top 5 series

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My Top 5, in no particular order:

Asimov's Foundation trilogy, and the Foundation novels that came out later that were written by him and not someone else;
Harry Potter;
Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels;
John Christopher's Tripod trilogy (I don't care for the prequel When the Tripods Came, which he wrote much later);
Madeline L'Engle's Time Quartet (I haven't actually read Many Waters; I think it's based on Noah's Ark, which I always thought was a stupid story. A fifth book, An Acceptable Time, follows the Quartet. I read it and wasn't that impressed.)

I enjoyed John Christopher's Tripod trilogy very much when I was a kid, and required my kids to read it. Until reading your post, I did not know a single other person who had read it!

Yes! Read that several times in Junior High, haven't thought about it for decades. That brings to mind the Lloyd Alexander series "The Chronicles of Prydain".

This is not a series, but have any of you read "Stranger from the Deep"?

I love sci-fi, but never got into a lot of the more popular series like Dune or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and such. I discovered all these other books no one I knew ever read. The one I listed above is one, about a world under the ocean. I probably found it because I used to want to be a marine biologist when I was in jr. high and did a lot of investigating into deep-sea research. That stuff is fascinating.

Hadn't heard of that one but I was curious, so I tried google books and worldcat and they hadn't heard of it either. Do you remember the author? I'm intrigued (although to be honest that's pretty easy to do when it comes to tracking down texts).

Another series came (almost) to mind and required some pretty subtle google-foo to track down: Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_ series. Might actually be worth buying and rereading.

What was the first substantial book you remember reading? I got through _Watership Down_ in elementary school, which was quite the step up from _The Mouse and the Motorcycle_ and _Ben and Me_ (yeah, I really liked books with anthropomorphic animals).

Oh, it is "Stranger From the Depths" by Gerry Turner. I still have it on my bookcase. I also just learned that the version I have (and read) is edited and abridged. I'm going to have to go find the original! Maybe a local library has it...

I don't remember the first "substantial" book I read, but I do remember the first book that really affected me. It was "Where the Red Fern Grows." I cried and cried and cried at the end. I don't remember how old I was, but I was under 10.

I always got upset (and still do sometimes) when a book ends. I definitely enter the imaginary world of books and find it hard to adjust to reality again once the book ends. Sometimes when I need to "get away" and cannot physically leave for a vacation or some alone time, I pick up a book. I will read constantly for two or three days and then I will "return" to real life after my break.

1. Sherlock Holmes (by Arthur Conan Doyle)

A Study in Scarlet (1887)
The Sign of the Four (1890)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901)
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
The Valley of Fear (1914)
His Last Bow (1917)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

Of course there have been countless other books published by authors other than Arthur Conan Doyle, but aside from a few important works here and there like The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, it's the Doyle stuff that really matters.


2. Tom Ripley (by Patricia Highsmith)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
Ripley Under Ground (1970)
Ripley's Game (1974)
The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
Ripley Under Water (1991)


3. Horatio Hornblower (by C. S. Forester)

Beat to Quarters (1937)
Ship of the Line (1938)
Flying Colours (1938)
Commodore Hornblower (1945)
Lord Hornblower (1946)
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950)
Lieutenant Hornblower (1952)
Hornblower and the Atropos (1953)
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies (1958)
Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962)
Hornblower During the Crisis (1967)


4. John Carter of Mars (by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

There are 11 books, but I've only bothered with the first five:

A Princess of Mars (1912)
The Gods of Mars (1913)
The Warlord of Mars (1913)
Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1916)
The Chessmen of Mars (1922)

It's really just the original trilogy that truly matters, though I also consider Marvel's John Carter: Warlord of Mars (1977-79) comic book series, which takes place during a gap in the first book, to be a semi-official part of the series.


5. Perry Mason (by Erle Stanley Gardner)

Too many to list; there are over 80 books. Here are the first ten:

The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933)
The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933)
The Case of the Curious Bride (1934)
The Case of the Howling Dog (1934)
The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934)
The Case of the Caretaker's Cat (1935)
The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935)
The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece (1936)
The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1936)
The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (1937)