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Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - Rashōmon, In a Grove, other stories (Japanese)
Sōseki Natsume - Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat, Light and Darkness (Japanese)
Jami - Haft Awrang (Persian)
Attar of Nishapur -...

I think he was talking about Flaubert's attention to detail, compared to Dostoyevsky.

Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
A Sportman's Sketches - Ivan Turgenev

I think a good example of what you're saying is Madame Bovary, JBI. Flaubert takes a rather simple, almost boring plot and creates a masterpiece with his unique brand of realism, influencing...

Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, White Noise by Don DeLillo, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, John Updike's Rabbit series, and One...

Just read what sounds best to you, the more well-received translation be damned.

I reckon Mr. Twain's trying to be funny with it, poking fun at how the German language is grammatically odd, having their verbs at the end, compared to English.

It's pretty lonely, a bit dreary, and yet hopeful at the same time. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It's written in Old English, mostly incomprehensible to modern English speakers without proper study.

Toni Morrison, David Foster Wallace and Philip Roth.

I reckon it won't hurt to read them out of order, I'm not sure that anyone really does. The sparing people that do read Balzac usually pick up Le Pere Goriot, Eugenie Grandet, and Lost Illusions.

Why not include Rabelais or Balzac in the conversation? I believe almost all French literature of the 19th century had some influence from his Human Comedy cycle.

True, Tolstoy has it all and more. I just would feel a bit awkward labeling him as hilarious as Cervantes, even though Tolstoy does has quite a few snickering moments. He does it with a subtle...

I like Faulkner for his language, psychological depth, and because I'm a sucker for southern writing. I like Cervantes for his humor, his characters, his storytelling, just everything, really. I like...

The Winesburg, Ohio collection by Sherwood Anderson, obviously Chekhov, Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, Signs and Symbols by Nabokov, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, and That Evening Sun by...

Books

1. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

2. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

3. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

4. Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

Genji predates the Chinese classic novels, but they can still be considered in a discussion of the first novel, I think.

I think you may have misconceptions about what a plot is.

I liked The Grapes of Wrath pretty well. I've never read Of Mice and Men, despite it being apparentyly required at most high schools.

I think you mean a lute, caddy, which isn't really associated with Romeo as much as the medieval troubadors.

I'm not sure how you can name the likes of Proust or Faulkner as not intellectual. Certainly they're not the epitome, but I could think of several others (Kerouac, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.) before...

I quite liked William Stewart Rose's translation. Haven't tried Harrington's, though. Also, another Italian epic you should try if you haven't is Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso. Very...

Frankenstein's monster.

I wouldn't start with The Sound and the Fury if you've already tried and failed with As I Lay Dying. It'd just turn you off of Faulkner entirely.

Nabokov was very influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and the French. I'd recommend Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, maybe Balzac's Human Comedy collection.

Oh, I forgot to add The Portrait of...