On a lighter side.....

[diane]

Bill Bryson's One Summer, America 1927 is another of my favorites!

Bill Bryson is so good! I've got most of his stuff. He only disappointed me one time and that was his book about reliving a childhood road trip. It was a bit dark and grumpy - he learned you can't relive anything from your childhood because you can't be a child again. But it was still good!

 

[Drew]

How did I miss that? Thanks for the tip, Drew.

Certainly - all of his books are good. Beware, though, he was a "poor boy made good," who grew up in Boston and made it into Harvard College. There was something of an "aristocratic embrace" when JFK was killed - the president's widow asked T.H. White to immortalize him in terms of "Camelot," which White did. He offered the metaphor in a Time Magazine article at the time (I think) and it stuck, fairly or not.

The rest of his work is pretty well balanced and certainly worth reading.

 

[Northern Light]

In no particular order:

Killer Angels- Michael Shaara
Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
David Copperfield-Charles Dickens
The Bible
To Serve Them All My Days-R.K. Delderfield
A Jest of God-Margaret Lawrence
For Whom the Bell Tolls-Ernest Hemingway
A Civil War Narrative- Shelby Foote
Anne of Green Gables- L.M. Montgomery
Winnie the Pooh- A.A. Milne

 

[Lnwlf]

Lessee...
The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, John Fox Jr.

This Hallowed Ground, Bruce Catton (of course no list is complete without it!)

And A Hard Rain Fell, John Ketwig

April Morning, Howard Fast

Last Of The Mohicans James Fennimore Cooper

It Doesn't Take A Hero, H. Norman Schwarzkoph

Any Louis L'Amour western

The Holy Bible, KJV

Also numerous cereal boxes...

 

[diane]

Got to add the old hippie category:

Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
Sand County Almanac - Aldous Leopold
Living the Good Life - Scott and Helen Nearing
Back to Eden - Jethro Kloss
Let's Eat Right! - Adelle Davis
Another Roadside Attraction - Tom Robbins
The Jack LaLanne Way to Vibrant Good Health - Jack LaLanne
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
A Confederate General from Big Sur - Richard Brautigan

p s
Added authors!

 

[AUG]

Co. Aytch by Sam Watkins
With the Old Breed by Eugene B. Sledge
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarkqu
Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
The Thin Red Line by James Jones

 

[Drew]

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson's book? Outstanding! I remember Dharma Bums also. Jack Lalanne was right - he made it to 96 or something and could have whooped most us along the way!

 

[diane]

Rachel Carson's book? Outstanding! I remember Dharma Bums also. Jack Lalanne was right - he made it to 96 or something and could have whooped most us along the way!

He was aiming for 120 but didn't take into account all the pollution and 'stuff' on the veggies! His method worked though, but I could never follow it all - he believed food was just fuel and if it tasted good you shouldn't eat it. I think food should taste good whether it's fuel or not but do agree our taste buds have been sadly perverted... (Guess I should go back and add the authors?)

 

[chellers]

@chellers
Othello? Microbiology?
Way above my pay grade.

Ya never know, Lnwlf. Such works just might strike your fancy!

 

[John Davison]

I'm going to " borrow " a page from Facebook. Today someone tagged me to give a list of ten books, which I am going to ask of my friends on this forum. What I am looking for is ten books that have influenced you. The idea here is to list your ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and do not think too hard. They do not have to be the "right" books or great work of art/literature. Just ones that have affected you in some way. Here are my ten:

1- Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

3- The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

4- The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn ( about Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers )

5- North Dallas Forty by Pete Gent ( football )

6- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

7- The Last of the Mohicans by Nathaniel Hawthorne

8- Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy

9- Semi Tough by Dan Jenkins ( more football )

10- The Summer Game by Roger Angell ( more baseball )

How about it everybody, what are yours?

Great idea! Be interesting to see what comes out of your survey. As for me:
1. The Nick Adams series: Hemingway
2. Canoeing with the Cree: Eric Severied
3. Rabble in Arms: KennethRoberts
4. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
5. Sailing Alone Around the World: Joshua Slocum
6. Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand
7. Paradise Lost: John Milton
8. History of the English Speaking People: Winston Churchill
9. Profiles in Courage: John F. Kennedy
10. The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew: various authors. Taught me to love reading at an early age.

 

[ole]

Too many to list.

 

[John Davison]

Bill Bryson is so good! I've got most of his stuff. He only disappointed me one time and that was his book about reliving a childhood road trip. It was a bit dark and grumpy - he learned you can't relive anything from your childhood because you can't be a child again. But it was still good!

Bill Bryson is a good writer. I especially liked his tale of hiking the Appalachian trail.

 

[diane]

Bill Bryson is a good writer. I especially liked his tale of hiking the Appalachian trail.

I'm reading that right now. In one of his books, he was asked by a waitress in Mississippi where he was from. He said he was living in Britain but had been raised in Iowa. She said, "Well, you speak right good English!"

 

[Nathanb1]

I'm sort of with ole on this.....but at the moment.....and in no particular order

1. The Hobbit
2. The Ring Trilogy
3. Gone With the Wind
4. The Saga of Billy the Kid by Ash Upson (I think I was six when I read it.....)
5. Nine Years Among the Indians by Herman Lehmann (Also read when I was six or seven...can you see a pattern here?)
6. This is War by Ernie Pyle (hmmm......maybe age 12?)
7. A Vaquero of the Brush Country by J. Frank Dobie
8. Hound of the Baskervilles (4th grade)
9. Jane Eyre
10. The Once and Future King

And yes, ten is too few. It's funny....these are all books I read by the time I was out of high school, and there is a decided slant toward history and British Lit....both of which I teach. I was one of those weird kids who loved to read fiction and then research the heck out of it to find out more about what really happened, or the period, or the author.....

And I'll probably think of some others....like The Little Engine That Could and Three Billy Goats Gruff (hmmmm......trolls.....)

 

[7th Mississippi Infantry]

Two more . . . for now,

My Dog Skip, Willie Morris

2001: A Space Odyssey , Arthur C. Clarke

 

[JerseyBart]

Oh The Places You Will Go
Poppy
Poppy and Ereth
The Last Full Measure...1st Minnesota Regiment
A Scythe of Fire...8th Georgia Regiment
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
The Polar Express
The Odyssey
Where the Red Fern Grows
To Kill a Mockingbird

 

[JerseyBart]

Great thread by the way!!!

 

[Nathanb1]

Shogun (james Clavell)
The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Sybil ( Flora Rheta Schreiber)
Papillon (Henri Charriere)
The Civil War (Shelby Foote)
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

Not quite 10, but a couple of those are multi-volumes, so close enough.

One of my 8th graders ran up to me yesterday waving a book and saying, "You have to read this!" It was Shogun, which I read so long ago I can't remember the date (it was before the TV miniseries was made!).....

OMG. I left off To Kill a Mockingbird?

 

[Old Hickory]

Awe, you guys are bringing up too much stuff to read, I only have so much time!

 

[GELongstreet]

In no particular order:

Quintus goes to Rome - Hans Dieter Stöver
The Conquest of Mexico by Cortez 1519-1521 - Anton Hoffmann
The Commodore - Cecil S. Forester
Shogun - James Clavell
The Day of the Ants - Bernard Werber
Arena (Magic: The Gathering 1) - William R. Forstchen
Star Wars - George Lucas
From Manassas to Appomattox - James Longstreet
Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
Legends of the American Indians / Indian Stories - Vladimir Hulpach (a re-narration of The Last of the Mohicans, Singing Arrow, Prairie Son, The last of the Chiefs, Dakota on Fire and The ghost of the Llano Estacado)

EDIT: Corrected title translation