Favorites

Before I delve into the meat of this blog, which will be focused on reviews of books, literature, music, games etc, i think it would be good for potential readers to get some idea of my personal tastes before they waste time reading anything substantial I care to write.
Books- My classics teacher refers to me as a literary snob and I guess the label is appropriate. I try to read as much classic and critically acclaimed modern literature as possible. I dont really read for enjoyment or relaxation as i'd probably rather play video games or tennis or something like that. Anyway....
My favourite book of all time comes with a concession. I haven't actually finished reading it yet. The books enormous girth and infamous unreadibility probably contribute to this but i am about 5/6ths of the way through it. If anyone recognises the book they will have no illusions as to why I have'nt finished it yet

That book is Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, and you can expect a full dissertation of it when I finally finish the bloody thing.
I love many other books as well but I will try and keep this list relatively concise
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell
Candide by Voltaire
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Midnights Children and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Anything by Philip K Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, UbIK, The Man in the High Castle, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said, A Scanner Darkly etc)
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Anything by Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Baroque cycle)
Portnoys Complaint by Philip Roth
American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

SUPREMELY verrated books include:
The Ambassadors by Henry James (worst 'high literary minded book ever written')
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (Nothing but gibberish, however poetic it may be)
TWILIGHT by STEPHANIE MEYER IS A TERRIBLE BOOK THAT PORTRAYS AN ABUSIVE, PEDOPHILIC RELATIONSHIP AS ACCEPTABLE AND EVEN DESIRABLE. I will elaborate on this book in another blog post as the book is so supremely dreadful that I could rant for pages about it. And probably will.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Book goes NOWHERE)
Stranger in A Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (good first half, turns to a Jonestown esque cult propaganda in the second half)
Enders Game (A sci fi penny dreadful with a pat story that somehow managed to gain widespread cult like devotion)
Midnights Children by Salman Rushdie (this book belongs in both lists. The first half is the greatest 300 pages of literature I have ever read, but the books ending makes Twilight look like great romantic literature)

A top film list is soon to follow.