Feel free to disagree with me.
All of the books on my list have held up for me over time with repeated reading, although some have moved down on the list because of the writing style they were written in. Probably the main factor used to determine importance was the effect they had on my reading habits.
Just missing the cut... Magician (Raymond Feist), Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (Tad Williams), The Deryni Chronicles (Katherine Kurtz), Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (Fritz Leiber), Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), and Redwall (Brian Jacques). And a lot more...
10. What If... The best way to appreciate the impact of history is to see what would have happened if a particular event never occurred. A series of essays that delve into the alternatives...
9. North and South Series (John Jakes) - These books got me into historical fiction. Other series of books such as With Fire and Sword (Henryk Sienkiewicz), First Man in Rome (Colleen McCullough), The Religion (Tim Willocks) and Emperor (Conn Iggulden) followed.
8. The Chronicles of Prydain (Lloyd Alexander) - The first fantasy series I read as a kid, which helped spur my interest in the genre.
7. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Books I-III (Stephen Donaldson) - What set this series apart was the sheer nobility of the people of the Land contrasted by the utter evil of Lord Foul and his Ravers - and in the middle, the struggles of anti-hero Covenant, who fears it is all a sick delusion.
6. The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowlings) - Give this time...This may end up higher on my list in a few years because of the brilliant character development.
5. The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien) - The Harry Potter of my generation, and a major influence of many of the fantasy writers over the past 40 years.
4. The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) - If there ever was a series that makes me want to be a kid again, this is the one. And I always liked the allegories of the stories too.
3. The Pliocene Saga (Julian May) - A perfect mix of sci-fi and fantasy...When I read this series back in the 80's for the first time, I waited a month and read it again, and then a few months later, I read it a third time. I gave this to my son to read a couple of years ago, and guess what...the pattern continued. If you ever wonder why we have legends of faeries and goblins, read it and be amazed at an story full of unforgettable characters and a quirky alternative history.
2. Dune (Frank Herbert) - Read review #3 and project it thousands of years into the future. None of the other Dune books, either by Frank Herbert or his son Brian, can hold a candle to this one, IMO.
1. Watership Down (Richard Adams) - A book about rabbits trying to find a new home...what publisher would touch that? A smart one! For me, this is the best-crafted story I have ever read, and it is that craftsmanship that makes the premise of this story so plausible to accept.
My top 5 books are practically interchangable too. Any of them could function as my #1, although if I had to plug one of them to you to read, it would be the Julian May series because it is probably the one that most people would not have heard of. And it is a incredibly fun read too.
And some of your suggestions look like they will be on my reading list. Though I have to get through Riftwar Legacy and Ken Follett's new book, World Without End first...
And the winner is
Kjaaly
Please send me a PM with your mailing address.
Thanks for playing. There will be one more contest to wrap it all up.
and I am forced to leave out works from people like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchet, Tolstoy (read war and Peace and Anna Karenina they are masterpieces from a gone world) but such are the rules of the game... if you havent read whats on my list then do.
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and i agree with you about Bean's series
