Your Ten Books

[skb12172]

List 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They don't have to be the "right" or great works, just the ones that have touched you. Here's mine. Not in any particular order, of course.

1) Miles: The Autobiography - Miles Davis
2) Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3) Open - Andre Agassi
4) God In My Corner - George Foreman
5) Old Yeller - Fred Gipson
6) The Stand - Stephen King
7) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
8 ) A Catcher In The Rye - JD Salinger
9) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
10) The Killer Angels - Michael Shaara

[First Shirt]

Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.
Old Yeller by Fred Gibson.
Savage Sam by Fred Gibson.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein.
More Than Courage by Patrick Lawson. A book about dogs and horses that went above and beyond.
The Big Knives by Bruce Lancaster. George Rogers Clark during the American Revolution.
Lucifer's Hammer by Jerry Pournelle. TEOTWAWKI.
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. TEOTWAWKI.
Use Enough Gun by Robert Roark. Actually everything by him.
Pocono Shot by John Taintor Foote. A collection of short stories about dogs, by a man who truly appreciated them.
My Health is Better in November by Havilah Babcock. Hunting, fishing and life in general.
The Tranquility Stories by Harold Sheldon. See above.

Okay so it's more than ten. Sue me.

I could have added: Anything by Mark Twain, H. Rider Haggard, or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Read Starship Troopers in 7th grade. And 8th grade. And every year since then, it gets re-read at least once. I have hardback copies for each of the grandkids. In fact, that's what Hunting Buddy was reading in the deer stand this week.

[Bullspit]

1. Swiss Family Robinson
2. Cannery Row
3. Horn of the Hunter
4. Old Man and the Boy
5. Job, a Comedy of Justice
6. Press On by Chuck Yeager
7. Guns Germs and Steel
8. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
9. Undaunted Courage
10. Alas Babylon

On edit: like First Shirt, anything by ERB could be on my list.

[Aglifter]

Bible

The Screwtape Letters

Common Sense

Practical Shooting, Beyond the Fundamentals (not completely about shooting)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I don't read them much these days, but The Sherlock Holmes stories affected me quite a bit, as a child.

The GE Way, or whatever that book I bought about Jack Welch's management in revitalizing GE.

Fractals, Chaos, and Power Laws. I've wrestled w. this book off and on since 1998

Some fiction has to have the right mood, to affect me. Shadow of the Wind can be incredibly moving. Heart of Darkness, the Brothers Karamazov, Moby Dick, and the first half of Dracula also used to affect me, deeply.

I've always enjoyed the Horatio Hornblower books.

[Mike OTDP]

1-4. The Lensman Series, by E.E. Smith. I know, it's 7 books...but one massive story. I'll count Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen, and Children of the Lens as four of my choices. It's that big an influence.
5. Starship Troopers, by Heinlein.
6. The Mote in God's Eye, by Niven & Pournelle.
7. Fleet Tactics, by CAPT Wayne Hughes.
8. Patton, by Ladislas Farago.
9. The Campaigns of Napoleon, by David Chandler.
10. The Hornblower Series, by C.S. Forester. If forced, I'd specify Hornblower and the Hotspur and Commodore Hornblower.

[Aesop]

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
The Story Of The U.S. Marines by George Hunt
Undersea Fleet by Frederick Pohl and Jack Williamson
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
Golden Gate by Alistair Maclean
The Green Berets by Robin Moore
The Singer trilogy, by Calvin Miller
The Walking Drum by Louis L'Amour
Patriot Games by Tom Clancy
The Day The Universe Changed by James Burke
Save The Cat by Blake Snyder

Twelve was the smallest I could whittle it to...

[First Shirt]

Every list has books that I've read and could have just as easily included in my own list.

Seems like Starship Troopers is pretty popular.

[evan price]

I'll try to list some that haven't been listed yet. A lot of the ones in above lists are on my lists too!
These are all books that caught my attention during some period in my life that I needed something and they stuck with me.

David & Leigh Eddings The Belgariad (Well, this is five books at least in the first series, and five more in The Mallorean but...)
Andre Norton's Star Rangers
Robert A. Heinlien's Have Space Suit- Will Travel
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising
Arthur Conan Doyle's The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia
Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired
Melissa Scott's The Kindly Ones
James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small
Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie
Jack L. Chalker's Web of the Chozen

[Langenator]

1. The Bible
2. Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
4. Parliament of Whores by P.J. O'Rourke
5. Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
6. Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby
7. Battle Cry of Freedom by James MacPherson
8. The Grand Design by Donald Stoker
9. Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

[Bullspit]

Yes, most of the lists include a number of choices that could have been on my list. I'm thinking I need to use this to make a list of books I haven't read to check them out.