In lieu of a poll

[andrewducker]

Over here marrog links to a photo of a tattoo with five books on it and asks

If you were going to have a tattoo of five books (or their titles) somewhere on your body, let's say somewhere where it will be seen from time to time, what five books would you get?

If you know Morag then clearly you should be telling her. If you don't then I'd love to know.

My 5:
The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy - Robert Anton Wilson
The Invisibles - Grant Morrison
IT - Stephen King
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Excession - Iain Banks

What's interesting is that I didn't read any of those for the first time in the last five years. The only books I can think of that have completely gripped me in that time were We Need To Talk About Kevin (which you have at the moment), the last two books of the Series Of Unfortunate Events and the Lucifer comic series from Vertigo. I've largely migrated across to reading articles online when I want information, and I just haven't bumped into many books that have set me on fire recently. I need more time*, and some decent recommendations, clearly :->

And I wouldn't want them displayed as horizontal titles. I'd want a small image for each one, with the title on it, and something iconic.

*By more time, I mean "not to have a job. Or weekends that last about three weeks." There are about 15 things above "reading more fiction" on my to-do list at the moment, and my current reading-for-fun is "CLR through C#".

Comments

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Malory's Le Morte De Arthur (Beardsley edition)

The History of William the Marshal

Robert E Howard's Conan (better be Fantasy Masterworks Edition)

"Goliath" (Medieval sword fighting manual)

Beowulf

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Lord of the Rings; The Three Musketeers; Starman Jones; Age of the Vikings by Peter Sawyer; Drinking Sapphire Wine by Tanith Lee.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Anything but the Invisibles. Incoherent, self indulgent nonsense. Although that could just be because elements of it have been so aped elsewhere the original seems stale...

Or it could be that Morrisson peaked with Animal Man or Arkham Asylum... (Although having not read Doom Patrol I should probably reserve judgement)

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

In lieu of a poll

:(

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that most people are choosing the five books that they personally care most about, or made most impression on them when they read them. Surely better to choose the five books that will most impress people who see your tattoo?

So, for instance, one's direct knowledge of Shakespeare might be limited to being able to hum "I like to be in America" from West Side Story, but one might still desire to make people think you had some connection with the Bard, and choose a tattoo of the First Folio.

This is certainly the approach taken in practice by many tattooees, who get stuff written permanently on their bodies in scripts they can't even transliterate.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to be more sporting, I'd have:

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
A History Of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell
The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster & Jules Feiffer
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie

I might've gone for Brave New World but didn't since you'd baggsied it. :-) The Women's Room by Marilyn French was another close contender.

These are all books that I read first when less than 25 - possibly even before I was 21, but not sure about the Rushdie.

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Catch-22
A Disease Of Language (Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell comic)
Schrodinger's Cat trilogy
Anathem by Neal Stephenson (which from your list above you definitely should read if you haven't)
Feynman Lectures In Physics

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

This Time of Darkness - H M Hoover (Starscape edition)
Children of Morrow - H M Hoover (1977 Beaver Hamlyn edition)
The Changeover - Margaret Mahy (Collins Modern Classics edition)
The World of the "Dark Crystal" by Brian Froud
I Am The Blast From Your Past and other poems - Morney Wilson

[aliiis.livejournal.com]

I replied in more detail over at Mo's post (interesting discussion re Vonnegut by the way, I think you're right about him), but since you ask, my current thinking is:

Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Le Deuxième Sexe/The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
Los versos del Capitán/The Captain's Verses - Pablo Neruda
Unto This Last - John Ruskin

(and since I maintain that the one in the photo has six, also the Gormenghast trilogy - Mervyn Peake)

How to put this, when I started thinking about this I sort of thought 'stooopid ideeeea' (partly cos of how horribly executed that one in the photo was, I think), but being a fairly tattooed person already and all, I actually don't think I would regret having any of those somehow represented on me forever. I would probably feel weird about the omission of other Books What Changed My Life though, so I'd end up all inky. I dunno.