If there was one book you could read for the first time, again, what would it be?

idarling · 3 years

1984

NitsujTPU · 3 years

I actually had a motorcycle accident a few years ago which, once I'd healed, left me with only a couple of scars.

Or so I thought. When I got home I realised that a book I'd begun reading in hospital was already on my bookshelf. My gf swears I've read it, but I had no prior memory of it. Same with about two thirds of my books.

My doctors had no clue why, nothing else seems altered. Ultimately I was told it's just one of those things.

Just some books got knocked out of my head, no films or music (That I'm aware of)

Means I had a lot of reading to catch up on.

durkin65 · 3 years

Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. That book restored my faith in literature.

Mr_Sadist · 3 years

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for myself.

[deleted] · 3 years

SnowCrash

cinnamongreen · 3 years

East of Eden - John Steinbeck

krelian · 3 years

One hundred years of solitude

schawt · 3 years

WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin

kjhatch · 3 years

A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. I reread the series every time a new book comes out, and it's still very enjoyable, but completely new again would be great.

EatSleepJeep · 3 years

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

JackRawlinson · 3 years

The Magus, John Fowles.

The only novel that I ever literally stayed up all night reading. Amazing book.

Junior1919 · 3 years

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Phantom Tollbooth.

username444 · 3 years

The Catcher in the Rye

gandhikahn · 3 years

Neal Stephenson's "The Cryptonomicon"
Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange land"
Neil Gaimen's "American Gods"
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon's "Good Omens"
Koushun Takami's "Battle Royal"
sorry i couldn't stop at one.

daysi · 3 years

Dune.

minigamer1896 · 3 years

Enders Game.

emosorines · 3 years

[deleted]

aenea · 3 years

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.

polonius · 3 years

The Lenseman series by E. E. Doc Smith. I've just started re-reading them. They're still an excellent read, but the first time really blew my mind!

Tphile · 3 years

Umberto Eco, The name of the rose, or Neal Stephensons' Cryptomicon. Just for the sheer pleasure of discovery. Eco is playful, William of Baskerville is a delight.

drbold · 3 years

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. Though I don't think I'd appreciate it like I did at 21.

cjones · 3 years

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Luckily, with his knack for language I find something new every time I read it. Also, I'm really excited to hear such praise for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; I'm on book 2!

HeirToPendragon · 3 years

Twilight

I'd stop myself before opening it.

catlebrity · 3 years

How to Serve Humans

emosorines · 3 years

For the science fiction lovers out there, this is Penny Arcade recommended: Old Man's War

I'd like to re-read this series just because it's been a good 60 hours of solid entertainment

meramera · 3 years

Grapes of Wrath

[deleted] · 3 years

Tough call. Can I say the Foundation series? It's kind of like one book...

zipperhead · 3 years

The Dharma Bums

flaneur · 3 years

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

CodenameEvan · 3 years

The Great Gatsby. I read it for the first time in high school and hated in on the principle that, by God, I wasn't going to enjoy anything I was made to read. I cam back around to it in college, but it would be nice to have been able to discover on my own terms.

anarchistica · 3 years

The Lord Of The Rings. I was saddened when i finished it for the first time, i wanted it to go on.

captaink · 3 years

so many...

House of leaves

Lord of the rings

Dune

All of Ian M Banks' scifi

Leviathan by Paul Auster

All tomorrow's parties by William Gibson

Pattern Recognition, ibid

Spook Country, ibid

Imagica, Clive Barker

...

bperki8 · 3 years

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Jabberwockey · 3 years

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende ("Die unendliche Geschichte").

My brother gave me that book for christmas when I was a teenager (13, I guess) but I didn't read it until later. And I immediately regret putting it off. It's an amazing fantasy story. The movies they tried to make out of it don't even come close.

The best part is that on a very real level, it is a neverending story. Whenever a plot line is finished or a character disappears, there's a comment like: "But later he DID find out what XXX was. But that is another story and shall be told another time." When I was a kid I often closed my eyes after a sentence like that and imagined what this other story would've been.

jasenlee · 3 years

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

diogames · 3 years

The Silmarillion.

verbpreposition · 3 years

Stranger in a Strange Land But only if I could read it with the innocence of a child as well.

bassmrod · 3 years

The People's History of the United States and You can't be Neutral on a Moving Train, all by Howard Zinn.

diddy0071 · 3 years

where the red fern grows

raf797 · 3 years

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

er0k · 3 years

Musashi

HeirToPendragon · 3 years

[deleted]

Ken_Breadbox · 3 years

No fair narrowing it to one. --The Night's Dawn trilogy, Peter F. Hamilton --The Callahan Chronicals, Spider Robinson --Lords of Discipline, Pat Conroy --The Neanderthal Parallax, Robert J. Sawyer --the Conversations with God series, Neale Donald Walsch

Qingy · 3 years

Hate to admit this, but the Harry Potter series.

Also, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

velocitygirl77 · 3 years

The Children's Hospital

[deleted] · 3 years

The city and the stars by Arthur C Clarke

dr3dg · 3 years

Jurassic Park before the movie came out.

riled · 3 years

The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe -The Shadow of the Torturer -The Claw of the Conciliator -The Sword of the Lictor -The Citadel of the Autarch

droz · 3 years

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Suskind

kazakdogofspace · 3 years

Dune

superwinky · 3 years

"Lord Foul's Bane" - Stephen R. Donaldson. He really has a way with describing the most depressing things in a beautiful way. His facility with language is right up there with Eco. I think I'll read the whole series again!

firepunk · 3 years

Lamb: The gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal.

It was quite possibly one of the funniest religion related books I have ever read.

Disclosure: I am an atheist.

Sobchak · 3 years

Wizards First Rule by Terry Goodkind

jdc123 · 3 years

I can't just list one:

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

All three of the New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Sirens of Titan and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

edit: Just thought of another:

Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

[deleted] · 3 years

Green Eggs & Ham. Really.

bnporter · 3 years

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

mvaliente2001 · 3 years

Oh, There are lot of them! All Jorge Luis Borges' books, The Foundation from Asimov, WIlt from Tom Sharpe, Crime and Punishment from Dostoievsky...

Edit: Ah! and Chronicle of a Death Foretold from Garcia Marquez. How many books can keep the suspense when you know the victim and the killers from page 1?

Philll · 3 years

I'm very late to this party, but Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Hands Down. Truly a spectacular book.

READ IT, READ IT NOW (but stay away from most of his other works)

jnana · 3 years

catch-22

kleos_aphthiton · 3 years

The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kaye (actually two volumes, but one story).

nomoremermaids · 3 years

China Miéville's Perdido Street Station.

_tweaks · 3 years

All the Harry Potters (I know, sad - but true). Shogun, Catch-22, The Road (so I could stop after the first page)

[deleted] · 3 years

Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, this time in the correct order, because I read The Fall of Hyperion first, not knowing it was the second in a series.

relic2279 · 3 years

Wheel of time series by Robert Jordan.

jonx_rainer · 3 years

[deleted] · 3 years

Hmm...

Roots
Midaq Alley
God's Bits of Wood
Baltazar & Blimunda (it's the only book in adulthood I've read twice)
Bird by Bird
I'm Not Scared
Sister Carrie
Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada
Power of One
Joy Luck Club

emosorines · 3 years

Hands down, World War Z

Porknog · 3 years

Lord of the Rings for sure.

obtuse · 3 years

Y! The last man...If that doesn't count I would say 'Gun with occasional music'.

Nuli · 3 years

Desert Solitaire

Walden

SimonS · 3 years

A Tale of Two Cities.

joshuatree · 3 years

Beyond Geography.

rageagainsttheapes · 2 years

Figures in a Landscape, by Barry England. I picked it up for a few cents at a second-hand bookshop because the cover looked interesting. Turned out to be one of the best novels I've ever read.

andkore · 2 years

Atlas Shrugged The Count of Monte Cristo

misterthingy · 3 years

http://is.gd/fS5A

pipecad · 3 years

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester.

DENVERG · 3 years

Cyteen Shogun The Stand Dune Anything written by Bruce Catton, the Civil War historian

[deleted] · 3 years

Any of Fleming's James Bond novels.

intangible-tangerine · 3 years

tin men by michael frayn

Zom_B · 3 years

Strega by Andrew Vachss.

SFWopinions · 3 years

The Fountainhead

Chewyboognish · 3 years

The Complete collection of Winnie the Pooh Stories by A.A. Milne. I remember reading this giant 300 page book in a weekend as a child (I was in 3rd grade I think) and just completely falling in love with it. It was a damn impressive book seeing as it tore me away from my Gameboy at the time.

fingers · 3 years

Rubyfruit Jungle. Seriously. I loved that book the first hundred times...now I am not into the book as an adult...but it is a great book.

bottlin · 3 years

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. Read it with a pencil - you can't help but underline.

xyzzy_b · 3 years

One Hundred Years of Solitude

[deleted] · 3 years

It would be interesting if people explained their choices. I have a feeling that many people are just listing their favorites.

dalarro · 3 years

Survivor, I had chills reading the last chapter the first time.

lani · 3 years

this is a tough question. it's like a blind man who meets a helping wizard who tells him to eat all the apples he can find on the way, and after eating one particular apple, presto !! man gets eyesight ( then he eats apple with pesto!) anyways, so after ten years, he wants to remember what that apple looked like ...

sanat · 3 years

The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

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