I find it too difficult to read books anymore, I guess I lack the focus required for such reading, but when I did read I stuck mostly to classic novels. They’re classics for a reason.
For me, it goes as follows:
The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes)
Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
There are others I like quite a bit, such as The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Animal Farm (George Orwell), Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain), and the list goes on and on.
Flowers for Algernon is a very close second, but I give The Catcher in the Rye the rank of most favorite.
Those are all high school canon books… I remember so little about them. Flowers for Algernon was a short story if I remember correctly. Another one I loved in school was called Harrison Bergeron, it’s good and was written by Kurt Vonnegut. All I’ve ever read outside of school is R.A. Salvatore and Stephen King. Also the Goosebump books when I was a kid. My granddad bought me the new ones as they came out.
There’s an episode of Family Guy you should see if you haven’t, called “High School English.”
It’s also a full-length novel. It was made into a movie, too, in the 70s I think, called “Charly.” The actor who played Charlie won the best actor Oscar that year. The novel is way better than the movie, though, and better than the short story, too.
I read the short story in my 8th grade English class, but read the novel on my own as a young adult.
I almost forgot, I read the short novel that Edgar Allan Poe wrote called The Narrative of Gordon Arthur Pym in college, and it was so good. I highly recommend it, it is a short read. Wish he had written more full length novels.
Poe’s poetry is among my favorites, but I’ve read only one of his stories, for my A.P. English class senior year of high school, I think. It was an allegory that dealt with the seven deadly sins; I forget what it is called, though. It might have been The Fall of the House of Usher.
My favorite poet is Dylan Thomas, followed by Emily Dickinson, then Poe.
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien. Must have read it and bits of it a million times over the years!
The Last Legends of Earth, AA Attanasio. Amazing space opera and just so well written on so many levels.
Catch 22, Joseph Heller. Just might be the sanest book I’ve ever read and one of the few I will laugh out loud to! Amazing work and everyone should read at least once!
I have always been an avid reader. With that said, my all-time favorite books are those I loved most as a child — Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.
I’m going to read some English novels but don’t know how to choose the right ones. The Catcher of Rye is famous among the educated Chinese people. But I’ve heard some negative comments about this book. They say this book has no plot, just ranting of a mentally ill youth. So I am curious why you have listed as the number one book among what you have read. Could you specify the reason?
