Sunday, September 07, 2008

Another list in the Wall (Part 4)

The following is the list of my favourite books in no particular order. Only those belonging to the 'Beyond AA' category are admitted.

1) The Insulted and the Humiliated (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
2) The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
3) Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
4) Notes from the Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
5) The Idiot (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
6) Anna Karenina (Lev Tolstoy)
7) The First Circle (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
8) The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
9) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M Pirsig)
10) Neuromancer (William Gibson)
11) The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
12) लाल टीन की छत (निर्मल वर्मा)
13) Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal, Golden Braid (Douglas R Hofstadter)
14) The Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger)
15) 1984 (George Orwell)
16) Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
17) कुरु कुरु स्वाहा (मनोहर श्याम जोशी)
18) Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
19) चंद्रकांता/चंद्रकांता संतति (देवकीनंदन खत्री)
20) Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk)
21) Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
22) Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
23) 2666 (Roberto Bolaño)
24) Road to Reality (Roger Penrose)
25) Underworld (Don DeLillo)
26) The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolaño)

7 comments:

Aparna Mudi said...

started with catch 22 yesterday...
yeah hadnt read it so far...
hard to believe but true.

Nanga Fakir said...

Thou shalt be blown to smithereens...

? said...

have read the idiot. Oh, I love russian literature and I have read others not included in your list i.e. dead souls by nikolai gogol, master and maggarita etc.

am currently on war aned peace by leo tolstoy.

Nanga Fakir said...

@Red Eyes: Oh yes...I totally agree. Dead Souls, Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago etc are smashing books...

Happy reading!

veni, vedi, dormivi... said...

Isaac Bashevis Singer is notably absent.

Also, I find it surprising Palahnuik hasn't made it to your top list. Intentional omission?

Nanga Fakir said...

@Prabha: Never heard of Singer. Suggest a book please...

Palahniuk's 'Fight Club' and 'Survivor' very nearly made the list. But so did Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago', so I guess it's fair.

veni, vedi, dormivi... said...

Scum.

(the book by Singer)