Most Memorable Novel You've Ever Read?

[JustErin]

The one I remember most from school is... Lord of the Flies. I think that's partly because at the time I was reading it, we were also reconstructing Raccoon bones in biology class.

And though it's not "technically" a novel... Beowulf is one of my favorite, and most memorable epics.

Erin

[PocketKings]

This whole thread looks a LOT like my bookshelves...

For further consideration I would have to recommend any by the late James Michener or Leon Uris.

Michener wrote a lot of historical fiction backed up by a LOT of research. He's mostly famous for his 'Tales of the South Pacific' based on his adventures in the Navy in WWII. He also wrote non fiction; 'Kent State' arriving on site to start the research about 48 hours after the shooting and 'Sports in America' a little dated since it was done in the 70's (?) but has still useful data on exercise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Michener

Leon Uris also wrote historical fiction on a variety of historical fiction with his most famous work being 'EXODUS'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Uris

Michener is a good read. That guy is hands down the most descriptive writer in history. When he writes about a meal, you end up full.

[bmf175]

I know its not as popular as it once was but the Iliad is my favorite Ive read it but enjoy the book on tape even more.

Gates of fire is a great book that i require my mentees to read prior to training.

[Mike175]

In addition to just about every book mentioned....all great stuff, some I had forgotten about like 'Enders Game', etc...

You guys are forgetting....

The Conan series
The Tarzan Series

Most everything by Nelson Demille.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Inside the Jihad
The Guts to Try - Untold Story of the Iran Hostage Rescue
Imperial Grunts
The Five Fingers
The Bourne Identity

Just finished 'Lone Survivor' .... incredible story.

The list goes on and on and on, sadly I've probably forgotten more than I care to remember....lol

[SouthernBlonde]

Wow -- I could build a library out of this thread! At the very least, I've got my reading list for the Summer!!

I have no idea how to begin to pick just one but some of the novels that really had an impact on me are...

To Kill A Mocking Bird
Grapes of Wrath
East of Eden
Starship Troopers
Catch 22

I'm a big Conroy fan, too -- he's definitely one of my favorite modern authors, though it's been a while since he wrote anything...other than cookbooks :?

[rangerrg_c75]

Anything by Robert Ludlum.
"Once an Eagle" is my favorite. Whne Genreal Emerson commanded 18th Abn Corp it was required reading for all officers. Gunfighter6 said there were too many Courtny Massengals and not even Sam Damons in the Army.

Yes. I'm that old, thank you very much!

[PocketKings]

Anything by Robert Ludlum.
"Once an Eagle" is my favorite. Whne Genreal Emerson commanded 18th Abn Corp it was required reading for all officers. Gunfighter6 said there were too many Courtny Massengals and not even Sam Damons in the Army.

Yes. I'm that old, thank you very much!

You don't mean Hank 'The Gunslinger' Emerson, do you? His Randall knife (which he presented to CSM Sabalauski) sits in the 2-502 entry under glass. I used to just stare at it and drool.

[Jim]

Anything by Robert Ludlum.
"Once an Eagle" is my favorite. Whne Genreal Emerson commanded 18th Abn Corp it was required reading for all officers. Gunfighter6 said there were too many Courtny Massengals and not even Sam Damons in the Army.

Yes. I'm that old, thank you very much!

You don't mean Hank 'The Gunslinger' Emerson, do you? His Randall knife (which he presented to CSM Sabalauski) sits in the 2-502 entry under glass. I used to just stare at it and drool.

Gunfighter and the Sab. God, what warfighters those were. Sab is dead and buried in Arlington. Last I heard "Hatchet Hank" is retired in Montana.

[Darksaga]

I just finished reading Ripples of Battle by Victor Hanson. It is very well written and appears to be exhaustively researched. That being said it is an easy albeit thought provoking read.

I looks primarily at three battles (Okinawa, Shiloh and Delium) and how they changed the way we think, feel and perceive.

[DirtyM]

Posted by Mike175
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Inside the Jihad
The Guts to Try - Untold Story of the Iran Hostage Rescue
Imperial Grunts
The Five Fingers
The Bourne Identity "

Wow. It has been almost 15 years since I read Zen, and about 20 years since I read The Five Fingers... if I recall, that is supposed to be fact, not fiction? Don't have the book with me, but I believe the author was Gayle Rivers (AUS SAS) and if true- that was an incredible story...

[Torleif]

I dunno if you could count it as a novel, probably not.
I have however been reading "Achtung Panzer!" by Heinz Guderian.
Interesting book, to the german speakers/readers of the board I´d recomend it in it´s original language.

//T.

[rangerrg_c75]

Gen Emerson (Gunfighter6) used to come to 82d and talk to Bde's, always knew when he finished you were getting the day off. Woe be to any Cdr who had his troops working afterwards. Emerson would drive the Bde area and pick up troops, return to their unit and chew big ass.

Some of the 101st LRP's correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Emerson the one that started the Hatchet Teams?

[Torker]

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Meridian
I can't recommend this book enough. It it too violent for most, but that won't be an issue here.
One of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
You have never heard language like this before.

They saw patched argonauts from the states driving mules through the streets on their way through the mountains to the coast. Goldseekers. Itinerant degenerates bleeding westward like some heliotropic plague. They nodded or spoke to the prisoners and dropped tobacco and coins in the street beside them.
They saw blackeyed young girls with painted faces smoking little cigars, going arm in arm and eyeing them brazenly. They saw the governor himself erect and formal within his silkmullioned sulky clatter forth from the double doors of the palace courtyard and they saw one day a pack of visciouslooking humans mounted on unshod indian ponies riding half drunk through the streets, bearded, barbarous, clad in the skins of animals stitched up with thews and armed with weapons of every description, revolvers of enormous weight and bowieknives the size of claymores and short twobarreled rifles with bores you could stick your thumbs in and the trappings of their horses fashioned out of human skin and their bridles woven up from human hair and decorated with human teeth and the riders wearing scapulars or necklaces of dried and blackened human ears and the horses rawlooking and wild in the eye and their teeth bared like feral dogs and riding also in the company a number of halfnaked savages reeling in the saddle, dangerous, filthy, brutal, the whole like a visitation from some heathen land where they and others like them fed on human flesh.
Foremost among them, outsized and childlike with his naked face, rode the judge. His cheeks were ruddy and he was smiling and bowing to the ladies and doffing his filthy hat. The enormous dome of his head when he bared it was blinding white and perfectly circumscribed about so that it looked to have been painted. He and the reeking horde of babble with him passed on through the stunned streets and hove up before the governor’s palace where their leader, a small blackhaired man, clapped for entrance by kicking at the oaken doors with his boot. The doors were opened forthwith and they rode in, rode in all, and the doors were closed again.

...

The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the worth of that which is put at hazard. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up the game, player and all.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.