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Top 10 Novels and Plays


Ford

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Originally posted by Dr. D

I think # 10 is Salinger

vonnegut="salughterhouse 5" etc...

You actually LIKED reading GG Marquez? I find the style obliterates the substance. He should forget all about the semi-colon. Still just my opinion, he DID win a prize after all.

re: Rogue Warrior

I dont think I have read anything that captures my days in the navy as I remember them to be.

Funny story that is board related:

San Diego 1988 Super Bowl (shoot forgot the number) Timmy Smith and all. We were sitting offshore watching on the ship. The Small, wall-mounted TV would "spasm" every radar interval. Sometimes we saw the play begin and then ZZZZZ ..."TOUCHDOWN!" we were all waiting for the replays to see what happened. Anyway, segwe to further relevance, the captain had the security forces "probed" (anally). We were watching the Redskins, the CO was sharing his meal with company of the uninvited kind, in a friendly sort of way.

there was hell to pay the next day.

Thing was we were 5 miles out.

Dr. D,

You're killing me. I was waiting for someone to bring up 100 Years of Solitude. One of the best things I have ever read, it makes sense on MANY levels.

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Catch-22 and 1984 are by far my favorite books. After that...

Huckelberry Finn (anything by Twain is worth my time)

Of Mice and Men

Animal Farm

Lord of the Flies

Job (from the Bible)

Fahrenheit 451 (and the Illustrated Man/Martian Chronicles short stories, etc)

The Giving Tree (really)

To Kill a Mockingbird

I like Clancy's first 4 or 5 books...Red Storm Rising was the best.

Not a real big fan of plays, but Othello, 12 Angry Men, and A Raisin in the Sun were fine. Ok, 12 Angry Men was more than fine.

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I know I haven't seen 10 plays in my lifetime and of the ones I've seen, I can't remember any. So no top 10 there.

While I've read at least 10 books (I think) only a few stand out.

1. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Alexander Brown (I read this book while I stayed home from high school with the flu. It evoked rage and tears at the same time. For awhile I hated our government.)

2. Duncton Wood - William Horwood (Although it's a fictional story about moles, it's really a celebration of the light, or essential goodness of life and how an individual may always find it, however great the darkness in which he lives.)

3. Don't Stop the Carnival - Herman Wouk (One of the funniest books I've ever read.)

4. Caribbean - James Michener

5. Papillon - Henri Charriere

That's it. The only ones that stand out in memory.

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I can't even remember ten plays, so I won't even try, although of Shakespeare I always preferred Hamlet and King Lear. I once had a class in college where I had to read every single Arthur Miller play but I can't remember a damn one now (except for the Crucible).

For top ten books (in no particular order):

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the late great Douglas Adams

In Cold Blood by Capote

100 Years of Solitude by Marquez

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce

A Farewell to Arms by Hemmingway

Damn this is tough! I know I've read more than five books....

1984 by George Orwell

The Lord of The Rings by Tolkien

Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

The Catcher in the Rye by Salinger

Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez

Anyway, that's it. Marquez is easily my favorite contemporary author, even in translation.

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as for plays

always enjoyed Stoppard's work like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

macbeth; hamlet; othello; henry V; romeo & juliet

aristophanes

there's one that keeps sticking in my mind that I saw decades ago but can't remember the title of...the plot concerned 3 historical luminaries - I think Freud, Trotsky/Lenin, Einstein - crossing paths in Vienna. if anyone can help an old *art out here pls do!

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Originally posted by Yusuf06

Kurp, was Duncton Wood related in any way to Watership Down ? Just curious.

Related in that they're both metaphors for human life and struggles.

Although Watership Down was written earlier and by a different author, I read Duncton Wood first. After subsenquently reading Watership Down, I thought DW was by far the better book.

I should mention that DW is the first in a series of 6 books but the deeper in the series you get, the worse the writing gets. In retrospect, I should have just read DW and not wasted my time with the rest.

If you have children in the 10-year-old range and up, I would highly recommend that you gently coax them into reading this book. Trust me, they will long remember this as one of the best books they've ever read.

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