Young Writers Society

Eleanor Rigby wrote:
I can't think of five at the moment, but here's one that I finished last year that's just spectacular:
'The Things They Carried', by Tim O'Brien.

I love you. i read that book last year and I absolutly loved it. Another one I loved is Wicked.

I read The Darren Shan Saga and frankly he doesn't compare to R.L. Stines work. Stine knew how to capture suspense and gore. (And no, I'm not refering to the Goosebumps books. Ick!) Don't get me wrong, I have all the books in the Shan series and enjoyed it but the author uses a lot of repetition and it sometimes was a little drawn out.

Edit, uh... can we add more books?

I really need to read Ender's Game...I've heard a lot of good things about it.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy...hearing that people hate this book makes me want to cry. I love everything about it. Even the fifty-page long descriptions of weddings and wine.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo - the epitome of a gothic romance, and a tragic ending. Probably one of my favorite endings of all time. Hugo is my hero for this book.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri - it was breathtakeningly written, the story was woven together seamlessly, the ending bittersweet.

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. I've thought that this was about the perfect novel to write: fairly short, easy to read but well written, fantasy but not a series. Such a balanced book. And woman power! w00t!

Into the Land of the Unicorns by Bruce Coville. I had to put it on here because it was one of the first novels I read, and I've read it so many times the pages are falling out and you can't read the words on the spine.

oh.. this is hard. The only book to continually make my list in Ender's Game, and the entire Bean end of the series. I didn't like the last three on the Ender side, but I read them years ago.. time to re-read.

I loved Wicked.. currently reading Son of a Witch and I like it so far..

oh! ten angry men! I read that a few years ago in english, and loved it! I forget the numbers, now, but I remember my teacher assigned parts, instead of the usual randm pickinf of parts.. such typecasting I've never seen. a friend got teh foreman.. perfect personality fit.. I got.. oh lord, what number? I want to say 5.. the dissenter of the group. Loved that.

Nothing else makes a top list.. a few favourites, but not best. Tamora Pierce I really like (actually, a few summers ago, I think I read the entirety of the Tortall books in 10 days, but that's another story..yesh). Juliet Marillier's (think I spelled that right) Seven Water Trilogy I really like.. the first one especially (Daughter of the forest). Almost anything historical fiction I'll read, and usually like (helpful, no?). Shakespeare is god. end of story. fin. got it? good. I loved twelfth night, midsummer night's dream, much ado about nothing, scottish play was alright (would've been better if I had read it before we read it in english.. such lynching i've bever seen in my life.. except for freshman year when we read romeo and juliet, and no one got the jokes to boot. shutting up).

Nate wrote:1. "Oh The Places You Go" by Dr. Suess: I remember buying this book the day that it came out (I was and remain a huge Dr. Suess fan) and must have read a zillion times over. It's a great book and it still holds a prominent place on my book shelf today.

Amen to that, Nate.

Amen.

1. The Series of Unfortunate Events --Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
2. The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocolypse -- Robert Rankin
3. The Jungle -- Upton Sinclair
4. Something Wicked This Way Comes --Ray Bradburry
5.All Quiet on the Western Front --Erich Maria Remarque
------(I just started to read it and everything, the author was in WWI and the characters are based in that era, though not particularily him, I just started reading (chapter 2 ) but it's a pretty good book.)

Meshugenah wrote:
anything historical fiction I'll read, and usually like (helpful, no?).

*pokes Mesh's arm.* *clears throat and points to fishr's signature* The link is historical fiction, but long. Then again, it's a novel.

And I agree, Shakespeare is God.

The Black Rose wrote:
4. Something Wicked This Way Comes --Ray Bradburry

I forgot about this one. *smacks head* The movie wasn't too bad eaither.

Ok some of these are a bit unusual but they're still good.

1. 'The Tomorrow Series' - John Marsden
2. 'Mortal Engines' - Philip Reeve
3. 'I Am Legend' - Richard Matherson
4. 'The Edge Chronicals' (all of them) - Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell
5. 'A Series Of Unfortunate Events' - Lemony Snicket

Discworld (All of them) - Terry Pratchett
The Edge Chronicles (All of them) - Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell (Muddle Earth is fantastic too)
The Redemption of Althalus - David & Leigh Eddings
Tengu - Graham Masterton (Although James Herbert and Masterton are equally skilled, this one sticks in my mind for some reason.)
The Keys to the Kingdom Series - Garth Nix (Although Sabriel and sequals were equally fantastic)

You make me make hard decisions. And it took a friend to help me narrow it down!

1. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
2. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
3. Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
4. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

I like too many books x_x, though I do have to stop droolign over a few those might be...

1) All books by Tamora Pierce - I am a complete nut about her, x_x, I read, and re read her books till they pratically scream at me to put them away for a while ^_^ She writes wicked books though, espically the Protector of the Small Series, and the Circle Opens Series.

2) A great and terrible beauty, and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray- oh my goodness they were good, it was like ... wow, at first I was seriously skeptical but wowser, super awesome.. READ THEM x_x

3) Harry Potter series by whats her name (brain meltdown) - need I say more?

4) Narnia series by whats his name - wow, I love those books, sooo much, yay ^_^ books books books

5) Amelia Peabody set by Elizabeth Peters- Not many people have heard of this I think, but its really awesome stories, don't know how to describe them, but if you Ever like reading about stuff about Egyptology and the like, she's the one for yooou, first one is Crocodile on the Sandbank... I think...

In no particular order:

1. Lord of The Rings by JRR Tolkien
2. Anything written by David Gemmell (excluding one or two). He is easily my favourite fantasy author. I recently read Lord of The Silver Bow, and that's a fantastic book.
3. Harry Potter 1/2/3/4/5/6 by JK Rowling - despite her critics, I would say these books are the most I've got involved in or cared about the characters so much.
4. Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell
5. The Perks Of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell

- Most definetly agreed, haven't finished the entire series yet though.

They just finished filming Sharpe's Challenge...

ladydark wrote:3) Harry Potter series by whats her name (brain meltdown) - need I say more?

- It's that rich blonde english lady...

Sarah - My Into the Land of the Unicorn's is falling apart too...

I see plenty of Ender's Game fans around - I love you all. Lots and lots and lots. The last one is due out soon, isn't it... and the MOVIE. Jeepers.

I didn't like the last three on the Ender side

Thou mustest die(est). :p

Anyway - in no particular order (because they don't have orders when they're this good.

Tigana, The Lions of Al-Rassan and The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay is an absolutely immense author: if you're into historical fiction, read him, because they're all based very closely on real-life historical events. In fact, read him anyway: I was never much of a history man, but the two Sarantine books leave me physically shaking by the time I'm finished, they're so powerful.

The Once and Future King by T.H. White. It's a collection of five books, based on the Mallory (tale of King Arthur); White, however, has put an entirely new spin on it, turning it into an incredibly rich, deep political and philosophical fable. The characters are completely atypical of your expectations for the Arthur legend, and some of the imagination and exploration is breathtaking.

The Ender's Game series by Orson Scott Card. People have said it before, but I feel bound to say it again: they're amazing. The characters are impossible not to connect with, the dialogue is razor-sharp, and Card is a master of moralizing (in the good sense) and philosophizing. When he's on form, there's none better.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. People claim the detail and sheer amount bog it down, but I think it's entirely the opposite: people's inability to concentrate properly bogs down what they get from books like this. Coupled with The Silmarillion, which is an underappriciated gem, there's an entire world sprung complete from Tolkien's head. The man was an absolute genius, however well you like his work.

Number five is impossible to choose: my shortlist was reaching triple figures just in the time it took me to write the other four. I'll stick in the few that stand out: Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy is absolute class; while I don't mind Harry Potter, HDM are superior by far and away. Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul by Tom Stoppard, and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot are three playscripts that everyone bar none should read - Beckett's is a strong, intense critique of modern values, while Stoppard's two brilliant plays are an unrivalled unpacking of language and political and ethical values. A Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a translation from Russian that brings imprisonment and police state home very hard indeed, and George Orwell's 1984 is, in my opinion, one of the finest political commentaries ever written - no messing around, no fooling with imagery, just prophetic journalism through fiction.

No book list can be complete without some hardcore thinking material: The Republic by Plato is one of the core texts that has shaped western thinking for a couple of millenia; On Liberty by John Stuart Mill somehow manages to be both exceptionally intelligent and (bizarrely) enjoyable while being dry as dust; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn and practically anything by Noam Chomsky are psychological milestones not to be missed - Chomsky is probably one of the few true geniuses alive today. There are hundreds more "intellectual" authors that should be listed, including Paul Frussell Jr., Bishop George Berkeley, John Hick, Jean Paul Satre, Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell and Louis Althusser, but the top plaudits go to Karl Marx and especially Friedrich Nietzsche for the practically insane genius of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil.

Finally, the poetic collections of Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney, John Milton, W.B. Yeats, William Blake, John Donne and many more are immortal and compulsory; if you throw off all other poetry, read Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson. There's quite a lot of Shakespeare that goes without mentioning (and some that could do with never being mentioned again, now I think about it), and if you haven't read Chaucer then you haven't honestly started your literary eductation.

And, of course - the Bible is in a league all on it's own; it covers religious, philosophical, ethical and historical grounds, not to mention whole sociological and psychological fields. Even if you don't believe in its truth, you still have to marvel at it for its sheer brilliance.

As usual, I've meandered on way longer than intended, but it's books: there are too many to be mentioned. Kay, Tennyson and Chaucer, boys and girls: get 'em read.