An award! A Booker Award, no less. Thanks to J M McDowell for nominating me. Here’s its logo. Interesting. if it weren’t for the real world we would have nothing on which to base our pretend ones. 
The Booker Award rules are to list five favourite books and to include why we loved the worlds created within, before passing the award on to five others. These may not be my all-time favourites but they are the five faves that came to mind. JM named two that would also be on my list (LOTR & HHGTTG) so I’ve include a different set. Here we go.
The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden
I know, it’s a series and not a single book. I read this Young Adult series about ten years ago and felt it was such a true to the heart narrative of Ellie Linton’s experience with her friends battling an invading force, dealing with death, survival in their previously quiet and peaceful world that has changed forever. Highly recommended to people of all ages.
Stephen King’s IT
This was the first King book I ever read and it was the one that hooked me. The creepiness of that damned clown and the entire mood around the town of Derry in both time frames when the characters were children and later as adults was captivating. I was at first daunted by the length of the book but at no time was I impatient for the ending. Loved it.
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
I read this cleverly constructed story after I read the more famous, and more recently written, The Da Vinci Code and quickly found that there were similar themes and tricks used in the latter that lost points simply because of lack of originality. A religious conflict is always a good subject and the combination with a new technology in the yet to be completed Large Hadron Collider was a winner for me. I was also impressed by the very clever use of ambigrams throughout the book. Excellent.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Are we allowed to include non-fiction? Bad luck, I did. A controversial yet very sound set of arguments against the existence of God. Dawkins gets a bit heated at times and sometimes his arguments are little strong such as his description of some acts of religion as psychological child abuse. Strong but not on the wrong track.
The Rama Series by Arthur C Clarke
Yes, another series but if I had to strip this selection down to a single book it would be the first one of the set which focussed on the discovery and initial investigation of the Rama spacecraft. A fascinating concept: a habitable world created on the inside of a spinning cylindrical craft. A man with true vision was the late Mr Clarke.
Five People’s Five Fave’s
Now, to nominate five other people who each have five favourites to share:
(Note: This is also an experiment with Pingbacks. I learned today that by linking to someone’s blog’s home page they won’t receive a pingback. Linking to a post will, if they have enabled pingbacks on that post. I’ve linked to the above people’s about pages in the hope they have pingbacks enabled. To those people, please let me know if you received a pingback. If I don’t receive any notification, I’ll poke you harder! )
Congratulations on your award, Richard, and thank you for the nomination.
Your favorite books are interesting, and I hate to admit to only knowing the Stephen King book. I’ve been in the world of children’s books for many years, and have only recently returned to adult books.
Thanks, Maddie! I was worried about this list being rather mediocre. And last night we sat around and watched The Hunger Games and thought I should have put that on the list, too. That’s certainly up there.
Nothing wrong with Children’s books. In fact Dr Seuss probably deserves a spot here, too. And many others. Where the Wild Things Are is another that comes to mind.