Top 5 Novels

1. Kafka - all novels

2. Castaneda - all novels

3. Ursula Le Guin - Earthsea trilogy

4. J. R.R. Talkien

5. Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures

I think life is hard enough to read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, though they are great writers, of course. 

For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemmingway

The Dharma Bums- Jack Keroauc

The Illuminatus! Trilogy- Wilson and Shea

Neuromancer- William Gibson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter Thompson 

Don't you think it's just the writing that's scary?

how to pick just 5... i have to cheat and include series

1. The song of ice and fire series by george r r martin

2.  the wheel of time series by robert jordan

3. gone with the wind  by margaret mitchell

4. pride and prejudice by jane austen

5. great expectations by charles dickens

I'm a huge fantasy fan but i just can't get into the sword of truth even though it seems to be alot of peoples favorite. I found it repetative and dull at points. 

Someone mentioned heart of darkness and i just don't get that one either. I read it in university an all i remember thinkings was "someone should really teach this guy the concept of a paragraph" 

Ha! I grinned when I read this.     As much as I love them both and as great as they are, their writing (figuratively) weighs a ton. (Hey, maybe literally, too!) They each could have shaved off one- or two-hundred pages in their gargantuan novels, and those works still would have retained their greatness. I still love them though...

The wheel of time hey? I liked the first couple but after that it just drops off.

War and Peace--Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina--Leo Tolstoy

The Brothers Karamazov--Fyodor Dostoevsky

Les Miserables--Victor Hugo

Don Quixote--Miguel de Cervantes

The first four of these I've read twice apiece. Reading is how I misspent my youth--aside from playing chess! 

My top five novels (not to be confused with my top five books)...

 1) A Moveable Feast (Hemmingway)

 2) Coming Through Slaughter (Ondaatje)

 3) Dreams of Long Lasting (Medoff)

 4) Papillon (Charriere)

 5) Bangkok 8 (Burdett)

I tend to read more short stories and plays than novels and would definately count Gogol and Kafka among my favorite writers...  Duras wrote an amazing piece "The Man Sitting in the Corridor" that is all of about forty pages long and very sparsely populated pages to boot...  Stirrings Still by Becket is quite similar in format though the style and tone is radically different. And, another of my favorites, Snapshots by Robbe-Grillet...  but none of those are novels so...

 Novels:

1) The Brothers Karamazov - Fiodor Dostoievsky

2) The Stranger - Albert Camus

3) Crime and Punishment - Fiodor Dostoievsky

4) The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

5) Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre

Essays and short stories:

1) The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus

2) The Rebel - Albert Camus

3) The Pit and the Pendulum - Edgar A. Poe

4) The Devils of Loudun - Aldous Huxley

5) Taras Bulba - Nikolai Gogol 

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

3. Divina Comedia by Dante Alghieri

4. Last Days of Pompeii by Bulwer-Lytton

5. The Brothers Karamazov 

I have so many books in my head it's hard to choose.... and why do people say they like war and peace?

 1.Creatures of Light and Darkness - Zelazny

2. Anything else written by Zelazny, while Still Alive

3. Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlien

4. Dune Messiah - Herbert

5. My 60 Memorable Games - Fischer  since I've read it more than a novel ...

Definately love the sword of truth series its absoloutely spellbinding

1 1984 - George Orwell

2 Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3 Nausea - Jean-Paul Satre

4 Dune - Frank Herbert

5 Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

And I suppose 'The Luzhin Defence - Nabakov' should get a mention if only because it uses chess as it's central subject.

I'm glad whenever I see people mention The Master and Margarita. This masterpiece doesn't come close to receiving the attention it deserves.

I read a LOT, but few novels actualy rise to the level that I would be able to call them "favories". Whenever I think of my favorite novels, my mind tends to recall two books:

1. A Painted House - John Grisham (yes, I know he's done his fair share of pot-boilers, but he still tells a good story, and this one was outstanding)

2. World Without End - Ken Follett if you have not read this one.. you should. That means you, and you, and you too.

The Covenant - Michener

Eye of the Tiger - Smith

Watership Down - Adams

Sunbird - Smith

Perfume - Suskind

1. Narcissus and Goldmund (Hesse)

2. Crime amd Punishment (Dostoyevski)

3. Kafka on the shore (Murakami)

4.Book of illusions (Auster)

5. Sinuhe the egyptian (Waltari)