the 5 books you'd buy first if your personal library was stolen

just like the similar thread in Music

The Great Gatsby/F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas/Hunter S. Thompson
1984/George Orwell
Inferno/Dante
American Psycho/Bret Easton Ellis


honorable mentions:

The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare: The Complete Works Annotated
Heart of Darkness/Joseph Conrad
The Stand (Uncut Edition)/Stephen King
Imajica/Clive Barker
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things/J.T. LeRoy

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky
Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky

I don't tend to re-read books they same way I listen to music over and over
and would probably go out and buy 5 new books before I started collecting
old favourites. Having said that....

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
Day After Tomorrow - Robert Folsom (not related to the movie - thank fuck)
Galilee - Clive Barker (or almost any book by Clive)
Time Enough For Love - Robert Heinlein
The Killing Floor - Lee Child

Despite (or maybe because of) having worked in book shops for 14 years
my literary tastes are quite shallow.

Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality - John R. Perry
Delta of Venus - Anias Nin
The Witching Hour - Anne Rice
War and Peace - Tolstoy

I'm not claiming to have read W&P cover to cover. It's just a good book to have around for various reasons.

Like keeping doors open or reaching things on the top shelf?

I may just kill myself instead. I cannot even imagine losing my books.

Pretty much. It's good for quotes (I've got a future tattoo planned around one from it) and it's good for throwing at jackasses.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Johnny Got His Gun
Grapes of Wrath
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West
Slaughterhouse-Five

Five absolutely depressing novels.

Ducks

My Ántonia -Willa Cather
The Complete Works of Kate Chopin
The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Red Tent- Anita Diamant
Peach & Blue- Sarah S. Kilborne

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy-D.Adams
Lestat the vampire-A.Rice.
Steppenwolf- H.Hesse
Brothers Karamazov- F.Dostoevsky
Cats Cradle- K.Vonnegut

Honorable mention:

The Great Gatsby- F.S.Fitzgerald
Dangerous Angels (Weetzie Bat books)- F.L.Block
Siddartha- H.Hesse
Ishmael- D.Quinn
Imajica- C.Barker

And the usuals, complete works of Shakespeare, Poe and a whole group of others that makes a long, long list.

First, I'd go looking for the blood trail of the idiot who stole my library; we're talking thousands of pounds of books, and he'd have blown a gasket getting them out of here.

Only five? Gotta go with stories I've re-read multiple times for enjoyment (if this were an apocalyptic scenario the list would lean heavily towards technical references) ... hmmm

Shakespeare (any complete collection of his works)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (anthology) - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
Dune - Frank Herbert
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Don't worry, my aim is shite.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Georgian Feast (cookbook)
The Prophet Armed by Isaac Deutscher
The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: a People's History by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
Last Exit To Brooklyn - Hubert Selby Jr
1984 - George Orwell
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please - Raymond Carver
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami

Thats fine but I'm still not cleared of being a Jackass

I don't know you well enough to determine if you are or if you aren't. I could always go with the argument that you are a man so you must be, but I'll be fair. State your case!

I am completely unprepared. For now I am happy to have books thrown at me, I crave the attention

If a man says something
And a woman isn't around to hear it,
Is he still wrong?

Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut
The Tao Te Ching
The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Brockett's History of Theatre

To Reign in Hell - Steven Brust
The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester
Orca - Steven Brust
Virtual Unrealities - Alfred Bester
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This isn't even fair. I'm so close to having every book by Brust, Bester, and Pratchett, to only be able to choose five is ... unthinkable.

yes, yes he is.

Collins English Dictionary.
Chambers Biographical Dictionary.
Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica.
Oliver Rackham, The Illustrated History Of The Countryside.
Samuel R Delany, Driftglass.

That was hard. The first two were easy, but after that...

Liber ABA Aleister Crowley,
Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu,
The Best Recipe from Cooks Illustrated,
The oldest edition of The Joy of Cooking that I could find, and
Some new science fiction novel to take my mind off being robbed.

Jack Kerouac - On the Road
Hunter S Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Charles Bukowski - Post Office
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front

Honorable Mentions:
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
J D Sallinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Robert Mason - Chickenhawk
William S Borroughs - Naked Lunch
Ernst Jünger - Storm of Steel

Phew, that was tough! I thought it would be easy to pick favourites... but it isn't!

Toilers of The Sea - Victor Hugo
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
Tropic of Cancer - Miller
A History of Christian Thought - Tillich
The Bible - a nice reproduction of The Luther Bible since I never really read it anyhow.