My Top Ten Books - Fiction

The book begins with Pi's early life in a zoo in Pondicherry, India where he embraces three religions: Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. After his father decides to relocate the family to Canada, they are involved in a shipwreck after which Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with some of the zoo's animals; a zebra, an Orang-utan, a Hyena and a tiger named Richard Parker.

The Hyena eats both the Orang-utan and the zebra but is then eaten by Richard Parker. Pi then attempts to keep himself alive by catching enough food and supplying enough water for both himself and Richard Parker. Eventually, the castaways reach a floating island full of meerkats, but the island holds a terrible secret and both Pi and Richard Parker retreat to the lifeboat. Eventually they are washed up on the coast fo Mexico where the Japanese owners of the boat which sank question Pi on his story.

Finally, Pi offers an alternative story!

The Life of Pi was recommended to me by a friend and I was very pleased I listened to her recommendation. This is a very unusual and enthralling story with an ending that leaves the reader thinking for a long time after finishing the book.
Read my review of Life of Pi.

Candide is a philosophical novel in which Candide is banished from his home, the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh for a brief kiss with Baron's daughter, Cunegonde. Candide spends the rest of the novel wandering the globe, stumbling from tragedy to tragedy, all the time keeping a blind optimism on life due to the philiosphy he has been taught; "everything is for the best, in this, the best of all worlds". Eventually, after all those close to him have died or suffered terribly, Candide finds his beloved Cunegonde, who has become hideously ugly, and marries her to spite her family.

Whilst this novel sounds rather heavy, in fact it is very humourous, with great tragedy being satirised to highlight the flaws in not only philosphy but in European governments and organised religion.

Candide is a surprisingly easy-to-read book with great satirical humour and an incredible plot. It is a book I have read many times and recommended to many readers, all of whom have enjoyed it.
Read my review of Candide

Sam-I-am torments a nameless sceptic with his constant proferring of Green Eggs and Ham, delicacies in many people's minds but not appealing to the nameless sceptic. The meal is offerred in a variety of locations and with a great number of companions, including a goat, a fox, in the rain, in a tree and, most famously, here or there.

Finally, after much harrassment, the nameless sceptic agrees to try the Green Eggs and Ham, in the sea, surrounded by a crowd of expectant creatures, and he finds that indeed he does like Green Eggs and Ham.

Green Eggs and Ham is, in my opinion, the best book by Dr Suess. This book has an excellent message and funny ryhming text alongside wonderfully surreal illustrations.
Read my review of Green Eggs and Ham.

The Religion is the fictional story of Matthias Tannhauser's involvment in the real-life seige of Malta, where the Turkish Empire held a fortress defended by The Knights Hospitaller to seige.

After coming up against the Inquisition, Tannhauser is forced to leave his business and decides to take up the request of a Maltese noblewoman to help find her son. This gets Tannhauser involved in the battle for Malta, and has he had served with the Turkish army in the past, he is in a unique position to obtain intelligence for the Christian Knights.

The story becomes intriguing when the Inquisition's agent joins the knights and attempts to infulence them and to complicate Tannhauser's mission.

I picked this novel up in a second-hand bookstore. I bought it because I had enjoyed other works of fiction by the same author, but this book stood out as something special. I found "The Religion" to be a gripping page turner, but written like a piece of classic literature.
Read my review of The Religion.

This fantasy novel follows the adventures of a Hobbit, Bilbo, and twelve Dwarves under the guidance of Gandalf the wizard. The dawarves are on a quest to reclaim their mountain home, under occupation by an evil dragon named Smaug, and to win a share of the dragon's treasure.

Along the way Bilbo has adventurous encounters with giant spiders, trolls, goblins and wolves, but his most notable meeting is with Gollum, a disgusting cave-dwelling creature who covets a ring of invisibility which is found by Bilbo.

The story culminates in the "battle of five armies" in which men, elves and dwarves defeat goblins and wargs with the aid of giant eagles.

My father read this story to me when I was about 7 years old, doing different voices for all the characters. Gollum was the character that scared me the most and when he finally appeared in the movie "Lord of the Rings", his voice was exactly as my father used to do it.

Animal Farm is the story of a revolution by animals to oust the farmer and his employees from a farm because they are tired of the way that the farm is being run. With the promise of a better life for all the animals, the pigs take over running the farm but are soon corrupted by their new found power.

As the pigs change their own rules to suit themselves, they commit purges of animals that dare to question them and do deals with the humans. Using dogs as a sort of secret police and propoganda about the farm's production the pigs, under the rule of Napoleon, become worse than the farmer and by the end of the novel the other animals are unable to tell the difference between pigs and people.

Animal Farm is a really easy read and its political allegorical meaning is obvious. In a simple and effective way many aspects of government are satirised and apart from anything, this is a really good story.
Read my review of Animal Farm.

This is the story of Jurgis and his family, Lithuanians who migrate to America in search of high wages and a better life. However, they find that expenses are high too and there are corporations and individuals that are well equipped to take advantage of naive people from afar.

Jurgis is an honest, hardworking individual who finds pride in his part of the meat packing industry, but eventually he learns of its evils.

Jurgis has to deal with the death of most of his family members, unemployment, homelessness, prison and alcohol addiction but eventually finds solace in socialism, a cause into which he puts himself enthusiastically.

Possibly the most depressing book I have ever read but also one of the most compelling to read. I found that I really wanted to know what was going to happn next and could identify a lot of the injustices from this story in the modern world.
Read my review of The Jungle.

This book follows the life of Tom Jones from his birth until the finding of his fortune.

Tom Jones is a foundling, brought up by a kindly gentleman, however, due to his bawdy conduct, Tom has to leave home and embarks on a number of adventures. Starting with nothing, Tom Jones eventually finds his fortune, meeting a catalogue of characters along the way, most of which reunite at the end of the story when the many plotlines all come together.

Tom Jones is a comic novel, and was criticised as being immoral on publication but has become one of the most accliamed works of fictional literature in the English language.

I love this book for the memorable characters and amazing vocabulary; before reading this book I had never heard of words such as niminy-piminy, rodomontade or ipse-dixit. Tom Jones has one of the most intricate plot of an work of fiction I have ever read.
Read my review of Tom Jones.

In Making History a student is preparing his thesis but instead becomes involved in an experimental project to change history by polluting the waters in an Austrian village in order to prevent the birth of Hitler and change history for the better. The experiment is successful in preventing Hitler's existence but there are consequences.

After a blackout, the novel's main character wakes up in a completely alternative reality in which the whole world's political affiliation is fascist. Realising his terrible mistake, he attempts to go back and ensure that Hitler is born after all.

This is a very original novel which I have read and enjoyed a couple of times. Amusing and thought-provoking but at the same time easy-to-read.
Read my review of Making History.

In this anarchistic novel a 15 year old gang member, Alex, commits a series of hideous crimes and random acts of violence which culminates in rape and murder. Although he and his gang members enjoy bragging about their exploits in a strange dialect, the police eventually capture him and prepare him for therapy.

Under encarceration Alex is exposed to the Ludovico technique in which he is repeatedly shown violent images and made to feel sick at them by the use of drugs. Eventually this makes him ill every time he thinks of commiting acts of violence.

This is a very original novel which I have read and enjoyed a couple of times. Amusing and thought-provoking but at the same time easy-to-read.
Read my review of A Clockwork Orange.

A big thank you to lensmasters a_willow and Flynn_the_Cat for some very helpful critique on this lens. The advice they gave has been acted upon and the lens is definitely improved because of it.