Favorite books

Someone published a book that is basically a list of famous authors (famous? I hadn't heard of all of them...) favorite books, so I was curious what my top 10 would be. I am making this a little flexible because some aren't entire books, but it's my blog. List in no particular order, except the first one belongs there.

1. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is easily the most creative book I have ever read, the first book I ever read where I was amazed that people could write like that, which meant people could think like that. It also has some extremely interesting views on power, solitude, and family that are normally not discussed but make the book worth multiple reads. Incredible. One of the first lines talks about giant rocks like prehistoric eggs and the need to point because many things did not have names. This line immediately sets the stage and timing of the book, then Marquez proceeds to rebuild reality throughout the story. Absolutely incredible. I can't even begin to describe how amazed and impressed I am by this novel. Easily my favorite novel of all time.
2. Bible, written by God et al. And I'm not just putting this on the list in case any omnipresent beings are reading this blog. Actually, the Bible has any number of great stories regardless of where you fall on the official Bible Credibility Scale. The Sermon on the Mount is probably the greatest single short speech of all time, although the entire old testament is full of interesting stories and the gospels in general are worthwhile. To be honest, I didn't spend much time on the part where the Soandso begot Susywhatshername who married Blennyblahblah and they begot..., I think it is the book of Numbers - a little repetitive. Also it then drags on into 40 pages on cutting fat from a lamb and burning it best for the big fellas pleasure, that gets a little tedious and boring as well. You can also ignore anything between the gospels and revelations, it is so dull even the vatican won't turn it into a movie. Don't skip revelations though. I can confess this if I bury it deep in the description because omnipresent beings only have time to scan blogs, not read the details. Seriously though, the Bible is one of those books that is so ingrained in our American culture and the basis of so many other stories it warrants the time. I'm not saying it's necessarily right, I'm just say it's true.
3. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. The style is very short and direct sentences and this may be one of the books where Hemingway either developed that style, or it may be a good example. Regardless, the character development is great. There is a single female character so if that is what you are looking for, look elsewhere. One of my favorite books to re-read and I'm never disappointed.
4. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. I already talked about this, very clever and creative. I imagine meeting and speaking to Marquez would be a great time and we would drink rum and tell stories (mostly him). Meanwhile, I imagine meeting Borges would be like watching one of those cartoons about fractals where you zoom in on a fractal and it becomes another fractal and you keep zooming and it keeps repeating. The conversation would just be mind boggling, entertaining in its own way because of everything that keeps happening, but really more mind blowing than enjoyable.
5. Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. I picked up the Odyssey in Peace Corps because it was there and I had a lot of time to read. Honestly, I did not expect to complete it. I'm not trying to be intellectual, the Robert Fitzgerald translations of these books are delightful and fun. You do have to get used to reading them as poems (sort of like Shakespeare, it is just a different flow), and there is not a single limerick in the thousands of lines of poetry, but it's still worth it. Once in a while, it's okay to challenge your mind and see what happens. Your mind is a muscle, I know I've said it before. These books both reward your effort. I don't know which I prefer, but the character development of Achilles in the Iliad is wonderful.
6. The Stranger by Camus. Some people consider it a bit dark, but I read this for the first time at a point in my life when I needed something like this. It has had a profound impact on the last 10 years of my life, and I probably re-read the last 4 pages monthly. I won't argue all the effects of this have been positive long term, but the power of the idea and how it affected me puts it on my list.
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Very amusing look at life and war. Makes some attempt at depth, mostly successful, but I'll always enjoy it for the comedy. If you read the first 10 pages and don't like it, don't keep reading. It doesn't change. To me, that's a good thing.
8. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Just a great read. See the cat? See the cradle?
9. Howl by Allen Ginsberg. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn searching for an angry fix..." That still gives me the chills, one of the angriest poems I have ever read. This poem is filled with a lot of great imagery. It catches how I felt at 20 better than any piece of writing I have ever experienced. It might be possible for pieces of my life to be defined by this poem, The Stranger, and, hopefully maybe, the Sermon on the Mount. That wouldn't be such a bad life, would it?
10. Poetry by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Because he wrote this line about New York (roughly translated from Spanish): "...There is a wire stretched from the Sphynx to the safety deposit box that passes through the heart of all poor children...." Also because he wrote a lot of happy poems that breath youthful exuberance and make me feel young, mostly his earlier poems. That feeling is not something I can do very well myself. He was murdered by Franco's nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. As he matured, he poetry gains depth and understanding but I still prefer some of the more joyful poems of his youth because sometimes that is what I need.

OK, 2 honorable mention, it's my list remember. James Joyce is arguably the greatest english writer of the last century, but he can be dense. His short stories in the Dubliners are written extremely well, tight I would call them, but they aren't anything more than great short stories. However, in Portrait of the Artist, he has a fire and brimstone speech that makes the flames tickle your feet as a little bead a sweat walks down your forehead and falls on the page. Although the entire book is great, that passage is top 10 (or 12...).

The other is Arthur Rimbaud, and I throw him out because of his longer poems the Illuminations and A Season in Hell although I like a lot of his work that I know. They both have great openings, and if nothing else, you should flip through the opening sections of each of these poems while browsing a bookstore. "When the idea of the flood had subsided, a hare stopped among the clover and swaying flower bells, and said his prayer to the rainbow through a spider's web..." Isn't that a great opening line to a poem? Wouldn't that be a great opening line to anything?

That's my list. It might change if you asked me tomorrow but right now, that's what I'm thinking.

PS: After rereading this, I realized I don't have any female authors (except maybe god et al?). I reviewed my bookshelf and I don't actually own many female authors. I wouldn't consider myself a manly man, but what who knows. The closest I come to having more than one book by a female author is Jean Genet and that's not very close at all.