A dozen Books

Another post got me thinking - without thinking too hard just name 10 books and optionally why they made an impact

After a chance for people add their ten(ish) - I'll collate and see how many common books there are - anyone game for a laugh??

Here's mine

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
I'm not Scared (Nicolo Ammaniti)
The Glass Bead Game (Herman Hesse) - utterly butterly impenetrable
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) - because it got me into the rest of his work
The Tin Drum (Gunter Grass) - incredibly original
Regeneration (Pat Barker) - and the other two
Songbird (Sebastian Faulks)
And Quiet Flows the Don (Sholokov)
Germinal (Zola)
Would you Rather (John Burningham) - because both our sons loved this book at bedtimes
Stalingrad (Anthony Beevor) - history writ large

Hmm, that will take some thinking about.

Pedantic to the last - I guess you mean Birdsong by S Faulks, do you?

xx

You're right Lydia...this will be difficult. I don't necessarily read the same sorts of books now that I read years ago (when I was expecting my daughter I got hooked on Mills and Boon!).

Ahh...Would You Rather...my kids loved that too!

Here's my list:

The "Adventure" Series by Enid Blyton - sheer escapism for children.
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (mad on horses at the time!)
Little Women, Good Wives, and the rest of the series, by Louisa May Alcott
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
Eleni by Nicholas Gage (the Greek connection)
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
Weep Not For Me by Constance Jenkins (on the death of a cat)

And that WAS without thinking too hard.........when I DO think about it I, like Vicky, have been through all kinds of crazes..............historical novels, Catherine Cookson, thrillers, travel books and light holiday reading. I suppose the titles above are the ones I remember best, so are most appropriate, but I've enjoyed so many others over the years!

Well, I don't know about a dozen, but here are some of my most memorable books.

The Bible. (many authors)

The Quran (Supposedly by Mohamed)

The 'Pocomoto' series.(Reg Dixon, or REGINALD ALEC MARTIN. His real name) Read as a boy with fantasies of my own.

To noumero 31328 (The number 31328) by Ilia Venezi True story of the author's capture by the Turks in 1922, and his forced march into the mountains of Anatolia.

Eleni by Nikos Gatzogiannis and also the sequel, 'A place for us'

The Winter of 41 by (?) Psathas. The story of the winter in Athens, following the German invasion in WWII.

Freedom or Death (Captain Michaelis in Greek) (Nikos Kazantzakis) The story of early uprisings against the Turks in Crete.

The Mermaid, and The Schoolmistress with the Golden Eyes (Stratis Myrivilis) Two novels about Greek life, love, passion, and death.

Birds without Wings (Louis de Berniere) His novel of Greeks and Turks in Anatolia. The prelude to the disaster of 1922

Overnight additions

The Voyage of the Beagle (Charles Darwin)

The Malay Peninsula (Alfred Russell Wallace)

The Jason Voyage (Tim Severin)



And a host of other mainly Greek novels and history books.

Some of my favourites

Heidi
Black Beauty
Jane Eyre
Eleni
Captain Correlli's Mandolin
The Island

I'm still thinking about this one. Nearly there, but there are a couple on my list at the moment which might not deserve to be there.........

"Decision Making for Beginners" by I Dunnow would be a start

Hardyhar.

Right, here goes.

The Swish of the Curtain - Pamela Browne (read when I was a young teenager. Inspired me to be an actress, which never happened, but I ended up at the Beeb instead)
Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Middlemarch - George Eliot
First Light - Peter Ackroyd
The Regeneration trilogy - Pat Barker
The Odyssey - Homer
The Iliad - Homer
Le Grand Meaulnes - Alain Fournier
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
The Wonderland of Knowlege (set of 12 encyclopedias fromthe 30s which introduced me to the Greek myths)
Rhyme and Reason (anthology of verse studied for O level. Great introduction to poetry)
Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy (triggered ideas on paganism in literature for the book I might never write)

There were lots I had to leave out (including a couple from your list John), and some I read when I was young and wouldn't read now, including a number by Anya Seton, particularly Katherine.

Ah, Katherine! I remember, as an older teenager, crying buckets over that one!

Yes, very educational too. All that stuff about John O'Gaunt.

Mmmmmm.....I developed quite a crush on him at the time! :)

An addition to my list which Lydia reminded me of, and one I still haven't managed to finish, is The Odyssey by Nikos Kazantzakis. A sequel to Homer's poetic tome.
It took him 14 years years to write it from 1924 till 1938 when it was first published. It is made up of 33,333 verses of 17 syllables, and continues with Odysseus' journeying after his return to Ithaca and his subsequent tiring of the quiet life back home.

Hmm - interesting.

Lydia, it occurred to me much later after your post, that if you would like to borrow 'The Odyssey', I could post it to you, and then you could return it later.

That's a very kind offer. Thank you. I'd be interested to read it. I think you have my address, do you? If not I'll pm you.

Lydia, like the disorganised fool that I am, I deleted your address along with several others when clearing out my PM folder.
Send it to me again, and I will post the book in time for your trip to Nauplio, so that you can sit on your balcony sipping ouzo and reading Kazantzakis.

This was hard!

Jill's Gymkhana ~ Ruby Ferguson (I read this book loads of times)
The Moonspinners/My Brother Michael ~ Mary Stewart (20ish years ago I loved reading Mary Stewart books and it was one of these two that made me want to go to Greece)
Jane Ayre ~ Charlotte Bronte
Restoration ~ Rose Tremain
The Secret History ~ Donna Tartt
The Colour Purple ~ Alice Walker (I wanted to re-read this book as soon as I'd finished it)
Amsterdam/Atonement ~ Ian McEwan (I just couldn't choose between these two)
Spies ~ Michael Frayn (I loved the atmosphere in this story - it made me think of my grandparent's house)
Little Boy Lost ~ Marghanita Laski (A lovely story - fantastic atmosphere and the ending...!)

I wanted to choose an art book (I've got quite a lot) and I decided it should be 'American Art In The 20th Century'. I went to see this exhibition twice and loved it.

VickyS wrote:Spies ~ Michael Frayn (I loved the atmosphere in this story - it made me think of my grandparent's house)

Ah yes - loved that one.