Scott F's Desert Island Books
1. "The Secret History" - Donna Tartt
2. "A Prayer For Owen Meany" - John Irving
3. "The Line Of Beauty" - Alan Hollinghurst
4. "Imajica" - Clive Barker
5. "The Talisman" - Stephen King & Peter Straub
6. "A Man In Full" - Tom Wolfe
7. "The Unconsoled" - Kazuo Ishiguro
8. "A Short History Of Almost Everything" - Bill Bryson
9. "Beloved" - Toni Morrison
10. "The Known World" - Edward P Jones



SandieH's Desert Island Books

1. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. Gone With Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
4. North and South by John Jakes
5. A Good Dictionary
6. Stands a Calder Man by Janet Dailey
7. Emma by Jane Austen
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
9. Roget's International Thesaurus
10. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje


War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Far Side Gallery - Larson
Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
Boatbuilding: A Complete Handbook of Wooden Boat Construction - Howard Irving Chapelle
Survive on a Desert Island - Claire Llewellyn
SAS Survival Guide: How to Survive Anywhere, on Land or at Sea - John Wiseman
Beating Boredom Creating Interest - M Thomas Russell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Creative Writing Coursebook: - Andrew Motion and Julia Bell
Complete Works Shakespeare
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Make Way for Lucia -- E.F. Benson (You can read from beginning to end, then start again and never stop laughing.)
The Ambassadors -- Henry James

Of Human Bondage	Somerset Maugham
A Winter in the Hills	John Wain
Rabbit IsRich	John Updike
Humboldt's Gift	Saul Bellow
Buddenbrooks	Thomas Mann
Sons and Lovers	D.H. Lawrence
Tess of the d'Urbervilles	Thomas Hardy
Midnight's Children	Salman Rushdie
A Long Way to Shiloh	Lionel Davidson
Theology and Sanity	Frank Sheed

If you were stranded on a desert island with only 10 books to read, which would you want?

Click "EasyEdit" to add your list to this page.

Anonymous List: No Order. It's hard enough already!
1. The Bible (NKJV)
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
3. A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
4. The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr.
5. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
6. The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux
7. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
8. Shardik by Richard Adams (the single best book for re-reading I have come across!)
9. The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
10. The Book of Sorrows by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (So I can find out what happened to the animals from "Dun Cow"!)

Michele's must-bring books that live in teen, young adult, or junvenile book sections

1. Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
2. Garth Nix - Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen
3. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series
4. Susan Cooper - the Dark is Rising series
5. Fire and Hemlock - Diane Wynne Jones
6. And Then they were Young - Madeline L'Engle
7. Harry Potter series
8. Hero and the Crown - McKillip
9. The Wee Free men - Pratchett
10. Zuzak - The Book Thief



Tammy's Tomes

1. Little, Big - John Crowley
2. Tom Jones- Henry Fielding
3. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
4. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
5. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
6. Borderland Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy
7. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville
8. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
9. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - Annie Dillard
10. The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx

Victoria's Must Reads When Stranded On an Island: (No Order)

1. My Name is Asher Lev- Chaim Potok
2. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
3. Everything is Illuminated- JonathanSafran Foer
4. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
5. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
6. Complete Works of Ian McEwan
7. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
8. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
9. Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

If I could add a number 11, I would actually say the complete Harry Potter books, though 7 isn't out and I feel odd for liking them so much. Anywho . . . .


Suzanne's Top 10 - not necessarily for desert island but for the impact they've had on my world view

1-3 The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders)
by Robertson Davies.
4 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
5-6 Without End by Adam Zagajewski and Poems New and Collected by Wislawa
Szymborksa.
7 Broken April by Ismail Kadare.
8 The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski.
9 Swann by Carol Shields.
10 A History of God by Karen Armstrong.

A Barnes and Noble Bookslave's Favorites (no order):
1. The Brothers K, David James Duncan
2. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
3. The Gormenghast Trilogy, Mervyn Peake
4. Jesus' Son, Denis Johnson
5. The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien
6. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
7. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
8. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
9. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Phillip Gourevitch
10. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Roberta's list - intelligent love stories-
1. Pride and Prejudice/ Jane Austen
2. Shogun / James Clavell
3. Jane Eyre / Bronte
4. A. D. 62: Pompeii / Rebecca East
5. Till Morning Comes / Han Suyin
6. All This and Heaven Too / Rachel Field
7. The King's General / Daphne du Maurier
8. Fly Away Home / Marge Piercy
9. A Town Like Alice / Neville Shute
10. Antonia / Brenda Jagger

Sarah's mind-altering books:
1. Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
2. Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
3. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
5. Pretty Birds by Scott Simon
6. Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
7. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
8. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
10. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

mjdq's quicklist which surprised even myself:
1. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
2. Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
3. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
4. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier, by Joanna L. Stratton
5. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
7. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
8. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
9. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
10. Middlemarch, by George Eliot

John's Desert Island Selections:
1. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
2. Cherry by Mary Karr
3. Chronicle of Youth by Vera Brittain
4. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
5. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
6. Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
7. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
8. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
9. The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennet
10. West with the Night by Beryl Markham


Onering's Desert Island Selection:

1. Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis


Bluestalking Reader's Desert Island Selection

(I'm planning on being marooned a LONG, LONG time...)

1. The Complete Works of Shakespeare (fully annotated of COURSE)
2. The Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Oxford Illustrated Edition)
3. All Virginia Woolf's fiction and non-fiction (not picky about edition)
4. Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf
5. All William Faulkner's fiction and non-fiction (Library of America for the fiction, please)
6. A good bio of Faulkner
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
9. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
10. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

N.B.: Looking at the list above, I think I know what made my boat crash into the desert island in the first place... ;-)

Would also like a big crate of notebooks and pens to wash ashore with me, if it's not too much trouble. Thanks very much.


Leslie's Favorite Books

1. Oxford English Dictionary
2. The Master and Margarita / Mikhail Bulgakov
3. The Last Temptation of Christ / Nikos Kazantzakis
4. Complete Works of T.S. Eliot
5. The Lord of the Rings triology / J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Bleak House / Charles Dickens
7. The Iliad / Homer
8. Good Poems / Garrison Keillor
9. Winnie the Pooh / A.A. Milne
10. The Book of Common Prayer (1928 edition)


Amy's Favorite Books : )
1. The Dragonlance Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey
2. Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
by Helen Fielding
3. The Poisonwood Bible
4. Rescue Me by Gigi Levange-Grazier
5. To the Nines by Janet Evanovich
6. Native Tongue by Carl Haaisen
7. The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
8. Blackberry Wine by JoAnne Harris
9. Watermelon by Jane Green
10. Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner


PB's Favorites (no order)
1. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
2. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
4. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
5. Devil In the White City - Eric Larson
6. The Lover - Margeurite Duras
7. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safer Foer
8. The Volcano Lover - Susan Sontag
9. The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
10. The Bible


Linda's Picks (no order)
1. Infinite Jest - Daviad Foster Wallace
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Being Dead - Jim Crace
4. The Last of the Just - Bart Schwartz
5. Geek Love - Katherine Dunne
6. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
8. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
9. Alice Munro - Any Stories
10. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Anonymous's Top Ten Picks:


Sand Dune Reader: (in no particular order)
1. Gone with the Wind (being stranded allows time to read a saga)
2. Gulliver's Travels
3. Complete collection of Tony Hillerman mysteries
4. The Tempest
5. A collection of poems by Robert Frost
6. Atlas of World Art
7. Encyclopedia of Aquaculture
8. Mosby's Medical Dictionary
9. Lord of the Flies (in case there are others on the island)
10. Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


Booklady's Top Ten: (in no particular order)
1. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
2. Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
3. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Bible
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
7. The Giver by Lois Lowry
8. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
9. The Hobbit by Tolkien
10. An Agatha Christie Omnibus


Some English Teacher's Top 10:
1. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
3. When I was Five I Killed Myself by Howard Button
4. Othello by William Shakespeare
5. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Leguin
6. Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
7. Deliverance by James Dickey
8. 100 Best Poems by E. E. Cummings
9. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
10. 1984 by George Orwell


Guybrarian's Top 10 Picks:
(not all-time faves, necessarily, but desert island books)
1. The Oxford English Dictionary
2. Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust (might even read it)
3. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
4. The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton
5. The Grove Centenary Edition of Samuel Beckett
6. The Complete Plays of Euripides
7. Haiku (in 4 vols), by R.H. Blyth
8. The Great Thoughts, George Selden, ed.
9. The SAS Survival Handbook, by John 'Lofty' Wiseman.
10. One huge, vast blank book of about a million ruled pages (in several volumes).


JulieK's Top 10 Picks:
1. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. Modern Library's old single-volume Complete Works of Jane Austen
3. Precious Bane - Mary Webb
4. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
5. Les Liaisons dangereuses - Choderlos de Laclos
6. A solid P.G. Wodehouse omnibus
7. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (1940 Everyman single-volume edition - only a small portion of her work, but a nice selection!)
8. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
9. A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch
10. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Martin's Top 10:
1. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. Collected works - Arthur Rimbaud
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
4. L'Stranger - Albert Camus
5. Saint Genet - Jean Paul Sarte
6. The Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
7.History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
8. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
9. A la Reche du Temps Perdu - Proust
10. The Wasteland - T.S. Eliot


XTerminalTerminal's Top 10
(in no order, save perhaps that on which they'd take up space on the lone bookshelf on the island)

1. Wendy Walker, The Secret Service
2. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West
3. Kathe Koja, Strange Angels
4. Robert Lowell, Lord Weary's Castle
5. Hayden Carruth, Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991
6. Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (I'll finally have time to read it!)
7. Clive Barker, Sacrament
8. Peter Sotos, Total Abuse: Collected Writings 1984-1995
9. China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
10. The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy


Sluggy's Top 10:
My top 10 books for the desert island would depend on the circumstances--am I alone or do I have company? If the latter, I might include a couple of books on loving other people! Also, I'm assuming we're excluding books about building rafts or spearing fish or making salt water drinkable....
1. Bible--NIV, though I might be tempted to read the Message (a paraphrase of the Bible by Eugene Peterson)...maybe I'd finally have time to memorize the whole Bible!
2. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (for adventure and Jamie Fraser)
3. King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (for deep and dynamic characters and relationships)
4. William Barclay's book of daily prayer (for expression of practical human needs, and for when I'm too tired to pray on my own)
5. Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor (for the beauty of words and images)
6. Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom (for courage and a good biography)
7. Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins (need to keep a sense of humor)
8. scrapbook filled with photos and written memories of family and friends
9. Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott (or another good book on writing)
10. If there are other people on the island, a book of games to play!


Kate T.'s Top 10 Desert Island Books (I really had trouble limiting this to 10...hope I don't get stuck on an island anytime soon...)

1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
3. Pope Joan by Donna Cross
4. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
5. A People's History of the U.S. by Howard Zinn
6. The Stand by Stephen King
7. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
8. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
9. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
10. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman


Will's top ten (I cheated and put in some series, since I saw others had included Tolkien's Ring trilogy, for instance):
1. The Oxford English Dictionary
2. Dune by Frank Herbert
3. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
4. Tolkien's Ring trilogy
5. Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
6. Roger Zelazny's original Amber series
7. Anything by Laurie R. King
8. Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker series
9. Any compendium of Tony Hillerman's Jim Chee and Lieutenant Leaphorn mysteries
10. Any of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, with The Nine Tailors as my first choice

Stomfi's Top Ten
1. Survive on a Desert Island by Claire Llewellyn
2. Glory Road by Robert Hienlen
3. Puzzle Power by Terry H Stickels
4. Arabian Nights translated by Sir Richard Burton
5. General Semantics by Count Korzybski
6. Nights Dawn Trilogy by Peter F Hamilton
7. Pears Cyclopedia latest edition
8. Spanish for Dummies by Susana Wald
9. The Complete Costume History by Francios Tetart-Vittu
10.The Dhammapada the teachings of Prince Siddartha

Markonen's Top Ten
1. The Bible (NASB)
2. Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
3. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski
4. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
5. The Holy War by John Bunyan
6. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
7. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
8. Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ by John Piper
9. The Diaries of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain
10. The Golden Booklet of the Christian Life by John Calvin

Sleepydumpling's Top Ten
(in no particular order)
1. Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
2. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
3. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
4. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series - Douglas Adams
5. The Silver Metal Lover - Tanith Lee
6. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
7. Dirt Music - Tim Winton
8. Tomorrow When the War Began series - John Marsden
9. The Commitments/The Snapper/The Van - Roddy Doyle
10. Harp in the South/Poor Man's Orange - Ruth Park

Kathleen Sullivan's Top Ten
1. Sherlock Holmes' Short Stories- Arthur Conan Doyle
2. A Civil Contract- Georgette Heyer
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Poetry - Emily Bronte
5. The Power of One - Bryce Courtney
6. The Golf Omnibus- P.G. Wodehouse
7. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
8. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
9. The Bible
10. Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L. Sayers

dvance's Top Ten Books - probably wouldn't hurt to bring a book about surviving on a desert island, but would rather have these:

1. The Bible
2. Gone with the Wind
3. One Wore Blue - trilogy by Heather Graham
4. Anything by Stuart Woods
5. Anything by Michael Connelly
6. Anything by Janet Evanovich
7. Anything by Meg Cabot
8. Anything by Nelson Demille
9. Anything by Sandra Brown
10. Anything by Jennifer Crusie

Keris's Top 10 (not in order)

1. In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner

2. Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes

3. A Princess Diaries omnibus (is that cheating? I don't care) by Meg Cabot

4. Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington (very funny)

5. Asta's Book by Barbara Vine

6. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay

7. The Joy Diet by Martha Beck

8. An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan

9. One for my Baby by Tony Parsons

10. The West Wing scripts by Aaron Sorkin (instead of a TV)

Adam's Top 10

1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

2. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

3. Underworld by Don DeLillo

4. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

5. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

6. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

7. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

8. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

9. White Noise by Don DeLillo

10. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Cos's Desert Island Picks
Not in any order
1. Don Quixote by Cervantes
2. Les Miserables by Hugo
3. Three Musketeers by Dumas
4.. The Giver By Lowery
5. Breadfruit Bread and Papaya Pie (need at least one cookbook)
6. A Town LIke Alice by Schute
7. Mrs. Mike by Flannigan
8. For Whom The Bell Tolls by Hemingway
9. White Dragon by McCaffrey
10. The Thornbirds by McCullough

Laurie's Top Ten
1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
2. West with the Night by Beryl Markham
3. Possession by A. S. Byatt
4. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
6. Dune by Frank Herbert
7. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
8. Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
9. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
10. Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner

Bookbelle's Desert Island Books1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson (or A Walk in the Woods)
4. The Opposite of Fate OR The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
5. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
6. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
7. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Nicholas Eggers (or his McSweeney's collection)
8. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
9. East of Eden or The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
10. A collection of Mary Oliver's poetry

Julie's Desert Island List

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy -- J.R.R. Tolkien

A Wizard of Earthsea -- Ursula K. Le Guin

The Ropemaker -- Peter Dickinson

Sabriel -- Garth Nix

The Chosen -- Chaim Potok

The Chronicles of Narnia (all 7!) -- C.S. Lewis

The Dark is Rising -- Susan Cooper

Tu -- Patricia Grace

Tom's Midnight Garden -- Philippa Pearce Swallows and Amazons -- Arthur Ransome

Tracy's Desert Island List
1. River God - Wilbur Smith
2. The Ladies of Missalongi or Angel Puss - Colleen McCullough
3. Any Stephanie Plum novel - Janet Evanovich
4. Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquival
5. The next Corrinna Chapman novel - Kerry Greenwood
6. What look's like crazy on an ordinary day - Pearl Cleage
7. T is for ... - Sue Grafton
8. The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith
9. The Belgariad series - David Eddings
10.The Lonely Planet Guide to Desert Islands

Oberon's List

Gilead by Marilynn Robinson
Stone Angel by Carrol O'Connell (Any book of hers will do!)
Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Sailing to Sarantium/Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay
Metzger's Dog/Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry
The Mirror of Her Dreams/A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
From Wild Man to Wise Man by Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos
___________
Now if I were actually stranded on the island primitive-like, I would prefer The Boy Scout Handbook over the Richard Rohr book! Practicalities, you know!