<p>I have yet to read this: They Poured Fire on Us from the sky.</p>
<p>I’m not a parent, but these are some of the best books I’ve yet read (but I’m always looking for suggestions too). </p>
<p>Narcissus and Goldmund–Hermann Hesse
The Chosen, Davita’s Harp, and My Name is Asher Lev–Chaim Potok
Exodus–Leon Uris
Crime and Punishment–Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Good Earth–Pearl Buck
Killer Angels–Michael Shaara
Jude the Obscure–Thomas Hardy
The Andromeda Strain–Michael Crichton
O, Pioneers–Willa Cather (although I’ve heard My Antonia is better, I haven’t read it yet)
The Kite Runner–Khaled Hosseini
A Tale of Two Cities–Charles Dickens
AND YES, AYN RAND!</p>
<p>I got SO UPSET at a certain point in Kite Runner (anyone who has read it will know the upsetting betrayal scene I’m talking about, although I don’t want to add anything for fear of spoiling it for others)!! I’m usually very emotional anyway, but my reaction was particularly strong and I think it was because I was right in the ‘culture shock’ portion of my exchange. Anyway, it’s a great book and I recommend it as well…I’ll just always have that association with culture shock in my mind when I think of it. </p>
<p>I don’t know why everyone recommends The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, as I despised it (only one person posted it here I think, but SO many used to recommend it to me IRL). From my experience, people tend to feel strongly one way or the other about it. </p>
<p>I loved Bee Season, though. Why are all of the movies these days based on books?? The books are inevitably better. </p>
<p>Behind the Scenes at the Museum was great, too, although I didn’t love the following book by the author. I can’t remember her name, arg.</p>
<p>So many books on this list have been recommended to me at various times…I really want to find the time to read the ones that have been on my list for a long time this summer. I love these suggestions, and although my style is usually to just go to the library and pick up everything that looks good, I almost always end up thrilled with friends’ suggestions. I’ll have to bookmark this page…</p>
<p>OK, I admit I read mostly for escape, but these are above the usual plot-driven, pageturners:</p>
<p>Ruth Reichl’s memoirs: Tender @ the Bone, Comfort me with Apples, Garlic & Sapphires
When the Emperor was Divine
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
Three Junes (Julia Glass)
March (this year’s Pulitzer winner for fiction – The Little Women family from a different angle)
The Glass Castle
Intuition & anything else by Allegra Goodman
Persuasion (Jane Austen)</p>
<p>If you’re not above the mystery genre, I love P.D. James, Peter Robinson, Lee Child, Elizabeth George, Dennis LeHane – usually interesting characters, as well as plot. </p>
<p>And because I love my Lab almost as much as I love my children: Life with Marley</p>
<p>Seole:</p>
<p>Behind the Scenes at the Museum was written by Kate Atkinson and I agree with you, it’s a fabulous book. I did not like Human Croquet, if that’s the book you’re saying you did not like.</p>
<p>I liked Tender (at? to?) the Bone as well, although I think I had to return it to the library and never finished it. I’ll have to look it up again.</p>
<p>Edit: Thank you Marite! I don’t remember the title of the other book because I found it so annoying that I returned it immediately. Also, I forgot to add that Bee Season is by Myla Goldberg.</p>
<p>Also, although I read them a million years ago, I loved Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I find some of Margaret Atwood’s work a bit, I don’t know, tedious sometimes, but I would still suggest her work as well.</p>
<p>Seole – </p>
<p>I also liked Kate Atkinson’s most recent (at least in paperback), “Case Histories.” The families dynamics aren’t quite as twisted as in “Bee Season,” but it certainly has its moments.</p>
<p>Thanks! I’ll definitely check it out. I really like books with twisted family dynamics, as you put it–close to home, maybe? 
Post away if you have any other suggestions for that category!</p>
<p>Almost any and every book by J California Cooper- especially some soul to keep and the future has a past</p>
<p>the Easy Rawlings series by walter mosley (start with devil in the blue dress)</p>
<p>the collected autobiographies of Maya Angelou’s books (all 6 books combined)</p>
<hr>
<p>All great books! J. California Cooper is at the top of my list for short stories.</p>
<p>How could I forget “Gone with the Wind.” When I was a teen and early 20’s I used to read it once a year. Love that book!</p>
<p>Joy Luck Club
Ann Rice Vampire series
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, (I love, love, love this series. No literary challenge, just plain ol’ gut busting laughter)</p>
<p>I’ll think of some more later. :)</p>
<p>“Books to read before I die.” I guess I’d have to say finishing everything by Faulkner as “The Sound and the Fury” is a lifelong favorite. I’ve promised myself to get through “Ulysses” someday as I’ve always loved Joyce; I just don’t think I’ll ever have enough background knowledge to fully appreciate all of the novel’s nuances.</p>
<p>Trying to pick a favorite book is like trying to pick a favorite child… but if someone put a gun to my head, I guess I’d have to say “East of Eden” by Steinbeck. I keep coming back to it, and each time it’s better than the time before. I never really understood the story of Adam and Eve and its central importance to all of Judeo-Christian thought until reading that book. I love it because it’s so thoroughly American, so timeless, deeply philosophical, beautifully written, wise. What other book can boast a portrait of true, pure evil personified like Cathy?</p>
<p>Personal favorites among the many authors mentioned here and some others: “David Copperfield” by Dickens, “Trinity” by Leon Uris, “I, Claudius” and “Claudius the God” by Graves, “Les Miserables” by Hugo, “The House of Seven Gables” by Hawthorne, “Shogun” by Clavell, “The Color Purple” by Walker, “Gulag Archipelago” by Solzhenitsyn, “Lonesome Dove” by McMurtry, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Lee, “The Jungle” by Sinclair, “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad, “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Vonnegut, “Catch 22” by Heller, “The Trial” by Kafka. All of these books are great reads and capable of changing how you see and understand the world. </p>
<p>Too bad we’re not talking about plays or I’d mention Sartre, Wilder, Hellman.</p>
<p>Garland, I’ve read everything by Rand, and I do mean everything. IMO, her best book is also her shortest (coincidence?): “We the Living.” Interesting and personal glimpse into post-revolutionary Russia. Tragic story, not too didactic, honest and autobiographical in a way she never again allowed herself to be, fully developed heroic and tragic characters who evolve during the course of the story, well-crafted fiction from Rand before she became a popular icon. If you want to get a quick handle on objectivism, read John Galt’s radio address toward the end of “Atlas Shrugged.”</p>
<p>Thanks, maybe I will. But as it’s been described to me by adherents I knew in school, and on its own website, I have trouble seeing why I would want to know more. That’s why I asked for followers to explain what attracts them to it. I’m just plain puzzled by that, more than by what it is.</p>
<p>^^ Good points.</p>
<p>She was so influential politically to so many people, seminal really (more than Buckley, Reagan, or anyone else) to the renaissance of conservativism and the Republican party, partially indirectly. I truly believe that many people today would not be active advocates of capitalism had they never learned about it from Rand; she was, and remains, that important. She introduced, and probably still does introduce, many a teenager to Adam Smith and the “Austrian school” of economics. You might be interested to know that our former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, contributed an essay on the gold standard to one of her nonfiction works. Back in the late '50s, he was a devoted acolyte. I would also credit her as a major influence on libertarianism.</p>
<p>You could call her an advocate of enlightened self interest as well as individualism. She was intentionally provocative, choosing to use inflammatory language in books like “The Virtue of Selfishness.” At the same time, I think she was the first to use the argument re: abortion that women have the right to control their own bodies (the right of ownership). She redirected the national debate on fascism, identifying it as a statist political philosophy that should be identified with the left, rather than the right, end of the political spectrum.</p>
<p>Her writing suffered because of her politics. She aroused so much curiosity, wrath, and devotion that her novels became polemics, anticipating and answering her critics. As a result, the writing turned turgid. </p>
<p>A thoroughly interesting character, IMO. (Have I convinced you to give her a whirl? 
)</p>
<p>“Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series”—yes, lightweight, but soooo funny! I love the Grandma and Lula.</p>
<p>Um, no? :)</p>
<p>I guess I’d be reading her only to argue–so much of that I don’t agree with, (identifiying fascism as leftist only makes sense if you accept a rightwing set of definitions), and if the prose is turgid, too…(great word, by the way). ANd life’s too short to read just to argue. I enjoy different points of view, but I’m pretty sure I’m not about to change my whole worldview at this age! I guess I really don’t see the attraction of self-interest as the highest value (well, I get it, but I’m always surprised when people I encounter not only subscribe to it, but do so publicly). </p>
<p>But, I don’t want to hijack this thread…I do appreciate your interest in addressing my question, though–I’d forgotten I’d asked it.</p>
<p>An eclectic list:
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
Uncle Tom’s Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
One the Road - Jack Kerouac
Notes from the Underground - Fyodr Doestovsky
Diary of a Madman, The Overcoat, The Nose - Nikolai Gogol
Nine Stories - JD Salinger
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig
Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman</p>
<p>Don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this (didn’t read all the posts), but for sheer entertainment value: Lonsome Dove (one of my favorites).</p>
<p>I almost mentioned “Lonesome Dove.” A great book, has all the elements needed for a great read.</p>
<p>So Far:</p>
<p> Sound and the Fury Faulkner
Hamlet/Henry IV Shakespeare
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
The Prelude Wordsworth
Gilead Marilyn Robinson
Emma Jane Austin
Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky
Meditations Descartes (for love of literature, not philosophy)
The Conference of the Birds Attar<br>
Great Gatsby/Tender is the Night Fitzgerald
Zorba the Greek Nikos Kaznzakis
Reflections on the French Revolution Burke
A Farwell to Arms/Sun Also Rises Hemingway
The Gulag Archipelago Solzhenitsyn
Emerson-The Mind on Fire Richardson
Lolita Nabokov
Walden Thoreau
Masnavi/Divani-Shams Rumi
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Solzhenitsyn
If on a Winters Night a Traveler Calvino
Ghazals - Hafez
Dialogues Plato
Witness Whittaker Chambers
1001 Nights Sherezade (under the covers, in bed!)</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>love love love to read anything i can get my hands on.
some of my favorites that i dont think have been mentioned:</p>
<p>An Unquiet mind
prozac nation
chronicle of a death untold
don quixote
100 years of solitude
wicked
the kite runner
a million little pieces
catch-22
the odyssey
lies and the lying liars who tell them
the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
madame bovary
things fall apart</p>