Favourite Books

[tomtom]

My Family and Other Animals
LOTR - J.R.R Tolkien
Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome
Other Mens Flowers - Field Marshal Sir Archibald Percival Wavell
Cache Lake Country - John J. Rowlands
The Last River Rat - J.Scott Bestul and Kenny Salwey
Tintin - Hergé

(not in that order)

EDIT: Authors added, sorry!

 

[British Red]

Ooh good call Tomtom - I still re-read Gerald Durrell - he really got me into wildlife at a young age!

Red

 

[Matt Weir]

I've just bought My Family and Other Animals on the strength of this

 

[British Red]

Great book - you won't regret it! Its about Durrells early life growing up in the olive groves and....oh, just read it!

If you like it, I suggest "The Bafut Beagles" to follow

Red

 

[Matt Weir]

Cheers Red.

 

[fishfish]

i have over 400 books ! amongst my favorites are : my bible, poachers handbook by Ian Niall,the art of lure fishing by charlie bettel,and all the river cottage books.

 

[falling rain]

Strewth - hard one to answer I've read so many good books.

First few that spring to mind are

Deep survival - Laurence Gonzales
The strange last voyage of Donald Crowhurst - Nicholas Tomalin,Ron Hall
Tales from an empty cabin - Grey owl
Trafalgar :biography of the battle - Roy Adkins
Miracle in the Andes - Nando Parrado
Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle - Juliet Barker
South - Sir Ernest Shackleton

 

[tomtom]

I've just bought My Family and Other Animals on the strength of this

Like Red says, My Family and Other Animals is in a slightly different vain than his other books, Such as 'A Zoo in my Luggage' 'The Drunken Forest' 'The Bafut Beagles' (I forget the names of the other) because its about his childhood.

When I was a kid before I could even read my dad used to read me his other books about animal collecting all over the world and I think it was this that really got me interested in nature and expeditions- getting out in it seeming like the best way to learn about it and experience it! I'm sure these would be of interest to a lot of people who like these kind of books too!

 

[Soloman]

Tom toms book list got me thinking.Three men in a boat should be on everbodys list.Chapter4 Cheese as a travelling companion.Chapter13 a peaceful dog.This is a book ive had on many a outing and it allways makes me laugh.Get hold of a copy its ace.Food for free by Richard Mabey, the new addition is very good.

 

[Northsky]

For me its Ted Simon Jupiters Travels the story of Teds journey round the world on a Triumph motorcycle in the seventies. He went through the Libyian desert and Sudan when you could.

I stayed up all night to finish it something I dont do often.

 

[Soloman]

All of mike tomkies stuff.
Read his wildlife books and then his "my wicked first life" this is a great guy who mixed with the A listers and had the guts to follow his own path.

 

[plastic-ninja]

Hello everyone.Thought I'd add my two penn'orth.
I'm a sucker for a good cliche but " Lord of the rings " is still my all-time favourite book.Read it loads of times but I can't bring myself to go see the films as I don't want to mess with the pictures in my head.
Also worth a read is Go Rin No Sho " Book of Five Rings " by Miyamoto Musashi ancient Japanese warrior/hermit known as the "Sword Saint" in Bushido circles.The book is his philosophy for life and battle.This man was so proficient with a sword that he gave up using them and used to beat his opponents to death with bokken - the wooden practice swords made of oak or in one case with an old oar that he broke in two.Fascinating book : talk about tough!!
Also endorse many of the lists already posted btw I'm not just a reader of books with "Rings" in the title!
Simon

 

[stinger]

Factual - Guy Grieve - call of the wild my escape to alaska (easily my favourite book)
Gus Russo - gangsters, goodfellas and life on the run

Fiction - Karen Traviss - All 3 gears of war books (great if your a game geek like myself)
Tolkien - LOTR triliogy and the hobbit
Mario Puzzo - The godfather

 

[Biogenic1]

Factual:

Tom Brown: Tracker, Search, Vision, Quest, Journey, Awakening Spirits, Grandfather( I've done 5 of Tom's courses!)and field guides
Edmond Bordeaux Szekely: any/all of his 50+ books
Findhorn Books( had 5 years there- the community is powering ahead 49 years after the start. Living proof!)
Ray Mears
Ernle Bradford: The Knights of the Order- a history of the most ancient, prestigious order of chivalry over the past 962 years.(I'm a member)
The Great Siege of Malta- 1565 and still considered by many historians as one of the most world-changing battles ever fought.
Bill Bryson: Down Under- the funniest book I have ever read.


Fiction:

(Historical fiction)Hanta Yo- Ruth Beebe Hill- nothing else comes close for me
Submarine fiction-Love them all!
Leon Uris
Nikos Kazantzakis
Wilbur Smith in my younger days
Herman Hesse- Sidhartha
Tolkien
Sara Douglas- Battleaxe Trilogy

SO MANY MORE!!!!!

Oh, and THE most important at this time: Guide to investing in Gold & Silver- Michael Maloney. A financial tsunami is ready to hit the world resulting in the largest transfer of wealth ever seen.

 

[sandbender]

In no particular order, what comes to mind are these...

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (possibly the most violent book I have ever read)
Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper (not really violent at all, a story of folks living in a Tennessee mountain community)
Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England (The fictional memoir of a Czech waiter living through the second world war and after)
John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Cold war spy story)
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Probably one of the greatest novels ever written IMHO)
Richard K. Morgan's Broken Angels (Science Fiction, lots of military hardware, quite violent)
Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl (Science Fiction, a future without oil, with no cheap energy and with much of the world's food resources devastated by man made viruses, it could never happen of course )
Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (The Spanish Civil War, a story of love and death in that sad time)
George Orwell's 1984 (It was written as a warning and a critique of totalitarianism, it wasn't supposed to be a blueprint )

 

[adestu]

great collection there.we could start our own libary!
i have to reccommend "sniper one" by sargeant dan mills. a true story of a sniper team in the first iraq conflict under constant fire.read it and you will want to read it again!
ade

 

[Highbinder]

Anything by Kerouac! My favourite being Desolation Angels

Also love The Myth of Sysiphus by Albert Camus

 

[3bears]

massive Jim Butcher, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and Raymond E. Feist, Dave Eddings fan here...I'm sure you can see the trend lol

 

[bearman]

Favorite books have to be Call Of The Wild and Whte Fang both by Jack London. They have to truly be the greatest metaphor for mans yearning for the wild vs. that of comfort and family love.

The Count Of Monte Cristo also comes high on my list, Written in 1830 by Alexander Dumas, IMHO a more intriguing and cleverly written book hasn't been written yet...

 

[Harvestman]

Oh good grief, there are so many...

Excession - Iain M. Banks (sci fi)
The Crow Road - Iain Banks (fiction)
Just about anything Mary Gentle has ever written, but especially Ash, the Orthe series, and... no, just anything by her. Incidentally, she knows her history and her swordplay too.
Detective stories - Inspector Morse and Lord Peter Wimsey
Stephen Erikson's Malazan sequence (fantasy)
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins