You know, I didn't dig that one as much as some others he wrote. I think some of my favorite RAH novels are his "juveniles" - _Have Spacesuit...._, _Starship Troopers_, etc, but for some reason, I really love TMIAHM. Most of Heinlein's later stuff suffered from the same problem Stephen King's more recent works do - they are too cluttered.

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Doug, quit. This topic is about the top ten books of all time. We have a shameless self promotion topic in the porch conference.

It's topic 27 in porch.

sorry

This is probably the most difficult topic somebody has come up here! I'll have to have a go too, though I cannot remember all the names of the authors that wrote the books that most impressed me. Hope they'll forgive me. 1. Wuthering Heights (E. Bront�), together with Jane Eyre (C. Bront�): reasons will be obvious to anyone who has read these books. 2. Poor things: can't remember who wrote it, but I found it weird and wonderful, especially the bits where the doctor sews black bunny heads onto white bunny bodies, and vice versa! 3. The picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde): because it scared the hell out of me!! 4. Jeeves and Wooster books (P.G. Woodhouse): because they're great fun! 5. Dracula (B. Stoker): because I ADORE scary books. 6. The Prince (N. Machiavelli): another scary one. 7. Confessions of a justified sinner (James Hogg): SCARY! 8. Jekyll and Hyde . . . OF COURSE!!!! 9. The name of the Rose (Umberto Eco): gripping stuff. 10. Of mice and men. I have a confession to make: I don't like Shakesspeare.

This is probably the most difficult topic somebody has come up here! I'll have to have a go too, though I cannot remember all the names of the authors that wrote the books that most impressed me. Hope they'll forgive me. 1. Wuthering Heights (E. Bront�), together with Jane Eyre (C. Bront�): reasons will be obvious to anyone who has read these books. 2. Poor things: can't remember who wrote it, but I found it weird and wonderful, especially the bits where the doctor sews black bunny heads onto white bunny bodies, and vice versa! 3. The picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde): because it scared the hell out of me!! 4. Jeeves and Wooster books (P.G. Woodhouse): because they're great fun! 5. Dracula (B. Stoker): because I ADORE scary books. 6. The Prince (N. Machiavelli): another scary one. 7. Confessions of a justified sinner (James Hogg): SCARY! 8. Jekyll and Hyde . . . OF COURSE!!!! 9. The name of the Rose (Umberto Eco): gripping stuff. 10. Of mice and men. 11. LOLITA!! Wonderfully perverse, and the first paragraph is the best beginning I have ever read in a book. I have a confession to make: I don't like Shakesspeare.

Wow, you really like scary stuff! "Lolita" was the scariest of them all, I thought...BTW I hate Shakespeare.

Othello and Hamlet were my favorites of Shakespeare...

You also don't like Shakespeare, Autumn? Thank God, I thought I was a Philistyne! I don't like him, 'cos he's such an old put-on! Nobody talks like that, no way!! Not even back then. Not unless you want your tongue tied in hundreds of little akward knots. I mean, the blood and gore simply don't make up for it!

My thoughts exactly! But I think we're alone on this...maybe we should form a support group!

To think I'm probably going to have to study the old bugger during the next few years!

To thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night follows the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Almost an exact quote. I find that it flows better with the extra word in there. You think shakespeare is rough. wait until you get to "The Canterbury Tales" in Middle English.

The "Canterbury Tales" were at least amusing. There is a French equivalent which is quite entertaining.

I just had to read that in Middle French and did. But for some reason in the middle of the stories everybody'd be eating popcorn and talking about "Catcher in the Rye". Middle French, on a scale of 1 to 10, is probably a 5 (right in the middle) when it comes to comparing it to Middle English, far as reading difficulty goes.

Tell me about it! I took an entire class on that, and my head was swimming the whole semester. There were 8 of us in this lit class and we had to speak in Middle French as well as read/write in it.

oh so it was one of those swimming classes, eh, Autumn? Towson (sp.?) State had a very advanced Physical Education Dept., I'd say. They could combine swimming with something the French dept. was willing to collaborate with them on. I mean, I now know why you went there. I'm signing up, too, if they have a swimming class that my whole body can swim in and not just my head.....and if the Film dept. collaborates on the design of the class.

Come to think of it, for my gym credit I took aerobic swimming! In French! And the Film dept. at TSU does offer a class on French swimming film stars. :-)

lol!!!!

What!!!! you mean they don't offer underwater basket weaving???

Hi all My top ten books would have to be: 1)Volcano cowboys - Dick Thompson 2)Rommel, Desert Fox - Desmond Young 3)Quake - Albert J. Alletzhauser 4)Star Wars, Rogue Squadron (No.1 of 8)- Michael A. Stackpole 5)Nimitz Class - Patrick Robinson 6)USS Seawolf - Patrick Robinson 7)Kilo Class - Patrick Robinson 8)The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William L. Shirer 9)Inside the Third Reich - Albert Speer 10)Isards Revenge (No.8 of 8)- Michael A. Stackpole Rob

Hi all Here is why I like those books. Volcano cowboys: The true story of the United States Geological Survey at Mount St Helens, Nevado Del Ruiz (Colombia)and Pinatubo. It shows the problems they confronted dealing with their first real explosive volcano, Mount St Helens. With Nevado del Ruiz the shocking true story of Armero which was obliterated by the volcano and the loss of 23000 people. Finally at Pinatubo a story of triumph dealing with the second biggest of last century. Rommel, Desert Fox: The biography of one of Germanys best field commanders in World War 2, the charismatic and cunning Erwin Rommel. Quake: A very realistic and very SCARY account of a big earthquake hitting Tokyo. It is real because Tokyo is expecting a severe earthquake, and scary because the dark side of Japanese society is exposed. A reality test of the individual chapters, at the end confirms the facts. Star Wars, Rogue Squadron: The first science fiction novel in a series of 8 about the Rebellions best fighter squadron. This one deals with the rebirth of the most feared fighter squadron in the Star Wars galaxy. Nimitz Class: A US supercarrier vanishes in a nuclear explosion taking all on board with it. A Kilo Class submarine commanded by a fanatic is responsible. As political tensions mount a deadly chase to destroy the rogue sub begins. Kilo Class: China has ordered 10 of these submarines to block the Taiwan Strait, of which 3 have been delivered but the United States will not allow the rest to arrive. USS Seawolf: A special US submarine is hijacked in Chinese waters and the crew taken prisoner. On board is the Presidents son. When the crew is rescued, someone must take the blame for the sub being captured in this devastating tale of corruption. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: The story of the Third Reich and the role of the individuals who created something better remembered for its role in 12 of 20th Century's darkest years. Inside the Third Reich: The autobiography of Hitlers armaments minister who for a time was the most powerful man in Germany after Hitler himself. Isards Revenge: The final novel in the 8 piece saga that starts of with the rebirth of Rogue Squadron, the capture of Coruscant (heart of the Empire), a treachery trial, and ends when Ysanne Isard, a tyrant of unspeakable evil, dies. Rob

Top ten books of all time? Tough, but I'll try (I won't promise to put them in order): The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - Sequel to The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer for which Twain was lambasted for using colloquial American language. As a reply to the critics, Twain took the roughest, dirtist, most low down character from Tom Sawyer and had him NARRATE the sequel! Huck Finn was superior to those he considered his superiors (he was a far better trickster than his idol Tom Sawyer, mainly because he was much more practical) and inferior to the only person in the book he considered to be his inferior, Jim. Chapter Fourteen ends with a paragraph which, if it were put to stand on its own, would be unconscionably racist; in the context of the chapter, however, it is the punch line of a massive joke and the joke is not on Jim but on Huck! From The Earth To The Moon and Round The Moon - These Jules Verne novels are best read one after the other. There are glaring inaccuracies, especially concerning the strucure of the Earth (this was before tectonic theory...) but Verne had most of the physics and a good part of the politics right. Verne could not have concieved of the Cold War, but he made the moon shot a symbol of American unity and greatness (in his version, a symbol of healing after the Civil War). Verne (and most Americans at the time) could not concieve of the U.S. Government putting up the massive amount of money required to go to the moon, so he had the planners raise funds throughout the world. Being French, and given to some national pride himself, Verne had a Frenchman suggest travel inside the cannonball. Verne predicted that there would be a battle between Texas and Florida for the launch site, that Florida would win (but not that the missions would be controlled from Texas; his flight was not controlled at all , and he put the cannon in the southernmost large town in Florida at the time: Tampa Town (right state, wrong coast...) Science fiction? To quote Huck Finn: "Not by a considerable stretch!" Animal Farm - Wonderful allegorical tale from George Orwell, his second-to-last novel shows him even gloomier than he was before the war when his outlook was already not a particularly rosy one. A children's story about the fultility of revolution in general and the death of the Socialist dream in particular. I knew I had to include either Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four here, but the latter was a bit too heavy-handed... A Tale Of Two Cities - A portrait of happiness in a bleak time. It is primarily the story of the Manette family, but the other characters, the deFarges, Jarvis Lorry, Jerry Cruncher and his family, Les Freres d'Evremonde, Barsard & Cly, and especially Sidney Carton paint a picture of the good and evil of the time. (I wish I could remember the name of Carton's employer...) All Quiet On The Western Front - NOT the Iliad by a long stretch! There are NO heroes here, just kids caught in a lethal situation with no way out for no real reason. Not John Wayne material, and beautiful for it. What Catch 22 should have been. Well, I can't think of any other real ones... I nearly came up with Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut, The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank by Erma Bombeck, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, but I couldn't justify any of them...

The Bible: particularly Mark, John, Jude, Ezekial, Isaiah, Song of Songs, Hebrews. Shakespeare: Lear, A Winter's Tale, As You Like It, Twelth Night Scarlet Letter and Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, plus his journals. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesin Henrik Ibsen: Peer Gynt, Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis Bernard Shaw: Heartbreak House, and Pygmailion. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Westing Game by Ellen Raskin I had a tough time picking only ten, so I made a rule: it had to be something I had read at least twice, and once fairly recently. Also like Jane Eyre, Don Juan by Lord Byron, The Moomintroll books, Madeline L'Engle's Time Trilogy, Dune, If On A Winter's Night a Traveler, In Watermelon Sugar, Howard's End, A Movable Feast, Bellefleur. Favorite prose stylists (apart from content), in this order: Jane Austen, Oliver Sacks, Daniel Dafoe, Hemmingway, Harold Bloom. Oliver Sacks may write the most beautiful prose of any living author. Daniel Dafoe taight me it's okay to write really long sentences, so long as theuy are clear. His sentences are beautiful. If you haven't read the Bible yet start with Ezekial. It reads like a dark science fiction fable-- darker and more bitter than you might expect the Bible to be. Or Song of Songs, which is the best and most beautiful erotic poetry ever written. Isaiah is sophisticated, uncomprimising, and full of joy. Mark is the story of Christ written in breathless haste, John is the story of Christ written by a dreamer. Through the Looking Glass-- what a mixture of wit, absurdity, and startlingly beautiful imagery. People in the sixties said Lewis Carroll owed his surreal imagery to psychedelic drugs, I think it's more likely that his genius for surreal imagery was the motive power behind a lot of sixties psychedlia. Lewis Carroll wrote one of my favorite single sentences in all literature: "What kinds of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?" Alice meets a wasp, who asks her that question in a chapter that didn't make it into the final version, because John Tenniel said it was impossible to illustrate. I'm one of maybe twelve people who actually like David Lynch's film of Dune. I still remember seeing the televised Heartbreak House with Rex Harrison as Captain Shotover. I love that guy. Tough to imagine any actor coming along so perfectly suited to play Shaw characters. I had absorbed up a sense of the Hemingway persona from the culture without actually having read any Hemingway, and was surprised to find A Movable Feast so funny. I always imagined him as this grim, humourless character. Sometimes as I read A Movable Feast, it seems to me he is a little cruel to his friends, like Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald. I heard Joyce Carol Oates give a talk once. She was very modest, funny, quiet, and self-deprecating. Afterward she signed books. I told her how much I loved Bellefleur. She thanked me, and said "I want you to know that I worked very carefully on every sentence of that book."

Wow! That's quite a list, jeb. You are dead-on in your descriptions. We don't have a lot of the same favorites, but I follow your reasonings. What are you reading now?

Thanks. I'm reading quite a lot now, but I guess I should put that under the "What I'm reading right now" topic.

Aw, we don't stand on ceremony here.

3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: What's not to love? A dashing, brooding older man, a plain but intellectual young woman, a spooky old house and a crazy lady in the attic! All the elements you need to make this classic story of love and loss completely unforgettable. I only regret that I waited until college to read it--don't make the same mistake--check out this book and others by the Bronte sisters today! from http://tln.lib.mi.us/~amutch/jen/top10.htm