Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Good books, good memories

I just finished reading A Little Princess in French (I bought it over there and yes, it's taken me a year to read it...but I did lose it for about 8 months of that <g>). And while I was in the midst of happy sighs of bliss (what can I say? I love the book), I looked up at my sister and said, "I love this book." (Well, actually I said, "Que j'aime ce livre" and then she gave me a dirty look because she doesn't speak French and I kindly translated for her. :p )

And then I said something about how I can't even count the number of times I've read it.

But I always love coming back to it.

As a writer, I look at some of the things in there as not the best -- whether it be with the prose or the plot -- and yet, I love it. Absolutely and unequivocally love it.

So, I was wondering (and no, Labby, you don't have to limit it to one ) if anyone else had any special books like that. Ones that are like slipping on an old, soft pair of jeans and fuzzy socks and a baggy sweatshirt -- they're just plain good.

Any takers? And hey, maybe it'll give us all some good book recommendations/reminders.

Bethy

Oh, you people have got to stop posting fascinating stuff! <g>

Okay, favorite books... The Lord of the Rings.

Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers.

Pretty much everything by Lois McMaster Bujold -- she writes mostly science fiction with some fantasy -- lately it's been "The Curse of Chalion" (and the sequel's coming out this year! yippee!).

About half of the books I own by Jayne Ann Krentz (also known as Jayne Castle (futuristic setting) and Amanda Quick (Regency romance)) -- they're really all the same sort of plot, but what the heck, I like the plot And some characters/situations appeal to me more than others. If I had to pick one, it'd be "Absolutely, Positively." And maybe "Scandal" for Amanda Quick...

I have a feeling I'm forgetting a lot <g> but I like re-reading books, so if I liked it the first time, chances are I'll get to it again sooner or later.

PJ

Thanks for making it easy, Bethy.

Hmmmmmmmmm...let's see. Well, I have a lot of favourite books and authors of course, which I revisit all the time. David Eddings's Belgariad, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (although very disenchanted with the latter books), Patricia Kenneally's Keltiad novels, Joan De Vinge's The Snow Queen, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Time and The Firebrand, almost anything by Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm, to name but a few....

But I guess for me the answer to your question would have to be a couple of childhood favourites which have stayed with me through the years: Watership Down and The Chronicles of Narnia. I've worn out copy after copy of these and each time I revisit I never fail to be caught up in the adventure.

LabRat

Let's see...

Everything by John Grisham
The Lost World by Michael Crichton
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls *sniff*

and...

Dave Barry in Cyberspace by Dave Barry
People think I'm psycho, but this book has me ROTFLing everytime I read it.

Okay, did I just forget how to speak English today?! I've had to edit every single post!

Ooh, good thread, Bethy!

Well, there are a few classics which have been among my very favourite books for years:

Stendhal's The Red and the Black - the story of a man who always runs after a happiness that eludes him, and learns from his experiences in life, through contact with other men or relationships with the two women in his life.

Zola's The Ladies' Paradise - a fascinating social picture, as well as a sweet love story between the daughter of a small shop owner and the owner of a big mall.

Balzac's Pere Goriot - another fascinating social picture, with a hero who learns from the encounters and experiences he makes.

Top of the classic list would be Madame de Lafayette's The Princess of Cleves - completely enthralling love story focusing on the psychological aspect of an impossible relationship.

More recently, there was a book I couldn't put down: Racing the Moon, by Terry Prone. It tells us the life story of a fascinating heroine, Darcy King, who is hilarious and moving in turns. The more classical format of the novel is interspersed with entries to Sophia's diary (Darcy's twin sister) and the letter-exchange that Darcy has been entertaining with an American teacher she has never met.

And lately I've been reading lots of regency romances.

I'd recommend anything by Mary Balogh, though I have a few favourites:
The Secret Pearl - heartwrenching story of a man and a woman brought together under dreadful circumstances, and who only find some peace by getting closer.
More Than a Mistress - the relationship between the hero and heroine is antagonistic and hilarious at first, then the novel progressively unveils their haunted past as they're brought together.
Heartless - a tortured hero that you loathe at first, then progressively understand, and in the end I dare you not to love him [g].
Silent Melody - original and fascinating story showing the world through the eyes of a deaf-mute in the regency period, and her sweet love for a man she's convinced will never be hers.
Irresistible
A Certain Magic - both "best friends falling in love" stories.
The Notorious Rake - another tortured hero!! Unpredictable and purely poignant.

Anything by Mary Jo Putney, but most especially:
Thunder and Roses - heroine in the hands on a rake who might be more than met-the-eye, plus social picture of a village living through the exploitation of a dangerous coalmine.
The Rake - the reforming of an alcoholic rake thanks to the help and support he gets from the woman who (amazingly!) manages his estate.

And of course there's Mrs Drew Plays Her Hand (one of the rare romance stories that convincingly show that one can love twice) and Reforming Lord Ragsdale (another reforming story, with funny and poignant moments), both by Carla Kelly.

I think it's a lot more than you wanted to know about my reading tastes, so I'll shut up now.

Kaethel

Ooooo, good topic. Ok I have two favourites that I love, have always loved and could re-read over and over!

To Kill a Mocking Bird– my English teacher gave this to me when I was 12 and I thought that it was the most amazing thing that I had ever read. I went on about it so much that she let me keep her copy (she was a really great teacher) I’ve read it so many times now that its getting really worn, but I cant bring myself to read a new one, it just wouldn’t be the same!

Little Women – I cant actually remember the first time that I heard this story because my Mum would read a chapter of to me before bedtime every night and as soon as we got to the end I would make her start all over again the next night! Then once I could read well enough, it became the first book that I read all by myself from cover to cover.

I guess I love them both because they are amazingly well written books but also because they hold so many personal memories for me. Plus I’ve always had an interest in American Literature (I did part of my degree in it) that I guess started at an early age.

Sarah-Jayne

I can see that a lot of my responses are going to be the same as Kaethel's.

Ohboy, you would ask this, would you. Let's see

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women series. Not just Little Women, Little Men, and Jo's Boys, but also Eight Cousins, A Rose In Bloom, Jack And Jill, Under the Lilacs, and An Old-Fashioned Girl. I can't count how many times I've read them. And I still cry during Little Women

C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia I still cry during the Last Battle (not a theme, I swear!)

The Secret Garden and A Little Princess are good, too.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. I still love it when Anne (with an E!) smacks her slate over Gilbert's head. *giggle*

I think those are the only ones I reread a lot, other than Jude Deveraux's series about the Montgomery/Taggert families. LMA's childrens books always put me in a simpler state of mind. Her thriller novels are slightly odd, but still fairly good if you can find them.

Okay:

All time favourite (and my nomination for the BBC's big read, for those who've heard of it) is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. I've read it from cover to cover five times (which is pretty good going, if you've ever seen the size of it) and I've dipped into it far more often than that. I haven't done so much recently, but that's more because I know the book too well, rather because I don't like it any more.

Michael Strogoff by Jule Verne is terrific, too, even if the ending had me wanting to spit. It's fantastic up until the dramatic climax, and then... Ugh. I always want to rewrite that bit.

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. I like that one rather a lot.

I'm also a Dick Francis fan, and I particularly like the Sid Halley books, Odds Against, Whip Hand and Come To Grief.

Oh, and Harry Potter of course... Yes, I was one of those sad thirty thousand people who preordered The Order Of The Phoenix on the same day its release date was announced.

While I wouldn't put it on my must have list, I also want to endorse the recommendation for Thunder and Roses. Wendy pointed me in the direction of Mary Jo Putney, and that is my favourite (by quite a long way) of the books I've read.

Oh, and two last books I'd recommend: The Fool on the Hill by Matt Ruff (a delightfully quirky fantasy novel -- not my favourite genre normally -- set around Cornell university) and The Crow Road by Ian Banks. Both these books have plots that seem very fragmented at the beginning but which come together into very satisfying wholes towards the end.

Chris (who has spend far too long reading these boards tonight and has probably doubled the number of her posts in the process.)

Wow...lots of good books out there...

For me, I'd have to say:

Chronicles of Narnia of course,
Harry Potter series,
The Left Behind Series,
anything by RA Salvatore,
The Merlin's Legacy Series (the only "Romance" type novels I have ever read...besides some nfics).
and
A Wrinkle in Time

-Breanna

Favourite books. Great topic, Bethy!

Let's see...

A book that I absolutely adored and that I keep reading over and over again is Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse.

Another one is Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The first time I read it I stayed up till 5 am. I just couldn't put it down.

[EDIT: thanks to some help on IRC (thanks, Wendy!), I finally remembered the title. It's One Good Turn by Carla Kelly.]

I'm now reading also a number of vampire romance novels. Christine Feehan wrote some good ones.

I could list many books I really liked, but since it took me almost 40 minutes to write this (yeah, I know, pathetic), I guess I should stop.

[EDIT: Just remembered other books I'd like to add to my list.
Racing The Moon by Terry Prone and The Three Musketeers and its two sequels by Alexandre Dumas.]

Elena

Wow, I go to dance and come home to find a whole new book list to read. And I went to the library before dance, too. Silly Bethy.

And reading these posts made me remember more. Add another Chronicles of Narnia to the list. My mother read those aloud to us when I was around 6 or 7 and I have loved them ever since. And the more I learn about CS Lewis and the allegorical aspects of the books, the better they get. Unfortunately, in the US they changed the order! (Did they act as stupidly in the UK, too?) They put The Magician's Nephew first, because chronologically in the world of Narnia it comes first. But it's not meant to be read first! I will recommend the books to complete strangers in the bookstore and tell them the correct order to read them in. O:-) (The Horse and His Boy is moved to right after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because of 'chronology' too -- it technically takes place in TLTWATW. :rolleyes: )

And I love Little Women, too, but part of that is because I was in the play (hence the nick Bethy...) and so it has a special place in my heart because of that. I also read it first in the "Children's Illustrated Classics" version -- a picture every page and the text is veeeeeeery simplified and chopped down -- then found the original and was wowed by how much had been cut out.

Another one that I just recently re-read (and re-watched because I got it for my dad on DVD for his b-day) is The Scarlet Pimpernel. "They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That demmed elusive Pimpernel."

A recent find that I think will probably turn out to be in the same category of familiar-blue-jean-books for me is The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey. It's a novelization of the ballet Swan Lake but it adds soooooo much more, along with making one of the ballet's principal bad guys into the main character and a good guy. I love fairy-tale novelizations, and since this is a ballet and I'm a ballerina, it just connects even more. Not to mention it is a just plain good book.

Oh! (I was going to end there, honest I was.) Pascal's Wager by Nancy Rue. Honestly one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I've read it twice in a year and it's going to get read many many many more times.

Bethy (who is going to save this list -- and give her library card a workout this summer)

Ooh, great topic!

Count another Jayne Ann Krentz fan here!

Also love the L.M.Montgomery books -- not just Anne, she had some others too... /me tries to remember

The Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane.

The Pern books, by Anne McCaffrey. Some of her other stuff too.

Anything by Orson Scott Card. Especially Songmaster!

The Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy, by Douglas Adams. Also the Dirk Gently books.

Three shelves of Star Trek books! I reread many of them all the time.

Funny thing is, haven't read any of these in weeks. Wonder what I could possibly have been doing with my time...

Oh dear - thanks for the lists guys. I'm heading off to the largest bookstore in Seoul, which has a not bad English section, and was going to try to hunt down some books that Loriel had suggested to me. Now I'm printing off this thread so I can look for these books too.

I've got about 5 large bookshelves full of books at home, but of course only brought my Lonely Planet Korea and Baron's Korean phrasebook along with me. And seven months later I'm going crazy with nothing to read. Well, I mean yeah there's fanfic, but I can't print it off, and I don't have a Palm Pilot, so I can't carry it with me. And sometimes I just like to curl up with a good book, ya know...

Keep the recs coming! I'll have some for you a little later...

Melisma (going upstairs to get ready to go out...)

Okay, obviously I don't read very much because I don't recognize, well, almost all of the authors that were already mentioned.

Recently, I have read all 4 of the Harry Potter books. My two best friends are completely obsessed with Harry, and they talked about the books all the time. Even though they dragged me to see both movies, I felt a bit out of the loop. Finally, I was convinced to read them (grumbling the whole time about how they were childrens' books) and I ended up wanting to find out what happens next.

My all time favorite book of all time is Anne of Green Gables. I saw the movie when I was a little girl and I demanded that my mom go out and get me the books to read! To this day, it is my favorite book of all time.

- Alicia (who is a little scared that all of the books she has read in the last 5 years are children's books... and movies )

That was good!

However I'm an Asimov fan , so I stick for the Foundations Trilogy:Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, or The Gods Themselves.

Anything more new, in science fiction, The Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card, at least,
Ender's Game and Speaker for the Death

Jose (last book read Passage by Connie Willis)

A Wrinkle In Time! How could I forget it? Probably wasn't on my list because I've only read it once, way back when I was nine, and so it doesn't really qualify. But it probably would if I'd had a copy all these years. Twisted logic there, but it kind of works. <g>

Anyway, I remember being absolutely blown away with this one at the time, filled with wonder at the revelation of the ending. Which seemed awfully profound to me at that point. <sigh>

I really need to try and build up a collection of Madelaine's stories, I think. Thanks for the reminder, Breanna!

I have about 400 books, all of which I really enjoy! Most, if not all, are in the sci-fi/fantasy category.

All time favourites have to be Imzadi by Peter David and Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, both Star Trek novels. Erery so ofetn I re-read them, or, if I don't have time, I'll re-read my favourite bits!

Other favoutites include Anne of Green Gables series, (Rivka, are you thinking of the Emily of New Moon and Road to Avonlea series? I loved Emily too!), Harry Potter (another of those 30 odd thousand people), anything by Anne McCaffrey, but especially the Pern and Freedom/Catteni series, Chronicles of Narnia (I read Magician's Nephew, TLTW&TW, The Horse and his Boy, Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle in that order) and every so often I have a yearning to go back and re-read some of Enid Blyton's books - Shadow the Sheepdog, Adventure series.

Also really enjoyed David Eddings, Elenium and Tamuli series and Daid Gemmell's Rigante recently.

And I remeber reading and loving Little Women, Secret Garden and A Little Princess.

Karen, could you tell me the order of the Little Women series, I always wanted to read the, but not in the wrong order!

Loriel (who really will have shares in Amazon soon - a lot here I haven't read! )

See, I knew I was forgetting a lot <g> How could I not mention Georgette Heyer??? I think my all-time favorite of hers is Black Sheep -- I still vividly remember the first time I got to the ending and fell over laughing Venicia and Frederica are faves, too. I like the characters, the stories, and the language <g> Both because she's good at prose and because she uses a lot of Regency slang which, like any slang out of context, sounds hilarious today <g> There are whole passages I read aloud, every time. "Well, I don't want to say anything unladylike, but," she said, overcoming this reluctance, "you're one as would marry a midden for muck, and that's the truth!" okay, I'll be re-reading Black Sheep today... <g>

I really love The Secret Garden.

And add me to the list for the Chronicles of Narnia. How on earth could anyone put The Magician's Nephew first??? I've got a box set of the seven books (had it for years and years), and they have numbers right on them so you can keep them in the proper order... There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. C.S. Lewis also did a sci-fi trilogy ... "Out of the Silent Planet," "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength" ... that really impacted me at the time... Definitely for an older audience than Narnia. I still re-read the last one, sometimes.

I like most everything by H.B. Piper -- he wrote the Little Fuzzy stories, but I'm more fond of his future-history novels. He wrote decades ago (40s or 50s) and the first thing of his I read was "Omnilingual," a short story about an archeologist team in the Martian ruins, and the woman who figures out how to translate their language. Isaac Asimov and Anne McCaffery are classics, too. Especially the first Pern trilogy.

Okay, I think that's all I can remember for now

PJ
(all quotes above were from memory and might not be entirely accurate)

The Narnia books I have (a mixture of my mum's and new ones from my gran) are all numbered starting from Magician's Newphew, etc as I listed above, so I was wondering what order everyone else read them in. They seem to make sense to me in the order I read them. Tho, I do remember thinking at one point (possibly in The Horse and his Boy or Prince Caspian (I haven't re-read in a while)) 'So that's where Aslan went when he disappeared!' I liked finding that bit out.

Did anyone else watch TLTW&TW on BBC, possibly on a Sunday evening, maybe about 10 yrs ago. I never saw the other one's they did, but I'll always remember that one. I can still remember hiding behind the couch when The White Witch had tied Aslan to the table and turned him to stone. My heart broke (got a tear in my eye as I type!) and I just couldn't watch the 'evil' White Witch, and this is despite knowing what happened next!

I must go and look for CS Lewis's sci-fi series. I remember finding out, a while, back that he hadn't only written Narnia and that he had done other novels too, but I never went and looked for them!

Loriel