Photo by Natalia Osiatynska
Call me crazy, but, obviously, when I have time on my hands, I read, and, obviously, as I read, I tweet, and, obviously, as I tweet, I retweet. Long story short, I was tweeting about reading Lolita by Nabokov and got asked what my most favorite book of all time is. I got stumped a bit, because my life breaks into two parts. One part is before I became a writer full time and finally allowed myself to read fiction every day, and the time when I wasn't a writer, I didn't know I would be one, and I always felt guilty by sneaking in a novel to read. So, the first books that came to my mind were the ones that changed something deep in me. It was Harry Potter, of course, I don't remember now which one I liked best, but I do remember reading until 4 in the morning, falling asleep, waking up, and reading again. Then I said Fight Club, because every time I read it, I cry from the beauty of his language. And I said 1Q84. And of course everything Stephen King, and a bunch of Russian books like Master and Margarita, but by now I broke the rule of one book only. I turned it around and asked my 40,000+ followers on Twitter for their choice. As a result, my twitter feed exploded, and people asked me to compile a list on my blog.
Well then, here are the top mentioned books, in no particular order. Enjoy!
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzerald
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Dune by Frank Herbert
If I Stay by Gayle Forman
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Dracula by Bram Stoker
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
Black by Ted Dekker
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Daniel Deronda by George Eliott
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill
The Little Prince by Antoine de SaintExupery
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Light in August by William Faulkner
Redwall by Brian Jacques
The Stand by Stephen King
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Sabriel by Garth Nix
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
The World According to Garp by John Irving
Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav
The Grass Harp by Truman Capote
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
Venetia by Georgette Heyer
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Beyond the Pawpaw Trees by Palmer Brown
Heir of Novron by Michael J. Sullivan
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Alice's Adventures in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The Odyssey by Homer
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
I think I did most suggestions from Twitter. Feel free to add more favorites in the comments!