Layla's Dark and Foreboding Weblog

Normally, I don't ask for feedback or comments on my blog - most people email me directly. However, I'd like some here.

I was chatting with some of my online friends the other day about books, both literary and fluff. There was an article written in The Guardian, a UK paper, that polled about 400 men and women to ask what their all time favorite books were. Here they are:

MEN'S LIST

1 Albert Camus The Outsider
2 J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye
3 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
4 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
5 J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit
6 Joseph Heller Catch-22
7 George Orwell 1984
8 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
9 Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
10 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
11 Vladimir Nabokov Lolita
12 J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings and Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
14 Graham Greene Brighton Rock
15 Nick Hornby High Fidelity
16 James Joyce Ulysses
17 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
18 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
19 Franz Kafka Metamorphosis
20 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath

WOMEN'S LIST

1 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
2 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
3 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale
4 George Eliot Middlemarch
5 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
6 Toni Morrison Beloved
7 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook
8 Joseph Heller Catch-22
9 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
10 Jane Austen Persuasion
11 Mary Shelley Frankenstein
12 Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
13 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
14 George Eliot The Mill on the Floss
15 Louisa May Alcott Little Women
16 Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary
17 C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
18 Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind
19 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness
20 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

Not many surprises here. These are all pretty great books. But, is that to say that we're only in love with these historical pieces, most written 50, 100 or 200 years ago? What about the modern day classics, book written in the past 20 years that will resonate with people years from now?

I'd love to hear from you about what you feel are the best books of your life, your time. What are your non-literary favorites? It could be anything - from the DaVinci Code to The Notebook. The Time Travelers Wife to The Pilots Wife. This is sort of self-serving in a way, too. I'm looking for new authors to check out, so I thought I'd ask other people what they are in love with.

Of course, I'll give you my list first:

Stephen Kings Dark Tower Series. Linked in with The Stand in a lot of ways. Amazing, end of world stuff too. It's *these* types of King books that make me love him.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. A murderous tale set at a posh Vermont college with all the dirty work done by brilliant geniuses. Really great.

Boy's Life by Robert McCammon. A coming of age story set around a murder that disrupts an 11 year old boy's life. It's a brilliantly done story.

Life of Pi by Yan Martel. I loved this book. Most of it set in a life raft with the main character and a few zoo animals, including a large tiger. I knew nothing about it going in, which made it that much better.

Waiting by Ha Jin. A sad love story about two people who can't be together. Set in China, around an army officer who returns home each year for 18 years to ask his wife to divorce him so that he could marry his true love.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee. About a South African college professor who is shunned for sleeping with a student, and who goes to stay with his daughter on her farm, only to be attacked by nearby brutes. His disgrace is overshadowed by hers, and the atrocities committed during the attack. It's a sad, gutwrenching story.

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. A woman running away from her life is in a diner in the middle of a desert when she returns to her car to find a Cherokee woman leaving a baby in it. She keeps the baby, and stays right there in the town, because she can't afford to fix her two flat tires. Really nice story.

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. Mythical fantasy series about a young man growing into his role as the King-in-Waiting's bastard son. He's learning to become the kings assassin, but needs to come to terms with his own issues first.

The Songs of Fire and Ice by George RR Martin. Great series, but I refuse to read the latest until he completes the whole thing, since he has a tendency to take YEARS to do it.

Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolff. My all time favorite modern fiction. Stories criss-crossing through the world of the money hungry, the plain old hungry and the willing-to-do-what-it-takes-to-get-ahead types. Everyone on earth should read this book.

Most of these books were given to me by other people, which make me love them (the people and the books) all the more.

So, post your comments here, with your (non) literary picks. I can't wait to read them!