What are your favorite books?

My reading list is already longer than I can keep up with but I'm always looking for something new to read so I'm asking for a short list of recomendations. Here are mine:

--Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges, an excelent biography

--Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, author unknown. Find a good translation or read the original if you have the patience.

And on the lighter side

--anything by Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon (which lead me to the Turing book) are my favorites.

Also, though many might not like it at all...

--Dhalgren by Samuel Delany is one of the most intriguing books I have read. Be warned, it is extremely dense and convoluted; I don't claim to have understood a tenth of it... but maybe that't the point.

Oh, one more...

Though written for kids, an adult will get much more out of

--The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.

It recalls Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

For Fantasy-Fans I recommend The "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn"-Cycle by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, To Green Angel Tower Part 1, To Green Angel Tower Part 2)

For Sci-Fi-Fans I reccommend all books of the "Honor Harrington"-Cycle by David Weber

Fans of VERY strange books schould look for "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski

the name of the rose by umberto eco

la vispera del hombre by rene marquez

and every poem u can find by mario benedetti

Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the beach (German Title).

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Since this is a GAMES site, I thought I would mention a few of my favorite GAMING books.

"Hex Strategy - Making the Right Connections" and "Connection Games - Variations on a Theme" both by Cameron Browne.

I recently re-read "Word Freak - Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obseiion in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players" by Stefan Fatsis and enjoyed it just as much, if not more, the second time.

"New Rules for Classic Games" by R. Wayne Schmittberger is a good book, one I've turned back to many times...

...Likewise with "A Gamut of Games" by Sid Sackson.

"One Jump Ahead - Challengin Human Supremacy in Checkers" by Johathan Schaeffer is the book I'm reading now.

Every Pente fan should have a copy of "Pente Strategy" by Tom Braunlich.

The Playboy Winner's Guide to Board Games" bu Jon Freeman is outdated and long since out of print, but still entertaining

I loved "The Official Master Mind Handbook" by Leslie H. Ault when I was a kid.

I have too many chess books (300+) and backgammon books (30+) to name.

"A Gamut of Games" by Sid Sackson.

A spell for chamelon-Pears Anthony

Tatham Mound-Pears Anthony

Robot Visions-Isac Asamov

As far as I am concernd thease are the best books ever.

Just remembered this thread: I have read several books by Haruki Murakami and Umberto Eco based on the above recommendations. I still haven't read any of Asimov's robot stuff but did read the Foundation series. Word Freak is on my list.

Currently reading 2666 by Roberto Bolano. Of the things I've read recently, I've enjoyed the Ibis trilogy (Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke) by Amitav Ghosh and The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte was also very good.

I'm on Goodreads.com as Dustin Kerksieck if anyone else uses that site

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut is very good if you're a sucker for irony, as, by the way are the books of James Branch Cabell (in particular "Figures of Earth", "The Silver Stallion" and "Jurgen". To understand the intricate practical joke of "The Cream of the Jest", you must know the history of Jurgen.

Then John Erskine wrote Adam and Eve. Get this for starters:

"God made man, like Himself, lonely."

And immediately salt in the wound:

"The animals had mates, but man had a soul."

I also like Silverlock by John Myers Myers for its opening sentence:

"If I had cared to live I would have died."

And Peter Pan of course!

i have a lot of books in totally different styles and so are my favourites

This is only a bit of the list:

Regular books:

The tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Brontë ---> the best of their books by far in my opinion, but always forgotten because it really made the statement the other books lingered: also the upperclass can be badly behaving loosers.

Het Verdriet van België ---> The number 1 of the flemish books

already mentioned : The name of the rose

Fantasy:

The lord of the rings

SciFi

The Foundation Trilogy (all 7 books) - Asimov
The hitchhikers guide

Biographies:

Einstein in love
The Lives of John Lennon

There are the comic novels

The Chninkel (Rosinski Van Hamme)
Persopolis (Sartrapi) ---> great book on the daily life in Iran at the end of the 20th century

The real comic series

XIII (Vance, Van hamme)
tintin (Hergé)

I also have
Asterix et les Bretons

On this list I would have expected Hofstadter already would have appeared wiht
both

Gödel Escher Bach, An eternal golden braid (I have it in both dutch english and dutch because I was not happy with the translation)

Metamagical themes

In a totally other league of books

Neal Stephenson - The baroque cycle (about 3000 pages of pure joy !)
Mark Helprin - Memoir from antproof case & A soldier of the great war (incredible storyteller)
Barbara Kingsolver - Flight behavior + everything else she has written.

I realized lately that I am not much into reading long and winding novels and that I am preferring short stories and parables like for example Kafka's "Before the Law".

I strongly recommend this collection of texts about what war does to people:
Wolfgang Borchert - The Man Outside (orig.: Draussen vor der Tuer)

Sorry to double post... but I think that motion pictures should be in the same category. And aside from all the other really great films for me one film is so much more than meets the eye:
      The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob (orig.: Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob)
It reminds me of Lessing's Nathan the Wise and Monty Python's Life of Brian at the same time - and is one of Louis de Funes' greatest films.

hjalti - het verdriet van België - I started reading, but it didn't grab me. It's a classical one, but...no. (Just like Multatuli not my style)

My all-time favourite: Lila by Robert Pirsig.
Milan Kundera - unbearable lightness
Michael Ende - Momo and the timesavers (childrens book but so-o-o-o important!)

I'll ad some more later.

John Varley's short story "Air Raid" or the derived novel "Millennium".

Spoiler:
The story follows Louise Baltimore, who is in charge of the "snatch team" that goes back into the past to kidnap people who would otherwise die. Because of the massive pollution and the genetic damage she has sustained, she is missing one leg and must get advanced medical treatment daily. Her appearance is quite ugly due to skin damage (from "paraleprosy") and other problems; however, she wears a special "skin suit" which makes her look whole and beautiful (which may or may not be real—she is an unreliable narrator), and gives her a functional artificial leg.

The team she leads uses a "time gate" to appear in the bathroom aboard an airplane in flight. Dressed to look like flight attendants, they begin to bluff the passengers into entering the bathroom where they are pushed into the gate, to arrive in the future. After large numbers of people disappear, the remaining passengers become suspicious. The future team then uses special weapons to stun them before throwing them through the gate.

@Slaapgraag: Lila is a sequel of sorts to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, review here.

"Lonely werewolf girl" by Martin Millar

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", autobiography of Richard Feynman (physicist)

@ slaapgraag:

Max Havelaar I even read twice and I regard it as more important than 'Het verdriet van Belgie', although the first is about the dutch historical guild, while Het verdriet is about ours.

Having been in a westflemish college as a kid might make het verdriet for me much easier accesable than for you of course.

Caroll - I know, I preferred the sequel! (A lot!)
Hjalti - somhow the style of writing didn't cache me... (I'm affraid that says more about me then about Hugo Claus...)

Hey, I didn't mention all the Dirk-Jan comics by Mark Retera!

I couldn't make up my mind except for the comic genre:
Calvin and Hobbes
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
Lucky Luke - or other comics where Goscinny was the writer (for example most Asterix and Obelix comics)
Donald Duck

nonfiction:
Addison-Wesley's Programmer's choice series

German novels:
Heinrich Böll - Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum
Patrik Süskind - Das Parfum

Chinese:
I Ging / Yi Jing
Everything from Confucius and his students

Anyone read Starfish by Peter Watts?

I enjoyed this really dark under-sea universe.

I recommend

*Comics:* +Tom the Dancing Bug+ by Ruben Bolling
*Graphic Novels:* +Love and Rockets+ by Los Bros Hernandez
*Sci-Fi:* +Beyond Heaven's River+, +The Forge of God+, +Anvil of Stars+, and +Moving Mars+ by Greg Bear, +The Beginning Place+ and +Tehanu+ by Ursula K. Le Guin, and +A Fire Upon the Deep+ by Vernor Vinge.
If you like a bit of horror with your Sci Fi, try Greg Bear's +Vitals+.

patrick O'brians aubrey maturin 20+ series

Murder in the squash court by Jonah Barrington

Calvin & Hobbes
garfield

To Kill a Mocking Bird by Lee Harper

"To Mock a Mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan

has someone read "The amityville horror" ??

i have been reading Stephen king and lovecraft as well.
Im new in this thing of the "reading"