Which five books would you take to a desert island?

[Moksha]

You will be there for exactly a year. Food, drink and shelter will be provided, but there will be no one to talk to, no TV or radio, and nothing to do but read. So pick some good ones. I mean your all-time favorites.

Rules:

- Have to be books you've read, or at least dipped into and meant to read properly.
- Can't take anything like How to Escape From an Island (if you're gonna be like that you won't get any books at all!)
- Can't take a collected works (except for poetry, letters or essays)

Other than that you can take anything: art books, novels, biographies...anything.

1. Dickens: David Copperfield. Yeah, OK, so he's sentimental. Yeah, the novels are too long and padded out. But no one can match him for energy and characters. This is really his autobiography, and the first third is as good as literature gets ***8211;so vivid and full of life.

2. Patrick Leigh Fermor: A Time of Gifts. Amazing man: Adventurer, war hero, could read half a dozen languages, including Ancient Greek, and interested in everyone and everything. This is his memoir of hiking through Europe in the winter of 1934, just as the Nazis were consolidating their power. He is such a loveable man, who sees the best in everyone and is at home everywhere. One minute he's getting p**sed with the sailors in a bar near the Hamburg docks, then he's staying with an Austrian aristocrat.

3. Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow: His first novel. Sharp, clever, funny and beautifully written.

4. Robert Graves: Collected Essays and Lectures. Weird, eccentric, but always fascinating.

5. Bill Bryson: A Brief History of Everything . Never completed it, but have read a few chapters. I'd take the large, hardback edition with all the glossy photos. I'm hopeless at science, but it really fascinates me. Bryson writes like an intelligent amateur discovering science for the first time. A chatty, lively, but informal guide.

[Dougella]

1.) Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

2.) Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate

3.) Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

4.) Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

5.) Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White.

[jd90]

1) Catch 22 -- Joseph Heller (Greatest book ever written. Truly)

2) Wolf Hall -- Hilary Mantel

3)Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

4) Bring Up The Bodies -- Hilary Mantel (if we're not allowed to take collected works, i'll take that over Anna Karenina)

5) The Wind Up Bird Chronicle -- Harumi Murakami

[Moksha]

^^^

Hmmm...Interesting choices.

Dougella: Love in A Cold Climate. Been on my to-read list for years. Wasn't she pals with Evelyn Waugh? Is it similar to Waugh's stuff?

jd90: Catch 22...sigh, another masterpiece I've never got round to reading. Why Mantel? Is she really that good? Everyone seems to buy Wolf Hall and then give up.

[Dougella]

^ I'm not sure if Nancy Mitford was friends with Evelyn Waugh, but i wouldn't be surprised. It's in a similar style. I just find it a very easy read.


^^ I managed to read Anna Karenina once, I was proud of myself!

[kirbycrackle]

Religious books. For when there's no more fire fuel laying about

[Mo34]

George Orwell - 1984
Harper Lee - Too Kill a Mocking Bird
JRR Tolkien - Lord of The Rings
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Night Falls on Ardnamurchan - Alasdair Maclean

[jd90]

Originally Posted by Moksha

^^^

Hmmm...Interesting choices.

Dougella: Love in A Cold Climate.

jd90: Catch 22...sigh, another masterpiece I've never got round to reading. Why Mantel? Is she really that good? Everyone seems to buy Wolf Hall and then give up.

Honestly Catch 22 is the most enjoyable masterpiece to read. It's incredibly funny, absurdist and just wonderful. I've not read it for a few years because I want to almost forget it and reread it ''fresh''. But it truly deserves to be considered great. As he says of the character Clevinger in the book ''he knew everything about literature, except how to enjoy it'' And that's the one thing about Catch 22, it's truly a joy to read. It's not like fricking War and Peace or something that's an utter slog you'll love reading it.

As for Mantel... I've tried some of her other books and didn't get into them. Wolf Hall it took me a number of chapters to become accustomed to the way she writes it. But that world is brought to life and she pretty much inhabits Cromwell and slips on his skin. (or her version of him) I'd say read it, 100% I would recommend it and the follow up, but just be prepared, it's quite a unique style and it might take you a while to get used to it like it did me and others. It's sublime though. There are whole paragraphs of inventive brilliance that you genuinely marvel at.

[jd90]

Originally Posted by silenus

Cormac McCarthy's Suttree because I love the way McCarthy uses language and this is his longest and densest book. It's not his most perfect book but it is the one which would best keep me company. I wouldn't want to be stuck on an island with Blood Meridian, that would be terrifying.

I'd feel good stuck on a deserted island with Blood Meridian, only time you'd feel safe, away from everyone I've not read Suttree, but I do like McCarthy so I might give it a go

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by jinny

The Lord of the Rings

My 'jinny' books (children's books, can I not have them as a set? As they're so thin?)

Children's books are definitely allowed. But you've got to name them!!! (it's my game, my rules...play nicely or I'm taking my ball and going home).

Lord of the Rings is a great choice – perfect for a desert island. I once had an audiobook of The Hobbit and loved it so much.

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by silenus

Montaigne's Essays because Michel de Montaigne seems like the most interesting, open-minded, and unassuming person who ever lived. He is the person I would most like to be stuck on a desert island with. Although I'm sure he would have hated me.

Interesting choice Silenus. I have dipped in and out of his essays and really enjoyed parts of them, especially his meditations on death (I love that line "I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but not caring much about it"). He writes with an astonishing freshness and openness, and he feels so modern. Extraordinary for a man who lived in 16th-century France! But then he was a brilliant classicist who thought of Latin as his first language. So even though he lived in 16th-century France, his mind was rooted in pre-Christian cultures, and especially in Greek Philosophy.

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by jd90

Honestly Catch 22 is the most enjoyable masterpiece to read. It's incredibly funny, absurdist and just wonderful. I've not read it for a few years because I want to almost forget it and reread it ''fresh''. But it truly deserves to be considered great. As he says of the character Clevinger in the book ''he knew everything about literature, except how to enjoy it'' And that's the one thing about Catch 22, it's truly a joy to read. It's not like fricking War and Peace or something that's an utter slog you'll love reading it.

As for Mantel... I've tried some of her other books and didn't get into them. Wolf Hall it took me a number of chapters to become accustomed to the way she writes it. But that world is brought to life and she pretty much inhabits Cromwell and slips on his skin. (or her version of him) I'd say read it, 100% I would recommend it and the follow up, but just be prepared, it's quite a unique style and it might take you a while to get used to it like it did me and others. It's sublime though. There are whole paragraphs of inventive brilliance that you genuinely marvel at.

Yeah, I've heard Catch 22 described as the greatest novel written since WW2. Damn it, another one on the 'to-read' list.

That seems to be the general verdict on Mantel – that you need to adjust to the style. I remember Stephen Fry (my god) saying it was the best book he'd read in the last few years. And it certainly appeals to me. My mother put me off though. She's a big historical fiction fan (loves C J Sansom), and so I bought it for her birthday. But she gave up after a few chapters. Like you said, the style seems to put people off.

[kirbycrackle]

Ok sensible answer...

Complete works of Shakespeare...if it's one volume lol

Complete works of Edgar Allen Poe...I know that is cause I have it!

The silmarillion by Tolkien

Alexander the Great - robin lane fox

The Iliad - by homer

[limey123]

Shakespeare - Complete Works
Ibsen - Samlede Verker
A book containing all extant Old English poems
Phillip Larkin - Collected Poems
The Metaphysical Poets (anthology)


Oh, sorry, I didn't read the rubric properly. Ibsen's and Shakespeare's Collected Works are out then...

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by man afraid of his horses

Ok sensible answer...

Complete works of Shakespeare...if it's one volume lol

Complete works of Edgar Allen Poe...I know that is cause I have it!

The silmarillion by Tolkien

Alexander the Great - robin lane fox

The Iliad - by homer

I should have made it clear that you have to choose individual Shakespeare plays. But I didn't. So I'm gonna let you off. No, I've changed my mind. Tell you what, you can have five plays in one volume...what's it going to be?

The Robin Lane Fox choice is an interesting one. Is that an all time fav? Wasn't he a consultant on the Oliver Stone's film? I think Stone let him dress up as one of Alexander's men and take part in a cavalry charge. I believe that was instead of being paid!

Which translation of the Illiad? I have got the Robert Fagles one. I love it. He also translated The Odyssey, which would definitely be in my top 20 or 30 books. Oh, and why The Silmarillion over Lord of the Rings?

[limey123]

Choice of 5 Shakespeare plays then:

1) King Lear
2) Measure for Measure
3) Hamlet
4) The Tempest
5) Prob. Henry V or Julius Caesar

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by limey123

Choice of 5 Shakespeare plays then:

1) King Lear
2) Measure for Measure
3) Hamlet
4) The Tempest
5) Prob. Henry V or Julius Caesar

Interesting.

Mine would be:

1) King Lear
2) Richard II
3) Henry IV (parts one and two. That counts as one...my game, my rules)
4) Henry V
5) The Tempest

I'd also be tempted to take Harold Bloom's 'Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.' I don't care whether his argument stands up, it's a wonderful, enthusiastic tribute. And it's still one of the best guides to his plays. Beautifully written as well.

[kirbycrackle]

Originally Posted by Moksha

I should have made it clear that you have to choose individual Shakespeare plays. But I didn't. So I'm gonna let you off. No, I've changed my mind. Tell you what, you can have five plays in one volume...what's it going to be?

The Robin Lane Fox choice is an interesting one. Is that an all time fav? Wasn't he a consultant on the Oliver Stone's film? I think Stone let him dress up as one of Alexander's men and take part in a cavalry charge. I believe that was instead of being paid!

Which translation of the Illiad? I have got the Robert Fagles one. I love it. He also translated The Odyssey, which would definitely be in my top 20 or 30 books. Oh, and why The Silmarillion over Lord of the Rings?

Hey you can't change the rules !

I've never been a Shakespeare kind of person and my ignorance betrays me here now you've called my bluff! I read Macbeth at school as most do, it was part of our English classes obviously. I tell myself I will read more Shakespeare but usually fail epically. So I'll have plenty of time on that beach.

Yea probably is odd lol ancient Macedonia is a bit of a personal fav and you can't really ignore the impact of Phillip and Alexander can you? He did advise and Star as you say in that god awful film of the same name. It's the most in depth and accurate account I think you can get but it's not overwhelming for new readers either.

The silmarillion is the bed rock of middle earth and by far the more interesting epoch in the tales, but alas was never quite completed as it would have been if Tolkien had had more time. Still it's a beautiful book with a lot of moving imagery and very much a grand tragedy.

I have the Robert fagles translation too it's the best I've read so far. I do have the penguin translation which is alright but pulls its punches a bit with the language.

[limey123]

If I could choose a 6th it would be Capablanca's My Chess Career (assuming I had some way to play out the annotated games).

[jd90]

WOAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! @Moksha What's with all this complete works of? Dear lord you folded faster than a house of cards! I'll have to amend mine and add Shakespeare in, a whole year with them would be amazing, hot weather all year round, just sat there chilling out with a few beers and old Shakey.

[jd90]

Originally Posted by Moksha

The Robin Lane Fox choice is an interesting one. Is that an all time fav? Wasn't he a consultant on the Oliver Stone's film? I think Stone let him dress up as one of Alexander's men and take part in a cavalry charge. I believe that was instead of being paid!

Tbh that sounds so much better than getting paid!

[kirbycrackle]

Originally Posted by jd90

WOAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! @Moksha What's with all this complete works of? Dear lord you folded faster than a house of cards! I'll have to amend mine and add Shakespeare in, a whole year with them would be amazing, hot weather all year round, just sat there chilling out with a few beers and old Shakey.

Whoa! Where's all the this beer coming from ! Is there an offy?

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by man afraid of his horses

The silmarillion is the bed rock of middle earth and by far the more interesting epoch in the tales, but alas was never quite completed as it would have been if Tolkien had had more time. Still it's a beautiful book with a lot of moving imagery and very much a grand tragedy.

I have the Robert fagles translation too it's the best I've read so far. I do have the penguin translation which is alright but pulls its punches a bit with the language.

There is a great literature podcast ('Backlisted'), where they review different books that often get overlooked. On one episode, they have a fascinating discussion about 'The Silmarillion'. The general view seemed to be that it wasn't so dense and difficult as people make out. The host said he first bought a copy in 1982, when he won a prize at school, and he only finished it this year! he said that the real problem is people expect another Lof the Rs.

Fagles is the only translation I've ever read. I enjoyed them so much more than I expected, especially The Odyssey. If only I'd had the brains, I'd love to have studied Ancient Greek at University.

[Moksha]

Originally Posted by jd90

WOAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! @Moksha What's with all this complete works of? Dear lord you folded faster than a house of cards! I'll have to amend mine and add Shakespeare in, a whole year with them would be amazing, hot weather all year round, just sat there chilling out with a few beers and old Shakey.

Hang on, you get five plays. And that counts as one book. Thems the rules (I know I'm acting a bit unpredictably...I think the power is going to my head).

Yeah, where's this off licence? Last time I visited the island there was just a mountain stream.

[jd90]

Originally Posted by man afraid of his horses

Whoa! Where's all the this beer coming from ! Is there an offy?

It was said drink would ''be provided''!! And i'm sure that means ''drink'' as opposed to water! (it bloody better!)

Fine Shakespeare and a mountain stream it is. Maybe a ship delivering beer runs aground and hey presto!

[kirbycrackle]

^ we could sing and lure em into the rocks lol I'd show some ass cheek for that

[anxiouslondoner]

Books? There had better be 3 solid bars of 4G signal and plenty of charging points or the deal's off!