These are some of my favorite books:
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
You Shall Know Our Velocity - D Eggers
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Dubliners - Joyce
Heart Of Darkness - Conrad
The Alchemist - Coelho
Great Expectations - Dickens
The Great White Shark Hunt - Thompson
Caught Inside - Duane
Papillon - Charriere
Catch 22 - Heller
1984 - Orwell
Animal farm - Orwell
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
The Crying of Lot 49 - Pynchon
The Jitterbug Perfume - Robbins
I've probably forgotten some though...
what's it about?---(1984)
1984 is George Orwell's vision of the future (he wrote it in 1949 so was thinking 35 years ahead)
It is a very dark book, about a world where everyone's movements are covered by camera and where you have to conform to the state's ideals at every turn. People are encouraged to report people not loyal to the state, and it is a world of propaganda and fear.
It has spawned the phrase "Big Brother is watching you" and certain "predictions" Orwell made seem uncannily accurate sometimes.
I have always chosen books for two different reasons. Sometimes I just want to be entertained, other times I want to read book I feel will add something to my knowledge/understanding. If you know a phrase that is in common useage first appears in a particular book, for me that's a good reason to read it -- hence 1984 "big brother", Joseph Heller's "Catch 22", etc.
My personal favourite books are ones i have been compelled to read more than once, or suspect i will
Therefore, in no particular order
1984
The Eagle Has Landed
Day of the Triffids
LOTR
Great Expectations
Of Mice and Men
Jurassic Park.
And before you ask, the movie was based on the book, not vice versa.
Memoirs of a Geisha was very good..
I used to love Threshold, but I'm not sure now as I haven't read it in ages.
Dead Famous was interesting....
*thinks*
Yeah, there is a lot more I could list.
But somehow I now can't think of any.
Darn.
Similar books will be in the same line.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Any Drizz't Do'Urden books
Eragon, Eldest
Ender's Game, Speaker of the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind
Ender's Shadow, Shadow Puppets
The Seventh Tower series
The Keys to the Kingdom
Most books written by Bruce Coville
His Dark Materials trilogy
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Starcraft books
Harry Potter series
Animorphs
God, that was long...
El Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
A Case of Need by Michael Crichton
(actually anything by Michael Crichton/John Lange/Jeffrey Hudson, if he wrote it, no matter what penname he used, I've probably read it and probably have it)