I like to read memes but I don’t participate very often. But this one was too good to pass up. It’s from Annie.
List 15 books that will always stay with you. And don’t take too long to think about it. It has to be spontaneous.
I reread my list and some of the choices seem pretty pedestrian and obvious, but it is what it is. They don’t call them classics for nothing. I thought of throwing a ringer in like Das Kapital or Ulysses to sound like a big smarty-pants but it would have been a lie. Play along, if you’d like
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit by Charles Bukowski
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Journey to the End of the Night by Céline
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver
If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien
Ironweed by William Kennedy
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Exile on Pain Street 
To kill a mockingbird … 2nd favourite book EVER. I just want to go home and read it right NOW.
Sid: The only reason I read today is because of that book. I wrote to Harper Lee once explaining how much her book meant to me. I told her I am a better father because of it. I received and immediate heartfelt, handwritten response. She’s a recluse, so I was surprised to hear from her. I still have the letter.Second favorite? What’s number 1?
my list (on facebook) includes mostly books read before i was 25… from my childhood, Trumpet of the Swan, Harriet the Spy, Island of the Blue Dolphins (a MUST “read to” book for your daughters around 3rd grade age…).from high school, Autobiography of Malcolm X, Communist Manifesto, Prayer for Owen Meany, Player Piano/Cat’s Cradle…and yes, i had to have a Sedaris book. mine was “Me Talk Pretty Someday” because i realized that there were some families more fucked up than mine…
Five or so of those would make my list as well.
Man, good list. Good list. I agree with several of those.
If I Die in a Combat Zone is one of my favourites too. Have you read The Things They Carried?
I can’t believe I left “Mockingbird” off my list. But Gatsby, I loathed.Cool that Ms. Lee wrote you.
good picks. I might think of doing this meme myself.