As my username as sig mmight suggest, I am a Don Quixote fan, but the works of Paul Auster are not far behind and I regard him as one of only a few living authors I truly admire.
As my username as sig mmight suggest, I am a Don Quixote fan, but the works of Paul Auster are not far behind and I regard him as one of only a few living authors I truly admire.
"Mere flim-flam stories, and nothing but shams and lies." - Sancho Panza, in Don Quixote, pt. 1, bk. 3, ch. 11 (1605)
Jane Eyre has been my favourite since I was ten years old.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Originally Posted by KCurtis
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Oh ****!! Now I'm going to want to read the last paragraph! I'll have to cover it up with an index card and tape it. Sorry, OCD. That's my excuse.
That is so cool. It was one of mine too!Jane Eyre has been my favourite since I was ten years old.
I also like Stefan Zweig
It's impossible for me to name a favorite book. But, going by which books I have read the most, I'd have to say Gone With the Wind, Pride & Prejudice and The Three Musketeers.
Not far behind would be everything else by Dumas and Jude the Obscure.
I think everyone has his7her favorite. It is more effective than others. More special. I like into the wild which is my favorite
I have about 20 books that are equally my favorites so I'll list them here:
(1) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
(2) The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
(3) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
(4) Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
(5) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
(6) The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
(7) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
(8) The Histories - Herodotus
(9) Paradise Lost - John Milton
(10) Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
(11) The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
(12) The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
(13) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
(14) Moby Dick - Herman Melville
(15) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
(16) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
(17) Confessions - St. Augustine
(18) A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
(19) Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
(20) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Ok I'll admit I might like some more than others, but I do LOVE all of these books. It's just SOOO hard to pick one! lol
They are all great books
After all these years, it's still Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
A clichè, I know, but I was very young. It made quite an impression and sill has a certain power over me, not to mention its charm.
"I have never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." - Henry David Thoreau
The Iliad
Pride and prejudice.
Don Quixote is my favoite novel and at some points I find myself a Don Quuixote, a romantic in fact. I always have been a dreamer and I found my meaning of living in dreams. I know a dream is a dream and most of them never materalize and yet I always love to dream and imagine and fantasize and things are close by do not appeal to me and like this famous hero I always dream of distance things.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
I read Doctor Faustus. LOL could you help me out? I was strugglin'. At times it seems to meander without much plot, and the symbolism was startlingly difficult to grasp at times. But near the end it became progressively more fast paced, sardonic, moving, and overall well worth your time. I only read the John E. Woods translation, however. Have any of you noticed any differences in quality between the Porter and Woods translations? I own both versions of The Magic Mountain, and intend on reading them concurrently some time this year, along with Woods's versions of Buddenbrooks and Joseph and his Brothers.
One question about it: was the depiction of the intellectuals and poets gathering to discuss mass psychology and the need for totalitarian regimes meant to be as bitterly sarcastic as it came off? XD And do you have any idea of what was symbol and what wasn't? I've heard interpretations as different as Leverkuhn's disdain and Zeitblom's kinder feelings for Bavaria symbolizing their respective views on traditional societies to Leverkuhn himself representing the modern homosexual. XDDD I loved the book tho. Mann understood music like few others, and his discussion of Beethoven's fugal works was especially poignant.
As for my favorite novels, I'd say without a doubt that the works I've read by Faulkner and Joyce have been the ones to affect me the most. They pushed me out of my shell and into the adult world. I will be forever grateful for their impact on my philosophy. If I had to choose a favorite book on music, it would be Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise.
Talk to me sometime. http://dysfunctional-harmony.tumblr.com/
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