"But before the debate national media were criticizing Romney for saying during an interview that Battlefield Earth, a science fiction novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was his favorite.

“I think it’s strange, you think he’d pick a better book to be his favorites," says supporter Craig Thorne.

Slate magazine said, “no one trying to look like a common Joe would pick this book. You simply need a deep level of weird to like Battlefield Earth.”

Even some supporters say the book about aliens enslaving humans seems an odd choice.

“It’s almost as bad as him saying the Book of Mormon was his favorite book. It would work for Mormons but scare a lot of the non-Mormons," said Craig Thorne.

Romney later clarified, Battlefield Earth is his favorite novel, the Bible is his favorite book."

Okay...

My favorite novel would be "The Brothers Karamazov."

My favorite "book" would be...hmmm...can't be a novel...let's say..."Indian Cooking" by Madhur Jaffrey???

For the hell of it I'll say "For Whom the Bell Tolls". It was the first novel that rocked me, I read it at just the right age and emerging maturity that I caught it full force. For brevities sake I'll keep the list to just this, my first ever favorite. Plus, choosing an all time favorite novel would be as hard as positively identifying the best ever Beatles' album.


Nah, it's Abby Road, of course.

Baracka Hussein Obama loves the Quran. Good book. A presidential candidate growing up and attending Islamic elementary schools in Indonesia as a child is very comforting.

Personally, I'm in the middle of Mark Steyn's 'America Alone'

Energy At the Crossroads - Vaclav Smil

On The Road, Jack Kerouk. Like Floof said, it just caught me at the right time.

Fiction: 'The Informers' Bret Easton Ellis

Non-Fiction: 'Grande Illusions' Tom Savini

Biography: 'High Concept' Charles Fleming

Graphic Novel: Too many to list....!!!

I cannot recommend 'High Concept' highly enough...it's the biography of Don Simpson, co-producer of Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Flashdance...it is a literally mind blowing tale of excess and debauchery, as well as being a critique of the Hollywood system that allowed him to flourish. Jaw dropping stuff...

War and Peace.

No shit.

I've been getting a lot of recomendations for the Weapon Of Choice series. Its the story of the USS Hillary Clinton carrier group, (named after "the most uncompromising wartime president in American history").

The Clinton group experimenting with a new weapon gets sent back in time to the Battle of Midway where its automated perimeter defenses devestate the US Pacific fleet.

One of the themes of the series is the tension between the bigoted sexist 1942 forces and the racialy and gender mixed forces of 2021.

Anything by P.J. O'Rourke.

Strictly novels...

1. F. Scott Fizgerald, The Great Gatbsy
2. James Joyce, Ulysses.
3. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
4. Jack Kerouac, On The Road
5. Erich Remark, Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet On the Western Front)

Best Beatles album is "Revolver"

novels:

under western eyes- joseph conrad
the woman in white- wilkie collins
things fall apart- chinua achebe
underworld- don delillo
to the lighthouse- virginia woolf


non-fiction:

manhood in america- michael s. kimmel
framing blackness- ed guerrero

Read Things Fall Apart in college. Great book.

More recently Prague was very good.

yeah "Things Fall Apart" is great...

If you guys like Things Fall Apart, check out Sam Kahiga's When the Stars are Scattered.

best novel to me at this moment is Lamb, the gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal. by Christopher Moore. laugh out loud funny stuff.

amazingly, i forgot to mention

madame bovary- gustave flaubert

best book i ever did read. i named my dog after it.

best novel period? middlemarch. not too easy to identify with.

best you'd want to read outside of the exercise of reading it?

a fan's notes. ford's independance day and the sportswriter. martin amis is the best writer of the last 50 years and it's fun to hate him because he knows it and mailed in two books he got million-dollar advances for.

but money and london fields are just fucking sick.

Favourite 20th Century fiction, in no particular order (the list speaks to my bias of form over content, as these are all more in the category of "prose poetry" than "ripping yarn") :

Underworld - Don Delilo



A History of the World in 10½ Chapters - Julian Barnes



The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie



LOLITA - Vladimir Nabokov



LIGHT IN AUGUST - William Faulkner

I tend to stick to my favorite "jondra", but outside of that, one book I've read more than any other, and keep going back to, is Michael Herr's Dispatches. It's an epic book, more about drug abuse, insanity and humanity than Vietnam.

I'll always have a soft spot for Roughing It, by Twain, too.

I like the works of Milan Kundera and its surprising that Chico hasn't mentioned the Art of War, by Szun Tzu.