Oi, you can't leave us there HB. Then what?

He's gay lol!

So am I, so any love is going to have to be platonic. Weaveworld was great. Have you read Imajica? That was also excellent. I ment Barker at FantasyCon in 2007. What a nice man. I'd found a hardback mint 1st edition of Weaveworld in Oxfam for 99p, and I got him to sign it, can you believe? Now that's what I call value for money...

JB

Well I know now he's bleeding gay but at the time he wasn't quite so open. Though the leather trousers and cap might have given it away.
I think he laughed politely at my advances. To be fair I had been at a two day festival and had eaten my body weight in pills so my gaydar was off that day.
HB x

<Added>

Yes, I love Imajika...which again may have been a slight hint that the writer was gay.

Lol. I just can't see Clive (first name basis, oh ya) in a leather cap and trousers! Sacrament was the one where he came out and said it, I think, by having probably the first ever gay MC in a Fantasy novel. First one I'd encountered anyway. Pills? I do hope you mean paracetemol for recovery?

JB

Love this idea!
The Lord of the Rings - I read the Hobbit when I was a child and loved it, then didn't get round to the trilogy till I was a teenager. I still remember my first experience of reading it. I was sitting in the brown armchair in the living room, and I opened the book and started reading... and I came up for air at the end of the first volume. I actually gasped for air. The living room looked weird and unreal because I'd been in another world for so long. It was such an intense reading experience.

Asterix and Cleopatra - I could name all the Tintins and Asterixes, but I go with this one because it was so clever, so funny, and every time I re-read it I'd spot yet another gob-smackingly brilliant pun.

A man from Alexandria, to Getafix:
"My dear old Getafix, I hope I find you well?"
Getafix, to Asterix, with a bit of a smirk on his face:
"An Alexandrine..."

Emma - I just loved all the Austen books so much, they were so funny. But at boarding school I was stuck with just Northanger Abbey, which is sort of one of the hardest to enjoy, because the heroine (with whom you so want to identify) is made to look so silly. I over-read Pride and Prejudice, so I lost some pleasure in it eventually, that's why I'm picking Emma. (Mr Knightley!!! Swoon, in an embarrassingly pre-feminist way).

The Pickwick Papers - this actually is the funniest book ever, ever written.

Lolita - this is the only book that I've picked that isn't downright comfort reading. But I do think it answers the requirement of 'enjoyment' because of the gorgeousness of its language.

There are lots of books that I admire or that were formative for me, that aren't on this list because reading them wasn't sheer enjoyment. The list is skewed towards books that make me laugh, wish-fulfillment books, and Great Adventures. And also I read all those books before I was 18 - I think you do enjoy reading more before that age, and the books you read then mark you more, and stick around more. As an adult you get too jaded, there are so many books, after all. These are all books that I read when every book was still a revelation.

Oh, I Claudius! I LOVED that too - those were amazing books.

Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier
Treasure Island - R L Stevenson
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
The Hobbit - Tolkein
Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

<Added>

I should add I was a late reader and read Treasure Island when I was 35 years young

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell (I really identified with this when I was young and angry - now I'm older and angry I can see that the main character is deluded. But that doesn't mean he's wrong [discuss...]).

You read my mind! Though now I can't remember a word of the plot except it was all about being stuck in suburbia and miserable, which was totally my life as a teenager. I identified with Madame Bovary at that age as well. And you're so right, he's deluded but it doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong - EXACTLY.

Gee, my favorite books are usually the ones I've just read, so I'll have to think back a bit...also it's going to be very difficult to restrain myself from listing 5 of Terry Pratchett's, or 5 of Deric Longdens, or 5 Agatha Christies...


Mort by Terry Pratchett
About a Boy by Nick Hornby
Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time by Mark Haddon
Once in a Green Summer by Thomas F. Walsh
Lost For Words by Deric Longden



- NaomiM

I love this site for increasing my reading wish list!

Mine are:

Rachel's Holiday - Marian Keyes
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Herries Chronicles (all of them) - Hugh Walpole
Small Island - Andrea Levy
The Stand - Stephen King

and anything by Terry Pratchett and definitely The Lord of the Rings.

When I was in my teens the book I read over and over again was a [*cough*] Danielle Steele one called The Promise. I think I read it at least a half dozen times in the space of 18 months. I was as obsessed with that as my sister was with the song My Endless Love which she played on her record player at least a thousand times in that same 18 months!

I really struggled not to include The Stand by King in my five. Mockingbird edged it out though.

I think you do enjoy reading more before that age, and the books you read then mark you more, and stick around more.

Definitely agree with this. My reading was also much more adventurous, ambitious and prolific when I was a teenager - I read for reading's sake in a way that I struggle to now.

Thinking back to the books I read and enjoyed as a youngster, I'd have to include:

Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Shane by Jack Schaefer
The Honorable Schoolboy by John Le Carre
Who? by Algis Budrys


Plus:

Everything by John Wyndham
Everything by Arthur C. Clarke
Everything by Anne McCaffrey
Everything by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Shane! Naomi. I'd forgotten it. I loved that book. And the film. Thanks for reminding me.

Hard to think of just five books...!

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Fear & loathing in las vegas by Hunter S Thompson
The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem