I loved that story! The sequels were disappointing but Gus and Woodrow were classic characters that I was dying to follow through other adventures (until I did).

 

I too loved Siddhartha, here are some of my favourites in a somewhat similar vein

Man’s search for meaning - Victor Frankl
The Alchenist - Paulo Coelho
Illusions, the adventures of a Reluctant Messiah - Richard Bach - I have bought and given this to friends numerous times

A recent read that I enjoyed was
The Queen of Bloody Everything - Joanna Nadia

Others I enjoyed from memory
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
The Quarry - Iain Banks
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
The Universe Versus Alex Woods - Gavin Extence

 

Reading and book collecting is an interest I share with Mrs. noelekal. We maintain a library of about 1500 volumes of trash 'n treasures including many antiquarian books up to nearly 400 years old. Why it's "The Home For Wayward Books" here!

No Kindles for us!

Bible reading is a lifetime habit. Beyond that, we each keep two or three books going at any given time as well as one which we read to each another. I like dead 18th-19th century British novelists and works of history: American, British, European, and classical Greco-Roman.

I first read Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles" at about 12 years of age and have loved Sherlock Holmes ever since. Mrs. noelekal gave me a two-volume set of the complete Sherlock Holmes for Christmas the first year we were married and I've worn them out rereading them every 18 months to two years.

I appreciate "Fate Is the Hunter" by Ernest Gann. I love Gann's writing style and the narrative reveals his own outlook on life which mimics my own.

Both are regularly inserted in my reading schedule.

 

Nice!
I share the love for antique books. Here are my latest additions, bought three weeks ago

 

the works I gravitated towards had to display a particular use of language. I won't call it poetic, but certainly rhythmic and given to that structure. I don't read much besides poetry anymore, but back when I did read novels...

Light in August, Faulkner. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy. We, Zamyatin (see where Orwell got most of 1984).

 

Great stuff Chronos!

How well crafted the antiquarian books are, more timeless somehow. The paper is sturdier and of much higher quality than the books printed much later, say 1880s forward. The antique ones are fun to read too. They keep the reader on his toes with their medial S ( ), ligatures ( æ), spelling, punctuation, and other textual quirks. Sometimes one has to read carefully.



Here are a few photographs of of some kept here. I should make photographic records of all the oldies on hand.

A 1704 copy of Sir Samuel Butler's "Hudibras."


1631 edition of Godwyn's "Moses and Aaron Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites."


The oldest volume on hand, also by Godwyn, his "Roman History".


Sentimentally attached to this one, a 1793 copy of Goldsmith's "The Vicar of Wakefield" purchased, whimsically enough in a dusty bookstore in Wakefield West Yorkshire while on a visit to friends.

 

I've always liked Shakespeare and Tolstoy for dysfunctional family histories.
Recent fiction? Anthony Doerr's All the Light You Cannot See, which is superbly crafted.
Old Fiction/Fishing yarns--lol--Moby Dick
Anything about anything Dept: John McPhee and Ian Frazier
Literary history: Arnold Gingrich's Nothing But People: The Early Days of Esquire
Interviews: James Baldwin, The Last Interview
Etymology: OED and Skeat
Piscatorial Entomology: Preston Jennings
Reading now: Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet

 

I have a few, but here are two:
100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The little Prince by Antoine de St Exupery

 

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

 

I really love the book The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wow. Never gets old...

 

see what you did there

 

I had a second edition unabridged printing of Moby Dick. Between the chapters there were detailed descriptions of many strange places and creatures of the oceans. One I remember was of a chapel built in the skeleton of a great whale.
A rather disturbing part was the suggestion of Ahab abusing the black child Pip. After pip was rescued and near witless from his ordeal Ahab kept him in his cabin and dressed him like a little girl. I certainly don't remember them keeping that part in the Film versions.

 

On the Road is one my favorites as well. Funnily enough, I read it at three different points in my life and thought different things:

16 years old:
I hadn't travelled without my parents and was blown away by the freedom of being on he road while meeting all manner of new and interesting people.

24 years old:
I had travelled and spent time on friend's couches across the country, and without much money, so I could relate. I could also appreciate the wild nights/days with new/crazy people you meet while on the road.

45 years old:
All I could think was: why can't these people keep to themselves, get a job and stay at a hotel like normal adults.

 

One of the best books I have ever read is by the Danish author Tom Buk-Swienty called Slagtebænk Dybbøl (Slaughter-bench Dybboel) and is about the 1864 war between Denmark and Preussia and the Battle of Dybbøl. The only book that has made me cry while reading it when he recites letter from the soldiers to their families and vice versa. Extremely powerful stuff.

One I have also read several times is Bernard Cornwell’s first non-fiction “Waterloo” about the battle at Waterloo in 1815. You are right down there with the soldiers. You are right at the edge of your seat, when The Scots Greys charge and rout several columns only to get counter-charged and slaughtered by the French lancers.

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton is also really good. And his Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, I have also read several times.

So many incredible books

 

Yeah Togri. So many books. So little time.

 

Crash - J.G Ballard
Life is Elsewhere - Milan Kundera
The Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Bitter Moon - Pascal Bruckner
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
The Lover of Lady Chatterley - D.H Lawrence
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Bug Jack Barron - Norman Spinrad
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Great Gatsby - F.S Fitzerald
The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe
If This Is a Man - Primo Levi
The Human Stain - Philip Roth
The Turn of The Screw - Henry James
Le Maitre Du Monde - Jules Verne
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - H.P Lovecraft


It is not easy for me to stop once i get started....

X

 

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.

 

Hmm, tough one it is really hard for me to pick any one as a favorite as that changes all the time.
Fiction, probably Heart of Darkness, I also really enjoy many mystery series and will consume anything by Tony Hillerman or Craig Johnson, I also will read anything by Louis L'Amour or JRR Tolkien.
Nonfiction, Something by Massie, Castles of Steel or Peter The Great; I have a soft spot for history books and old travel narratives. My personal area of expertise is Plains Indian Tribes so my personal library has a large section dedicated to this subject.