1. Blood meridian 2. Under the volcano 3. Suttree 4. Wise blood 5. Great gatsby 6. 100 years of solitude 7. Catcher in the rye 8. Gilead 9. Never let me go 10. Stoner
@@keithandrew2705 I've read all four of those novels. Really enjoyed all of them, especially The Crossing, which is Cormac's most underrated novel. "Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting." ❤
100 years I have read, Catcher in the Rye and Never Let me Go. 100 years is one of my all time favourites. Never Let Me go made me feel suicidal. I read catcher in the rye too long ago to remember if I liked it or not. Great Gatsby I have heard good things about, the rest of your list I dont know.
nice to see a (my home town) Montreal based story make a top 10 list! Mordecai Richler is greatly underrated on the international front! Thank you for taking the time to describe each book; I've now added a few to my TBR list!
It should probably come as no surprise, then, that I'm clearly biased, being a Montrealer myself. ;) Happy to hear you were able to find some books to add to your TBR. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Morderchei Richler sorry for the mispell is an author I have died to read but never found it anywhere in my country. Here is an author I must read before I die!!!!
I love "best" lists, particularly personal lists. Some of mine self-selected when I asked which books I've read more than once. Thanks for your contributions.
@@ADudeWhoReads, MY TOP TWELVE BOOKS 0) "The Holy Bible: King James Version" copyright 1967 1) "Verbal Behavior" by Dr. B. F. Skinner 2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy 3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev 5) Myth Adventures - series by Robert Asprin 6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis 7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë 8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy 9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev 11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener 12) "Poland" by James A. Michener
@@ReligionOfSacrifice Definitely some excellent reads on that list, and not one, but two Michener books! As well as a few I've never heard of. Thank you so much for sharing!
@@ADudeWhoReads TOP 40 BOOKS 0) "The Holy Bible: King James Version" copyright 1967 1) "Verbal Behavior" by Dr. B. F. Skinner 2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy 3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev 5) Myth Adventures - series by Robert Asprin 6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis 7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë 8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy 9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev 11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener 12) "Poland" by James A. Michener 13) "Roots" by Alex Haley 14) The Silmarillion - The Hobbit, or there and back again - The Lord of the Rings - Middle Earth stories by J. R. R. Tolkien 15) Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov 16) "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin 17) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 18) "Paris 1919: six months that changed the world" by Margaret MacMillian 19) "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Brontë 20) "Virgin Soil" by Ivan Turgenev 21) "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen 22) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - by Mark Twain 23) Old Mother West Wind series - wildlife series by Thornton Burgess 24) "Microbe Hunters" by Paul de Kruif 25) "Cancer Ward" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 26) "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt 27) "Kon Tiki" by Thor Heyerdahl 28) "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman 29) "The Berdine Un-Theory of Evolution: and Other Scientific Studies Including Hunting, Fishing, and Sex" by William C. Berdine 30) "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair 31) "Caribbean" by James A. Michener 32) "Hawaii" by James A. Michener 33) "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosiński 34) "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice 35) "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee 36) "Torrents of Spring" by Ivan Turgenev 37) "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis 38) "Emma" by Jane Austen 39) "In the First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Another way to evaluate is FAVORITE AUTHORS 1st) Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons) seven more books in the top 200 not shown here 4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev 10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev 20) "Virgin Soil" by Ivan Turgenev 36) "Torrents of Spring" by Ivan Turgenev 59) "First Love" by Ivan Turgenev 2nd) James A. Michener (Chesapeake) 11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener 12) "Poland" by James A. Michener 31) "Caribbean" by James A. Michener 32) "Hawaii" by James A. Michener 3rd) Leo Tolstoy (Resurrection) 2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy 8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy 57) "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy 84) "A Confession" by Leo Tolstoy 4th) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) 9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 25) "Cancer Ward" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 39) "In the First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 72) "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: an Experiment in Literary Investigation" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 5th) Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot) 3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 17) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 108) "Poor Folk" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 135) "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 142) "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky 6th) C. S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew) 6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis 37) "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis 165) "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis 176) "Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life" by C.S. Lewis 7th) Charlotte Brontë (Vilette) 7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë 67) "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë 138) "The Professor” by Charlotte Brontë 162) "Shirley" by Charlotte Brontë
@@ReligionOfSacrifice Bible yes. Idiot is good, and sad, but Brothers Karamazov is better. Narnia Yes. Tolstoy is a jerk. Poland by Michener was a great book.
Nice variety and happy you included Mazzuchelli's book. It's interesting how his style has radically changed from his Frank Miller Daredevil books like "Born Again" and "Batman Year One."
Thanks! I’m not sure that Mazzuchelli’s style changed so much as he adapted his style to the story he wanted to tell. The style he used in Year One wouldn’t have worked for Asterios Polyp and vice versa. Regardless, the man is incredibly talented as both an artist and a writer! Thanks for watching and commenting. :)
I was so skeptical when I saw the title of this video, but I respect it. Old Man AND Kitchen Confidential?! Hell yeah! Excellent breadth and depth here.
Hah! Nothing like someone declaring that they're going to give you the top 10 books of all time to make you a little suspicious, eh? Thanks for the comment!
Your selections introduced me to some exciting new authors and reminded me to reread some of the oldies again. Please hold your book up longer, especially when you are introducing it to us. I write down your recommendations and often I struggled to actually know the names to facilitate writing them down. (author's names were difficult to write down when rushed)
As soon as you brought up kitchen confidential I subscribed. I was not expecting that, and you perfectly described exactly how I felt about him and his passing. Well done 👍🏻
This was excellent. Thank you! I haven’t read all of these and will be adding them to my list. I LOVE Bourdain. I have read all his books. Hitchhikers guide are also fantastic and I can’t wait to read them to my kids one day. Reading a chapter of war and peace per day sounds totally doable! Currently reading the Iliad then the odyssey, then Tom Sawyer (with my kids for school). Looking for some books for myself. This list is a great inspiration.
I *just* finished re-reading the Iliad! I'm saving my re-read of the Odyssey to read alongside Ulysses (it's going to take a while...). Happy I was able to provide some inspiration. Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment!
I think the biggest difference between the two are the themes that Tolstoy is tackling. While there's a lot of personal focus in War and Peace (which is impressive considering how many characters there are), there's also a large part of the book that's devoted to broader discussions on things like the role of historians. I hope you enjoy both, and if you can, let me know what you think once you've had a chance to read both. Thanks for watching!
Dostoevsky is a much better writer. Tolstoy is great at describing how things really occur in life. "Tolstoy has a fundamentally accurate perception of events" - Nabokov. However, Tolstoy is a moral hypocrite and a philosophical idiot. If you think I'm kidding, then read about his life, and you will see that is true. Eg. Paul Johnson on Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov addresses the actual issues of how to live, and shows the path of Alyosha is best. I would choose to try to be smart like Ivan, but kind like Alyosha. Audiobook version makes it easier to get thru it fast, then selectively read the best parts like the grand inquisitor.
@@PeterRogersMDDefinitely agree! Dostoevsky is the greater writer overall. I think Tolstoy is better than Dostoevsky in terms of literary style, whereas Dostoevsky wasn't a master stylist like Tolstoy. Dostoevsky often wrote in a hurry if not frenzy and his style can be quite jagged and chaotic. It's as if a madman grabbed you by the arm as you're walking down the street, shouting at you, yet what he says is utterly riveting and intelligent and meaningful. However, with regard to far more fundamental matters like the existence of God, good and evil, the meaning of life, and such questions, Dostoevsky is greater than Tolstoy. And indeed Tolstoy was an immoral person in real life, though Dostoevsky also had his issues (e.g. gambling addiction, possible affair, anti-Semitism). But, unlike Tolstoy, it seems Dostoevsky hated himself for his sins and he seemed to have tried to turn away from most of them as he matured. The exception is perhaps the anti-Semitism. It's no more excusable than, say, the Founding Fathers owning slaves, but it is at least explainable in the sense that it was commonplace in his time and place. Both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy should be read in good translations to best appreciate them. Especially Dostoevsky for the reason I've given above about his style. I'd recommend Michael Katz for any of Dostoevsky's major works except for The Idiot since Katz hasn't done a translation for The Idiot yet, though Katz had told me he's working on it now. Alternatively, Oliver Ready is great for Crime and Punishment. The Garnett translation that's updated by Susan McReynolds Oddo is great for The Brothers Karamazov, likewise Ignat Avsey for The Brothers Karamazov though he plays a bit fast and loose here and there, and McDuff is decent for the same but I don't like McDuff as much as the previous two. Robert Maguire did a great translation of The Demons. Notes from Underground I like Ronald Wilks, but Kirsten Lodge pretty good too. I don't care for Tolstoy as much. However, the Maudes's War and Peace updated by Amy Mandelker is good. Anthony Briggs for The Death of Ivan Ilyich which in my view is actually the best book Tolstoy wrote. And Rosamund Bartlett for Anna Karenina. But again I don't really like Tolstoy Regarding the very popular Pevear and Volokhonsky translations in general. See articles like: "The Pevearization of Russian Literature" (Gary Morson); "The Pevear/Volokhonsky Hype Machine and How It Could Have Been Stopped or At Least Slowed Down" (Helen Andrews): "Socks" (Janet Malcolm); and "Pevear and Volokhonsky Are Indeed Overrated" (John McWhorter).
@@philtheo You certainly know a tremendous amount about Russian literature. I partially went through several different translations of Brothers Karamazov, and found Constance Garnett to be the best; because hers was the most religious. Dostoevsky was trying to figure out "how does a person live a good life; a life that helps others, and makes them happy; and how can Russia be saved from serfdom, atheism, tyranny & cruelty?" Modernists try to take the religion out of Dostoevsky. The fact remains: you can't have Christianity without Christ. He's the reason for everything; for all the great stuff like great painting, literature, music and improved behavior.
@@PeterRogersMD Yes, amen! I'm a conservative Christian so I'd agree with you. I also like Garnett, though the issue(s) with her translations is that she often simply elided passages in Dostoevsky she didn't quite understand, not to mention the textual basis for some of her translations isn't always the best, and she is known to have smoothed out passages in order to make Dostoevsky sound better than he does in the original Russian. This latter point about making Dostoevsky sound better than he does is a matter for fair debate and I could see a good case made either way, though contemporary translators tend to think it best to leave Dostoevsky as is and let his own voice come through. In any case, I think Garnett (as well as the husband-wife team of the Maudes) did the English speaking world a tremendous service in translating so much great Russian literature, and Garnett mostly holds up, but I'd prefer to recommend a revised or updated version of Garnett's work. For The Brothers Karamazov, I love the Garnett translation that's been revised by Susan McReynolds Oddo. If I recall, I believe this is published in the Norton Critical Edition. The modern revisions fix all the problematic issues in Garnett without losing Garnett. May the Lord bless you and keep you!
I have recently begun a project of reading classic novels that have somehow escaped me. I'm reading the Count of Monte Cristo at the moment (having just read Great Expectations), but I have many, many more to go. I quite enjoy fiction, but there are some nonfiction works that are tremendous as well - The Devil in the White City or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example.
I am a huge Tolkien fan and agree 100% that 'The Hobbit' is his best book. I love the rest of his stuff, too, but 'The Hobbit' is his best crafted story.
Great list, have read most of them but yes, I am in the majority who cannot understand how The Hobbit is there instead of the LOTR!! It's still a great list, and Kafka On the Shore is also my favourite Murakami. Like you, I'm in the minority that prefers War and Peace to Anna Karenina, which is usually placed ahead of it. Will need to check up on Barney's Version, never heard of the author before. This is why these lists are fun and useful.
@@feanorian21maglor38I agree with you about LOTR and War and Peace (even though I would be surprised if what you said is true about most people preferring Anna Karenina to War and Peace).. as for Murakami I feel like I will never be able to rank his books but my top in no particular order would be Killing Commendatore, Kafka on the Shore, the wind up bird chronicles, 1Q84, Dance Dance Dance and Pinball,1973
'Kafka on the Shore' good choice. Love Murakami and would probably pick 'Dance, Dance, Dance.' Tolstoy is a miraculous writer but Dostoevsky's 'Brothers Karamazov' is the ultimate for me.
Love Dance, Dance, Dance and Wild Sheep Chase (they have somehow become one book in my memory). At this point, Brothers Karamazov is probably the first or second most recommended book by people who watch this channel. I think I need to get to it sooner rather than later. Thanks for watching and for the recommendations!
Interesting you have "The Hobbit" in this list. I still think "The Lord of the Rings" is Tolkien's best work, but "The Hobbit" holds a very special place in my heart. Ten year old me learned English with that book. Kneeling down on my mother's living room, an old English copy of "The Hobbit" on top of a couch and an English-Portuguese dictionary at my side. It was magic. Each page came with new wonder.
Books are so subjective and personal..im so varied in my reading but here are some of my favourites. 1. Jayne eyre by Charlotte Brontë 2. Anne Frank's diary 3. Weave world, Clive Barker 4. Kingdom for sale sold, Remond E feist. 5. Bridges of Madison county yes my romantic one lol 6. Godnight Mr Tom, Michelle Magorian. 7. Danny champion of the world, Roald dahl. 8. Little women and little men by louisa may Alcott..i read these to my kids every night. 9. Memoirs of a geisha, Arthur holden. 10. Screwtape letters..C.S. Lewis
Very cool list, with several entries I’d never heard of, including “Little Men.” I had no idea there was not one, but multiple sequels to Little Women!
I too am somewhat obsessed with the 50s 60s Americana era. I'm always looking for books that take place in this time. James Elroy is definitely on my tbr list now ,thanks to you. I would love to hear of more that you've discovered from this era. Maybe another list?
This is a great question (and not a bad idea for a future video, either...)! If you like Kerouac, then reading any of the Beats (Ginsberg, Burroughs, Cassady) is probably a no-brainer. Also, one of my favourite writers is James Baldwin, and his work is set in this era (thematically VERY different from Kerouac or Ellroy). Finally, this is not a book, and not quite in the right time period, but if you have a similar obsession to mine, you'll want to check out the film Vanishing Point (1971): it's a knight-errant quest story, but instead of horses and medieval landscapes, it's muscle cars and Route 66.
I really like it and it makes me happy that a person like you values The Hobbit as much as I do. Disguised as a children's story, in reality a very serious novel, a map of internal paths, a route of mythical wisdom, a rounded and perfect narrative.
Very interesting list. It doesn’t follow a usual trend and for that it gave me exposure to some works that are new to me. Thanks for putting it together, I hope to comment once I have gone through some of those less common picks
Thank you so much. This is precisely why I did this! If you like some of the things on my list and have never heard of some of the others, then maybe you’ll want to check them out, and if I can help someone discover a new favourite, then that makes me happy! I’d love to hear from you once you’ve had a chance to check some of these out! Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Appreciate the variety of your choices, like serving delicatessens for sampling, satisfying my taste buds for the "unexpected" . Also impressed by your personal response to each comment, like "my Dinner with Andre", conversing with a friend cozily over good food n wine!
There is nothing NOTHING like War and Peace!! I’m 84 and I didn’t particularly like Tolstoy and I didn’t like war so I had no plans to read the book. Tolstoy’s ’ “virtue” was shouted from the rooftops all my life; yet, he never considered his wife when he decided to be celibate and he made her lie next to him to test his celibacy. His wife wasn’t happy with this. (Gandhi did the same-I don’t know if he was influenced by Tolstoy) Given his personal life, I was amazed when I finally read the book a year or two ago and saw the breadth and depth of his human observation and the actual aspects of war not the glory of the thing that I grew up with post WWII. I’m glad I read it late in life when I could bring more to it. A hint to new readers: the book begins with a lot of characters all at once with their multiple names and titles which can be confusing and discouraging. You can google a list of characters to keep at hand. After firmly getting into the book, I found it interesting to go back and see their introduction in the first chapters. This is the best book ever! …..well, there’s Moby Dick which I’ve read 5 times, 2 of them aloud.
I agree with everything you wrote here and especially with your hint to new readers. At some point I’ll probably do a video specifically about War and Peace and how to approach reading it. With regards to Moby Dick, I haven’t tackled that whale, yet. It’s probably going to be sometime next year, but I’m looking forward to it!
Great list. Since everyone is listing theirs, I think you missed out on PKD's "Ubik", Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking", and Kafka's "The Castle".
For war and peace, print out a list of all the characters to refer to as you read. Necessary because characters go by several names (eg nickname, and family name).
Good tip! Many editions, including the Oxford Classics edition I show in the video, also have a list of characters at the front or back of the book (including nicknames), so a sticky note on that page can also work.
I enjoyed this video very much because I too am a dude who reads. The only book on your list that is on mine was for years my #1. It is On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I started reading it exactly 60 years ago as of Sept 2023. I was seventeen and in love with the idea of just getting into a car and going. All these years later it has slipped down to #5. My number 4 is: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway #3 The Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque #2. More Than Conqueror by Grace Livingston Hill and #1 is (drum roll) The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. That book literally changed my life. And my trajectory toward eternity. I recommend it to all people. Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing this with us! I understand that impulse from reading On the Road. I will check out Lindsey’s book as I’ve never heard about it before right now. Thanks again!
@@ADudeWhoReads You're welcome. And I'm going to check out many of the books on your list, especially #1. At this late hour of my life and since I'm retired I really should read War and Peace. I did read part of a book by Tolstoy about The Cossacks, etc. First time I ever saw the word etc in a title except maybe e e cummings. Saroyan was one of my favorite authors growing up. Especially his short stories.
Thank you for your interesting list which I've taken down, read two and heard of four. You've only read War and Peace once, did you ever research the best translation and that's the one you bought? Can you recommend your translation and mention it? Thank you.
The translation I read was the Maude translation published by Oxford Classics, and I would definitely recommend it. I chose that particular translation for 3 reasons: 1) Tolstoy himself apparently approved of it. 2) I read the first few pages of a few different translations (you can do this for free on Amazon), and I liked the style. 3) In the original Russian, there's a lot of dialog that's actually written in French and then translated in footnotes. This translation preserves the French in the text and translates the footnotes, while other translations translate the French directly in the text, making it impossible to know which parts were originally Russian and which were originally French (also, I happen to be able to read French, so there's that). The other translation I've heard good things about is the Briggs translation published by Penguin Classics. I hope you enjoy it when you read it! Cheers and thanks for commenting!
You've given me some wonderful material to enjoy in the coming months. I'll be looking forward to your reviews and judgments for 2024. Thanks for sharing.
Sorry last comment - I have not read Bourdain but I did read Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson and found it really interesting and a fascinating look at what goes on behind the kitchen doors.
I've read three of the books on this list (the Hemingway, Tolkien, and Tolstoy) and the only one I'd call a great book is War and Peace. I wonder if A Dude Who Reads was really trying to list the top books of all time, or merely his current favorites. For example, does he actually judge the graphic novel Asterio's Polyp to be superior to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass? Can he compare the illustrations in the two novels and prefer the new stuff?
Excellent questions. The purpose of this list was to give a wide-ranging list of books that might allow people with similar tastes to discover something new. Is the title clickbait-y? More than some, less than others. Thanks for watching and commenting!
'm so glad I stumbled upon your video! there are a lot of new authors I have never read. Sometimes it just gets overwhelming! Because I'm not in the loop to begin with I am interested in reading a number of the ones that you mentioned and it's always great to have, a personal recommendation, especially when a book has made, someone laugh or cry... I'm impressed that you could narrow it to 10. I would have such a difficult time with books, films, and music, all of which seem to have saved my life, especially during my younger years. If I were to make a spontaneous list that I didn't have to suffer to narrow down and analyze, that might be a very good exercise for me. So here goes! 1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien 2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 3. Charlotte's Web by EB White 4. Persuasion by Jane Austen 5. To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 6. A Tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 7. My Antonia by Willa Cather 8. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery 9. Random Harvest by James Hilton 10. The Object of my Affection by Stephen McCauley
As you can tell from the comments, haters are gonna hate. I hope you don't let the negative get to you. Your favorites are your favorites. The way you talk about books is very intelligent. Let them get out there and start a channel if they want to be so critical.
Haha! I don’t think you can express an opinion on the internet without expecting some degree of push back and discussion. And frankly, that’s fine. It’s all in good fun! Really appreciate you watching and commenting!
Nice varied selection of books in your top 10 list covering a wide choice of Genre's and writing styles. In no particular order here are my current 10 favourite books i've read. The Stand - Extended Edition - I was so engrossed in this lengthy novel with so many characters (both good and evil) going on their travels that i was completely immersed in the story. This easily gets into my top 10 list. His Dark Materials - This fascinating tale felt completely fresh and took me on a grand adventure in different Worlds with so many types of characters coming together to fight for what is right against seemingly impossible odds. The Godfather - The classic crime family story is wonderfuly told with great drama and events that are compelling throughout. The Great & Secret Show - An abstract battle between nightmares and good dreamt heroes that is both horrifyingly strange and wonderfuly beautiful. Treasure Island - The classic adventure story was so much better than i expected it to be, i heartily enjoyed this tale. The Three Body Problem - This Sci-Fi Alien invasion (sort of) story was very smart and technical with it's attention to scientific detail told over the course of Centuries in three novels is wonderful. Dune - Fantastic space opera with feuding aristocracies for control of a mining operation on a hostile Planet is brilliantly told, and is easily one of my favourite stories. Robots And Empire - The fate of the future of Humanity and Planet Earth is in the hands of two robots. I loved this story. I Am Legend - Possibly my favourite novel mixing Sci-Fi and Horror. A morality tale of finding out who are the real monsters, us or them? Great story. 1984 - The pinnacle of totalitarian novels in my opinion, equal parts frightening as it is fascinating. Thanks for making this video. Cheers.
Thanks for sharing! I’ve actually read most of your top 10, so we must have pretty similar taste. My thoughts on a few of your selections: It took me three tries to read The Stand and when I finally got through it I realized the problem. I liked the characters and the slice of life stuff so much better than the main plot! Seriously, that book could have just been about how the protagonists got along in post apocalyptic America without any of the “evil horror” stuff and I probably would have enjoyed it even more! I agree with you that the Godfather is a fantastic book but most people I talk to about it claim that it’s that rare exception where the book is inferior to the adaptation… never quite understood why the book gets ragged on so hard when the movies are such a close adaptation. The Three Body Problem is on my TBR and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve heard so many good things! Overall, love your list. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@ADudeWhoReads Thanks for replying. I get your point about The Stand, it may well have been more compelling without concentrating on the evil ones, an interesting thought. The Godfather movie adaptation is really close to the novel, there are a few events and characters that fill out the World a little more, they compliment each other really well though. I'm sure you'll really enjoy the Three Body Problem, once you begin the series you may find yourself drawn to complete the trilogy to see how the story plays out. Cheers.
@@JD.78 Part of my issue with books like the Three Body Problem is that I hesitate to start them, because I know that there's a good chance I'll want to read the whole series, and therefore need to set aside that much more time! :)
@@JD.78 I'm definitely not opposed to audiobooks for certain types of books. I'll probably read the first book in print and depending on how much I like it, will choose whether to read, listen or ignore the last two :)
I think the point you raise at the end is so important for anyone trying to put together a list of the best books of all time: how a book affects us is as much driven by our familiarity with literature as it is what we are experiencing when we read a particular work. I know, for example, that Atlas Shrugged, Huckleberry Finn, the Foundation and Robot series, and all of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books are at the top of my list. This is not necessarily because they are in a top ten list. Instead, I rank them highly because they had such a profound a d joyful impact on me each time I read them.
Both are on my radar! It's funny, I had never heard of Stoner until about 6 months ago, and now, you're probably the fifth or sixth person I've seen recommend it. Either Stoner is undergoing a revival, or I just wasn't paying attention before. Thank you so much for the recommendations!
Enjoyed that. I'd struggle to pick a top ten. Hitchhiker's probably would but not On the Road. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth would make it. James Hoggs private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner would have to be in there.
Very cool! Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth seems to be a very popular pick, which is really cool considering that prior to this video, I hadn't heard anything about it. Thanks for watching and sharing.
@@ADudeWhoReads He is such an interesting writer. For years he produced good, but not always brilliant thrillers of average length. Then he wrote The Pillars of the Earth. He openly talked about how he changed his writing style with that doorstep of a book, giving more focus on character. He said prior to that, he wrote almost as if he was imagining an action film. Since, he has written many more big books in a no nonsense style that he's become a master of. Pillars is the first in a series of five, his Kingsbridge series. The latest, The Armour of Light came out just 3 days ago. I'm reading it now. I can't recommend them highly enough. Since watching your video I've been recalling books I'd have in my top ten. It's almost impossible to settle on.
So cool finally seeing someone else appreciating asterios polyp. Mazzuchelli’s changing style throughout the book is awesome. Have you read his adaptation of city of glass?
That was fun... I share your love of Murakami and War and Peace as well 😁... I love HHGG too (although it's the BBC tv series from 1981 for me) What do you think of Infinite Jest (my #1)?... Imajica by Clive Barker?... Douglas Coupland? So glad to have found you friend 😁
It would appear we have very similar tastes! I think Infinite Jest is a masterpiece, and I need to find time to re-read it and give it the attention it deserves. I love Douglas Coupland. Generation X is one of the books I keep on my small bookshelf, because I enjoy it so much. I've also enjoyed his novels and wish he would write more, but from what I understand he's turned his talents to visual art. As for Imajica, believe it or not, I hadn't heard of it until a couple days ago, but now you're the second person in as many days to mention it to me! Thanks so much for watching, and given how similar our tastes are, if you have any other recommendations, I'm all ears!
thanks for this - i loved many of the books you listed and never read #1 so just bought it! and maybe one day i'll muster up the courage to attempt War & Peace
Awesome. Let me know if you end up reading it what you think. As for W&P, I JUST released a video today about how to read it, so maybe that can help you out. :) Thanks for watching!
I personally took like 8 months to read it. I read other books concurrently and even took a short break halfway through because it is broken up into 4 parts. It’s amazing though and WELL worth it!
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm shocked to have never heard of Mordecai Richler if he's not only Canadian but also from Montreal since this is where I live. Gotta make sure I check your suggestions out!
Well, hello, to a fellow Montrealer! There's actually a couple of landmarks named after him including the Gazebo at the bottom of Mount Royal and the library in the Plateau. One of the nice side benefits of reading Richler is that you'll recognize many of the settings. Happy reading and thanks for watching and commenting!
I like that you read all sorts of genres. I also read classics, modern fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, non-fiction. I notice some Star Wars on your shelf as well - not ashamed to say I read Star Wars fiction on the regular as well! Mostly Canon, but the original Thrawn trilogy is excellent. Very interesting top 10 books, look forward to more on your channel! Subbed!
@tazzypumpkin I bought the Thrawn Trilogy as a boxed set because it was one of my two favourite Star Wars stories back in the day (we're talking before there was a prequel movie trilogy). I've tried a couple of the newer Canon books, but not many, and was left lukewarm (which is better than my feelings on episodes 7, 8 and 9, but still...). Any recommendations for the Canon books to check out? Part of the challenge with Star Wars novels is that there's just so much to pick from, and quality is up and down.
@@ADudeWhoReads Yeah for sure, the quality is very uneven. I think some of my favorites from canon are Lost Stars, Rebel Rising, Dark Disciple (if you are a Clone Wars fan, it feels like a story arc straight from the show), the Rogue One novelization, and the first Thrawn trilogy.
Douglas Adams: I favour Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency myself. Only book I've ever read that upon finishing the last page, I had to immediately re-read it. Similar humour as Hitchhiker's, but the most incredibly crafted mystery that leaves you feeling like you have solved a Rubik's Cube by accident.
Wow! I read Dirk Gently a few years ago and didn't have the same experience. I had previously watched the Dirk Gently Netflix series (which I think is fantastic), and I don't think the series could be more different from the source material. For whatever reason, the humour in DG didn't land for me as well as for Hitchhiker's.
Interesting list. I've read five of the ones you list: 3, 5, 6, 7, and 10. Recently read all of Hemingway's short stories also. Wondering if you have read The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Great list. It’s nice to see another reader that enjoys a variety of genres and is open to new authors. I will be checking out some of these books on your list. Cheers
Love it! Nothing feels better than introducing someone to something that they might potentially love. Once you've had a chance to read any, let me know how you feel about them..
Agree with you on War and Peace and The Old Man and the Sea and your opinion as to Hemingways lesser works. I would also add Anna Karenina to the Tolstoy list. Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain is one of my favourites and no one who makes favourites lists seems to mention him, yet he won the Nobel Prize. His short story Life and Death in Venice too. For W&P what remains with me is when PA died, it took like 100 pages to kill him off, and when the little boy Count inherited all that land and serfs and people just stared at him.
I confess to having never read Mann, but The Magic Mountain is on my to-read list. As for PA's 100-page death in W&P, to me that's the perfect example of Tolstoy's genius; it would have been tedious written by anyone else, but Tolstoy makes it seem completely natural. Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
Well, this was an interesting and useful video. As is the case with you, I was introduced to Murakami through Kafka on the Shore and like you, I went on a Murakami binge. Kafka on the Shore remains my favorite of his books, although The Windup Bird Chronicle is close, and Murakami is my favorite living author. And, while Anthony Bourdain was neither a great writer nor, I think, particularly insightful, I too loved Kitchen Confidential. It was in its day, a cultural bomb at least in the New York restaurant-goer world, of which I was a part at the time. It made you wonder if he was talking about the place where you were eating. Bourdain also tried to write some mystery novels, and they are awful. Also, because of your video, I just ordered Barney's Version, which I had not heard of. So many books, so little time. Your list is interesting and, of course, such a list is intensely personal. My favorite novel is Kipling's Kim, and nobody I know agrees with me on that. The Hobbit is fun and I enjoyed it, but it's a children's book and not in a league with The Wind in the Willows and numerous others; On the Road was great when I was a seventeen-year-old college freshman trying to figure out the world and what I wanted from it, and was impressed by the beats and bebop musicians, but sixty years later it is unreadable. Truman Capote famously said of the book, "That's not writing, that's typing," and I think in retrospect that he was right. Ellroy is, in my view, a second-rank crime/noir writer, way below Hammett or Graham Greene in his Brighton Rock mode. (Unlike you and to my discredit, I have over the past 65 years read a trainload of mystery/crime/thriller/spy novels, quite literally thousands, and I read L.A. Confidential on someone's recommendation, and decided to not read any of Ellroy's other novels.) The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway long past his prime, and not up to his best stuff, such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and the Nick Adams stories. I always thought of it as a minuscule homage to Moby Dick, and I emphasize the minuscule. I suppose it's hard to quibble with War and Peace, but I have never gotten through it, though I have tried several times. As Woody Allen once said, "It's about Russia." I don't read, if that is the proper verb, graphic novels, which tend to strike me as pretentious comic books, and while I thought Douglas Adams was a funny man - I loved his line, "Let us now eff the ineffable" - the Hitchhiker's Guide is hardly a great book. So, I have read six of the books on your list - seven if you count having read one of Ellroy's other L.A. books - and made a serious stab at War and Peace. It's an interesting list, but if I were to try and put together a top-ten list, none of yours would be on it, with the possible except of Kafka, and I would have to think about that a lot. Still, I do have hopes for Barney's Version, so I thank you.
First off, thanks for watching and commenting! Clearly, we have different views on almost all of the books on this list, so I have to commend you on being open to trying out Barney’s Version. Given the overlap in our personal tastes I’d be very curious to get your thoughts once you’ve read it. Let me know!
Henry, I loved your comment, and agree with most of it. Thank you for your comment on Hemingway - OldMan and the Sea is on so many lists, but it's not his best. The other writer's comments were hilarious. What are your favorite mystery/crime/spy favorite novels?
@@barbarapaige4587 Thank you for your kind words. My taste in mystery/crime/spy novels is fairly varied. If you are starting out, you can't go wrong with Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle is the Shakespeare of the genre. He was followed around the turn of the last century by R. Austin Freeman, who pioneered the forensic detective story. Freeman was a creature of his time, and his female characters tend to delicate flowers who might weep or faint at the slightest shock, but the mysteries are good and I recommend The Red Thumbmark. Early Agatha Christie was very good, but avoid any after the mid-50s. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Ambler is the quintessential spy novel, and another great one from the early days is The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, although I don't like anything else by him. Of the Golden Age writers, beside Christie, I like Dorothy Sayers and Marjorie Allingham very much. Hammett and Chandler are both terrific. The Maltese Falcon is one of my all-time favorites. My favorite contemporary crime writer is John Lawton, who has two series - the Frederick Troy series about a Scotland Yard officer and the Joe Wilderness series, which are MI6 espionage - both of which are terrific. Lawton in my opinion writes better prose than anyone else in the genre. Even my late wife thought he was good, and she, an Ivy League English major, almost never stooped to reading crime novels, although she did also like A Coffin for Dimitrios. There are a number of great spy novelists over the last few decades - Jean le Carre of course, his American counterpart Charles McCarry, whom I actually like better (both le Carre and McCarry had actually worked for MI6 and the CIA respectively and knew what they were talking about) and you might try McCarry's The Tears of Autumn, which is wonderful, Alan Furst is very good, Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon books about a Mossad assassin are good, if a little lighter than le Carre and McCarry's. In no particular order, my favorite books over the past decade or so are Terry Hayes' I Pilgrim, which I found to be an absolute page-turner, although with nothing much to say. Rennie Airth's A River of Darkness was wonderful, although subsequent efforts were less good. Tana French, whose novels are set in Ireland, is very good. A strange and wonderful writer is Fred Vargas, a woman who in real life is apparently a well-regarded French archaeologist: her character Commissaire Adamsberg is one of a kind and I like her novels a lot. JanWillem van der Wettering's novels set in Amersterdam are terrific. I could go on for a while, but I suppose that enough for the moment, except that my all-time favorite series are the Judge Dee novels by R.E. van Gulik. Judge Dee was based on a real 7th Century figure from the Tang Dynasty who was later popularized in detective stories during the Ming Dynasty 700 years later. Van Gulik was an expert in ancient Chinese and Japanese (he finished his career as the Dutch ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s), and he initially translated one of the Ming books of Dee stories, but then started writing his own. His stated ambition was to present what life during the Tang Dynasty would have been like to westerners. I love them. If you are interested, the Chinese Gold Murders are the place to start. I hope that this has been helpful.
@@henrytberry Wow, Henry - thank you so much for your long and thoughtful reply. You are certainly well-read, and I appreciate your time in answering. Most of these authors I am not familiar with so you have given me some great (and new) suggestions. I just started on the spy stories, although I have read a bit of true crime and true spy stories. I have read several of Alan Furst's novels, and I especially enjoy the atmosphere he presents; you feel like you're there. I am also a history buff and enjoy reading about WWII. My Dad fought in Patton's Third Army and he's gone now, but somehow reading about WWII helps me to stay close to him. You sound so knowledgeable , and I wish you'd start a UA-cam channel - you'd be great.
@@barbarapaige4587 It's a coincidence that your dad was in Patton's Third Army. My dad was in the Normandy invasion. If you've seen Saving Private Ryan, the rollover at the opening says something to the effect of Normandy, France - Omaha Beach, Easy Section - June 6, 1944, 6:45 a.m., which is when and where my dad landed. Like most of those men, my dad never talked about the specifics of combat, but when my brother and I went with him to the movie, I asked him what he thought of the first twenty minutes, and he looked me in the eye and said, "That was pretty much what it was like." I'm grateful that I never say anything like that personally. I was in during Vietnam, but was in intelligence and never got near bullets flying. I know my dad had bad dreams for the rest of his life, and he was a very though guy. His unit was attached to the First Division and my brother and I had the enormous pleasure and honor of accompanying him to the Fiftieth Anniversary celebration in Normandy. I can see why you like Furst's books, as they all are set during the lead-up to the war, and as you say his great strength is that he creates an incredible sense of verisimilitude regarding time and place. I really liked his Kingdom of Shadows. You might like Berlin Noir, which are three mysteries featuring a police detective in Nazi Berlin during the war. They are very good. And the earlier of the John Lawton Troy novels - Black Out and Bluffing Mr. Churchhill - take place in London during the war. Lawton's Then We'll Take Berlin is partly set in Germany during the post-war allied occupation. They are all very good. I think I'm a bit old to start a video channel. The upkeep would be too much work. Thank's for the complement though.
10) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe 9) Dubliners, James Joyce 8) The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien 7) The Dictionary of Khazars, Milorad Pavić 6) Malone Dies, Samuel Beckett 5) A Game of Thrones, George R R Martin 4) 1984, George Orwell 3) The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco 2) The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons 1) Unnamable, Samuel Beckett
Dan Simmons and that series is as good as science fiction gets I think. We were in the same dorm, Martindale Hall, at our tiny Indiana college, Wabash, at the same time. My roommate, the only person who kept the same extreme night owl hours as Simmons, swore he was a highly interesting guy. He was tiny and deathly pale. He is an excellent writer in all genres.
Well, it was definitely in my top 10… maybe 2 is a bit high, but Adams opened my eyes to a whole new style of writing, and it’s one of the few books that I can read over and over again and never get tired of :). Thanks for watching and commenting!
Thanks for sharing a very interesting and diverse top ten list of your favorite books. While the only book that is also on my personal top ten list (as of today, because like you my list can change from time to time) is Tolstoy's War and Peace. That having been said, I have read and admire some of the other books on your list including The Old Man and the Sea, Kafka on the Shore, and On the Road. I was fortunate to attend an exhibition of Kerouac memorabilia, here in Chicago, that included the original manuscript of his book. I will look forward to any future changes to your list based on your planned fiction reading project.
Bro I have introduced many of my friends to hitchhiker's guide to galaxy! What an amazing book! I am surprised they dont have full fledged series on this book, that captures all the essence of this book! Amazing book series and best sci fi ever!
The book is a really impressive feat. It manages to be a good story while being being funny on almost every page. I don't know any other books that can do that (maybe some of Terry Pratchett's books?). Thanks for watching and commenting!
Mission accomplished! I hope you enjoy it, and if you get a chance, drop me a note once you've read it and let me know what you thought. Thanks for watching.
Just discovered your vlog and I like it. I too am a huge Murakami fan. Also on my top ten is the old Man and the Sea. May I suggest Memoir From Antproof Case by Mark Helprin? I can't believe I haven't read any James Ellroy! Thanks for that suggestion!
I really enjoyed hearing your list and went to check out Barney’s Version and Kitchen Confidential ebooks from the library. I’m a 73 year old retired librarian and have been an avid reader all my life. What’s funny is that if I were to make my own list, my number one favorite book is one I read in 1966 called Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman. I recently reread it for maybe the fourth time, and it checks all the boxes of what I look for in a great novel. It’s a big one too. My #2 would be Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, also read in my youth and reread later on. Not to say I haven’t read hundreds of great books since, but those two are just like long-time best friends.😊
And I’ve never heard of either! Thank you for sharing. I will be adding them to my list of books to check out! If you have a chance let me know what you think of Barney’s Version and Kitchen Confidential.
Hi Adam, just wanted to let you know I’m about 50 pages into BV and this is definitely my kind of book. I’m American, but lived in Montreal between 1968-70, and I just loved that city. I don’t know if it’s still as great, but it was a fantastic place to be at 18. I remember having a season pass for Expo 67 - $15!
This is so great to hear! In some ways, Montreal has changed quite a bit since then, in other ways it’s exactly the same. I know I’m biased but it’s still one of my favourite cities in the world! I hope you enjoy the rest of Barney’s Version just as much!
I'm looking forward to reading some of these books, thank you for sharing. I've been reading War and Peace for about a year. The writing is beautiful, but I have stopped and started a few times to take breaks. I think it's time to get back to it. I miss it. I appreciate you saying to not try to sprint, but just enjoy the writing, that's sort of how I'm reading it. The writing is so gorgeous, that I don't care if I get lost in it and forget some details. I'm not trying to analyze anything - just reading and enjoying, taking in what I can as I go. There's so much, that just getting through it, I know I will have gained so much.
So happy to hear this. As for analyzing and missing details, I think that if you're enjoying it this much, you may well enjoy a second read, at which point any details you missed, I'm sure you'll pick up on.
Good list. Nice and varied. Here's my top 10 as of this moment. The order is very loose. 1. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 2. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers 3. The Alexandrian Quartet - Lawrence Durrell 4. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak 5. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien 6. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 7. Peace Breaks Out - John Knowles 8. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 9. Swann's Way - Marcel Proust 10. (tie) Go Tell It on the Mountain/Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin I cheated a bit with the quartet, the LotR trilogy, and the Baldwin tie. It's tough to narrow it down to only 10 books. As I Lay Dying, The Sun Also Rises, Tender Is the Night, and many more might find a spot depending on the day you ask me.
Fantastic list! James Baldwin is one of my all time favourite authors, and the only reason Go Tell it on the Mountain didn't make my top 10 list was because it's been so long since I read it that I wasn't sure I remembered it properly. I'm due for a re-read. Thanks for watching and for sharing!
Thank you for this great list. I happened to have just picked up a copy of Kitchen Confidential at a GoodWill store. I’ve always been a fan of Bourdain’s television shows and the book is like discovering him all over again. I love the HitchHiker’s Guide and I highly recommend the early1980’s video series. My one recommendation to you would be One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I often pick up used copies and give them out as gifts. I would describe it as LSD for life; it will change your perspective on reality.
Cool! Ironically, despite being a huge Murakami fan, 1Q84 is probably my least favourite book of his. Different strokes… Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@HoldenNY22 there is indeed. 1Q84 is by Haruki Murakami. However, as you might guess by the title there is thematic allusion to 1984 by George Orwell (despite the stories being nothing alike)!
The fifth Kingsbrigde novel came out three days ago. The Armour of Light. Pillars of the Earth is in my top 3, with the second, World Without End definitely in my top ten. I'm really hoping the Armour of Light makes it too, just started it.
I have some similar tastes. I will check out a couple of your choices. I never could get into Douglas Adams or On the Road. My favorite Ellroy book is American Tabloid (I love it), but I haven't read The Big Nowhere. You might want to hold the book up with a steady hand or place on a stand.
Lists like this are fun. On my list, I would include Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Lady Murasaki's Tale of Gengi. I also really liked War and Peace, like you.
Thanks for your video. I loved how you described War And Peace....I agree....It is a marathon and not a sprint. Also thanks for introducing this Australian to a Canadian author treasure. Looking forward to reading Morecai Richler.
I read War and Peace 18-ish months ago and it shot to the top of my list too. Since then I’ve read a few more of Tolstoy’s works and so far they’re all great. I also have Hitchhiker’s Guide in my top ten!
I read _Anna Karenina_ and *looooovvvvvveeeedddd* it, so thought I would give _War and Peace_ a try and loved it even more! I kept thinking, "How did I get to be 60 years old and not know these books?!" I then realized I _had_ to be 60 to read them, to understand them, to know I could take my time... to know I couldn't have read them in my hands, but had them read _to_ me on Audible. What a joy they were (and are) in my life! I love that _War and Peace_ is on your list and you, too, have recently read it. (All that said, *you* do NOT have to be 60 to understand them. _I_ did because I didn't have the life experiences to relate. I am sure I was a late-bloomer. If you are intrigued, pick it up!)
@@HealthAtAnyCost You're so right. What you bring to a book is just as important as what's in the book. While I'm not 60, I freely admit that I wouldn't have appreciated this book 20 years ago... maybe not even 10 years ago!
Great selection with Kafka on the Shore...most people select 1Q84, but Kafka is the one for me. Murakami is one of my favorite authors and one of the few authors whose books I just want to reread.
Love that list. Read only one of them, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and yes sooo lol. Thanks for encouragement to read War and Peace. If haven’t yet check out The Death of Eli Gold by David Baddiel. 👏🏼🐀😎👍
Aside from those mentioned in the video, I'm going to have to give this some more thought (perhaps worthy of a video of its own), because while many great works by many great writers jump to mind (Didion, Roth, Baldwin, Ellison, Capote, Thompson, Salinger), I know I'm probably going to be forgetting a ton of my favourites.
Wow! Love your top 10 because your favorite books are so varied! You are certainly not stuff in a rut. I agree with you about W&P (also just read it last year) but I hated On the Road (may be more appealing to younger males than retired women). Love that you included Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the same list as W&P. Thanks for introducing me to Mordecai Richler. It's going to be so interesting to see how you react to these cherished books in about 20 years. I enjoy re-reading my favorites every so often, but it's as though I never read the same book twice since, as I get older, the books seem different. Oh wait. I'm different!! 🙂PS A favorite classic of mine is The Count of Monte Cristo. You may enjoy it, too.
Thanks for the comment, Susan. You're right that this may be the only top 10 list that puts the Hitchhiker's Guide next to War and Peace. Hah! And you're absolutely right that the way you respond to a book changes with you, which is why I'm such a fan of re-reading. As for On the Road, I actually did first read it 20 years ago, and re-read it recently, and it still held up (for me)! I can definitely see how it would appeal more to a younger male audience, but I think what I love about the book is more the energy of the writing and the atmosphere it creates than the themes and story itself. The Count of Monte Cristo is on my list to read, and my goal is to read it in the original French, so it might take me a while. Thanks again!
It's always fun to hear someone discussing books they enjoyed. I have read almost all the books you mentioned and was particularly pleased you mentioned Anthony Bourdain. I really enjoyed his book and him as a chef. Glad you threw in some foreign authors. As a child of the 50s you are quite right about those decades, the 50s,60s and 70s ', an awesome time to have lived through .
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I miss Bourdain. No one's been able to replace him, and those who've tried don't even come close in my mind (thinking of people like David Chang).
Thanks. If you do, let me know how it goes. I started out with a chapter a day, but after a while, I was enjoying the book so much I was doing more and more. It still took me a few months to finish, but totally worth it!
James Ellroy is one of my favorite writers, the LA quartet is great. Joan Didion “The White Album” & “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. Truman Capote “In Cold Blood”. Always loved “Catcher in the Rye”. Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Kurt Vonnegut, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, so many writers change your life
In a few sentences you named so many of the authors I struggled so hard with excluding from this list: Didion, Salinger, Faulkner, Roth, Vonnegut… fantastic selection.
An interesting list, have read 5 of them and greatly enjoyed 4. And I have added four of the unread 5 to my reading list; I just don't really enjoy many graphic novels. Thank you for the suggestions 🙏
@@ADudeWhoReads truth be told, Murakami has been put on the back burner as I have got myself incredibly invested in the Red Rising series but I read Colourless Tsukuru Tzakaki recently and loved it. Kafka on the Shore next I think as I haven’t read any of his more famous “surreal” novels yet.
@@lewisb.3242 Cool! I've read the first 2 novels in the Red Rising saga so far. I'm not going to lie, I haven't loved it. As far as modern epic sci fi series, I'm a bigger fan of The Expanse. That said, I'm going to read the 3rd novel before making my final judgment!
@@ADudeWhoReads I have mixed emotions with Red Rising, as I read it I love it but when things don’t go the way I want them to I feel myself resenting the direction it’s going until it grips me again. I think that’s a good sign that I’m invested enough to be upset when things don’t go my way. I would encourage you to read the 3rd book before making your final decision as it is a good place to leave it if you don’t feel drawn into reading the remaining 4 books. I haven’t read The Expanse books but I will definitely look into them.
Nice list ( Although I’ve never heard of 70% in it ) . I will check these out . Also , have you read “ The Brothers Karamazov “ ? I see that it appears in many top 10 lists .
I haven't read Brothers Karamazov, yet, but as of right now, I believe it's the most commonly recommended book by viewers of this channel, which means that I need to get to it sooner rather than later!
@@ADudeWhoReads Awesome . I read a lot of management and self help books in the last couple of years . Looking forward to different genres and new titles . I blind bought The Brothers Karamazov a few days ago ..Excited to start reading it today !. I like your style of reviewing and presenting . Looking forward to more content from you . Subscribed !
@@mustanggt5713 Management and self help books were pretty much all I read for the better part of a decade. Any particular favourites? I tend to prefer the older books. For Self-Help, I think the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still is unbeaten, and in management, Peter Drucker still stands the test of time, but also anything by Jim Collins.
@@ADudeWhoReads “The 7 habits of highly effective people “ was my first ever self-help book . Great book indeed. I also love Atomic Habits by James Clear, Influence by Robert Cialdini , Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco , Rework by Jason Fried , Eat that frog by Brian Tracy and Linchpin by Seth Godin .
Here's how I know I've read too much Self-Help: I've read all of those. :) Have you read the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg? I actually prefer it to Atomic Habits. However, if you've read Atomic Habits, not sure there's a lot more to learn by reading The Power of Habit.
Thank you for the comment! There are definitely female authors I love like Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion, Ursula K LeGuin and Doris Kearns Goodwin, but somehow their books didn't crack the list. That said, I'll freely admit that I have read far more male authors than I have female authors, and it's a pretty serious gap in my personal reading history. I'm not sure about creating a separate list of books by women, because something about separating them out feels wrong (or maybe I'm just wrong)... Instead, I'm committed to reading more female authors. Just a few that are on my reading list for the coming year include: Austen, the Brontes, Du Maurier, Eliot, along with a few recommendations that have come from me posting this video! Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Interesting list. I'd never heard of your number 1, so must check it out. I don't know what my top 10 would be, except that Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset would be top of my list, head and shoulders above the rest. And I think I'd replace the Hemingway with some Steinbeck, probably The Grapes of Wrath.
I've never heard of Kristin Lavransdatter, so I'll have to look into it! On another day, I very well could have switched Hemingway with Steinbeck (although, it probably would have been Of Mice and Men). This was a tough list to narrow down to 10! Thank you so much for the comment!
This is m first video of you. I am recently retired and want to read again. So I visited some top ten videos. All of them fantasy. What I liked about your collection is the allround approach. And... you seem to be a sensitive person who likes the connect with the books. Also your presentation is so real and not overdone. No one else I visited on UA-cam gave me that feeling of a real and honest person. Thanks for sharing and I wil try to read some of your list. I am from holland and there libraries are very poor provided. It I give it a try. Translations are also poorly made. So maybe I have to buy them in English., thanks wim
Hi Wim. Thanks for watching and for your kind words. I truly means a lot. My guess is that you can probably get the classic books and the really popular ones translated into Dutch. So, things like War and Peace, The Old Man and the Sea, The Hobbit and Kafka on the Shore are all probably readily available in a good translation. Other books I'm not even sure I'd want to read as a translation. For example, I don't think the humour of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would translate well. Personally, whenever possible, I like to read books in their original language (English is my mother tongue, but I also read French well enough), but that will depend on your level of comfort in the language and the difficulty of the book. Best of luck and if you do end up trying some of these books, let me know how you like them!
Another ‘Dude Who Reads’ here and not usually a Commenter (definitely more of a ‘Lurker’). Whilst my favourite genre is ‘American Southern Gothic’, I wanted to share some lesser known works by some Australian authors, as this seems to be a ‘safe space’ to complete such an act. I hope I would not be defined as presumptuous to say, that the following could potentially be defined as ‘Australian Gothic’, if such a category exists. (Side note, earlier spelling of ‘favourite’ denotes my own origin of Australia). Kenneth Cook: Wake in Fright Elizabeth Harrower: The Watchtower Janette Turner Hospital: Oyster Patrick White: The Tree of Man Elizabeth Jolley: The Well Alexis Wright: Carpentaria All 6 evoke such a strong sense of place, which for me, is the indomitable strength of Australian Literature. A spattering of contemporary ‘bush’ or ‘outback’ works, as well as some mid-century (20th) urban pieces. Having previously been so averse to Australian writing, due in part to my ignorance that I need not have my ‘culture’ explained to me in a written format, I have in recent times had perhaps what some would define as an ‘epiphany’. These writers (and of course, many more) are extremely skilled in translating and distilling Australian Identity, Culture and Landscape to the literary form. I do still adore ‘Southern Literature’, and have come to realise (British spelling) the many parallels that correlate between them. Oozing with dark, typically ‘sultry’ (Southern) and ‘humid’, though sometimes ‘devastatingly arid’ (Australian) atmosphere, I do not think I can ever be satiated of desiring that certain modern Gothic flavour (Brit sp.) Anyway, diatribe over. This comment will most likely be ‘lost’ amongst the sea of other comments, but I was feeling particularly inspired by another ‘Dude Who Reads’ passion, and felt like joining in. 😉
Thanks so much for sharing! I’m Canadian (in case it wasn’t obvious from the video), and I went through a similar progression with Canadian literature, and I think part of it stems from having it force fed to me in school. But as I got older I saw the importance, the beauty and the truth in it. I confess to never having read any of your selections, but the idea of deep diving into a culture based on its literature is immensely appealing. I’m going to keep this list handy, because eventually I’d love to do some immersive reading like this. Maybe as I visit Australia! Thanks again for watching and sharing this! 🙏
The Old Man and the sea is the only one I have read and I have read it a number of times and I think its brilliant book. Kafta on the Shore and Barneys Version both sound like there very good, i might add them to my to-read list. Would it be a good guess to say you haven't read Ulysses, Middlemarch or Crime and Punishment yet. They might make it to your list at in a few years time. I enjoyed you delivery and comments and look forward to seeing your updated list next year
Thanks for watching and for your comments, Tony! You are correct that all three of the books you've named are still on my "to read" list. Last year I set myself a challenge of working my way through a list of 100 classics in chronological order. So far, I'm only in the 1st century (just finished The Aeneid), so it might take a while before I get to Ulysses, but I'll get there. :)
Thanks, and yes, you are correct. I noticed that when I put the list together, too. This is, to be perfectly honest, partly a reflection of what I’ve read (which has been largely white male authors) and partly a bit of happenstance (for example, James Baldwin is easily in my top 10 favourite WRITERS of all time but none of his individual books cracked my top 10). It’s something I’m keeping in the back of my mind as I choose books in the future.
I really thought when I published this vid, no one would have heard of Asterios Polyp! It makes me so happy to know I’m not alone in my love of this book! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Not on this list, but for ancient books I'd say my favourite is the Odyssey (many prefer the Iliad, but I like the adventure aspect of the Odyssey). I've also re-read Meditations a few times, so that would probably be up there. In terms of philosophy I like Hume, Simone de Beauvoir and just recently discovered Simone Weil (a contemporary of the other Simone). I haven't read much contemporary philosophy. For history, I love Will Durant's The Story of Civilization. Some of the ideas are a little outdated, but he writes beautifully. For something that's not 11 volumes and a little more accessible, I don't think you can go wrong with Sapiens, or if you want something to argue over Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. For mathematics, I confess I've never read a math book that wasn't a text book, so I'm definitely not the right person to ask.
Great video thanks. A small favour to ask, when you hold the book at the first instance, stop waving it about I am deaf and need to know what the book is. Thank you
My #1 book is Godel, Esher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Brsid by Douglas Hoffsteader. A story about art, beauty, and self-referential philosophy--deep! It is stunning how the author mimics the points being made in the structure of the writing itself.
Respect for including Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain put the whole culinary world in context for everyone. This book was the beginning of that. Im gonna have to give this one a re-read.
Totally agreed. Even if some of the more memorable bits are now a bit outdated (by and large it’s okay to order fish on a Monday now), the book itself shone a light on a culture that was everywhere but unseen. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I have! I thought it was a beautifully written book about the importance of discovering one's identity. I thought despite the overall morose tone of the book, the underlying message was uplifting. I also think Williams' writing is phenomenal. He doesn't try to dazzle with fancy prose, but he still leaves a lasting emotional impression. I talked about Stoner in greater length in a video called: "New Year. New Series. New Favourite? (Jan Reading Recap)" You can use the chapters to go directly to where I talk about Stoner, if the other books don't interest you. Stoner's also one of the books that was recommended to me the most, so it's also mentioned in the video: "I got 500+ book recommendations. These are the top 10." What were your thoughts on it?
I so appreciate how you discuss books concisely while providing enough information for to have something to go on. Thank you.
Thanks to you for the kind words!
1. Blood meridian 2. Under the volcano 3. Suttree 4. Wise blood 5. Great gatsby 6. 100 years of solitude 7. Catcher in the rye 8. Gilead 9. Never let me go 10. Stoner
If you like stoner you should read butchers crossing. Also all the pretty horses, the Crossing and in cold blood.
@@keithandrew2705 I've read all four of those novels. Really enjoyed all of them, especially The Crossing, which is Cormac's most underrated novel. "Between the wish and the thing, the world lies waiting." ❤
100 years I have read, Catcher in the Rye and Never Let me Go. 100 years is one of my all time favourites. Never Let Me go made me feel suicidal. I read catcher in the rye too long ago to remember if I liked it or not. Great Gatsby I have heard good things about, the rest of your list I dont know.
nice to see a (my home town) Montreal based story make a top 10 list! Mordecai Richler is greatly underrated on the international front! Thank you for taking the time to describe each book; I've now added a few to my TBR list!
It should probably come as no surprise, then, that I'm clearly biased, being a Montrealer myself. ;) Happy to hear you were able to find some books to add to your TBR. Thanks for watching and commenting!
I have read all of Mordecai’s publications. He was a wonderful writer taken way too young 😢
Morderchei Richler sorry for the mispell is an author I have died to read but never found it anywhere in my country. Here is an author I must read before I die!!!!
I've read everything on your list except for The Big Nowhere and your #1! Gonna add them to my Goodreads. Thanks!
Wow. You're like my reading twin! Thanks for watching. 😀
I love "best" lists, particularly personal lists. Some of mine self-selected when I asked which books I've read more than once. Thanks for your contributions.
Love that! Some of the books on this have definitely been read multiple times!
@@ADudeWhoReads, MY TOP TWELVE BOOKS
0) "The Holy Bible: King James Version" copyright 1967
1) "Verbal Behavior" by Dr. B. F. Skinner
2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy
3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev
5) Myth Adventures - series by Robert Asprin
6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis
7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë
8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev
11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener
12) "Poland" by James A. Michener
@@ReligionOfSacrifice Definitely some excellent reads on that list, and not one, but two Michener books! As well as a few I've never heard of. Thank you so much for sharing!
@@ADudeWhoReads TOP 40 BOOKS
0) "The Holy Bible: King James Version" copyright 1967
1) "Verbal Behavior" by Dr. B. F. Skinner
2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy
3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev
5) Myth Adventures - series by Robert Asprin
6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis
7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë
8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev
11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener
12) "Poland" by James A. Michener
13) "Roots" by Alex Haley
14) The Silmarillion - The Hobbit, or there and back again - The Lord of the Rings - Middle Earth stories by J. R. R. Tolkien
15) Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov
16) "Eugene Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin
17) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
18) "Paris 1919: six months that changed the world" by Margaret MacMillian
19) "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Brontë
20) "Virgin Soil" by Ivan Turgenev
21) "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
22) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - by Mark Twain
23) Old Mother West Wind series - wildlife series by Thornton Burgess
24) "Microbe Hunters" by Paul de Kruif
25) "Cancer Ward" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
26) "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt
27) "Kon Tiki" by Thor Heyerdahl
28) "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman
29) "The Berdine Un-Theory of Evolution: and Other Scientific Studies Including Hunting, Fishing, and Sex" by William C. Berdine
30) "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair
31) "Caribbean" by James A. Michener
32) "Hawaii" by James A. Michener
33) "The Painted Bird" by Jerzy Kosiński
34) "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice
35) "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
36) "Torrents of Spring" by Ivan Turgenev
37) "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis
38) "Emma" by Jane Austen
39) "In the First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Another way to evaluate is FAVORITE AUTHORS
1st) Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons) seven more books in the top 200 not shown here
4) "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev
10) "Smoke" by Ivan Turgenev
20) "Virgin Soil" by Ivan Turgenev
36) "Torrents of Spring" by Ivan Turgenev
59) "First Love" by Ivan Turgenev
2nd) James A. Michener (Chesapeake)
11) "Chesapeake" by James A. Michener
12) "Poland" by James A. Michener
31) "Caribbean" by James A. Michener
32) "Hawaii" by James A. Michener
3rd) Leo Tolstoy (Resurrection)
2) "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy
8) "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy
57) "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
84) "A Confession" by Leo Tolstoy
4th) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich)
9) "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
25) "Cancer Ward" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
39) "In the First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
72) "The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: an Experiment in Literary Investigation" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
5th) Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot)
3) "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
17) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
108) "Poor Folk" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
135) "The Gambler" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
142) "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6th) C. S. Lewis (The Magician's Nephew)
6) The Chronicles of Narnia - series by C. S. Lewis
37) "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis
165) "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis
176) "Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life" by C.S. Lewis
7th) Charlotte Brontë (Vilette)
7) "Vilette" by Charlotte Brontë
67) "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
138) "The Professor” by Charlotte Brontë
162) "Shirley" by Charlotte Brontë
@@ReligionOfSacrifice Bible yes. Idiot is good, and sad, but Brothers Karamazov is better. Narnia Yes. Tolstoy is a jerk. Poland by Michener was a great book.
Nice variety and happy you included Mazzuchelli's book. It's interesting how his style has radically changed from his Frank Miller Daredevil books like "Born Again" and "Batman Year One."
Thanks! I’m not sure that Mazzuchelli’s style changed so much as he adapted his style to the story he wanted to tell. The style he used in Year One wouldn’t have worked for Asterios Polyp and vice versa. Regardless, the man is incredibly talented as both an artist and a writer! Thanks for watching and commenting. :)
I was so skeptical when I saw the title of this video, but I respect it. Old Man AND Kitchen Confidential?! Hell yeah! Excellent breadth and depth here.
Hah! Nothing like someone declaring that they're going to give you the top 10 books of all time to make you a little suspicious, eh? Thanks for the comment!
Your selections introduced me to some exciting new authors and reminded me to reread some of the oldies again. Please hold your book up longer, especially when you are introducing it to us. I write down your recommendations and often I struggled to actually know the names to facilitate writing them down. (author's names were difficult to write down when rushed)
Ah. Sorry about that! I’ll make a conscious effort for future videos. Thank you for watching and taking the time to comment!
You can Freeze the Video.
It is difficult to see the books the way you keeping moving them around. Thank you
Thanks a lot ~~~
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy seems like a fun reed i will try that out :) good video
As soon as you brought up kitchen confidential I subscribed. I was not expecting that, and you perfectly described exactly how I felt about him and his passing. Well done 👍🏻
Happy to hear it! I think Bourdain was one of a kind, and our culture is poorer for his loss. Thanks so much for watching and commenting. 🙂
KC and Medium Raw are two great reads. As Frank Zappa used to say ‘so many books, so little time’. They were kind of kindred spirits. Miss them both.
This was excellent. Thank you! I haven’t read all of these and will be adding them to my list. I LOVE Bourdain. I have read all his books. Hitchhikers guide are also fantastic and I can’t wait to read them to my kids one day. Reading a chapter of war and peace per day sounds totally doable! Currently reading the Iliad then the odyssey, then Tom Sawyer (with my kids for school). Looking for some books for myself. This list is a great inspiration.
I *just* finished re-reading the Iliad! I'm saving my re-read of the Odyssey to read alongside Ulysses (it's going to take a while...). Happy I was able to provide some inspiration. Thanks for watching and thanks for the comment!
You described War and Peace similar to how I feel about Anna Karenina currently. I'm so excited to read War and Peace after I finish
I think the biggest difference between the two are the themes that Tolstoy is tackling. While there's a lot of personal focus in War and Peace (which is impressive considering how many characters there are), there's also a large part of the book that's devoted to broader discussions on things like the role of historians. I hope you enjoy both, and if you can, let me know what you think once you've had a chance to read both. Thanks for watching!
Dostoevsky is a much better writer. Tolstoy is great at describing how things really occur in life. "Tolstoy has a fundamentally accurate perception of events" - Nabokov. However, Tolstoy is a moral hypocrite and a philosophical idiot. If you think I'm kidding, then read about his life, and you will see that is true. Eg. Paul Johnson on Tolstoy. Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov addresses the actual issues of how to live, and shows the path of Alyosha is best. I would choose to try to be smart like Ivan, but kind like Alyosha. Audiobook version makes it easier to get thru it fast, then selectively read the best parts like the grand inquisitor.
@@PeterRogersMDDefinitely agree! Dostoevsky is the greater writer overall. I think Tolstoy is better than Dostoevsky in terms of literary style, whereas Dostoevsky wasn't a master stylist like Tolstoy. Dostoevsky often wrote in a hurry if not frenzy and his style can be quite jagged and chaotic. It's as if a madman grabbed you by the arm as you're walking down the street, shouting at you, yet what he says is utterly riveting and intelligent and meaningful.
However, with regard to far more fundamental matters like the existence of God, good and evil, the meaning of life, and such questions, Dostoevsky is greater than Tolstoy.
And indeed Tolstoy was an immoral person in real life, though Dostoevsky also had his issues (e.g. gambling addiction, possible affair, anti-Semitism). But, unlike Tolstoy, it seems Dostoevsky hated himself for his sins and he seemed to have tried to turn away from most of them as he matured. The exception is perhaps the anti-Semitism. It's no more excusable than, say, the Founding Fathers owning slaves, but it is at least explainable in the sense that it was commonplace in his time and place.
Both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy should be read in good translations to best appreciate them. Especially Dostoevsky for the reason I've given above about his style. I'd recommend Michael Katz for any of Dostoevsky's major works except for The Idiot since Katz hasn't done a translation for The Idiot yet, though Katz had told me he's working on it now. Alternatively, Oliver Ready is great for Crime and Punishment. The Garnett translation that's updated by Susan McReynolds Oddo is great for The Brothers Karamazov, likewise Ignat Avsey for The Brothers Karamazov though he plays a bit fast and loose here and there, and McDuff is decent for the same but I don't like McDuff as much as the previous two. Robert Maguire did a great translation of The Demons. Notes from Underground I like Ronald Wilks, but Kirsten Lodge pretty good too.
I don't care for Tolstoy as much. However, the Maudes's War and Peace updated by Amy Mandelker is good. Anthony Briggs for The Death of Ivan Ilyich which in my view is actually the best book Tolstoy wrote. And Rosamund Bartlett for Anna Karenina. But again I don't really like Tolstoy
Regarding the very popular Pevear and Volokhonsky translations in general. See articles like: "The Pevearization of Russian Literature" (Gary Morson); "The Pevear/Volokhonsky Hype Machine and How It Could Have Been Stopped or At Least Slowed Down" (Helen Andrews): "Socks" (Janet Malcolm); and "Pevear and Volokhonsky Are Indeed Overrated" (John McWhorter).
@@philtheo You certainly know a tremendous amount about Russian literature. I partially went through several different translations of Brothers Karamazov, and found Constance Garnett to be the best; because hers was the most religious. Dostoevsky was trying to figure out "how does a person live a good life; a life that helps others, and makes them happy; and how can Russia be saved from serfdom, atheism, tyranny & cruelty?" Modernists try to take the religion out of Dostoevsky. The fact remains: you can't have Christianity without Christ. He's the reason for everything; for all the great stuff like great painting, literature, music and improved behavior.
@@PeterRogersMD Yes, amen! I'm a conservative Christian so I'd agree with you. I also like Garnett, though the issue(s) with her translations is that she often simply elided passages in Dostoevsky she didn't quite understand, not to mention the textual basis for some of her translations isn't always the best, and she is known to have smoothed out passages in order to make Dostoevsky sound better than he does in the original Russian. This latter point about making Dostoevsky sound better than he does is a matter for fair debate and I could see a good case made either way, though contemporary translators tend to think it best to leave Dostoevsky as is and let his own voice come through. In any case, I think Garnett (as well as the husband-wife team of the Maudes) did the English speaking world a tremendous service in translating so much great Russian literature, and Garnett mostly holds up, but I'd prefer to recommend a revised or updated version of Garnett's work. For The Brothers Karamazov, I love the Garnett translation that's been revised by Susan McReynolds Oddo. If I recall, I believe this is published in the Norton Critical Edition. The modern revisions fix all the problematic issues in Garnett without losing Garnett. May the Lord bless you and keep you!
I have recently begun a project of reading classic novels that have somehow escaped me. I'm reading the Count of Monte Cristo at the moment (having just read Great Expectations), but I have many, many more to go. I quite enjoy fiction, but there are some nonfiction works that are tremendous as well - The Devil in the White City or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example.
Indeed! And it sounds like a wonderful project. Good luck, enjoy and thank you for watching and commenting!
"Kitchen Confidential" was a great read. Thanks for the tip. I knew nothing about Bourdain and it was a great introduction. Very entertaining.
Awesome. Glad you liked it!
I am a huge Tolkien fan and agree 100% that 'The Hobbit' is his best book. I love the rest of his stuff, too, but 'The Hobbit' is his best crafted story.
I think we may be in the minority, but glad to have a kindred spirit! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Great list, have read most of them but yes, I am in the majority who cannot understand how The Hobbit is there instead of the LOTR!! It's still a great list, and Kafka On the Shore is also my favourite Murakami. Like you, I'm in the minority that prefers War and Peace to Anna Karenina, which is usually placed ahead of it. Will need to check up on Barney's Version, never heard of the author before. This is why these lists are fun and useful.
I disagree. The Hobbit is one of the worst books I’ve ever read.
No! Just no! Respectfully…
@@feanorian21maglor38I agree with you about LOTR and War and Peace (even though I would be surprised if what you said is true about most people preferring Anna Karenina to War and Peace).. as for Murakami I feel like I will never be able to rank his books but my top in no particular order would be Killing Commendatore, Kafka on the Shore, the wind up bird chronicles, 1Q84, Dance Dance Dance and Pinball,1973
'Kafka on the Shore' good choice. Love Murakami and would probably pick 'Dance, Dance, Dance.' Tolstoy is a miraculous writer but Dostoevsky's 'Brothers Karamazov' is the ultimate for me.
Love Dance, Dance, Dance and Wild Sheep Chase (they have somehow become one book in my memory). At this point, Brothers Karamazov is probably the first or second most recommended book by people who watch this channel. I think I need to get to it sooner rather than later. Thanks for watching and for the recommendations!
Agree, Brothers K is the greatest novel.
Idiot better imo
Welcome to the book tube world. I love the fact that your reading is so diverse as mine is as well. I plan to check out Barney’s Version soon.
Thank you and I really hope you enjoy Barney’s Version as much as I do. Drop me a note and let me know what you think of it if you get a chance!
It is mesmerizing and by turn hilarious and melancholy and thought provoking throughout. Good choice.
Interesting you have "The Hobbit" in this list. I still think "The Lord of the Rings" is Tolkien's best work, but "The Hobbit" holds a very special place in my heart. Ten year old me learned English with that book. Kneeling down on my mother's living room, an old English copy of "The Hobbit" on top of a couch and an English-Portuguese dictionary at my side. It was magic. Each page came with new wonder.
Books are so subjective and personal..im so varied in my reading but here are some of my favourites.
1. Jayne eyre by Charlotte Brontë
2. Anne Frank's diary
3. Weave world, Clive Barker
4. Kingdom for sale sold, Remond E feist.
5. Bridges of Madison county yes my romantic one lol
6. Godnight Mr Tom, Michelle Magorian.
7. Danny champion of the world, Roald dahl.
8. Little women and little men by louisa may Alcott..i read these to my kids every night.
9. Memoirs of a geisha, Arthur holden.
10. Screwtape letters..C.S. Lewis
Very cool list, with several entries I’d never heard of, including “Little Men.” I had no idea there was not one, but multiple sequels to Little Women!
@@ADudeWhoReads little men is awesome I read it to my son every night and he loved it is just beautiful
So now I’m curious. What about Jo’s Boys? Which from my understanding is the sequel to Little Men?
@@ADudeWhoReads it follows the plumfield boys when they are grown a great read ❤️
@@ADudeWhoReads most people know little women but I preferred the little men series
Just love how you talk about books! keep going!
Thank you!
I too am somewhat obsessed with the 50s 60s Americana era. I'm always looking for books that take place in this time. James Elroy is definitely on my tbr list now ,thanks to you. I would love to hear of more that you've discovered from this era. Maybe another list?
This is a great question (and not a bad idea for a future video, either...)! If you like Kerouac, then reading any of the Beats (Ginsberg, Burroughs, Cassady) is probably a no-brainer. Also, one of my favourite writers is James Baldwin, and his work is set in this era (thematically VERY different from Kerouac or Ellroy). Finally, this is not a book, and not quite in the right time period, but if you have a similar obsession to mine, you'll want to check out the film Vanishing Point (1971): it's a knight-errant quest story, but instead of horses and medieval landscapes, it's muscle cars and Route 66.
@@ADudeWhoReads Thank you for the further recommendations! And I'll try to check out the movie as well, that sounds fun.
I really like it and it makes me happy that a person like you values The Hobbit as much as I do. Disguised as a children's story, in reality a very serious novel, a map of internal paths, a route of mythical wisdom, a rounded and perfect narrative.
Couldn't agree more. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Very interesting list. It doesn’t follow a usual trend and for that it gave me exposure to some works that are new to me.
Thanks for putting it together, I hope to comment once I have gone through some of those less common picks
Thank you so much. This is precisely why I did this! If you like some of the things on my list and have never heard of some of the others, then maybe you’ll want to check them out, and if I can help someone discover a new favourite, then that makes me happy! I’d love to hear from you once you’ve had a chance to check some of these out! Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Great video just started reading myself and it’s a bit overwhelming with how many countless books there are your channel is helpful so thanks!
Happy to hear it was helpful! Best of luck in your reading journey 😃
Thanks for the list! Never heard of a Richler, and I love that you included a graphic novel! And what variety. Subscribed.
My absolute pleasure! I'm happy you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Appreciate the variety of your choices, like serving delicatessens for sampling, satisfying my taste buds for the "unexpected" .
Also impressed by your personal response to each comment, like "my Dinner with Andre", conversing with a friend cozily over good food n wine!
Happy you enjoyed. Thanks for watching and commenting!
There is nothing NOTHING like War and Peace!! I’m 84 and I didn’t particularly like Tolstoy and I didn’t like war so I had no plans to read the book. Tolstoy’s ’ “virtue” was shouted from the rooftops all my life; yet, he never considered his wife when he decided to be celibate and he made her lie next to him to test his celibacy. His wife wasn’t happy with this. (Gandhi did the same-I don’t know if he was influenced by Tolstoy) Given his personal life, I was amazed when I finally read the book a year or two ago and saw the breadth and depth of his human observation and the actual aspects of war not the glory of the thing that I grew up with post WWII. I’m glad I read it late in life when I could bring more to it.
A hint to new readers: the book begins with a lot of characters all at once with their multiple names and titles which can be confusing and discouraging. You can google a list of characters to keep at hand. After firmly getting into the book, I found it interesting to go back and see their introduction in the first chapters.
This is the best book ever!
…..well, there’s Moby Dick which I’ve read 5 times, 2 of them aloud.
I agree with everything you wrote here and especially with your hint to new readers. At some point I’ll probably do a video specifically about War and Peace and how to approach reading it.
With regards to Moby Dick, I haven’t tackled that whale, yet. It’s probably going to be sometime next year, but I’m looking forward to it!
Great list. Since everyone is listing theirs, I think you missed out on PKD's "Ubik", Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking", and Kafka's "The Castle".
Thank you for the recos and thanks for watching and commenting!
For war and peace, print out a list of all the characters to refer to as you read. Necessary because characters go by several names (eg nickname, and family name).
Good tip! Many editions, including the Oxford Classics edition I show in the video, also have a list of characters at the front or back of the book (including nicknames), so a sticky note on that page can also work.
I enjoyed this video very much because I too am a dude who reads. The only book on your list that is on mine was for years my #1.
It is On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I started reading it exactly 60 years ago as of Sept 2023. I was seventeen and in love with the idea of just getting into a car and going. All these years later it has slipped down to #5.
My number 4 is: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway #3 The Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque
#2. More Than Conqueror by Grace Livingston Hill and #1 is (drum roll) The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. That book literally changed my life. And my trajectory toward eternity. I recommend it to all people. Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing this with us! I understand that impulse from reading On the Road. I will check out Lindsey’s book as I’ve never heard about it before right now. Thanks again!
@@ADudeWhoReads You're welcome. And I'm going to check out many of the books on your list, especially #1.
At this late hour of my life and since I'm retired I really should read War and Peace. I did read part of a book by Tolstoy about The Cossacks, etc. First time I ever saw the word etc in a title except maybe e e cummings. Saroyan was one of my favorite authors growing up. Especially his short stories.
Thank you for your interesting list which I've taken down, read two and heard of four. You've only read War and Peace once, did you ever research the best translation and that's the one you bought? Can you recommend your translation and mention it? Thank you.
The translation I read was the Maude translation published by Oxford Classics, and I would definitely recommend it. I chose that particular translation for 3 reasons: 1) Tolstoy himself apparently approved of it. 2) I read the first few pages of a few different translations (you can do this for free on Amazon), and I liked the style. 3) In the original Russian, there's a lot of dialog that's actually written in French and then translated in footnotes. This translation preserves the French in the text and translates the footnotes, while other translations translate the French directly in the text, making it impossible to know which parts were originally Russian and which were originally French (also, I happen to be able to read French, so there's that). The other translation I've heard good things about is the Briggs translation published by Penguin Classics. I hope you enjoy it when you read it! Cheers and thanks for commenting!
What an interesting list! I have read a few of them. I had nevee heard of Richler, but I will try to read the book you love
Thanks for watching, and I really hope you enjoy Richler. Let me know what you think!
Love the diverse list. Good luck with your channel.
Thank you so much! Hope you enjoy what’s to come!
You've given me some wonderful material to enjoy in the coming months. I'll be looking forward to your reviews and judgments for 2024.
Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure and thank YOU for watching and commenting :)
Sorry last comment - I have not read Bourdain but I did read Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson and found it really interesting and a fascinating look at what goes on behind the kitchen doors.
No need to apologize. The conversation is why I'm here! I haven't read Samuelsson's book. I will definitely check it out now, though.
I've read three of the books on this list (the Hemingway, Tolkien, and Tolstoy) and the only one I'd call a great book is War and Peace. I wonder if A Dude Who Reads was really trying to list the top books of all time, or merely his current favorites. For example, does he actually judge the graphic novel Asterio's Polyp to be superior to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass? Can he compare the illustrations in the two novels and prefer the new stuff?
Excellent questions. The purpose of this list was to give a wide-ranging list of books that might allow people with similar tastes to discover something new. Is the title clickbait-y? More than some, less than others. Thanks for watching and commenting!
'm so glad I stumbled upon your video! there are a lot of new authors I have never read. Sometimes it just gets overwhelming! Because I'm not in the loop to begin with I am interested in reading a number of the ones that you mentioned and it's always great to have, a personal recommendation, especially when a book has made, someone laugh or cry...
I'm impressed that you could narrow it to 10. I would have such a difficult time with books, films, and music, all of which seem to have saved my life, especially during my younger years.
If I were to make a spontaneous list that I didn't have to suffer to narrow down and analyze, that might be a very good exercise for me. So here goes!
1. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3. Charlotte's Web by EB White
4. Persuasion by Jane Austen
5. To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. A Tree grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
7. My Antonia by Willa Cather
8. Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
9. Random Harvest by James Hilton
10. The Object of my Affection by Stephen McCauley
That's a fine list with a few thrown in I've never heard of. Thanks for sharing!
Good list
As you can tell from the comments, haters are gonna hate. I hope you don't let the negative get to you. Your favorites are your favorites. The way you talk about books is very intelligent. Let them get out there and start a channel if they want to be so critical.
Haha! I don’t think you can express an opinion on the internet without expecting some degree of push back and discussion. And frankly, that’s fine. It’s all in good fun! Really appreciate you watching and commenting!
Nice varied selection of books in your top 10 list covering a wide choice of Genre's and writing styles.
In no particular order here are my current 10 favourite books i've read.
The Stand - Extended Edition -
I was so engrossed in this lengthy novel with so many characters (both good and evil) going on their travels that i was completely immersed in the story. This easily gets into my top 10 list.
His Dark Materials -
This fascinating tale felt completely fresh and took me on a grand adventure in different Worlds with so many types of characters coming together to fight for what is right against seemingly impossible odds.
The Godfather -
The classic crime family story is wonderfuly told with great drama and events that are compelling throughout.
The Great & Secret Show -
An abstract battle between nightmares and good dreamt heroes that is both horrifyingly strange and wonderfuly beautiful.
Treasure Island -
The classic adventure story was so much better than i expected it to be, i heartily enjoyed this tale.
The Three Body Problem -
This Sci-Fi Alien invasion (sort of) story was very smart and technical with it's attention to scientific detail told over the course of Centuries in three novels is wonderful.
Dune -
Fantastic space opera with feuding aristocracies for control of a mining operation on a hostile Planet is brilliantly told, and is easily one of my favourite stories.
Robots And Empire -
The fate of the future of Humanity and Planet Earth is in the hands of two robots. I loved this story.
I Am Legend -
Possibly my favourite novel mixing Sci-Fi and Horror. A morality tale of finding out who are the real monsters, us or them? Great story.
1984 -
The pinnacle of totalitarian novels in my opinion, equal parts frightening as it is fascinating.
Thanks for making this video.
Cheers.
Thanks for sharing! I’ve actually read most of your top 10, so we must have pretty similar taste. My thoughts on a few of your selections:
It took me three tries to read The Stand and when I finally got through it I realized the problem. I liked the characters and the slice of life stuff so much better than the main plot! Seriously, that book could have just been about how the protagonists got along in post apocalyptic America without any of the “evil horror” stuff and I probably would have enjoyed it even more!
I agree with you that the Godfather is a fantastic book but most people I talk to about it claim that it’s that rare exception where the book is inferior to the adaptation… never quite understood why the book gets ragged on so hard when the movies are such a close adaptation.
The Three Body Problem is on my TBR and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve heard so many good things!
Overall, love your list. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@ADudeWhoReads
Thanks for replying.
I get your point about The Stand, it may well have been more compelling without concentrating on the evil ones, an interesting thought.
The Godfather movie adaptation is really close to the novel, there are a few events and characters that fill out the World a little more, they compliment each other really well though.
I'm sure you'll really enjoy the Three Body Problem, once you begin the series you may find yourself drawn to complete the trilogy to see how the story plays out.
Cheers.
@@JD.78 Part of my issue with books like the Three Body Problem is that I hesitate to start them, because I know that there's a good chance I'll want to read the whole series, and therefore need to set aside that much more time! :)
@@ADudeWhoReads
I agree that a trilogy is a lengthy investment of time, a possible alternative would be an audiobook version if you enjoy them.
@@JD.78 I'm definitely not opposed to audiobooks for certain types of books. I'll probably read the first book in print and depending on how much I like it, will choose whether to read, listen or ignore the last two :)
I think the point you raise at the end is so important for anyone trying to put together a list of the best books of all time: how a book affects us is as much driven by our familiarity with literature as it is what we are experiencing when we read a particular work. I know, for example, that Atlas Shrugged, Huckleberry Finn, the Foundation and Robot series, and all of O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books are at the top of my list. This is not necessarily because they are in a top ten list. Instead, I rank them highly because they had such a profound a d joyful impact on me each time I read them.
100% agreed!
You should read these books and review them
1. Stoner
2. Notes from underground
Both are on my radar! It's funny, I had never heard of Stoner until about 6 months ago, and now, you're probably the fifth or sixth person I've seen recommend it. Either Stoner is undergoing a revival, or I just wasn't paying attention before. Thank you so much for the recommendations!
I loved Stoner - a quiet, philosophical book. Recommend it highly and would be interested in your opinion.
Stoner is awesome. One of my all time favorites.
Enjoyed that. I'd struggle to pick a top ten. Hitchhiker's probably would but not On the Road. Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth would make it. James Hoggs private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner would have to be in there.
Very cool! Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth seems to be a very popular pick, which is really cool considering that prior to this video, I hadn't heard anything about it. Thanks for watching and sharing.
@@ADudeWhoReads He is such an interesting writer. For years he produced good, but not always brilliant thrillers of average length. Then he wrote The Pillars of the Earth. He openly talked about how he changed his writing style with that doorstep of a book, giving more focus on character. He said prior to that, he wrote almost as if he was imagining an action film. Since, he has written many more big books in a no nonsense style that he's become a master of. Pillars is the first in a series of five, his Kingsbridge series. The latest, The Armour of Light came out just 3 days ago. I'm reading it now. I can't recommend them highly enough.
Since watching your video I've been recalling books I'd have in my top ten. It's almost impossible to settle on.
Thanks for the additional context. I will have to read it, if for no other reason than it’s been recommended so often. I’m very curious now.
So cool finally seeing someone else appreciating asterios polyp. Mazzuchelli’s changing style throughout the book is awesome. Have you read his adaptation of city of glass?
I have not, but I will now! Thanks for the reco.
That was fun... I share your love of Murakami and War and Peace as well 😁... I love HHGG too (although it's the BBC tv series from 1981 for me)
What do you think of Infinite Jest (my #1)?... Imajica by Clive Barker?... Douglas Coupland?
So glad to have found you friend 😁
It would appear we have very similar tastes! I think Infinite Jest is a masterpiece, and I need to find time to re-read it and give it the attention it deserves. I love Douglas Coupland. Generation X is one of the books I keep on my small bookshelf, because I enjoy it so much. I've also enjoyed his novels and wish he would write more, but from what I understand he's turned his talents to visual art. As for Imajica, believe it or not, I hadn't heard of it until a couple days ago, but now you're the second person in as many days to mention it to me! Thanks so much for watching, and given how similar our tastes are, if you have any other recommendations, I'm all ears!
thanks for this - i loved many of the books you listed and never read #1 so just bought it! and maybe one day i'll muster up the courage to attempt War & Peace
Awesome. Let me know if you end up reading it what you think. As for W&P, I JUST released a video today about how to read it, so maybe that can help you out. :) Thanks for watching!
I personally took like 8 months to read it. I read other books concurrently and even took a short break halfway through because it is broken up into 4 parts. It’s amazing though and WELL worth it!
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm shocked to have never heard of Mordecai Richler if he's not only Canadian but also from Montreal since this is where I live. Gotta make sure I check your suggestions out!
Well, hello, to a fellow Montrealer! There's actually a couple of landmarks named after him including the Gazebo at the bottom of Mount Royal and the library in the Plateau. One of the nice side benefits of reading Richler is that you'll recognize many of the settings. Happy reading and thanks for watching and commenting!
I like that you read all sorts of genres. I also read classics, modern fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, non-fiction. I notice some Star Wars on your shelf as well - not ashamed to say I read Star Wars fiction on the regular as well! Mostly Canon, but the original Thrawn trilogy is excellent. Very interesting top 10 books, look forward to more on your channel! Subbed!
@tazzypumpkin I bought the Thrawn Trilogy as a boxed set because it was one of my two favourite Star Wars stories back in the day (we're talking before there was a prequel movie trilogy). I've tried a couple of the newer Canon books, but not many, and was left lukewarm (which is better than my feelings on episodes 7, 8 and 9, but still...). Any recommendations for the Canon books to check out? Part of the challenge with Star Wars novels is that there's just so much to pick from, and quality is up and down.
@@ADudeWhoReads Yeah for sure, the quality is very uneven. I think some of my favorites from canon are Lost Stars, Rebel Rising, Dark Disciple (if you are a Clone Wars fan, it feels like a story arc straight from the show), the Rogue One novelization, and the first Thrawn trilogy.
Sweet. Thanks for the recos. I’ll check those out!
Douglas Adams: I favour Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency myself. Only book I've ever read that upon finishing the last page, I had to immediately re-read it. Similar humour as Hitchhiker's, but the most incredibly crafted mystery that leaves you feeling like you have solved a Rubik's Cube by accident.
Wow! I read Dirk Gently a few years ago and didn't have the same experience. I had previously watched the Dirk Gently Netflix series (which I think is fantastic), and I don't think the series could be more different from the source material. For whatever reason, the humour in DG didn't land for me as well as for Hitchhiker's.
Excellent list; Now I need to go read *The Big Nowhere* . Thank you very much for making this video. Cheers 🤘
You're welcome and thank you for taking the time to watch and comment!
Interesting list. I've read five of the ones you list: 3, 5, 6, 7, and 10. Recently read all of Hemingway's short stories also. Wondering if you have read The Overstory by Richard Powers.
Hey, Jim. I haven't read The Overstory, though it is on my (admittedly ridiculously long) list of books to get to. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Great list. It’s nice to see another reader that enjoys a variety of genres and is open to new authors. I will be checking out some of these books on your list. Cheers
Love it! Nothing feels better than introducing someone to something that they might potentially love. Once you've had a chance to read any, let me know how you feel about them..
Enjoyed your list. A suggestion? Try Willa Cather or Shirley Jackson on the distaff side
Thanks for watching and thank you so much for the suggestions. I'll check them out!
Agree with you on War and Peace and The Old Man and the Sea and your opinion as to Hemingways lesser works. I would also add Anna Karenina to the Tolstoy list. Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain is one of my favourites and no one who makes favourites lists seems to mention him, yet he won the Nobel Prize. His short story Life and Death in Venice too. For W&P what remains with me is when PA died, it took like 100 pages to kill him off, and when the little boy Count inherited all that land and serfs and people just stared at him.
I confess to having never read Mann, but The Magic Mountain is on my to-read list. As for PA's 100-page death in W&P, to me that's the perfect example of Tolstoy's genius; it would have been tedious written by anyone else, but Tolstoy makes it seem completely natural. Thanks so much for watching and commenting!
A young man who reads books. Rare....keep on your good videos!
Thank you! One of the things I love about this channel is that it’s the only place anyone refers to me as a YOUNG man. 😉
Well, this was an interesting and useful video. As is the case with you, I was introduced to Murakami through Kafka on the Shore and like you, I went on a Murakami binge. Kafka on the Shore remains my favorite of his books, although The Windup Bird Chronicle is close, and Murakami is my favorite living author. And, while Anthony Bourdain was neither a great writer nor, I think, particularly insightful, I too loved Kitchen Confidential. It was in its day, a cultural bomb at least in the New York restaurant-goer world, of which I was a part at the time. It made you wonder if he was talking about the place where you were eating. Bourdain also tried to write some mystery novels, and they are awful. Also, because of your video, I just ordered Barney's Version, which I had not heard of. So many books, so little time.
Your list is interesting and, of course, such a list is intensely personal. My favorite novel is Kipling's Kim, and nobody I know agrees with me on that. The Hobbit is fun and I enjoyed it, but it's a children's book and not in a league with The Wind in the Willows and numerous others; On the Road was great when I was a seventeen-year-old college freshman trying to figure out the world and what I wanted from it, and was impressed by the beats and bebop musicians, but sixty years later it is unreadable. Truman Capote famously said of the book, "That's not writing, that's typing," and I think in retrospect that he was right. Ellroy is, in my view, a second-rank crime/noir writer, way below Hammett or Graham Greene in his Brighton Rock mode. (Unlike you and to my discredit, I have over the past 65 years read a trainload of mystery/crime/thriller/spy novels, quite literally thousands, and I read L.A. Confidential on someone's recommendation, and decided to not read any of Ellroy's other novels.) The Old Man and the Sea is Hemingway long past his prime, and not up to his best stuff, such as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms and the Nick Adams stories. I always thought of it as a minuscule homage to Moby Dick, and I emphasize the minuscule. I suppose it's hard to quibble with War and Peace, but I have never gotten through it, though I have tried several times. As Woody Allen once said, "It's about Russia." I don't read, if that is the proper verb, graphic novels, which tend to strike me as pretentious comic books, and while I thought Douglas Adams was a funny man - I loved his line, "Let us now eff the ineffable" - the Hitchhiker's Guide is hardly a great book.
So, I have read six of the books on your list - seven if you count having read one of Ellroy's other L.A. books - and made a serious stab at War and Peace. It's an interesting list, but if I were to try and put together a top-ten list, none of yours would be on it, with the possible except of Kafka, and I would have to think about that a lot. Still, I do have hopes for Barney's Version, so I thank you.
First off, thanks for watching and commenting! Clearly, we have different views on almost all of the books on this list, so I have to commend you on being open to trying out Barney’s Version. Given the overlap in our personal tastes I’d be very curious to get your thoughts once you’ve read it. Let me know!
Henry, I loved your comment, and agree with most of it. Thank you for your comment on Hemingway - OldMan and the Sea is on so many lists, but it's not his best. The other writer's comments were hilarious. What are your favorite mystery/crime/spy favorite novels?
@@barbarapaige4587 Thank you for your kind words. My taste in mystery/crime/spy novels is fairly varied. If you are starting out, you can't go wrong with Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle is the Shakespeare of the genre. He was followed around the turn of the last century by R. Austin Freeman, who pioneered the forensic detective story. Freeman was a creature of his time, and his female characters tend to delicate flowers who might weep or faint at the slightest shock, but the mysteries are good and I recommend The Red Thumbmark. Early Agatha Christie was very good, but avoid any after the mid-50s. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Ambler is the quintessential spy novel, and another great one from the early days is The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim, although I don't like anything else by him. Of the Golden Age writers, beside Christie, I like Dorothy Sayers and Marjorie Allingham very much. Hammett and Chandler are both terrific. The Maltese Falcon is one of my all-time favorites. My favorite contemporary crime writer is John Lawton, who has two series - the Frederick Troy series about a Scotland Yard officer and the Joe Wilderness series, which are MI6 espionage - both of which are terrific. Lawton in my opinion writes better prose than anyone else in the genre. Even my late wife thought he was good, and she, an Ivy League English major, almost never stooped to reading crime novels, although she did also like A Coffin for Dimitrios. There are a number of great spy novelists over the last few decades - Jean le Carre of course, his American counterpart Charles McCarry, whom I actually like better (both le Carre and McCarry had actually worked for MI6 and the CIA respectively and knew what they were talking about) and you might try McCarry's The Tears of Autumn, which is wonderful, Alan Furst is very good, Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon books about a Mossad assassin are good, if a little lighter than le Carre and McCarry's. In no particular order, my favorite books over the past decade or so are Terry Hayes' I Pilgrim, which I found to be an absolute page-turner, although with nothing much to say. Rennie Airth's A River of Darkness was wonderful, although subsequent efforts were less good. Tana French, whose novels are set in Ireland, is very good. A strange and wonderful writer is Fred Vargas, a woman who in real life is apparently a well-regarded French archaeologist: her character Commissaire Adamsberg is one of a kind and I like her novels a lot. JanWillem van der Wettering's novels set in Amersterdam are terrific. I could go on for a while, but I suppose that enough for the moment, except that my all-time favorite series are the Judge Dee novels by R.E. van Gulik. Judge Dee was based on a real 7th Century figure from the Tang Dynasty who was later popularized in detective stories during the Ming Dynasty 700 years later. Van Gulik was an expert in ancient Chinese and Japanese (he finished his career as the Dutch ambassador to Tokyo in the 1960s), and he initially translated one of the Ming books of Dee stories, but then started writing his own. His stated ambition was to present what life during the Tang Dynasty would have been like to westerners. I love them. If you are interested, the Chinese Gold Murders are the place to start. I hope that this has been helpful.
@@henrytberry Wow, Henry - thank you so much for your long and thoughtful reply. You are certainly well-read, and I appreciate your time in answering. Most of these authors I am not familiar with so you have given me some great (and new) suggestions. I just started on the spy stories, although I have read a bit of true crime and true spy stories. I have read several of Alan Furst's novels, and I especially enjoy the atmosphere he presents; you feel like you're there. I am also a history buff and enjoy reading about WWII. My Dad fought in Patton's Third Army and he's gone now, but somehow reading about WWII helps me to stay close to him. You sound so knowledgeable , and I wish you'd start a UA-cam channel - you'd be great.
@@barbarapaige4587 It's a coincidence that your dad was in Patton's Third Army. My dad was in the Normandy invasion. If you've seen Saving Private Ryan, the rollover at the opening says something to the effect of Normandy, France - Omaha Beach, Easy Section - June 6, 1944, 6:45 a.m., which is when and where my dad landed. Like most of those men, my dad never talked about the specifics of combat, but when my brother and I went with him to the movie, I asked him what he thought of the first twenty minutes, and he looked me in the eye and said, "That was pretty much what it was like." I'm grateful that I never say anything like that personally. I was in during Vietnam, but was in intelligence and never got near bullets flying. I know my dad had bad dreams for the rest of his life, and he was a very though guy. His unit was attached to the First Division and my brother and I had the enormous pleasure and honor of accompanying him to the Fiftieth Anniversary celebration in Normandy. I can see why you like Furst's books, as they all are set during the lead-up to the war, and as you say his great strength is that he creates an incredible sense of verisimilitude regarding time and place. I really liked his Kingdom of Shadows. You might like Berlin Noir, which are three mysteries featuring a police detective in Nazi Berlin during the war. They are very good. And the earlier of the John Lawton Troy novels - Black Out and Bluffing Mr. Churchhill - take place in London during the war. Lawton's Then We'll Take Berlin is partly set in Germany during the post-war allied occupation. They are all very good.
I think I'm a bit old to start a video channel. The upkeep would be too much work. Thank's for the complement though.
Nice list! On The Road is one of my favorite books as well--I'm a big fan of "road" and travel novels and this fits the bill perfectly.
me too! any other road / travel books to recommend?
10) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
9) Dubliners, James Joyce
8) The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
7) The Dictionary of Khazars, Milorad Pavić
6) Malone Dies, Samuel Beckett
5) A Game of Thrones, George R R Martin
4) 1984, George Orwell
3) The Island of the Day Before, Umberto Eco
2) The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons
1) Unnamable, Samuel Beckett
I love it. Great to see Beckett in there, and a much deserved inclusion of GRRM! Thanks for sharing.
8) The Third Policeman, Flann O'Brien
7) The Dictionary of Khazars, Milorad Pavić
I didn't think anyone else on earth knew about these two books!
Dan Simmons and that series is as good as science fiction gets I think. We were in the same dorm, Martindale Hall, at our tiny Indiana college, Wabash, at the same time. My roommate, the only person who kept the same extreme night owl hours as Simmons, swore he was a highly interesting guy. He was tiny and deathly pale. He is an excellent writer in all genres.
@@michaelcrosby5031 'He is an excellent writer in all genres.'
Yup. Songs of Kali is amazing.
@@jeanneanberglund531My Dad told me to read Flan. So, I have to double check his real name (that is tricky to remember which one).
Really surprise me with number 2, i have read it twice and while is amazingly creative and absurd i never thought it will be anyone's top 2
Well, it was definitely in my top 10… maybe 2 is a bit high, but Adams opened my eyes to a whole new style of writing, and it’s one of the few books that I can read over and over again and never get tired of :). Thanks for watching and commenting!
Thanks for sharing a very interesting and diverse top ten list of your favorite books. While the only book that is also on my personal top ten list (as of today, because like you my list can change from time to time) is Tolstoy's War and Peace. That having been said, I have read and admire some of the other books on your list including The Old Man and the Sea, Kafka on the Shore, and On the Road. I was fortunate to attend an exhibition of Kerouac memorabilia, here in Chicago, that included the original manuscript of his book. I will look forward to any future changes to your list based on your planned fiction reading project.
That is an incredibly cool story! Any entries on your top ten list that you think I should be checking out? Thanks for watching!
Bro I have introduced many of my friends to hitchhiker's guide to galaxy! What an amazing book! I am surprised they dont have full fledged series on this book, that captures all the essence of this book! Amazing book series and best sci fi ever!
The book is a really impressive feat. It manages to be a good story while being being funny on almost every page. I don't know any other books that can do that (maybe some of Terry Pratchett's books?). Thanks for watching and commenting!
I always enjoy a Top Ten list where I’m persuaded to buy a book in the middle of a video:
Asterios Polyp *purchased*
Mission accomplished! I hope you enjoy it, and if you get a chance, drop me a note once you've read it and let me know what you thought. Thanks for watching.
Just discovered your vlog and I like it. I too am a huge Murakami fan. Also on my top ten is the old Man and the Sea. May I suggest Memoir From Antproof Case by Mark Helprin? I can't believe I haven't read any James Ellroy! Thanks for that suggestion!
Never heard of Helprin, but I will definitely check him out now. Thanks so much for watching and for the reco!
I like Soldier of the Great War as Helprin’s best. It’s definitely in my top list and I read it three times now. Antproof didn’t do it as much for me.
I really enjoyed hearing your list and went to check out Barney’s Version and Kitchen Confidential ebooks from the library. I’m a 73 year old retired librarian and have been an avid reader all my life. What’s funny is that if I were to make my own list, my number one favorite book is one I read in 1966 called Boys and Girls Together by William Goldman. I recently reread it for maybe the fourth time, and it checks all the boxes of what I look for in a great novel. It’s a big one too. My #2 would be Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, also read in my youth and reread later on. Not to say I haven’t read hundreds of great books since, but those two are just like long-time best friends.😊
And I’ve never heard of either! Thank you for sharing. I will be adding them to my list of books to check out! If you have a chance let me know what you think of Barney’s Version and Kitchen Confidential.
Hi Adam, just wanted to let you know I’m about 50 pages into BV and this is definitely my kind of book. I’m American, but lived in Montreal between 1968-70, and I just loved that city. I don’t know if it’s still as great, but it was a fantastic place to be at 18. I remember having a season pass for Expo 67 - $15!
This is so great to hear! In some ways, Montreal has changed quite a bit since then, in other ways it’s exactly the same. I know I’m biased but it’s still one of my favourite cities in the world! I hope you enjoy the rest of Barney’s Version just as much!
I'm looking forward to reading some of these books, thank you for sharing. I've been reading War and Peace for about a year. The writing is beautiful, but I have stopped and started a few times to take breaks. I think it's time to get back to it. I miss it. I appreciate you saying to not try to sprint, but just enjoy the writing, that's sort of how I'm reading it. The writing is so gorgeous, that I don't care if I get lost in it and forget some details. I'm not trying to analyze anything - just reading and enjoying, taking in what I can as I go. There's so much, that just getting through it, I know I will have gained so much.
So happy to hear this. As for analyzing and missing details, I think that if you're enjoying it this much, you may well enjoy a second read, at which point any details you missed, I'm sure you'll pick up on.
Good list. Nice and varied. Here's my top 10 as of this moment. The order is very loose.
1. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
3. The Alexandrian Quartet - Lawrence Durrell
4. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
5. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
7. Peace Breaks Out - John Knowles
8. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
9. Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
10. (tie) Go Tell It on the Mountain/Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
I cheated a bit with the quartet, the LotR trilogy, and the Baldwin tie. It's tough to narrow it down to only 10 books. As I Lay Dying, The Sun Also Rises, Tender Is the Night, and many more might find a spot depending on the day you ask me.
Fantastic list! James Baldwin is one of my all time favourite authors, and the only reason Go Tell it on the Mountain didn't make my top 10 list was because it's been so long since I read it that I wasn't sure I remembered it properly. I'm due for a re-read. Thanks for watching and for sharing!
We have incredibly similar taste
I just read As I Lay Dying. It was awesome. I can see how McCarthy was influenced and I love all Cormac McCarthy.
LOTR is not a trilogy; it is one novel.
Thank you for this great list. I happened to have just picked up a copy of Kitchen Confidential at a GoodWill store. I’ve always been a fan of Bourdain’s television shows and the book is like discovering him all over again. I love the HitchHiker’s Guide and I highly recommend the early1980’s video series. My one recommendation to you would be One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I often pick up used copies and give them out as gifts. I would describe it as LSD for life; it will change your perspective on reality.
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett was my no.1 book for 20yrs until I read 1Q84 earlier this year.
Cool! Ironically, despite being a huge Murakami fan, 1Q84 is probably my least favourite book of his. Different strokes… Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@ADudeWhoReads - I thought you menat 1984 by Geroge Orwell. But there is a Book called 1Q84?
@@HoldenNY22 there is indeed. 1Q84 is by Haruki Murakami. However, as you might guess by the title there is thematic allusion to 1984 by George Orwell (despite the stories being nothing alike)!
The fifth Kingsbrigde novel came out three days ago. The Armour of Light. Pillars of the Earth is in my top 3, with the second, World Without End definitely in my top ten. I'm really hoping the Armour of Light makes it too, just started it.
I have some similar tastes. I will check out a couple of your choices.
I never could get into Douglas Adams or On the Road.
My favorite Ellroy book is American Tabloid (I love it), but I haven't read The Big Nowhere.
You might want to hold the book up with a steady hand or place on a stand.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll pay more attention to waving the book around in future!
Lists like this are fun. On my list, I would include Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway and Lady Murasaki's Tale of Gengi. I also really liked War and Peace, like you.
Tale of Gengi has always intrigued me. I’ve never gotten around to reading it though. Thanks for watching and for the comment!
Thanks for your video. I loved how you described War And Peace....I agree....It is a marathon and not a sprint. Also thanks for introducing this Australian to a Canadian author treasure. Looking forward to reading Morecai Richler.
I truly hope you enjoy Richler. either way, drop me a line to let me know what you think after you’ve read him!
I read War and Peace 18-ish months ago and it shot to the top of my list too. Since then I’ve read a few more of Tolstoy’s works and so far they’re all great.
I also have Hitchhiker’s Guide in my top ten!
Nice! Thanks for watching and sharing!
I read _Anna Karenina_ and *looooovvvvvveeeedddd* it, so thought I would give _War and Peace_ a try and loved it even more! I kept thinking, "How did I get to be 60 years old and not know these books?!" I then realized I _had_ to be 60 to read them, to understand them, to know I could take my time... to know I couldn't have read them in my hands, but had them read _to_ me on Audible. What a joy they were (and are) in my life! I love that _War and Peace_ is on your list and you, too, have recently read it. (All that said, *you* do NOT have to be 60 to understand them. _I_ did because I didn't have the life experiences to relate. I am sure I was a late-bloomer. If you are intrigued, pick it up!)
@@HealthAtAnyCost You're so right. What you bring to a book is just as important as what's in the book. While I'm not 60, I freely admit that I wouldn't have appreciated this book 20 years ago... maybe not even 10 years ago!
Great selection with Kafka on the Shore...most people select 1Q84, but Kafka is the one for me. Murakami is one of my favorite authors and one of the few authors whose books I just want to reread.
Love that list. Read only one of them, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and yes sooo lol. Thanks for encouragement to read War and Peace. If haven’t yet check out The Death of Eli Gold by David Baddiel. 👏🏼🐀😎👍
Awesome. Thanks for the reco. Have not read The Death of Eli Gold!
I'd love to hear your recommendations on 50s-60s Americana as I also love books set in that period
Aside from those mentioned in the video, I'm going to have to give this some more thought (perhaps worthy of a video of its own), because while many great works by many great writers jump to mind (Didion, Roth, Baldwin, Ellison, Capote, Thompson, Salinger), I know I'm probably going to be forgetting a ton of my favourites.
@@ADudeWhoReads I'll be patiently waiting :)
Wow! Love your top 10 because your favorite books are so varied! You are certainly not stuff in a rut. I agree with you about W&P (also just read it last year) but I hated On the Road (may be more appealing to younger males than retired women). Love that you included Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the same list as W&P. Thanks for introducing me to Mordecai Richler. It's going to be so interesting to see how you react to these cherished books in about 20 years. I enjoy re-reading my favorites every so often, but it's as though I never read the same book twice since, as I get older, the books seem different. Oh wait. I'm different!! 🙂PS A favorite classic of mine is The Count of Monte Cristo. You may enjoy it, too.
Thanks for the comment, Susan. You're right that this may be the only top 10 list that puts the Hitchhiker's Guide next to War and Peace. Hah! And you're absolutely right that the way you respond to a book changes with you, which is why I'm such a fan of re-reading. As for On the Road, I actually did first read it 20 years ago, and re-read it recently, and it still held up (for me)! I can definitely see how it would appeal more to a younger male audience, but I think what I love about the book is more the energy of the writing and the atmosphere it creates than the themes and story itself. The Count of Monte Cristo is on my list to read, and my goal is to read it in the original French, so it might take me a while. Thanks again!
@@ADudeWhoReads I love Hitchhiker's Guide, On The Road, and War and Peace (but Anna Karenina better). Hate the Hobbit, though. :-)
Oh well. No one bats 1.000 I suppose 😉 thanks for sharing!
It's always fun to hear someone discussing books they enjoyed. I have read almost all the books you mentioned and was particularly pleased you mentioned Anthony Bourdain. I really enjoyed his book and him as a chef. Glad you threw in some foreign authors. As a child of the 50s you are quite right about those decades, the 50s,60s and 70s ', an awesome time to have lived through .
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I miss Bourdain. No one's been able to replace him, and those who've tried don't even come close in my mind (thinking of people like David Chang).
Fantastic choices. War and Peace is still on my list, unread. However, maybe I will try the chapter a day. Thanks.
Thanks. If you do, let me know how it goes. I started out with a chapter a day, but after a while, I was enjoying the book so much I was doing more and more. It still took me a few months to finish, but totally worth it!
James Ellroy is one of my favorite writers, the LA quartet is great. Joan Didion “The White Album” & “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”. Truman Capote “In Cold Blood”. Always loved “Catcher in the Rye”. Philip Roth, William Faulkner, Kurt Vonnegut, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, so many writers change your life
In a few sentences you named so many of the authors I struggled so hard with excluding from this list: Didion, Salinger, Faulkner, Roth, Vonnegut… fantastic selection.
An interesting list, have read 5 of them and greatly enjoyed 4. And I have added four of the unread 5 to my reading list; I just don't really enjoy many graphic novels. Thank you for the suggestions 🙏
4 out of 5 is a pretty good hit rate. If you feel like it, let me know how you like the ones that you pick up! Thanks for watching and commenting!
Great list, lots I’ve never heard of. I’m currently working my way through Murakami, loving it so far.
Thanks for the comment. What's your favourite Murakami so far?
@@ADudeWhoReads truth be told, Murakami has been put on the back burner as I have got myself incredibly invested in the Red Rising series but I read Colourless Tsukuru Tzakaki recently and loved it. Kafka on the Shore next I think as I haven’t read any of his more famous “surreal” novels yet.
@@lewisb.3242 Cool! I've read the first 2 novels in the Red Rising saga so far. I'm not going to lie, I haven't loved it. As far as modern epic sci fi series, I'm a bigger fan of The Expanse. That said, I'm going to read the 3rd novel before making my final judgment!
@@ADudeWhoReads I have mixed emotions with Red Rising, as I read it I love it but when things don’t go the way I want them to I feel myself resenting the direction it’s going until it grips me again. I think that’s a good sign that I’m invested enough to be upset when things don’t go my way. I would encourage you to read the 3rd book before making your final decision as it is a good place to leave it if you don’t feel drawn into reading the remaining 4 books.
I haven’t read The Expanse books but I will definitely look into them.
Поздрав из Србије! Дивно је када схватите да на другом крају света неко воли исте књиге, као што су Толкин, Толстој... Свако добро!!!❤
I'm not going to try and type a reply in Serbian, but I agree! And thank you so much for watching and taking the time to comment. :)
Nice list ( Although I’ve never heard of 70% in it ) . I will check these out . Also , have you read “ The Brothers Karamazov “ ? I see that it appears in many top 10 lists .
I haven't read Brothers Karamazov, yet, but as of right now, I believe it's the most commonly recommended book by viewers of this channel, which means that I need to get to it sooner rather than later!
@@ADudeWhoReads Awesome . I read a lot of management and self help books in the last couple of years . Looking forward to different genres and new titles . I blind bought The Brothers Karamazov a few days ago ..Excited to start reading it today !. I like your style of reviewing and presenting . Looking forward to more content from you . Subscribed !
@@mustanggt5713 Management and self help books were pretty much all I read for the better part of a decade. Any particular favourites? I tend to prefer the older books. For Self-Help, I think the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still is unbeaten, and in management, Peter Drucker still stands the test of time, but also anything by Jim Collins.
@@ADudeWhoReads “The 7 habits of highly effective people “ was my first ever self-help book . Great book indeed. I also love Atomic Habits by James Clear, Influence by Robert Cialdini , Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco , Rework by Jason Fried , Eat that frog by Brian Tracy and Linchpin by Seth Godin .
Here's how I know I've read too much Self-Help: I've read all of those. :) Have you read the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg? I actually prefer it to Atomic Habits. However, if you've read Atomic Habits, not sure there's a lot more to learn by reading The Power of Habit.
Great vid & great list 😊 are you planning on doing a list of your ten favourite books by women? Would love to see that!
Thank you for the comment! There are definitely female authors I love like Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion, Ursula K LeGuin and Doris Kearns Goodwin, but somehow their books didn't crack the list. That said, I'll freely admit that I have read far more male authors than I have female authors, and it's a pretty serious gap in my personal reading history. I'm not sure about creating a separate list of books by women, because something about separating them out feels wrong (or maybe I'm just wrong)... Instead, I'm committed to reading more female authors. Just a few that are on my reading list for the coming year include: Austen, the Brontes, Du Maurier, Eliot, along with a few recommendations that have come from me posting this video! Thanks again for watching and commenting!
Thank you so much for these recommendations!
You're so welcome! thanks for watching and commenting :)
Interesting list. I'd never heard of your number 1, so must check it out. I don't know what my top 10 would be, except that Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset would be top of my list, head and shoulders above the rest. And I think I'd replace the Hemingway with some Steinbeck, probably The Grapes of Wrath.
I've never heard of Kristin Lavransdatter, so I'll have to look into it! On another day, I very well could have switched Hemingway with Steinbeck (although, it probably would have been Of Mice and Men). This was a tough list to narrow down to 10! Thank you so much for the comment!
This is m first video of you. I am recently retired and want to read again. So I visited some top ten videos. All of them fantasy. What I liked about your collection is the allround approach. And... you seem to be a sensitive person who likes the connect with the books. Also your presentation is so real and not overdone. No one else I visited on UA-cam gave me that feeling of a real and honest person. Thanks for sharing and I wil try to read some of your list. I am from holland and there libraries are very poor provided. It I give it a try. Translations are also poorly made. So maybe I have to buy them in English., thanks wim
Hi Wim. Thanks for watching and for your kind words. I truly means a lot. My guess is that you can probably get the classic books and the really popular ones translated into Dutch. So, things like War and Peace, The Old Man and the Sea, The Hobbit and Kafka on the Shore are all probably readily available in a good translation. Other books I'm not even sure I'd want to read as a translation. For example, I don't think the humour of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would translate well. Personally, whenever possible, I like to read books in their original language (English is my mother tongue, but I also read French well enough), but that will depend on your level of comfort in the language and the difficulty of the book. Best of luck and if you do end up trying some of these books, let me know how you like them!
Another ‘Dude Who Reads’ here and not usually a Commenter (definitely more of a ‘Lurker’).
Whilst my favourite genre is ‘American Southern Gothic’, I wanted to share some lesser known works by some Australian authors, as this seems to be a ‘safe space’ to complete such an act.
I hope I would not be defined as presumptuous to say, that the following could potentially be defined as ‘Australian Gothic’, if such a category exists. (Side note, earlier spelling of ‘favourite’ denotes my own origin of Australia).
Kenneth Cook: Wake in Fright
Elizabeth Harrower: The Watchtower
Janette Turner Hospital: Oyster
Patrick White: The Tree of Man
Elizabeth Jolley: The Well
Alexis Wright: Carpentaria
All 6 evoke such a strong sense of place, which for me, is the indomitable strength of Australian Literature. A spattering of contemporary ‘bush’ or ‘outback’ works, as well as some mid-century (20th) urban pieces.
Having previously been so averse to Australian writing, due in part to my ignorance that I need not have my ‘culture’ explained to me in a written format, I have in recent times had perhaps what some would define as an ‘epiphany’. These writers (and of course, many more) are extremely skilled in translating and distilling Australian Identity, Culture and Landscape to the literary form.
I do still adore ‘Southern Literature’, and have come to realise (British spelling) the many parallels that correlate between them.
Oozing with dark, typically ‘sultry’ (Southern) and ‘humid’, though sometimes ‘devastatingly arid’ (Australian) atmosphere, I do not think I can ever be satiated of desiring that certain modern Gothic flavour (Brit sp.)
Anyway, diatribe over.
This comment will most likely be ‘lost’ amongst the sea of other comments, but I was feeling particularly inspired by another ‘Dude Who Reads’ passion, and felt like joining in. 😉
Thanks so much for sharing! I’m Canadian (in case it wasn’t obvious from the video), and I went through a similar progression with Canadian literature, and I think part of it stems from having it force fed to me in school. But as I got older I saw the importance, the beauty and the truth in it. I confess to never having read any of your selections, but the idea of deep diving into a culture based on its literature is immensely appealing. I’m going to keep this list handy, because eventually I’d love to do some immersive reading like this. Maybe as I visit Australia! Thanks again for watching and sharing this! 🙏
The Old Man and the sea is the only one I have read and I have read it a number of times and I think its brilliant book. Kafta on the Shore and Barneys Version both sound like there very good, i might add them to my to-read list. Would it be a good guess to say you haven't read Ulysses, Middlemarch or Crime and Punishment yet. They might make it to your list at in a few years time. I enjoyed you delivery and comments and look forward to seeing your updated list next year
Thanks for watching and for your comments, Tony! You are correct that all three of the books you've named are still on my "to read" list. Last year I set myself a challenge of working my way through a list of 100 classics in chronological order. So far, I'm only in the 1st century (just finished The Aeneid), so it might take a while before I get to Ulysses, but I'll get there. :)
Some of the books here are favourites of mine as well (number 10, 3 and 2). It's a great list but very white and male dominant.
Thanks, and yes, you are correct. I noticed that when I put the list together, too. This is, to be perfectly honest, partly a reflection of what I’ve read (which has been largely white male authors) and partly a bit of happenstance (for example, James Baldwin is easily in my top 10 favourite WRITERS of all time but none of his individual books cracked my top 10). It’s something I’m keeping in the back of my mind as I choose books in the future.
@@ADudeWhoReads just read good writing
omg finally some love for asterios polyp!!! one of my faves ever
I really thought when I published this vid, no one would have heard of Asterios Polyp! It makes me so happy to know I’m not alone in my love of this book! Thanks for watching and commenting!
No ancient books? No mathematics books? No history books? No philosophy?
Not on this list, but for ancient books I'd say my favourite is the Odyssey (many prefer the Iliad, but I like the adventure aspect of the Odyssey). I've also re-read Meditations a few times, so that would probably be up there. In terms of philosophy I like Hume, Simone de Beauvoir and just recently discovered Simone Weil (a contemporary of the other Simone). I haven't read much contemporary philosophy. For history, I love Will Durant's The Story of Civilization. Some of the ideas are a little outdated, but he writes beautifully. For something that's not 11 volumes and a little more accessible, I don't think you can go wrong with Sapiens, or if you want something to argue over Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. For mathematics, I confess I've never read a math book that wasn't a text book, so I'm definitely not the right person to ask.
God forbid he could have a personal choice, eh?
Great video thanks. A small favour to ask, when you hold the book at the first instance, stop waving it about I am deaf and need to know what the book is. Thank you
Sorry about that. I will do my very best to keep this in mind for future videos and also to post pictures of the books. Thanks for watching 🙏
It’s very much a dudes list, No it’s not because there’s no romance novels.
Indeed
It's nice to see, as there are way too many feminine lists on UA-cam already.
@@mh4841 That's such a strange thing to say. A good book is a good book regardless of "feminine" or "masculine".
What a feminine comment
@@X64813yeah i know right. some hyper masculine insecurity right there
I'd be interested to know how you would rate The Pendragon Legend by Szerb Antal
I had never heard of it until your comment, but based on the quick research I just did, it sounds fantastic!
My #1 book is Godel, Esher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Brsid by Douglas Hoffsteader. A story about art, beauty, and self-referential philosophy--deep! It is stunning how the author mimics the points being made in the structure of the writing itself.
I’ve never heard of it, but based on your description it sounds VERY intriguing. Thank you so much for sharing.
it seems incredible that that book is an isolate
Hey have you read atomic habits by James Clear?
I have. I preferred the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, but at some point a lot of those books start to resemble each other.
What channel or Patreon channel etc. has a good group where they read books and analyze them
Check out Benjamin Mcevoy’s Hardcore Literature. His Patreon is an in depth book club.
Respect for including Kitchen Confidential. Bourdain put the whole culinary world in context for everyone. This book was the beginning of that. Im gonna have to give this one a re-read.
Totally agreed. Even if some of the more memorable bits are now a bit outdated (by and large it’s okay to order fish on a Monday now), the book itself shone a light on a culture that was everywhere but unseen. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Have your read stoner by John Williams? If yes what do you think about it
I have! I thought it was a beautifully written book about the importance of discovering one's identity. I thought despite the overall morose tone of the book, the underlying message was uplifting. I also think Williams' writing is phenomenal. He doesn't try to dazzle with fancy prose, but he still leaves a lasting emotional impression.
I talked about Stoner in greater length in a video called: "New Year. New Series. New Favourite? (Jan Reading Recap)" You can use the chapters to go directly to where I talk about Stoner, if the other books don't interest you.
Stoner's also one of the books that was recommended to me the most, so it's also mentioned in the video: "I got 500+ book recommendations. These are the top 10."
What were your thoughts on it?
I will be reading War & Peace next year as I continue with my Classics reading for a 3rd year.
Excellent! Congrats on keeping up the habit, and thanks for watching, Patrice!