Personal top 5 deserted island books

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mnmwmnm

wave function collapse
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Mar 29, 2001
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If you had to choose five book to take to a deserted island, what would they be? Lets suppose that this will be your only reading material for the rest of your life.

My list, in no particular order:

1) Complete works of Plato.
2) The collected works of Robert A. Heinlen.
3) The Complete Works of Franz Kafka.
4) Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry Thoreau.
5) The Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Granted, I cheated a little bit considering some of these would come in several volumes (or in the case of number two, may not exist yet), but what can you do? This is an impossible question. Take a crack at it!:)
 
Good Thread!

Which five books would I take?

Let's see...

1) Complete Works of Shakespeare (what can I say? I have a BA in English Lit :coolyello )
2) The Odyssey by Homer (Loved it! Especially the translation I have, I'll have to look up who did it)
3) The collected works of Lois McMaster Bujold (okay, a little cheat there. I'd be hard pressed to choose between Memory and A Civil Campaign if it came down to it)
4) The two-in-one volume of Oath of Swords and War God's Own by David Weber (with the complete Honor Harrington saga if I could swing it ;))

How to narrow it down? I have soo many favorites! I'm a horrible bookaholic with a personal library of almost 1500 books (I know, I'm just a piker compared to some :() I keep threatening to get a home improvement loan to feed my addiction--6-8 inches of insulation on each wall, you know! :wink2:

5) Okay, if I had to pick...you know, I'd want the fifth book to be plain white paper. No words but what I wrote in it. Who knows, with that kind of free time on my hands, maybe I'd finally finish writing something!

Well, that's my input. Next!
 
Oh, I can only take 5 LOL...that will be difficult!

1) Dune
2) Everything that Morgan Lewellyn has written to date
3) The entire Dragonlance Chronicles
4) All of Piers Anthony's collected works
5) this would be a serious toss up between Stephen King's novels, my Harry Potter books and my AKC Complete Dog Book LOL
 
How about you just take the Harry Potter in one hand and the dog's leash in the other, with the Stephen King tied to his furry little back, scifimoth? :D

As for writing paper, I think I would get the encyclopedia brittanica photocopied, thereby keeping the back of every page clean for writing. Oh, and Red Queen, do you mind if I ask how long you have been collecting your "pikers worth" 1500 books for?
 
Libraries Rock!

Originally posted by mnmwmnm
Oh, and Red Queen, do you mind if I ask how long you have been collecting your "pikers worth" 1500 books for?
Click to expand...

Not at all, go ahead.

Actually, I'm going to cross-post this to a new thread, too (Personal Libraries seems like a good name :smile: )

It's odd...I was reading a new series by Deborah Chester a couple of months ago, and I realized that she was the same author that wrote Sign of the Owl.

Sign of the Owl was the book that I discovered that people, specifically me, could actually own books! I was in grade school or middle school at the time, and borrowed it from the library. I enjoyed it so much I had started to copy it (in my best handwriting) into a notebook. My step-mother found out, went out and found a copy of it, and gave it to me for either Christmas or my birthday. I think that was the first book that ever actually belonged to me. As opposed to me and my sisters, or to the family, or to my dad. And I never looked back! :cool:

So, I guess I've been collecting them for nearly, hm...seventeen years? Not seriously at first, selling back most of them to buy more...but after getting a job to support my habit--er, hobby, I only sold back the ones that I didn't like.

Of course I now have a firm rule about buying books. If I'm in a bookstore and turn a page and see the words "Chapter Two"...it's time to buy the book! ;)

But remember, it's not the Quantity, it's the Quality!

How long have you been collecting? (please respond to the new thread, we don't want to take over this one :))

RQ
 
5 books...

Bear with me... I'm new here...

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
3. All the Hitchhiker's books by Doug Adams (this is not technically cheating because they are available in an omnibus edition)
4. The Sparrow & Children of God by Mary Doria Russell (this is cheating, but I'd have to have both)
5. Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
 
My top 5

This is tough.

1. Violin-Anne Rice
2. The Great Book Of Amber-Roger Zelazny, all 10 Amber books together in one volume.
3. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
4. The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
5. A Tale of Two Cities-Charles Dickens
 
top

on a deserted island i would take

1.The Amber series by Roger Zelazny
2.All Piers Anthony series
3.Dune
4.Lord of the Rings
5.A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
 
OK, looking at your answers its seems you are all cheating - 5 books is 5 books, not 5 collections !!!!!!

So, following you guys.......

1. All Stephen Kings books
2. Asimov collection
3. Robert Rankin - Brentford Trilogy
4. Jack Higgins - Devlin collection
5. Lovers & Gamblers - Jackie Collins (gotta have a bit of sauciness in there somewhere)

BUT, sticking to the rules - 5 books only ...

1. The Stand by Stephen King
2. I Robot - Asimov
3. Raiders of the Lost Car Park - Robert Rankin
4. Touch the Devil - Jack Higgins
5. Lovers & Gamblers - Jackie Collins

As you can see I have very varied tastes - in fact I'll read pretty much anything once, its the books you can read again and again that mean something
 
Books I would NOT take to a dessert island:

1) Robinson Corusue
2) Lord of the Flies


Books I would take to a dessert island:

1) How to Survive on a Dessert Island: a complete guide
2) How to Escape from a Dessert Island: a complete guide
3) How to Survive an Escape from a Dessert Island: a complete guide
4) The complete works of Oscar Wilde
5) The complete Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov
 
Let's see:

1) I, Jedi
2) An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary
3) By the Book [Star Trek]
4) Freefall
5) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World.
 
Hmmm, trying not to repeat too many things already listed ...

1) The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

2)The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester

3)Ringworld, by Larry Niven

4)Dune, by Frank Herbert

5)Ender's Game, by Orson Card


:)

Ivan Cat
 
Originally posted by Prophet4Profit
Books I would NOT take to a dessert island:

1) Robinson Corusue
2) Lord of the Flies
Click to expand...

:lol: Not forgetting 'The Beach', by Alex Garland (I think that's his name)

Ok, partially using the cheating method ;)

1) The Dune Series
2) Anne Rice's Vampire books
3) Richard Nixon's Memoirs
4) The Bible/The Torah
5) The Preacher collection of Graphic novels
 
hey there. my top 5ive books to take to a DI would be:
1- cosmonaut by Peter McAllister-that book is sooooo well written
2-a complete star chart-so i could learn the constellations
3-all james herriot books-they are sssooo funny
4-chaos in the solar system-the most fascinating book EVER written
5-my diary-does that count?

so there you have it and i havent even included all my michael crichton and tom clancy books.

LOL
 
For me it would be:

1) 'seaQuest D.S.V: The Novel'
2) 'seaQuest D.S.V: The Ancient'
3) 'seaQuest D.S.V: Fire Below'
4) 'seaQuest D.S.V: The Offical Publication Of The Series'
5) 'Complete Enyclopedia Of Formula One'
 
Think I would probably drown whilst trying to choose from my library:)

Still here goes:-

1/ Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K Jerome)
2/ Helconia Trilogy (Aldiss. It's been on the shelf for fifteen years, so it's the only way I'll ever read the thing)
3/ Couple of Pratchett's (Lost Continent and Witches Abroad would suit best)
4/ Kings of Space (WE Johns. It's the only way I'll ever find all the books again!)
5/ Which ever came to hand first of The Moons a Balloon (David Niven) My Lively Lady (Sir Alec Rose). Both entertaining autobiographies I've promised myself I'd read again.
 
A slight change for me being:

1) The 'seaQuest' books
2) 'Offical Publication Of The Series' -'seaQuest D.S.V' again!
3) 'Jordan: Formula One Racing Team' - written in 1997
4) 'Against The Odds: Jordan's Drive To Win' - wote after their win in Belgium 1998
5) 'The Complete Encylopedia Of Formula One'
 
hmmm....welll....lets see....the cheating answer would be:

1. Dragonlance Series
2. The Wheel of Time Series
3. The X-Wing Series
4. Guardian of the Flame series
5. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The non-cheating hard as all get out answer would be:

1. X-Wing:Rogue Squadron
2. I, Jedi
3. Dragonlance Chronicles (comes in one book now *grins)
4. Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King
5. The Odyssey - Homer

not in any particular order
 
Too hard to choose between the books that I enjoy reading, so I think my some what cheating 2nd answer will have to do for me!
 
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