100 Desert Island Books

[qwertz]

Just an encyclopaedia brittanica, an SAS survival manual and a bible

[enyaw]

I'd have a go at the complete Aubery and Maturin series by the master of historical novels Patrick O'brian.

[pumpuiman]

Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens:any and everything.

Ray Bradbury:any and everything.

Shackelton: South

Catcher in the Rye

Anne Rice: Interview with a Vampire (and others)

John Grisham/Steven King: For reading on airplanes and beaches

Edgar Allen Poe

Grimms Fairy Tales

Aesop's Fables

Pinocchio (the original book, not the Disney version....Pinocchio smashes Jiminy Cricket to death with a hammer!! )

Greek Mythology

And many many more!!

[Thaddeus]

I have many favorites but for some reason all I can think of at the minute is;

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Douglas Adams

Very funny and very true

good choice! have you read all five of the trilogy?

I also like the Terry Pratchett Discworld books. maybe some John Le Carre, and then Paul Theroux's a star in my eyes.

I think so but it was a long time ago. The last one I remember reading was 'So long and thanks for all the fish'. I miss Marvin the depressed robot 'brain the size of a planet and here they have me opening doors'.

Btw, how can you read all five of a trilogy. Do you mean a fivology?

Apologies for being a pedant... but, it's Marvin the Paranoid Android.

I can read that series over and over again, it isn't great literature but it is great entertainment (bringing a whole new meaning to the word 'trilogy'... love it) .... Red Dwarf in print form is the same, as is the Disk World series, cranking it up a notch, Heinlein is a must, especially 'Job' 'The Number of the Beast' and 'The Cat who walks through walls'.

The Dune series and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are ones that I like to revisit every now and again .... oooh, Anne McCaffrey is good.

The printed word serves three purposes, to educate, to inform and to entertain. I use the internet for information, I'm up to the eyeballs with education, now I just want to be entertained. During my school years, we had Shakey Bill shoved down our throats, dissected and analysed, hated it. A few years later I picked up "A Mid-summer nights Dream" and read it for fun, I then went on to read everything he has ever written.

Steven King quite frequently says in his forewords that books are for enjoyment and not to be taken apart word by word ... I stand by that. (probably why I like some of Ms Jets posts)

[LaoPo]

I just need 1 book on a deserted island:

"How do I survive"

LaoPo

[Jet Gorgon]

Oh, I think I want to raid a few bookshelves...

I know many books are available on Inet, but there's something about having a book in hand, flipping back to read a favourite passage or to jiggle the memory when there are too many characters and subplots.

I'm with you Mossfinn -- Tale of Two Cities is one of my annual rereads.

Lannarebirth, you are too funny.

And too true, Tutsi, Norton's. Ah, I remember carting those tomes around at school. I now adore the onion skin pages of pretty words. I am to be bequeathed a 1912 edition of Omar Khayyam, which I will cherish more than any other thing, except one of my Gran's other original copies: Tennyson's Poems, which is already in my clutches.

New stuff: Stanley Park, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, Buddha Da...

I used to go through era stages -- Papa Hem, Gertrude Stein, Maddox, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, then Zola and his Les Rougon Macquart -- L'Assommoir, Germinal, Nana. And Mordechai Richler -- Duddy Kravitz and a fav, Solomon Gursky Was Here.

Because of my studies, I am also keen on Japanese writers. Akutagawa Ryunosuke (Kurosawa made a movie of his stories with Rashomon), Soseki (I am a Cat), Abe Kobo (The Box Man), Mishima Yukio (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), and the cutie pie Machi Tawara and her tanka poetry -- Salad Anniversary, Chocolate Revolution:

Like getting up to leave

a hamburger place --

that's how I'll leave

that man

I do love people that string words together in a lovely fashion...

Where can I read some of your poetry, Tiggy Tiger?

Edited February 27, 2007 by Jet Gorgon

[Jet Gorgon]

I'd have a go at the complete Aubery and Maturin series by the master of historical novels Patrick O'brian.

Ya, those are excellent reads, IMO.

[sceadugenga]

Many, many good books and a few I'd only keep to throw at the dog when he's barking at next doors Alsatians.

What I found refreshing was, unlike another forum which ran this thread, people cheerfully admitted to reading popular fiction...Stephen King, Wilbur Smith etc.

I like Joseph Wambaugh, I hope his new book's available at the airport next week I haven't seen it in Chiang Rai. Ditto Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris, probably my favorite writer.

McDonald Fraser

Larry McMurtry

Roddy Doyle

Bernard Cornwell

Grisham

Leslie Thomas

Hope you weren't really expecting a hundred Jet.

Edited February 28, 2007 by sceadugenga

[Jet Gorgon]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

[endure]

Oh, I think I want to raid a few bookshelves...

I know many books are available on Inet, but there's something about having a book in hand, flipping back to read a favourite passage or to jiggle the memory when there are too many characters and subplots.

Also you can't read the internet in the bath...

[PhilHarries]

Cutting out the works important to my professional life such as Timoshenko's Theory of Flat Plates and Roark & Young's Formulas of Stress & Strain (very good reads, highly recommended for insomniacs ), the two that really sitck in my memory are:

Quiet Flows the Don

and

The Cruel Sea

About the only other book I'd like is "Kontiki - The detailed plans".

[lampard10]

James Mitchener...................The Drifters

Tolkien................................Lord of the Rings

Tolkien................................The Hobbit

Heller ..............................Catch 22

Arthur. C. Clarke.................Rendezvous with Rama

Phillip Jose Farmer................Riverworld series

Phillip Jose Farmer................Dark is the Sun

Times Atlas of the World

I also liked a lot of science fiction/fantasy as well

Rice-Burroughs

Michael Moorcock ( who was also a member of Hawkwind)

Edited February 28, 2007 by lampard10

[endure]

Cutting out the works important to my professional life such as Timoshenko's Theory of Flat Plates and Roark & Young's Formulas of Stress & Strain (very good reads, highly recommended for insomniacs ), the two that really sitck in my memory are:

Quiet Flows the Don

and

The Cruel Sea

About the only other book I'd like is "Kontiki - The detailed plans".

I remember listening to the Merchant Navy programme on BBC World Service in the 70s. They had an interview with Thor Heyerdahl about his latest 'venture'. When they asked him whether he had arranged any form of rescue vehicle in case his voyage went wrong he said that he relied in the good will of the merchant marine and SOLAS to get him out of trouble for free.

[garro]

I would say that a book that really changed my life was Skallagrig by William Horwood.

It is about the lives of people with profound disabilities/handicaps.

I became a nurse because of it.

[sceadugenga]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

Let's face it if a genie popped out of a lamp and gave you the option of writing a great work that would be critically acclaimed and taught in schools for all time or something that Hollywood offered you a check with 8 or 9 zeros on it for the film rights the day after publication.....how long would you think about it?

[raslin]

I take heaps of books with me when I move around with my job, so not so much a question of top 100, rather shelves of books.

But the OP's question is soon to have some direct relevance, my next move is indeed into the dessert and at that time I have to remove a number of books lest they cause offense.

I really need to get started on that..

Kinky to paddle in the custard!

Why not step over the dessert and into the desert?

Edited February 28, 2007 by raslin

[bendix]

I've just had all my books shipped over to Bangkok and spent 20,000 baht getting some huge bookcases handmade to store them all. Of the books I own, the ones i couldn't live without include:

My entire Graham Greene collection (mostly first editions, some signed)

Virginia Woolf's diaries - all five volumes

Karl Popper - Conjectures and Refutations (because it taught me everything that I don't know, and never will)

My Folio Society set of Jane Austen's novels

Bertrand Russell - History of Western Philosophy

Anything by PG Wodehouse - a one joke wonder, but one of the purist prose writers ever

Times World Atlas . . a stunning edition, over a metre high, paper so thick and smooth you could play pool on it

An original edition of John Bull dated 1816. John Bull was a contemporary tabloid newspaper. This edition features an Old Bailey story about a housemaid from Norfolk (my home town) with the same surname as me (a rare surname), being transported to Australia for stealing 1 shilling worth of bread.

Dora Carrington - Letters and Diaries

Philip Larkin - Collected Poems

Ernest Dowson - Complete Poems

Kingsley Amis - Collected Letters

And for light relief - Kenneth Williams Diaries. Fantastic stuff.

I'm a bit like Jet Gorgon . I go through fads. For a while it was Bloomsbury and its hangers on. Then the Paris set of the 1920s. Then the 1890s Oscar Wilde Group. Then the Angry Young Men of the 50s and 60s.

[Jet Gorgon]

Ohhoooh. Library raiding at Bendix's house.

Ginny Woolf? I hated To the Lighthouse and stream of consciousness in school, but it's OK now. The Bloomers were a good group.

Also Mary Shelley, Shelley, Byron, Keats.

Dot Parker and the Algonquin table busters.

Who's the best today? I am out of touch.

[Ulysses G.]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

Let's face it if a genie popped out of a lamp and gave you the option of writing a great work that would be critically acclaimed and taught in schools for all time or something that Hollywood offered you a check with 8 or 9 zeros on it for the film rights the day after publication.....how long would you think about it?

I honestly would have a difficult time deciding.

[Jet Gorgon]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

Let's face it if a genie popped out of a lamp and gave you the option of writing a great work that would be critically acclaimed and taught in schools for all time or something that Hollywood offered you a check with 8 or 9 zeros on it for the film rights the day after publication.....how long would you think about it?

I honestly would have a difficult time deciding.

That's cause you already wrote a critically acclaimed work taught in schools that was made into a movie. Ulysses in Siam, with Spee and Boon Mee.

[Ulysses G.]

How many schools banned it?

[sceadugenga]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

Let's face it if a genie popped out of a lamp and gave you the option of writing a great work that would be critically acclaimed and taught in schools for all time or something that Hollywood offered you a check with 8 or 9 zeros on it for the film rights the day after publication.....how long would you think about it?

I honestly would have a difficult time deciding.

That's cause you already wrote a critically acclaimed work taught in schools that was made into a movie. Ulysses in Siam, with Spee and Boon Mee.

See the General wants to be liked and admired, I just want to be rich.

[Jet Gorgon]

How many schools banned it?

Dunno. I applied for entrance to many schools asking specifically for your book and nobody had it.

[Ulysses G.]

Asked for 100, expecting 1,000 or more.

Yep, pop fiction is excellent. Dickens was that once.

I often read animal-related murder mysteries. Like the Siamese kitty series by Lillian Jackson Braun. I do like to laugh.

Let's face it if a genie popped out of a lamp and gave you the option of writing a great work that would be critically acclaimed and taught in schools for all time or something that Hollywood offered you a check with 8 or 9 zeros on it for the film rights the day after publication.....how long would you think about it?

I honestly would have a difficult time deciding.

That's cause you already wrote a critically acclaimed work taught in schools that was made into a movie. Ulysses in Siam, with Spee and Boon Mee.

See the General wants to be liked and admired, I just want to be rich.

I have been obsessed with books and reading since I was a young child and have read Lord of the Flies at least 20 times.

The thought of being able to write something that wonderful and having everyone know that I contributed it to the world, might supersede having lots of money.

[garro]

Brendan Behan: Borstal Boy

James Plunkett: Strumpet city

[leisurely]

I love books and I think I would die if I couldn't read. Those that I re read frequently include Angelas Ashes and all the George Orwell titles. I have also discovered (using the term loosly) Sarah Walters. She is a fabulous author although oddly enough all of her books include some sort of sapphism...... . Other favourites include Dean R Koontz, Stephen King, India Knight, Charles Dickens, Jodie Picoult - she could be up there in my top 1 author, a very clever, thought provoking woman.

Around a year ago I had a bit of a Burma frenzy - I was trying to decide whether we should go and visit. I read lots and lots about it - the country,history and culture and a great book was Secret histories - finding George Orwell in a Burmese teashop by Emma Larkin. I can't recommend that one highy enough.

I came down firmly on the 'no we shouldn't go side' by the way.

[Anthony_Mustang]

TV bookworms, what are the best babies to have at hand for rainy days and power outages?

Besides an OED or similar dictionary, Bill Shakespeare, the Bible or similar tract, what else is requisite on the shelves? Tutsi Warrior is a connoisseur of literature, stuck out in the sticks without fine beef stock but a copy of Grapes of Wrath at hand. Resorts and farang restaurants are often good sources of a fine book to borrow. What are your favourites, TV readers? The 100 must-have books are...?

1. How to build a boat out of Cocconut tree

2. The idiots guide to Navigation.

3. 101 ways to prepare cocconuts.

Edited February 28, 2007 by Anthony_Mustang

[OM3N]

Shantaram- Gregory David Roberts (Any Expat living in Asia should read this!)

1984

The Kite Runner

Bangkok Eight

Thats all I can think of now...

[too true]

Anything by Ben Okri or Vikram Seth. And a book I can read again and again and always get something new from, The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

[Jet Gorgon]

Bangkok Eight

What's that about and who's the author?