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How was Tom Sawyer? I read Huck Finn and HS or college and loved it, but I don't consider myself as having really "read it," since it's been so long and I hate reading things for deadlines in school.

Moby-Dick is the greatest I've read, and I think it tackles big enough themes and is written in such a grand style that it can easily qualify as "The Great American Novel. That all being said, I am...

Novels of the second half of the 19th century (keep in mind I haven't read that many):

-Moby-Dick
-War and Peace (I would put this as #1 probably, although M-D is amazing, but I only got to about...

Not too much, since I'm finishing up nursing school this year, but let's see...

The Portable Edgar Alan Poe next
The Apocrypha and New Testament from the King James Bible (already read the OT)...

Which Norton anthology?

Also, what are some poetry (and just general literary) anthologies that you guys would recommend?

I gotta say, Dantesque, from the few posts I've read by you, I definitely want to keep my eye on you and your writing! You bring great knowledge and insight onto this sadly rarely-used board.
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To me, if it's nonfiction, yes, I get if you need special knowledge.

For fiction, I just don't think a work would last through the years if you NEED esoteric knowledge to get anything approaching...

I definitely want to read this, but I can imagine it's a very tough read. I would say don't force yourself to read it too fast. And really no books are "great" if you have to understand complex...

So I was at a nice used-bookstore and made two purchases relevant to this thread today: Bulfinch's Mythology and the Mandelbaum translation of Metamorphoses. Hopefully his translation is good for a...

First off, glad to see St. Lukes posting. Thought he had disappeared, and he always has valuable info for someone like me going through the classics for the first time. You, too, mortalterror!

I...

I love epic similes, too. They were the best parts of Homer. Noticed quite a few in Moby-Dick as well.

I would love to read Faerie Queen one day, but the pieces of it I read a few years back...

So I did finish Moby-Dick finally. Like you, it took me a few months. It's interesting that you call your year the Year of the Epic (I'd love to make 2017 that for me, as I need to read Dante,...

I'm about to finish Moby Dick, too! Once I finish it, I will read this post in more depth, but this seems like an amazing post.

I've only read bits of Paradise Lost, but even from those, Milton...

Yeah, honestly, the majority of the book is about the subject of whales and whaling, as opposed to the central narrative of actually being on the Pequod, chasing Moby Dick. It probably helps that I...

I think I didn't like it when I read (parts) of it in college, but maybe taking my time helped this time around? Mostly, though, I started reading it, because at the time I was living on Nantucket...

I think you'll definitely like Moby-Dick. I've been reading through it slowly, but it's actually not that challenging of a book, and with lots of hilarious and also beautiful lines in it.

How is...

I'm probably not nearly as well-read as most of the people on this board, so here are some of my reading goals for 2017:

1.) Finish reading Moby-Dick (on Ch. 100)
2.) Finish reading the King...

Since I just started reading classic books, my list is far fuller of the more obvious classics than everyone else's. That combined with the fact that I so rarely read books that I was assigned in...

To be fair, I bet you read a lot of books that involve people you wouldn't like to be around.

To each his own, though.

You're probably right that I was being a big judgmental and close-minded with my initial flurry of posts.

I do agree that swearing in novels that are in the actual descriptions, as opposed to...

:cheers2:

Glad to hear that someone else agrees. I think cursing may be more of a...faux pas for older people? I'm not sure. As someone on the first page (the OP?) mentioned, they remember when...

Yeah, what a pain in the ***. I hate message boards that censor words. Rotten Tomatoes is the same way for me, and I frequently visit there. Some people go through the extra pain of slightly...

For sure. Again, as I said in my previous post, anyone who is that intimidated by four-letter words or their equivalents comes across as very judgmental and close-minded, which to me is the complete...

It amazes me that so many people on this board have a problem with swearing. Does nobody else swear constantly, or at least hear it constantly, in their everyday life? Who cares?! This seems like...

Good call! I completely forgot that is how the Iliad ends. To me, Hector was really the great character that came out of Homer's epic poem, and this just adds to that. I know that Achilles is the...