crew
The Things they Carried - Tim O'Brien (Everybody should read this book)
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
Without Remorse - Tom Clancy
Raionbow Six - Tom Clancy

[DLibrasnow]

Only one by each author?

Doesn't have to be. Just what I've done. Go on, knock yourself out, DLibrasnow.
Puppet on a chain? Bear Island? Santorini? HMS Ulysses?

Okay...well with the one novel per author stipulation gone here is my revised list:

WHEN EIGHT BELLS TOLL by Alistair MacLean
WHERE EAGLES DARE by Alistair MacLean
GUNS OF NAVARONE by Alistair MacLean
BEAR ISLAND by Alistair MacLean
PARTISANS by Alistair MacLean
NIGHT PROBE by Clive Cussler
THE MEDITTERANEAN CAPER by Clive Cussler (Cussler modeled his early work on Alistair MacLean)
VALHALLA RISING by Clive Cussler
DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth
THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Arthur Conan Doyle
THE LOST WORLD by Arthur Conan Doyle
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH by Jules Verne
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by Jules Verne
COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS by Agatha Christie
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie
DEATH ON THE NILE by Agatha Christie
ALEX RIDER books by Anthony Horowitz

Some childhood favorites:
VALLEY OF ADVENTURE by Enid Blyton
ISLAND OF ADVENTURE by Enid Blyton
FIVE IN A FIX by Enid Blyton
SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS by Arthur Ransom
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE by CS Lewis

[Kronsteen]

I have a hard time remembering all the books I've read

Som excellent books though:

Hornet Flight - Ken Follett
Dogs of War - Fredrick Forsyth
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

And of course:
Enid Blytons "The Mystery Of..."-books

[Lazenby880]

A selected list from what I can think of at the moment.

Fiction
Alan Judd: LEGACY
Kingsley Amis: LUCKY JIM
Jack Higgins: PAY THE DEVIL
Robert Harris: ARCHANGEL and FATHERLAND
Charles Cumming: THE HIDDEN MAN and A SPY BY NATURE
George Orwell: 1984 and ANIMAL FARM
Eric Ambler: BACKGROUND TO DANGER, JOURNEY INTO FEAR and CAUSE FOR ALARM
Raymond Chandler: THE BIG SLEEP; FAREWELL, MY LOVELY; HIGH WINDOW and THE LONG GOODBYE
Frederick Forsythe: THE ODESSA FILE and THE DAY OF THE JACKAL
Alan Furst: KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

Non-Fiction
Edmund Burke: REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE
Friedrich von Hayek: THE ROAD TO SERFDOM, THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY and LAW, LEGISLATION AND LIBERTY
Adam Smith: WEALTH OF NATIONS
Robert Nozick: ANARCHY, STATE AND UTOPIA
Joe Haines: GLIMMERS OF TWILIGHT - HAROLD WILSON IN DECLINE
John Campbell: MARGARET THATCHER - IRON LADY and EDWARD HEATH - A BIOGRAPHY
James Callaghan: TIME AND CHANCE
Peter J. Wallison: RONALD REAGAN - THE POWER OF CONVICTION AND THE SUCCESS OF HIS PRESDENCY
Boris Yeltsin: MIDNIGHT DIARIES
Margaret Thatcher: STATECRAFT and THE DOWNING STREET YEARS
Kenneth Young: ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME
Kenneth E. Morris: JIMMY CARTER, AMERICAN MORALIST

These are the ones I have most recently read or the ones that stuck out in my mind. There are more older fiction books that I would consider favourites but I cannot remember them at the top of my head. Big fan of the political biography.

Edited by Lazenby880, 10 September 2005 - 02:14 AM.

[Mark_Hazard]

Almost anything by Agatha Christie lately.

Just in case you didn't know, check out the short story "The Rajah's Emerald" in the collection "The Listerdale Mystery".

Yep, I know of that little 'Bond' bit.

It's amazing the people that don't - did you also know of a short story by Kipling, in his collection "The Day's Work".

Don't know of that one!

Just for those reading this post that don't know what we're talking about, "The Rajah's Emerald" contains what I understand to be the first time (first published 1934) that a fictional character appeared in print with the name of James Bond.

As to Kipling's "The Day's Work" (first published in 1898) it contains a short story entitled ".007" about a small steam locomotive named, you've guessed it - .007 - arguably the first time a fictional character named 007 appeared in print.

[Qwerty]

Just for those reading this post that don't know what we're talking about, "The Rajah's Emerald" contains what I understand to be the first time (first published 1934) that a fictional character appeared in print with the name of James Bond.

To add, you can find it in this Agatha Christie collection: The Golden Ball and Other Stories.

[ComplimentsOfSharky]

I'm reading A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler right now. It's quite good.

[Lazenby880]

I'm reading A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler right now.  It's quite good.

That is the next Ambler on my list, and I can highly recommend those in my previous post. A master of the suspenseful thriller.

[stromberg]

Noticed some of my favourites in here...

Tristram Shandy -Laurence Sterne (already worn out three copies)
At Swim-two-Birds (amongst others) - Flann O'Brien
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Day of the Jackal (and mostly anything by) - Frederick Forsythe
anything Sherlockian - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Jungle Books - Rudyard Kipling
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
On tuera tout les affreux - Boris Vian
Vercoquin et le plancton - Boris Vian
The Hotel New Hampshire - John Irving
Treasure Island - R. L. Stevenson
The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Whosis Kid - Dashiel Hammett
Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh
Fup - Jim Doyle

Kids favs:
The Story of the Last Man alive - A.S. Neill
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Winnie The Pooh - A.A. Milne

Guess there's missing a few on the list...

Not reading very much German stuff. In fact, my two fav writers who write in German are Max Frisch and Friedrich D

[ComplimentsOfSharky]

[quote name='Lazenby880' date='10 September 2005 - 01:19'][quote name='ComplimentsOfSharky' date='9 September 2005 - 21:41']I'm reading A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler right now.

[terminus]

This is embarassing - aiming to be an English teacher and soem of my favourite books aren't up to scratch.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
The Snow Garden / A Density Of Souls by Christopher Rice
Decipher by Stel Pavlou
Fire Ice by Clive Cussler/Paul Kemprecios
ST:New Frontier (a series of books) by Peter David
The Bourne Quadrilogy by Ludlum and Lustbader