You can only pick one.

Mine?

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

One??

Shite....

Shogun, then...

I'm not sure I can pick just one.

I think SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD is about five times better than ENDER'S GAME, though.

That might be the most delusional statement I've ever read on the entire internet.

Catcher in the Rye. No, that doesn't make me a psycho killer.

Hard to pick just one, but it has to be science-fiction.

Footfall by Larry Niven and John Pournell. Haven't read it for years, but I know it'd still be brilliant.

I agree, Matt. I think Speaker is no more than twice as good as Ender's Game. Probably about 1.5.

I just read Ender's Game again last month. Apparently I need to read Speaker For The Dead again so I can reaffirm to myself that you and Frank are goofy on the dope.

Dude, this is IMWAN. We're all goofy on the dope.

If you've read the author's prologue to either ENDER'S GAME or SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD, Matt, then I'll assume that you know the history of ENDER'S GAME, the novel that only became a novel because Card decided to beef up the original short story once he got the idea to connect the kid from his successful short story to the protagonist of his upcoming novel.

Don't get me wrong: I absolutely love ENDER'S GAME. I teach it to my students whenever I draw the Science Fiction class, and most of them thank me for introducing it to them and continue to read the rest of the novels in the series. But, in the final analysis, ENDER'S GAME is a short story that was forced into becoming a novel, and that shows, a little. SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD was developed as a novel from day one, and it's one of the best SF novels I've ever read.

And I don't truck with the dope, for the record. Never have. Never will.

I hated that book, Jeff, simply because I hated Holden Caufield. I was irritated at every turn by his voice and point of view. It was torture for me to get through the entire novel.

Same thing happened to me when I was forced to read A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole.

If I find the narrator unpalatable, I'm not going to enjoy reading the book. (See also: FIGHT CLUB.)

In many ways I share Holden Caulfeilds cynical view of the world, in particular of the people in it. That's what made me love the book. I wrote a short story "as" Holden once, which won an award (High School senior year).

Hey, that sounds like a fun experiment to implement here at The Block. Write a piece "as" a character established in a novel or short story.

What do you guys think?

Only one, but I have three.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

This is doable. It's 'The Karamazov Brothers' by Fyodor Dostoevsky, his last and greatest novel. It is impossible to summarise what it's about, but suffice to say that it is the most bizarre, beautiful, funny, tragic, insightful and human piece of writing I have encountered.

You need to read this book at some point in your life..

The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe.

If I have to pick just one, it's To Kill a Mockingbird, though Ender's Game makes the top 5.

Sounds fun. I truly wish I still had a copy of my story, because (not to be immodest, but) it was really good. I found out a couple of years ago that Senior year english still uses my story for the example of how to do it right, at that time 18 years on.

I hate Holden, but I like you, Jeff. I guess that means I'd like to read your story if you ever find it. =)

"The World According To Garp" has always held a place in my favorite novels since reading it when bed-ridden one day in my early teens. Polished it off in two days.

Breakfast of Champions by the late, great Kurt Vonnegut

I've read many great books but the one I'm picking is because I feel its my own secret discovery

Relic-Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
great book turned into an awful movie adaptaion. Found it before the movie came out.