Ten Favorite Novels

[kilted exile]

I'm gonna try and keep this to 5 books (these are the 5 of the books that had the most impact on me - not in any order)

Narziss & Goldmund
Hard Times
Less Than Zero
Slaughterhouse 5
Frankenstein

[tudwell]

Pynchon, Faulkner, Beckett. Nuff said.

[Mortis Anarchy]

Slaughterhouse Five
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I, Lucifer
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali
Lolita
The Iliad
The Metamorphosis
Running With Scissors
Fahrenheit 451

[Argyroneta]

some have already been stated...but here are some of my favorites in no particular order:

Dostoyevsky - Crime & Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov
Gogol - Dead Souls
Voltaire - Candide
Camus - The Outsider, The Plague
Balzac - Old Goriot
Hesse - Peter Camenzind
Rand - Atlas Shrugged

[kenikki]

Not necessarily my top ten favourite books but these are what i recommend everyone to read at least.

1. 1984
2. Angela's Ashes
3. American Psycho
4. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
5. Dubliners
5. Frankenstein
6. Catcher in the Rye
7. Alice in Wonderland
8. On the Road
9. Cannery Row
10. Great Gatsby

[Stieg]

No particular order:

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

---

The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Ghost Stories/Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories

(Two great collections from Penguin edited by S. T. Joshi that include together all 33 of M R James' complete ghost stories with the complete manuscript of The Fenstanton Witch from "Stories That I have Tried to Write."

And am probably going to double dip and get Ash-Tree's $75 corrected second reprint of A Pleasing Terror due late this year.

Oxford's Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories edited by scholar Michael Cox is a highly recommended collection too but contains only 12 of 15 stories from the first Penguin collection and only 9 of 19 from the second Penguin collection - and lacks the complete manuscript of The Fenstanton Witch.)

---

The Best Ghost Stories of J S Le Fanu/Ghost Stories and Mysteries of J S Le Fanu

(Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's complete collection of ghost stories and mysteries compiled into two volumes from Dover however the latter volume above is out of print but obtainable through second hand sources.)

---

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories/The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories/The Thing on The Doorstep and Other Weird Stories

(Penguin's three affordable volumes of H. P. Lovecraft edited by Lovecraft Scholar S. T. Joshi containing the corrected text as HPL's work was constantly assailed by editing by Derfeth and others *Derfeth ironically is also credited with preserving Lovecraft and reintroducing his works to future generations I guess there is a good side to every bad thing and vice versa* and further encouraged by various publishers over the decades. Fortunately, S. T. Joshi exhaustively restored the author's original writings from liberal editing unfortunately the Penguin collection isn't as catagorically organized or as complete as Del Rey's collection of corrupted texts.

And these volumes don't represent the complete HPL but one would have to go through Arkham House and their five volume collection of HCs were priced around $30 a piece sadly some are out of print currently. Egads!

Library of America also released around two dozen stories in their HC volume with S.T. Joshi's corrected texts.)

---

I love ghost stories and the supernatural and these author have been well organized in collections unlike other greats such as Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood which require obtaining several collections.

Also would love to include Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Matheson's Hell House, the two finest contemporary ghost story novels of our time but my list would have little diversity.

[Lag866]

Some are favorites and some are just simply good. In no particular order...

1. Wuthering Heights
2. Picture of Dorian Gray
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. The Great Gatsby
5. Brave New World
6. Jane Eyre
7. Farenheit(sp?) 451
8. His Dark Material Trilogy- I dont think this is a classic so The Bell Jar
9. Lord of the Flies
10. A Seperate Peace

[tulysg1982]

My choice:
1.Anne frank: diary of a young girl
2.crime and punishment-Dostoyevsky
3.Resurrection- Tolstoy
4.The vinci code-Dane brown
5.Sophy's world-Jastein Garder
6.Iliad-Homer
7.The canterbury tales-Chaucer
8.The steel-Nikolai ostrovsky
9.One hundred years of solitude- Gabriel garcia
10. Macbeth, Hamlet, king lear-Shakespeare

King Oedipus by Sophocles and War and peace by Tolstoy are also my favourite.

[collinsc]

I want to read some famous books- what are the top 10?

i thought war and peace- crime and punishment...?


i read cathcer in the rye and didnt think it was that great!

id be interested to see everyone top10 then i can take the average.

thanks

[Etienne]

Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Dickens - David Copperfield
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Voltaire - Candide, Zadig, Micromégas, l'Ingénu (all together as you can get them all in one book :P)
Gogol - Petersburg Tales
Boris Vian - Froth on the daydream (what a strange title translation)
Marquez - 100 Years of Solitude

[Big Al]

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Dune by Frank Herbert
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

[Etienne]

I want to read some famous books- what are the top 10?

i thought war and peace- crime and punishment...?


i read cathcer in the rye and didnt think it was that great!

id be interested to see everyone top10 then i can take the average.

thanks

If you want to read the most famous classics and most influential books in literature, I'd suggest:

Tolstoy - War and peace
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Dante - The Divine Comedy
Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Voltaire - Candide
Homer - The Iliad
Virgil - Aeneid
Dickens - David Copperfield

[Dori]

My top 6:

Victor Hugo: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Les Miserables
Irving Stone: The Agony and the Ecstasy
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Voltaire: Candide
Alan Moore, David Lloyd: V for Vendetta

[collinsc]

ok here is one...!

has anyone ever attempted to total everyones top 10? and find out the most popular!?

perhaps a vote is in order!?

[bazarov]

Brothers Karamazov
Don Quixote
War and Peace
Eugene Onegin
Anna Karenina
Les Miserables
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Crime and Punishment
Fathers and Sons
Master and Margarita

[bluelightstar]

In no particular order, my 10 favorites are

1. Hamlet
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
3. The Great Gatsby
4. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard which also ties with Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
5. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
6. Heart of Darkness by Conrad
7. A Lesson Before Dying or Gathering of Old Menby Ernest Gaines
8. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
9. Frankenstein
10. The Stranger by Camus

[packersfan]

I can't limit my list to ten, but I tried to reduce the list as much as possibe. These are in no particular order (i'd probably die if I had to put them in order).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-Mark Haddon
Go Ask Alice-Anonyomus
Animal Farm-George Orwell
Matilda- Ronald Dahl
The Voyage of "Dawn Treader" CS Lewis
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain
A Tale of Two Series- Charles Dickens
Moby Dick-Herman Melville
Lord of the Rings-Tolkien
Jane Eyre-Bronte
The Alchemist- Coelho
Odyssey-Homer

[Etienne]

A Tale of Two Series- Charles Dickens
The Alchemist- Coelho

A Tale of Two Cities ;)

And out of curiosity, what exactly did you like in The Alchemist? I read it because some people told me they really liked it, but I really, really hated that book. I think it's probably the worst book I've ever read honestly.

[Old Crow]

My top five are pretty much set, but anything after that and my head starts to spin.

1. East of Eden - John Steinbeck
2. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
3. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
5. I and Thou - Martin Buber

...These choices are really just personal preference, and not meant to connote social/philisophical/historic significance.

NOTE: Had Kafka's novels been in the same league as his short stories, he would most certainly be first on the list.

[bazarov]

And out of curiosity, what exactly did you like in The Alchemist? I read it because some people told me they really liked it, but I really, really hated that book. I think it's probably the worst book I've ever read honestly.

I second to that!

[DavePatron]

ok here is one...!

has anyone ever attempted to total everyones top 10? and find out the most popular!?

perhaps a vote is in order!?

I did just that. The results are posted at Best 100 Novels. (http://www.best100novels.com)

[Etienne]

I did just that. The results are posted at Best 100 Novels. (http://www.best100novels.com)

Yet one more list made by and for english people only :sick:

[snowangel]

In the Lake of the Woods - Tim O'Brien
Maus: A Survivors Tale Vol. I & II - Art Spiegelman
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K. Dick

[StayGolden]

My top 10 are as follows:


The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
(OK, so The Hitchhiker's Guide isn't really a "classic" - but it should be! :p)

[oracle13]

In no particular order:

The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Richler
Hamlet
The Tempest
The Great Gatsby
Beloved - Morrison
Not strictly a book, but most stories by Edgar Allen Poe, especially The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Songs of Innocence and Experience
Not a novel, but for the way it changed my life perceptions - Russell's History of Western Philosophy
And of course, a cosy childhood favourite, all the Drenai Tales by David Gemmell

I found it quite challenging to pick my 10 favourite books, not because so many spring to my mind...more because its difficult to seperate a novel's immediate impact from its impact on reflection, if that make sense. A book I thought would be a really great contender for a top 10 spot was Portnoy's compaint, which had a pretty big impact on me upon first reading. A year later, I realise that it was Mordechai Richler's coming of age novel which I remember most fondly.

[nyka]

I second to that!

same here ;)

[Dori]

I just finished Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I feel obliged to edit my list:

Top 9 (I'm still trying to find a tenth)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
V for Vendetta by David Lloyd, Alan Moore
Candide by Voltaire
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

[jlb4tlb]

I just finished Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I feel obliged to edit my list:

Top 9 (I'm still trying to find a tenth)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
V for Vendetta by David Lloyd, Alan Moore
Candide by Voltaire
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Indeed a great read, Steinbeck at the top of his game

Jeff

[rmd]

I would like to know what other readers consider their 10 favorite novels. My favorites are novels that I have read more than once and will no doubt read again at some point in time. Here are mine in no particular order (and if I made the list next week it might be slightly different):

Howards End by E. M. Forster
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing
The Victim by Saul Bellow
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
Washington Square by Henry James
The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
July's People by Nadine Gordimer
Voss by Patrick White

[rmd]

I see that my Ten Favorite Novels thread has gotten folded into the Ten Must-Read Books, which seems different to me. Maybe the number of threads has gotten out of hand?

[Fowles27]

My ten "favorite" :)

The French Lieutenant's Woman, J. Fowles
The Magus, J. Fowles
Invisible Man, R.Ellison
Catch-22, J. Heller
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, J. Joyce
Nostromo, J. Conrad
Slaughterhouse Five, K. Vonnegut
Jude the Obscure, T. Hardy
Midnight's Children, S. Rushdie
The Great Gatsby, F. S. Fitzgerald

[bazarov]

I see that my Ten Favorite Novels thread has gotten folded into the Ten Must-Read Books, which seems different to me. Maybe the number of threads has gotten out of hand?


:lol: :lol: No, I doubt it's out of hand!
You're right, it's different, but they only wanted to help; it's very often that someone new don't look in other similar threads before opening new one! :lol:

[aabbcc]

I second to that!
And I third it ;)

[Simao]

My list is:
1- The Brothers Karmazov by Dostoyevsky.
2- Don Quixote by Cervantes.
3- Les Mesirebales by Victor Hugo.
4- Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky.
5- War and Peace by Tosltoy.
6- 100 years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez.
7- The Silent Don.
8- David Cooperfield by Charles Dickens.
9- "don't laugh at this please lol" Stephen King's The Running Man.
10- The Davinci Code by Dan Brown.

[aabbcc]

Do they have to be strictly novels? Most of my favourite works are not.

In no particular order, at this moment, my favourite works - novels and other - would be:

Alighieri, D. - La Divina Commedia
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Milton, J. - Paradise Lost
Calderón de la Barca, P. - Life is a dream
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Goethe, J. W. - Faust
Gundulić, I. - Osman
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game

[bazarov]

Alighieri, D. - La Divina Commedia
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Milton, J. - Paradise Lost
Calderón de la Barca, P. - Life is a dream
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Goethe, J. W. - Faust
Gundulić, I. - Osman
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game

I couldn't find Derviš i Smrt nowhere on Interliber but I really want to read it. Život je san, a san su i sami snovi - De La Barca ?:D

[Joreads]

1. The Catcher in the Rye
2. To Kill a Mocking bird
3. 1984
4. A Passage to India
5. Lord of the rings

These are in no special order I love them all

[thegreenthing]

Here goes (no order)

1984
Crime and punishment
A farewell to arms
Silmarillion
A tale of two cities
The silent Don

[IrishMark]

Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.

For my part, my ten ould be (in no specific order)
1. Catch 22
2. Great Expectations
3. A Farewell To Arms
4. 1984
5. The Lord of The Rings
6. Gulliver's Travels
7. Frankenstein
8. Jane Eyre
9. In A Glass Darkly
10. Pudd'nhead Wilson

[bazarov]

Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.

Les Miserables is a play?!?!?!?:bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling:

[Etienne]

Les Miserables is a play?!?!?!?:bawling: :bawling: :bawling: :bawling:

One could argue that Paradise Lost is somewhat a novel in verse too... although I'm not very scholarly in literature theory... (at least I know that Les Misérables is a novel though...)

[IrishMark]

lol, sorry, my mistake, i meant to say hamlet lol- apologies...

[LadyWentworth]

Well, top 10. The first 5 always remain the same. The last 5 tend to jump around or get knocked off the list by something else based on my mood. So these are my current choices....

1) Jane Eyre - Bronte
2) Persuasion - Austen
3) The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
4) A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
5) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Lewis
6) Maurice - Forster
7) The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Dickens
8) Gone With The Wind - Mitchell
9) Nicholas Nickleby - Dickens
10) A Long Fatal Love Chase - Alcott

Honorable mention: The "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder :)

[IrishMark]

Well, top 10. The first 5 always remain the same. The last 5 tend to jump around or get knocked off the list by something else based on my mood. So these are my current choices....

1) Jane Eyre - Bronte
2) Persuasion - Austen
3) The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
4) A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
5) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Lewis
6) Maurice - Forster
7) The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Dickens
8) Gone With The Wind - Mitchell
9) Nicholas Nickleby - Dickens
10) A Long Fatal Love Chase - Alcott

Honorable mention: The "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder :)

yes the lion the witch and the wardrobe is a brilliant book- first captured my imagination in primary school and has never let go...hopefully it never will...

[aabbcc]

I couldn't find Derviš i Smrt nowhere on Interliber but I really want to read it. Život je san, a san su i sami snovi - De La Barca ?:D
There is a DiVič edition of Derviš i smrt (Zagreb, 2001.), and my own copy is of that edition, and most of the copies I have been coming across in Croatian libraries over the years had either that edition, or Svjetlost edition (Sarajevo, year depending on edition). I could not find DiVič on web, but you might wish to attempt to contact them, probably there is only some address or some way to get to them if you really wish.

And yes, those are Calderón's verses. I remember from school, it was something like:
... O, malen je dar nam dan, Jer sav život - to je san, A san su i sami snovi...
God I love that work.:D


Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.
I feel alluded to - though, unlike some, I clearly warned that I was not making a list of 10 favourite novels since most of my literary favourites happen not to be novels :) - since my post was relatively recent at the time you replied, so alright, let me modify the post of my "top 10" according more to the form and less to the content.

If we insist on the form of novel, then:
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game (these four remain from my old response, if I exlude the non-novels off the list)

And, in addition to those, right now if I had to compose a list of another six, they would be:
Kundera, M. - Life is Elsewhere
Zweig, S. - The World of Yesterday (strictly speaking, that is also not a novel, it is sort of mixture of his memoirs?)
Lermontov, M. Ju. - A Hero of Our Time (though again, strictly speaking, one could argue this is not a novel in full sense)
Yourcenar, M. - Alexis
Pushkin, A. S. - Evgenij Onegin (we defined it as "novel in verse" at school when studied, so... :D)
and, say, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.

Equally predictable and "school"-ish list as the one I had before, except that these are novels, and that I tried not to have the same author twice (otherwise I could have composed an addition to the list out of Kundera and Dostoevsky only) ... :lol:
I had a hard time composing it, though. I really prefer other types of works, so this was a nice challenge.

[Ana Lovejoy]

1 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - Guimarães Rosa
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 Budapeste - Chico Buarque
4 Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
5 A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
6 Dom Casmurro - Machado de Assis
7 The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
8 São Bernardo - Graciliano Ramos
9 High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
10 The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

[IrishMark]

I feel alluded to - though, unlike some, I clearly warned that I was not making a list of 10 favourite novels since most of my literary favourites happen not to be novels :) - since my post was relatively recent at the time you replied, so alright, let me modify the post of my "top 10" according more to the form and less to the content.

If we insist on the form of novel, then:
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game (these four remain from my old response, if I exlude the non-novels off the list)

And, in addition to those, right now if I had to compose a list of another six, they would be:
Kundera, M. - Life is Elsewhere
Zweig, S. - The World of Yesterday (strictly speaking, that is also not a novel, it is sort of mixture of his memoirs?)
Lermontov, M. Ju. - A Hero of Our Time (though again, strictly speaking, one could argue this is not a novel in full sense)
Yourcenar, M. - Alexis
Pushkin, A. S. - Evgenij Onegin (we defined it as "novel in verse" at school when studied, so... :D)
and, say, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.

Equally predictable and "school"-ish list as the one I had before, except that these are novels, and that I tried not to have the same author twice (otherwise I could have composed an addition to the list out of Kundera and Dostoevsky only) ... :lol:
I had a hard time composing it, though. I really prefer other types of works, so this was a nice challenge.


im sorry if i gave you this impression, as I was actually looking through the pages and I seen several people doing it so no I shall not blame you lol...

[packersfan]

A Tale of Two Cities ;)

And out of curiosity, what exactly did you like in The Alchemist? I read it because some people told me they really liked it, but I really, really hated that book. I think it's probably the worst book I've ever read honestly.

That's what i meant-im the kind of person who thinks of something else why they're talking (in this case typing), and so i sometimes say (or think) of what im thinking-not what i really mean

I love the alchemist- its a universal book that gives universal lessons, and its a story about a boy on a journey-and that's what life is-a journey...

i first thought it was awful because i was forced to read it in school (any book i'm forced to read is a terrible book for me at the time)-but then i read it again and saw the beauty of a book like that :) )

[Ana Lovejoy]

i first thought it was awful because i was forced to read it in school (any book i'm forced to read is a terrible book for me at the time)-but then i read it again and saw the beauty of a book like that :) )

Now I'm really curious. Could you please say where are you from? I'm really surprised, especially because here in Brazil the only time I 'have to' read Coelho was when my Literary Theory teacher asked us to read "in order to understand why people love so much Coelho's works".

[Scheherazade]

There is a The Alchemist discussion thread if anyone is interested :)

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27870

[hellsapoppin]

Great selections by everyone on this thread --- obviously the forum is blessed with participants who are exceptionally knowledgeable. I see that the selections have been broadened to include poems and literature that are not novels. And, to me, that's a good idea.

Here are books I would include among my top ten:


Aesop Fables

Confucius Analects

Khayyam Rubiyat

Cervantes Don Quixote

Erasmus In Praise of Folly

Hugo Les Miserables

Melville Moby Dick

Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment

Santayana The Last Puritan

Orwell 1984

[Marata]

Milan Kundera - The Joke

Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita

Oscar Wilde - The picture of Dorian Gray

Herman Hesse - Demian

Albert Camus - The stranger

Bernhard Schlink - The Reader

G. G. Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment

Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Le Petit Prince

[rgdmalaysia]

Ten is too little....Here's my list;

Mysteries and Victoria by Knut Hamsun
The Lake and A Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller
The Razor's Edge and Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham
Death on the Installment Plan and Journey to the End of the Night by Celine
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
The Web and the Rock by Thomas Wolfe
L'Assomir by Emile Zola
The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz
No Longer Human and The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
The Abortion;A Historical Romance by Richard Brautigan
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
My Autobiography by Maxim Gorky
Wait Until Spring Bandini by John Fante
Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
Howards End by EM Forster
The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren

[thescholar]

1984-George Orwell
Ender's Gamie-Orson Scott Card
Crime and Punishment-Dostoyevski
Don Quixote-Cervantes
Brave New World-Aldous Huxley
Dracula-Bram Stoker
The Count of Monte Cristo- I can't remember
Farenheit 451-Ray Bradbury
The Chrysalids-John Wyndham
If-Rudyard Kipling (actually a poem but with enough depth to be a novel, also one of my favourite pieces of literature ever)

[Mattch1331]

There are so many great novels, but these are probably my favorite...

The Great Gatsby
Ulysses
The Catcher in the Rye
Gravity's Rainbow
Brave New World
War and Peace
Whisper of Death
Emma
The Sound and the Fury
The Odyssey

[LeonMello]

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, Guimarães Rosa
The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Machado de Assis
Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Edgar Allan Poe's Tales
Sherlock Holmen's canon, Conan Doyle
Ben Hur, Lew Wallace
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leon Tolstoy

[APEist]

It's actually a quintet. In 1985, ajoe was born.

LMAOROFL

God that hit the spot for some reason

[WaffenOates]

1. Melville's MOBY DICK
2. Faulkner's GO DOWN MOSES
3. Joyce's ULYSSES
4. Dostoevsky's THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
5. Traven's THE DEATH SHIP
6. Dostoevsky's THE IDIOT
7. Wittgenstein's TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS
8. Nietzche's ANTI-CHRIST
9. Plato's THE REPUBLIC
10. McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN

[Etienne]

7. Wittgenstein's TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS


Have you read the Philosophical Investigations? I'd expect one would rather enjoy it than the Tractatus. However the Tractatus is very interesting as well and also has some great quotes :p

Also, I haven't read the Anti-Christ by Nietzsche, what form did he give to this book?

[Julian Koller]

1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
2. Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
5. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
6. Arabian Nights
7. Stories and Drama by Anton Chekhov
8. Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes
9. The Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
10. A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

[Mal Reynolds]

In no particular order~

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Candide by Voltaire
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1984 by George Orwell
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

[Simao]

I was wondering which novel occured the most in the this thread? Doesn't matter which order just the fact it's in the posters top ten list. I saw Don Quixote few times in few pages but I am too lazy to look for the entire thread so if anyone knows please tell I am really interested to see what's the forum visitors have in common.

[Remarkable]

My top ten in disorder:

The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man-James Joyce
1984-George Orwell
Jane Eyre-Charlote Brontë
Pere Goriot-Balzac
Novels-Tolstoy
Don Quixote-Servantes
The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde
Blindness-Jose Saramago
Brave New World-Aldous Huxely
Arabian Nights

This is what I can recall right now,I might find something else later.

[marakatsu]

My Personal Top Ten

1. David Copperfield-Charles Dickens
2. Swann's Way- Marcel Proust
3. Mrs. Dalloway- Virginia Woolf
4. The Secret Agent- Joseph Conrad
5. Antony and Cleopatra- Shakespeare
6. To the Lighthouse- Virginia Woolf (again)
7. Bleak House- Charles Dickens (again)
8. Moby Dick- Herman Melville
9. Lolita - Nabokov
10. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot

[Remarkable]

Just rethinking,here is another Top Ten.The thing is,I cannot make myself prefere some books upon others.

Novels-Stephan Zweig
Joseph Fouche-Stephan Zweig
Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
Jacob's Room-Virginia Woolf
Year '93-Victor Hugo
The House of Mirth-Edith Wharton
Dubliners-James Joyce
Les Sorcieres de Salem-Arthur Miller(actually a play and I haven't read it in English,so I don't know the original title)
Huckelberry Fin-Mark Twain

[nathank]

* War&Peace
* Mason and Dixon
* Moby Dick
* Absalom Absalom
* Pale Fire
* Lolita
* Sot Weed Factor
* Grapes Of Wrath
* Scarlet Letter
* Huckfinn

[V.Jayalakshmi]

Dear Members,

My selection is as under.

1)War & Peace

2)Crime & Punishment

3)Razor's Edge.

4)My Cousin Rachel

5)David Copperfield.

6) Grapes Of Wrath.

7)Wuthering Heights.

8)The Mayor Of Castor Bridge.

9)Gone With The wind.

10)The Mill On The Floss.

[Tersely]

Well you want my opinion of ten classics that everyone should read. (Only from what I've read so far, 10 is a limited number)
This is what I started out with when I began to get into literature. There isnt one I'd pick over the other and there are alot more that should be on there but I only had a choice of ten. I wanted a kind of broad introduction when I started out...you know the novels that have been made into movies and plays or mentioned in little tv side jokes. Alot of these you can find mentioned in other literature also.


-Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
-Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
-A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
-Hamlet by Shakespeare
-Don Quixote by Cervantes
-Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn by Mark Twain
-Beowulf by Unknown
-The Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne
-Dracula by Bram Stoker

[The Intended]

(in no particular order)

The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wlde
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
1984 - George Owell
The Invisible Man - H. G. Wells
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
"Youth" - Joseph Conrad (a short story, but I love it too much not to put it up)

[Kafka's Crow]

Pre-twentieth Cntury
1- The Brothers Karamazov- Fyodor Dostoevsky
2- The Idiot- Fyodor Dostoevsky
3- Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
4- Notes from the Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky
5- War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
6- Madame Bovary- Gustav Flaubert
7- The Mill on the Floss- George Eliot
8- Tess of the d'Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy
9- Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
10-A hero of Our Time- Mikail Lermontov

The 20th Century
1- The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable)- Samuel Beckett
2- Ulysses- Jame Joyce
3- The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
4- Watt- Samuel Beckett
5- Murphy- Samuel Beckett
6- A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway
7- The Moviegoer- Walker Percy
8- A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
9- The Name of the Rose- Umberto Eco
10-Post Office- Charles Bukowski

Dostoevsky and Samuel Beckett, the two hemispheres of my imaginative world! I could add people like Reverte and Zafon, Rushdie, DM Thomas etc but these writers have yet to pass the test of time. They are too contemporary to be labeled classics. Eco's novel made into my list, just could not keep that one book out.

[Kafka's Crow]

Just rethinking,here is another Top Ten.The thing is,I cannot make myself prefere some books upon others.

Novels-Stephan Zweig
Joseph Fouche-Stephan Zweig
Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
Jacob's Room-Virginia Woolf
Year '93-Victor Hugo
The House of Mirth-Edith Wharton
Dubliners-James Joyce
Les Sorcieres de Salem-Arthur Miller(actually a play and I haven't read it in English,so I don't know the original title)
Huckelberry Fin-Mark Twain

This must be 'The Crucible' (1953). Excellent play. I read it to a blind friend of mine in 1990, watched its movie in cinema in 1996 (newly married couple, out and about in London, hoping from cinema to cinema, watching film after film, oh yes those were the days!)

[knightss]

This must be 'The Crucible' (1953). Excellent play. I read it to a blind friend of mine in 1990, watched its movie in cinema in 1996 (newly married couple, out and about in London, hoping from cinema to cinema, watching film after film, oh yes those were the days!)

That is a great play, I've read it a few times and I've seen it performed a few times. Arthur Miller's work is amazing. Death of Salesman is another one of my favorites.

[amalia1985]

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

5) Persuasion by Jane Austen

6) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

7) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

8) The Crucible by Arthur Miller

9) Wings of the Dove by Henry James

10)The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

[Axle1017]

1.Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
2.Crime and punishment by dostoevsky
3.anna karenina by tolstoy
4.huck finn by twain
5.the great gatsby by fitzgerald
6.in cold blood by capote
7.slaughterhouse five by vonnegut
8.hunchback of notre dame by hugo
9.the stranger by camus
10.the metamorphosis by kafka

hands down best ten ever correct me if i am wrong.

[ntropyincarnate]

In no particular order

War and Peace
Les Miserables
To Kill a Mockingbird
Quo Vadis
The Lord of the Rings
A Tale of Two Cities
Wuthering Heights
Ivanhoe
Moby Dick
Lord of the Flies

[LadyWentworth]

1) Jane Eyre - Bronte
2) Persuasion - Austen
3) The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
4) A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens





2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

5) Persuasion by Jane Austen

I swear, Amalia, you are turning more and more into me everyday! :p :D

[Igetanotion]

OK here is my list. Maybe not a list of what should be required for everyone to read, but things I think would be beneficial to anyone and that everyone ought to read them anyway. :lol:

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
2. Slaughter House Five- Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Iliad and the Odyssey.. (I'm counting them as one)- Homer
4. The Sea Wolf- Jack London
5. A Farewell To Arms- Ernest Hemingway
6. The Inferno- Dante Alighieri
7. Treasure Island-Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Love in the time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia Marquez (do not judge the book on the movie.. the movie did not do it enough justice)
9. Huckleberry Fin- Mark Twain
10. The Great Gatsby- F. Scott. Fitzgerald.

OK, so some of them are not quite 'classics' yet, they are all still great books.

If I could throw a number 11 on there, it would be "Sometimes A Great Notion"- Ken Kesey... Really great book
Oh and 12 would be "The Scarlet Letter" -Nathaniel Hawthorne

[bakestewah]

My top 10 would have to;
Orwell-Nineteen Eighty-Four
Shakspeare-Julius Ceaser
Salinger-Catcher in the Rye
Palahniuk-Fight Club
Hinton-The Outsiders
Harris-Silence of the Lambs
Cantor-Alexander the Great: journey to the end of the earth
Meyer-Twilight
Meyer-New Moon
Meyer-Eclipse

[annakarina]

In no particular order:

Notes From the Underground - Dostoievsky
Love in a Cold Climate - Nancy Mitford
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
L'Amant - Marguerite Duras
Christ Stopped at Eboli - Carlo Levi
The Sword in the Stone - TH White
Emily of New Moon - LM Montgomery
Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell

And so many still out there...

[johann cruyff]

Without giving it too much thought(because I could never decide otherwise),here are my current top 10,in no particular order:

Nausea Sartre
Steppenwolf Hesse
The Trial Kafka
Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky
The Death and the Dervish Selimovic
The Bridge on the Drina Andric
The Name of the Rose Eco
Hadji Murad Tolstoy
The Master and the Margarita Bulgakov
The Damned Yard Andric

Not to say that this list is rock-solid,though...

[eyemaker]

In no particular order, this is my Top 10

A Separate Peace
Pride and Prejudice
Father and Sons
A Tale of Two Cities
Master and Margarita
War and Peace
Dune
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
Les Miserables
Crime and Punishment

[Sir Bartholomew]

Emma (Jane Austen)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
The Mayor of Casterbridge (Thomas Hardy)
Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
Women in Love (DH Lawrence)
An American Tragedy (Theodore Dreiser)
The Great Gtasby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
The Sheltering Sky (Paul Bowles)
The Ginger Man (JP Donleavy)
The Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

[Joreads]

There are a lot of Top books of all time lists around at the moment. I thought that it would be interesting to see what your top ten books of all time are.

[Dharmabeat]

I'm by no means a very experienced reader, but if I had to pick 10 of my favourite books I've read, they'd have to be these. Obviously in no order! (And they are rather clichéd choices, so please, no judging ;) )

1. American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
2. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
3. The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
4. Perfume - Patrick Süskind
5. The Virgin Suicides - Jeffry Eugenides
6. Junky - William S. Burroughs
7. Post Office - Charles Bukowski
8. Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski
9. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
10. The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

[Dark Muse]

Well here is my list based on the books I have read thus far.

1. The Magus ~ John Fowles
2. Catcher in the Rye ~ J. D. Salinger
3. The Red Tent ~ Anita Diamant
4. Island of the Blue Dolphin (I know it is a kids book but I read it like three times and it really stuck with me. I loved it.) ~Scott O'Dell
5. Middlesex ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
6. Jane Eyre ~ Charlotte Brontë
7. Rainbow ~ D.H. Lawrence
8. A Passage To India ~ E.M. Forster
9. The Legend of Nightfall (Yes it is fantasy, but I thought it was brilliant, and ranks among my faveorites) ~Mickey Zucker Reichert
10. Call of the Wild ~ Jack London

[Hank Stamper]

Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Hunter S Thompson - The Great Shark Hunt
Bret Easton Ellis - American Pyscho
Hunter S Thompson - Hell's Angels
Charles Bukowski - The most Beautiful Woman in town
John Fante - The Bandini Quartet
George Orwell - Down and out in Paris and London
Tom Wolfe - The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test

[Dharmabeat]

Ah, I really like your choices Hank.

I keep meaning to check out 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'.
Will do so soon hopefully :)

[tscherff]

sometimes a great notion--kesey
catch 22---heller
absalom, absalom--faulkner
sound and the fury--faulkner
world according to garp
to the lighthouse---woolf
in search of lost time---proust
crime and punishment---dostoevski
heart of darkness---conrad
ancient evenings---mailor

[_Shannon_]

Ugh I dunno--I like so many different kinds of books--and like books for so many different reasons...

How about a list of 10 books I like a lot :) ( I started making my list and decided that I'd have to do fiction and non-fiction)
Fiction
1. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
2. Sister Carrie- Theodore Dreiser
3. The Good Soldier- Ford Maddox Ford
4. Jane Eyre- Charolette Bronte
5. The Dharma Bums- Jack Kerouac
6. Pudd'nhead Wilsom- Mark Twain
7. Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo
8. Sanctuary- William Faulkner
9. Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos
10. Appoinment in Samarra - John O'Hara

Non-Fiction
1. Dispatches- Michael Herr
2. They Things They Carried - Tim O' Brien
3. Home Town - Tracy Kidder
4. Friday Night Lights- Buzz Bissinger
5. In Cold Blood- Truman Capote
6. There Are No Children Here- Alex Kotlowitz
7. Rocket Boys - Homer Hickam (all three of the "Coalwood" books are awesome)
8. Young Men and Fire - Norman Maclean
9. Wait "til Next Year- Doris Kearns Goodwin
10. Executioner's Song- Norman Mailer

[Hank Stamper]

Ah, I really like your choices Hank.

I keep meaning to check out 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test'.
Will do so soon hopefully :)

do it. its great!

[THEfanatic]

1. The Possessed - Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Candide - Voltaire
3. The Cask of Amontillado - Edgar Allan Poe
4. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
5. A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
6. Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
7. The Crucible - Arthur Miller
8. A Doll House - Henrik Ibsen
9. Faust - Goethe
10. A Living Chattel - Anton Chekhov

[amalia1985]

This is STRICTLY my personal opinion. It may very well be wrong, okay?:)

In no particular order:

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
4) A Passage To India by E.M.Forster
5) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7) Macbeth by William Shakespeare
8) The Crucible by Arthur Miller
9) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
10) The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

[Hank Stamper]

sometimes a great notion--kesey


great book ;)

[Statistic]

1) Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures
2) Blue Lagoon
3) The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death
4) Dr. Rat
5) Treasure Island
6) Survivor
7) The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath
8) Heroics for Beginners
9) The Book of Three
10) Angela's Ashes

I tend to stick to low brow texts because most literary stuff deals with common morals with which I almost never agree. Religion, guilt, honor, courage. Bah, I'd rather hear about a dog who can talk.

[Dark Muse]

This is STRICTLY my personal opinion. It may very well be wrong, okay?:)

In no particular order:

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
4) A Passage To India by E.M.Forster
5) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7) Macbeth by William Shakespeare
8) The Crucible by Arthur Miller
9) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
10) The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams


We have simillar taste in books. I acutally went back and forth with The Sun Also Rises, almost added to my last, glad to see someone else did.

[johann cruyff]

My top ten books of all time...hmmm,not easy,but I'll give it a go:

The Divine Comedy - Dante
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
The Death and the Dervish - Selimović
The Damned Yard - Andrić
The Trial & The Metamorphosis - Kafka
The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Remembrance of Things Past - Proust
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Nietzsche
The Glass Bead Game - Hesse
Dead Souls - Gogol

My current top ten,novels only(I'm aware Zarathustra isn't exactly the classical novel).There are way too many plays and poems to take into account.

[Brasil]

Mysticim of number 3

The number 3 can represent "God" or the divine, "the unknown".

Divine Comedy:
- 3 books (hell, purgatory and heaven)

- 33 chants

- Hell, purgatory and heaven are divided in 9 (3 x 3) circles, it makes a total 27 (3 x 3 x 3).

- Verse in tercet (3 lines)

rhyme:
It is written in a technique known as the original terza rima (third rhyme)
Terza rima: the center line of each tercet control both lines of marginal following tercet: ABA, BCB, CDC, DED ....
...gives the illusion of growth to infinity


My list (it includes literature and not literature):
1- Iliad (Homer)
2- Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri)
3- Os Lusíadas - The Lusiads - (Luis de Camões)
4- Don Quijote de la Mancha (Miguel de Cervantes)
5- Fedon (Plato)
6- The Republic (Plato)
7- The Capital (Karl Marx)
8- Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas - The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas - (Machado de Assis)
9- Quincas Borbas (Machado de Assis)
10- Odissey (Homer)

[JBI]

How basic Brazil, you forgot the connections to 9 as well, and 2. There are other numerical things in it as well, and other considerations. For instance, Dante met Beatrice when he was 9 (3x3), got rejected when he was 18 (9x2, symbolizing the devil to some extent), but unfortunately she died two years too soon at 25. Scholars have found tons of other numerical things within the book itself, which are generally included in any introduction.

The Divine Comedy seems to be perhaps the 3rd or so most studied book in the Western tradition, behind Hamlet and the Bible. Dante scholarship is massive, dating back to even his contemporary times.

[amalia1985]

We have simillar taste in books. I acutally went back and forth with The Sun Also Rises, almost added to my last, glad to see someone else did.
;) :) ;) :)

[DapperDrake]

Ok, this isn't a definitive list and if you ask me again in 12 months it will have changed etc. but here it is:

Silas Marner - George Eliot
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Emma - Jane Austen
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

...Those are the ones I'm sure of :-/ I'll add more to bring the list up to 10 once I've decided.

Other candidates:

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

And if plays are allowed:

Macbeth - William Shakespeare
The importance of being earnest - Oscar Wilde

[Mark F.]

A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway
Notes From the Underground - Dostoevsky
The Fall - Camus
Ham on Rye - Bukowski
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Sentimental Education - Flaubert
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

[stlukesguild]

1. The Bible
2. Homer- The Odyssey
3. Dante- The Divine Comedy
4. Shakespeare- Plays: King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, and MacBeth especially
5. Cervantes- Don Quixote
6. Proust- In Search of Lost Time
7. Blake- Collected Poems
8. Kafka- Short Stories, Tales, and Parables
9. J.L. Borges- Collected Works
10. Sterne- Tristam Shandy

The first 5 are permanent fixtures but the final 5 may change tomorrow.

[Sir Bartholomew]

another one?

Mansfield Park / Emma (tie) - Austen
the Sheltering Sky - Bowles
Wide Sargasso Sea - Rhys
To the Lighthouse - Woolf
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
An American Tragedy - Dreiser
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - McCullers
The Rainbow / Women in Love (tie) - Lawrence
The Golden Bowl - James
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway

and many others, can't think well clearly

[Dark Muse]

Wide Sargasso Sea - Rhys

I want to read that

[Sir Bartholomew]

I want to read that

yes, do. you'll see mr rochester in a very different light.

[Drkshadow03]

I consider these more personal favorites than the best.

1) Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

2) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

5) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

6) A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

7) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

8) The Jewish Bible by G-D and an assortment of Hebrew writers

9) 1984 by George Orwell

10) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

[Dark Muse]

I read Homebody by Orson Scott Card and enjoyed it. I haven't read anything else of his yet though

[aabbcc]

My current favourites:

1. Alighieri, D. - La Divina Commedia
An absolute number one for me. The other works are, in no particular order:

Goethe, J.W. - Faust
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Dostoevsky, F.M. - Brothers Karamazov
Sophocles - Theban plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone)
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Bulgakov, M. - Master and Margarita
Selimović, M. - Death and the Dervish
Homer - The Odyssey

[Cadi]

This was much harder than it seemed :idea:
Bible
Pride & Prejudice
Persuasion
Crime & Punishment
War & Peace
East of Eden
The Great Gatsby
The Age of Innocence
To Kill a Mockingbird
Gone With the Wind

[_Shannon_]

I read Homebody by Orson Scott Card and enjoyed it. I haven't read anything else of his yet though

I am not a big sci fi fan---but Ender's Game was great! I really, really enjoyed it!

[mortalterror]

1.The Inferno- Dante
2.Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare
3.The Bible
4.The Republic- Plato
5.The Catcher in the Rye- Salinger
6.Catch-22- Heller
7.On the Road- Kerouac
8.The Metamorphoses- Ovid
9.Lolita- Nabokov
10.Andromache- Racine

My pick is kind of a mixed bag or all time greats and personal faves. I'm not particularly fond of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, Homer, Austen, etc. Most people prefer Hamlet, but I'm going to go with R&J for being Shakespeare's best.

[Drkshadow03]

I read Homebody by Orson Scott Card and enjoyed it. I haven't read anything else of his yet though

You should definitely try Ender's Game. That's considered his best book.

[SnipSnap]

1) Great Expectations - Dickens
2) Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
3) Lolita - Nabokov
4) Madame Bovary - Flaubert
5) Dracula - Stoker
6) Lord of the Flies - Golding
7) Invisible Man - Ellison
8) Ulysses - Joyce
9) The Enormous Room - Cummings
10) 1984 - Orwell

[Niamh]

1. Persuasion- Jane Austen
2. Hellfire- Mia Gallagher
3. The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
4. East of Eden- John Stienbeck
5. Utterly Monkey- Nick Laird
6. Merlin Trilogy- Mary Stewart
7. Artemis Fowl- Eoin Colfer
8. His Dark materials- Philip Pulman
9. Deirdre of the Sorrows- J.M.Synge
10. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte

Man i posted this a long time ago!
Be more like;
Persuasion
Bitterbynde Saga by Cecilia Dart Thornton
Hellfire by Mia Gallagher
North and south by Elizabeth gaskell
East of Eden
Merlin Trilogy
Artemis Fowl
His Dark Materials
Deirdre of the Sorrows
Candide by Voltaire

[Ethan Roy]

1.Lord of the flies
2.1984
3.And then there were none
4.Treasure Island
5.Inheritence saga
6.The chronicles of Narnia
7.The BitterBynde saga
8.Children of the red king saga
9.A midsummer night's dream
10. Artemis fowl saga

In truth I love just about all the books I've read.

[Guinivere]

1. A prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
2. The end of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas
3. Special topics in calamity physics by Marisha Pessl
4. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
5. Faust - Der Tragödie erster Teil by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
6. Der Proceß by Franz Kafka
7. North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. The shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
9. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoj

[kelby_lake]

2.Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare


Um, that isn't a novel :)

Mine, I dunno (but in no particular order)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau (which is probably actually a novella)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgeson Burnett
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
1984 by George Orwell

[johann cruyff]

Today I noticed that I had placed The Divine Comedy amongst my top ten novels as well...:blush::D

[Agatha]

1.The Red and the black by Stendhal
2.Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac
3.Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4.Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
5.Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
6.War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
7.Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
8.Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
9.The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
10.The Egyptian by Mika Waltari

So it's my ten. But I think that that list soon will change, because I have a lots of books which I want to read...

[kelby_lake]

Today I noticed that I had placed The Divine Comedy amongst my top ten novels as well...:blush::D

I was about to point that out actually! :):lol:

[Leaver]

books everyone should read:
- Demian, Herman Hesse
- Ishmael, Daniel Quinn, a book that will change your view of the world
- Original Wisdom, Robert Wolff
- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
- 1984
- The Catcher in the Rye
- Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
- Maus, Art Spielgman
- The World According to Garp, John Irving
- Griffin and Sabine

[promtbr]

Dostoevsky and Samuel Beckett , the two hemispheres of my imaginative world! I

What Kafka's Crow said. (Two hemispheres together make a world.)

I will add a list beyond the necessity of reading EVERYTHING by the above two authors first:

Franz Kafka- Pick one (the third hemisphere lol...:lol:)

Arno Schmidt- everything translated (currently 3 Volumes)

Jorge Louis Borges-- Fictions

Virginia Woolf -- To The Lighthouse

Joseph Conrad-- Pick any of his Majors

Marcel Proust-- In Search of Lost Time

David Foster Wallace-- Essays

Joyce--- Dubliners or POTAAAYM

I dunno, for the last two, maybe a major work by any 2 of: Camus, Hemingway, Nabakov, Pynchon, Bernhard, Mann, Tolstoy, or Barthelme's short stories...depending on how well grounded in the classics (or Literary IQ) the reader of the list of suggested books is intended for...

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

hmm here's my top ten.

Finnegans Wake-James Joyce
The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoevsky
Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man-James Joyce
Lolita-Vladimir Nabokov
Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ulysses-James Joyce
Lord of the Flies-William Golding
The Island of Dr.Moreau by H.G. Wells
The Stranger-Albert Camus
Pale Fire-Vladimir Nabokov

half my list is the same three writers. I need to get out more often!

[Etienne]

Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Bely - Petersburg
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Rulfo - Pedro Paramo
Proust - Swann's Way
Saint-Exupéry - Terre des hommes ("Sand, Wind and Stars", hate the title translation)
Döblin - Berlin Alexanderplatz
Aquin - Next Episode
Nabokov - Lolita
Gide - The Counterfeiters

Hmmmyeah...

[Dr. Hill]

1. The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde
2. Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. The Trial- Franz Kafka
4. Animal Farm-George Orwell (Not sure if this is a full-blown novel, due to length)
5. Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
6. The Count of Monte-Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
7. The Stranger- Albert Camus
8. Moby Dick- Herman Melville
9. Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
10. Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad

[Snowqueen]

These are the some novels I think all should read,

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Tess of the d`Urbervilles by Thomas Hard
The Picture of Dorain Gray by Oscar Wild Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hamingway
Boy by Roald Dahl

[Dr. Hill]

If you remove To Kill a Mockingbird, I can state safely that I agree on all points.

[Tallon]

I think To Kill a Mockingbird should be mandatory. The world would be a more empathetic place.

[Snowqueen]

Why not "To Kill a Mockingbird"? Its a great novel i think.

[Dr. Hill]

I think it may be my unnecessary-- in my opinion-- and extraneous exposure to "racial literature". By the time we had reached To Kill A Mockingbird I found myself sadly without a care in the world, as I had encountered so many of the same. TKaM doesn't stand out to me at all as anything more than a quintessential southern novel, and for a novel to be regional is not enough for me to concede its greatness.

This is not, of course, to say that I am not empathetic. I do care about the issue, but the book was too trite by the time I had arrived at it, not a year ago.

[prendrelemick]

These are the some novels I think all should read,

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Tess of the d`Urbervilles by Thomas Hard
The Picture of Dorain Gray by Oscar Wild Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hamingway
Boy by Roald Dahl


According to this thread, Crime and Punishment should be there as well.

[blp]

A baker's dozen. Sorry, couldn't limit myself to ten:

Huckleberry Finn
The Brothers Karamazov
Blood and Guts in Highschool [Kathy Acker]
Heart of Darkness
Vanity Fair
The Sun Also Rises
A Personal Matter [Kenzaburo Oe]
Jane Eyre
Summer Rain [Marguerite Duras]
Nausea
Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable
Naked Lunch
Tender is the Night

[promtbr]

A baker's dozen. Sorry, couldn't limit myself to ten:

Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnamable


Finally some Beckett love. That's what I'm talkin' about...

[blp]

Finally some Beckett love. That's what I'm talkin' about...

Am I really the first in 26 pages? Oy. And people wonder what's wrong with the world today...

[blp]

The 20th Century
1- The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable)- Samuel Beckett
2- Ulysses- Jame Joyce
3- The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce
4- Watt- Samuel Beckett
5- Murphy- Samuel Beckett
6- A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway
7- The Moviegoer- Walker Percy
8- A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
9- The Name of the Rose- Umberto Eco
10-Post Office- Charles Bukowski

Dostoevsky and Samuel Beckett, the two hemispheres of my imaginative world!

Ah, OK, no I'm not then.

[Snowqueen]

Well! Tallon and prendrelemick didn't mind. So what would you what would you suggest Dr. Hill?

[jbailey]

I'm a Steinbeck fanatic:
Please read
Grapes of Wrath
East of Eden
Of Mice and Men

They aren't classified "classics" yet, but if I had to list my personal library favorites, they would include:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hotel New Hampshire
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Last Days of Summer
Everything is Illuminated
Boy's Life
Samauri's Garden
Kafka on the Shore

[Tallon]

Interesting, Kafka On The Shore is by far the worst Murakami novel i've read. He seems to have hit his zenith with The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

[hoyden]

I'm a Steinbeck fanatic:
Please read
Grapes of Wrath
East of Eden
Of Mice and Men

They aren't classified "classics" yet, but if I had to list my personal library favorites, they would include:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hotel New Hampshire
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Last Days of Summer
Everything is Illuminated
Boy's Life
Samauri's Garden
Kafka on the Shore
I read One Hundred Years of Solitude when I was about 12, I was so confused :D I remember thinking "wow, this is a crazy book", but I finished it and still remember most of it now. I really should reread it :)

[bazarov]

These are the some novels I think all should read,

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Tess of the d`Urbervilles by Thomas Hard
The Picture of Dorain Gray by Oscar Wild Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hamingway
Boy by Roald Dahl

4/10 and 2 are awful!? I am bad.

[KaranTrehan]

well, though i cant recall all of my ten favorites (guess i have much more in the list) ...but there are certain novels which i enjoyed immensely. they are..


- Great Expectations
- Wuthering Heights
-A fine balance
- War and Peace
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
-The monk who sold his Ferrari

[Bumbeli]

To write down only 10 books is really kinda hard, there are so many more I would recommend.

G. Flaubert - Madame Bovary
M. Proust - In search of lost time (greatest series of books ever written)
G.G. Marquez - One houndred years of solitude
L. Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (prefer it over War and Peace)
J. Joyce - Ulysses (hard one, but once you're done you'll always love it)
A. Camus - The Plague (this book had a huge influence on me, definitly got to read it again some time soon)
J. P. Sartre - No Exit/Huis Clos
F. Nietzsche - Thus spoke Zarathustra
F. M. Dostoyevsky - Any of his "great novels" is amazing, though I personally liked The Idiot the most. I can't even tell how much I admire this guy.
Dante Alighieri - Divina Commedia

There are dozens of other books to add, but it's down to 10.

[Awakening]

I haven't read a huge number of novels, so this isn't a definitive list; just a list of favorites that come to mind.

Proust - In Search of Lost Time (certainly the greatest novel I have read)
Nabokov - Lolita, Ada, and Pale Fire (works of genius, all three)
Kafka - The Trial
Joyce - Ulysses (difficult, but worth it)
Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Robbe-Grillet - Jealousy
Beckett - The Unnameable

That's ten.

[Sakah]

Goodness, I'm not sure if I have ten favorites, but I'll list a few books here that I absolutely adore (I have recently started to expand my reading horizon, which mostly includes classics. Until then, here are fantasy/etc novels that I love.)

The Shining by Stephen King

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

The Book Thief by Markus Kusak

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Twilight + The Host by Stephenie Meyer

[Joreads]

Goodness, I'm not sure if I have ten favorites, but I'll list a few books here that I absolutely adore (I have recently started to expand my reading horizon, which mostly includes classics. Until then, here are fantasy/etc novels that I love.)

The Shining by Stephen King

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

The Book Thief by Markus Kusak

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Twilight + The Host by Stephenie Meyer


I loved The Book Theif it was a wonderful read and really engaging. You should try Interview with a Vampire Ann Rice it is also great

[Amlóði]

Subject to change and in no particular order;

i/ The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Tolkien)
ii/ [What currently exists of] The Gentleman Bastard Sequence (Lynch)
iii/ Watership Down (Adams)
iv/ Lolita (Nabokov)
v/ Gertrude and Claudius (Updike)
vi/ Man and Superman (Shaw)
vii/ True and False (Mamet)
viii/ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Barrett) !
ix/ Hamlet in Purgatory (Greenblatt)
x/ Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

[Zee.]

Interview with the Vampire is wonderful.
Watership Down.
The Sound and the Fury
Rabbit, Run
In Cold Blood ( why has this not been mentioned!? )

[Tallon]

I get the feeling Capote isn't very well regarded here. I like his work anyway, especially Breakfast At Tiffany's.

[Saladin]

1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. Hunger by Knut Hamsun
4. The Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
5. Faust (part 1 and 2) by J.W.von Goethe
6. The Trial by Franz Kafka
7. Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
8. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
9. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
10. Kimen by Tarjei Vesaas

[Caspa]

Here are my 10 favourites, not particularly listed in any order:

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime & Punishment
Albert Camus The Stranger
George Orwell 1984
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5
Jack Kerouac On the Road
Douglas Coupland Generation X
Jeffery Eugenides The Virgin Suicides
Irvine Welsh Ecstasy
Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises

[Zee.]

I loved, The Virgin Suicides and American Psycho.

[Caspa]

The Virgin Suicides was actually the first book I ever read (outside of education), and American Psycho was the second :)

[Zee.]

I really liked how it left you feeling.. i don't know.
The girl's suicides left you feeling, well left me feeling really... freaked out i guess.

[Remarkable]

My top ten for the moment(it might change as soon as tomorrow:D)in no particular order:

Midnight's Children-Salman Rushdie
A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man-James Joyce
1984-George Orwell
Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
War and Peace-Leon Tolstoy
Sophie's World-Jostein Gaarder
Seeing-Jose Saramago
Short Stories-Dino Buzzati
The Institute of Time Regulation-Ahmet Hamdi Tanpynar
All Quiet on the Western Front-Erich Maria Remarque

I tried to pick representatives for different epoches,styles and messages.It would be better to start with classics,like Dickens,but if you want a fast read,Remarque would be perfect.

[Infinitefox]

Swan Song by Robert McCammon
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
A Game of Thrones by George R.R Martin
A Storm of Swords by George R.R Martin
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
The Stand by Stephen King
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Shining by Stephen KIng
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon

[sixsmith]

In no order and likely to change in the next half hour.


Herzog - Saul Bellow
Independence Day - Richard Ford
The Outsider - Albert Camus
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
Lolita - Vladimir Nabakov
The Information - Martin Amis
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Disgrace - JM Coetzee

[Odysseus93]

Probably my favourite ten classics would be, in no particular order: Hamlet, the Illiad, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, A Christmas Carol, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth

[mal4mac]

... I would love to hear some recommendations from you pros on the classics.

What makes you think we're pros? I don't sell my body on this forum :) My recommendation - try reading some recommendations from real pros - like Harold Bloom, John Carey, Clifford Fadiman, and James Wood. They don't just produce another boring list, they actually say, at book length, what might be worth reading and why.

[Vladimir777]

I loved, The Virgin Suicides and American Psycho.

Interesting, I really liked the latter of these two but I didn't get into the former. Did you feel Virgin was Eugenides's best book? Maybe I should read another one by him.

[African_Love]

Fiction
______

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Native Son by Richard Wright

Gone With the Wind (I'm currently reading this but already I can tell it will be on my top 10 list)

Roots (although it's debatable as to how fictitious this actually is)

Queen (also based on the life of an actual woman but I'll add it as fiction)

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (not a classic but I'll add it to make a round 10)

Camoflauge by Joe Haldeman (also not a classic but very interesting)



Non-Fiction
--------------

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Speciesism by Joan Dunayer

Finding Fish by Antwone Fisher

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Assata by Assata Shakur

Left To Tell by Imaculee Ilibagiza

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama

Wonders of the African World by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver

[onioneater]

1. David Copperfield- Dickens
2. East of Eden- Steinbeck
3. The Return of the Native- Thomas Hardy
4. Absalom! Absalom!- Faulkner
5. Don Quixote- Cervantes
6. The Mill on the Floss- Eliot
7. Fortunata y Jacinta- Galdós
8. Jane Eyre- Bronte
9. The Brothers Karamazov- Doestovesky
10. The Last of the Mohicans- Cooper

These are some of my favorites!

[Vangeory]

The writer of The Art of War is Sun Tzu,not Lao Tzu.I am Chinese,and read this book before.Trust me

[Chabonist]

~ The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
~ The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
~ Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
~ Cannery Row (John Stienbeck)
~ Of Mice and Men (John Stienbeck)
~ Damian (Herman Hesse)
~ Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)

Plays:
~ Death of a Salesman
~ Hamlet
~ Cyrano De Bergerac

Almost classics:
~ Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
~ The Wizard of Earthsea (Ersula K Leguin)

[Return Journey]

Right now, as I think about my ten best list, these are the books that come to mind.
It’s a mixed bunch including some poetry and non-fiction.


The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens
Coming up for Air, George Orwell
Cancer Ward, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Quite Early One Morning, Dylan Thomas
Resolution and Independence, William Wordsworth
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence

[ennison]

Outside of The Psalms which I read daily I'd say "Uttermost Part of the Earth" by Lucas Bridges is my favourite book and after that there are too too many.

[sammyuk]

This is probably a poor list really, I haven't read enough to really pick and choose yet, and they're all very mainstream, but here goes anyway (in no particular order, sorry):
1. Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky (not finished it yet)
2. Animal Farm - Orwell (mostly because Russian history fascinates me)
3. Catch 22 - Heller
4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson (not a novel obviously but I couldn't omit it, it's far too good)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
6. LOTR - Tolkien
7. Brave New World - Huxley
8. Island - Huxley
9. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
10. The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger

Hardly a revolutionary list, but then I haven't read that much. It's very Western as well.

[Paulclem]

Lists -endless lists.

Instead of lists, I have piles...:lol:

[Travis_R]

1. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
2. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
4. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
5. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
7. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
8. The Brother Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
9. Animal Farm - George Orwell
10. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

[Satan]

The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
Der Steppenwolf
Narcissus and Goldmund
Don Quixote
Portrait of Artist as a Young Man
Jude the Obscure
Sons and Lovers
Lolita
Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable

Why only ten? Some more:

Notes from Underground
The Idiot
The Stranger
The Plague
Siddhartha
Nausea
The Master And Margarita
Of Human Bondage
War and Peace
Faust
Great Expectations
Tess Of The D'urbervilles
The Count of Monte Cristo
As I Lay Dying
The Great Gatsby
Mill on the Floss
Journey to the end of the Night
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Madame Bovary
The English Patient
Hunger
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Catcher in the Rye
Pale Fire

[neilgee]

What makes you think we're pros? I don't sell my body on this forum :) My recommendation - try reading some recommendations from real pros - like Harold Bloom, John Carey, Clifford Fadiman, and James Wood. They don't just produce another boring list, they actually say, at book length, what might be worth reading and why.

Some of us do read these lists, Mal. If I see a list with books on I have also rated very highly then I'm interested to see what's on the list that I have not read because the poster seems to have similar tastes to me. That does in this way make at least as much sense as believing the opinion of a critic whose tastes I know nothing about at all.

Making lists can be quite fun too. I'm not going to be critical of it.

[Dinkleberry2010]

1. The Mahabharata
2. The Bible
3. The Koran
4. The Iliad
5. The Classical Greek Dramatists in One Volume
6. The Divine Comedy
7. The Complete Works of Shakespeare in One Volume
8. Moby Dick
9. War and Peace
10. The Brothers Karamazov

[Dinkleberry2010]

I'm afraid that I misunderstood this thread, and I listed ten literary works, only three of them being novels.

[Cal1231]

In no particular order:

Animal Farm
Anna Karenina
The Catcher in the Rye
The Lord of the Rings
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
A Tale of Two Cities
Wuthering Heights

[wlz]

Gulliver's Travels.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
The Vicar of Wakefield.
The Wild Irish Girl.
Melmoth the Wanderer.
Ulysses.
Finnegans Wake.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
At Swim-Two-Birds.
The Ante Room.
An Beal Bocht.
A Drama in Muslin.
Esther Waters.
The Brook Kerith.

[Lumiere]

In no particular order, (except for How Green Was My Valley, which is without doubt my favorite of favorites).

How Green Was My Valley
Jane Eyre
God Knows
David Copperfield
Coming Up For Air
Dandelion Wine
Life of Pi
Till We Have Faces
Cat's Cradle
Lord of the Flies

[Babak Movahed]

hmmm that's a good question...

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave
3. The Stranger by Albert
4. The Sun Also Rises by Earnest
5. The Blind Owl by Sadegh
6. Lolita by Vladimir
7. Go Tell it On the Mountain by James
8. Fathers and Sons by Ivan
9. The Doctor is Sick by Anthony
10. The Idiot by Fyodor

[gruntingslime]

I can't put them in any specific order...

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Tenant - Roland Topor
The Castle - Franz Kafka
Ferdydurke - Witold Gombrowicz
The Little Prince - Antoine de Sainte Exupery
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Jacob Von Gunten - Robert Walser
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Moominvalley in November - Tove Jansson
Joko's Anniversary - Roland Topor

[ForKnowledge]

the idiot Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karazamov FD
Candide Voltaire
Lord Jim Joseph Conrad
Nostromo Joseph Conrad
Don Quixote Cervantes
the Portrait of an Artist as a Young man James Joyce
The Stranger Camus
Tropic of capricorn Henry Miller
The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner

[janesmith]

"Jude" and "Tess" - Thomas Hardy
"The Netherworld" - George Gissing
"La Terre", "La Bete Humaine" and "L'Assommoir" - Emile Zola
"Les Miserables" - Victor Hugo
"The Yellow Wallpaper" - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"Great Expectations" - Dickens
"Frankenstein" - Mary Shelley

[Sebas. Melmoth]

Ten Favourite Novels?

1) The Picture of Dorian Gray, O. Wilde

2) The Narrow Corner, W. S. Maugham

3) Heart of Darkness, J. Conrad

4) Spring Snow, Y. Mishima

5) Sister Carrie, T. Dreiser

6) Madame Bovary, G. Flaubert

7) Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence

8) Against Nature, J.-K. Huysmans

9) A Farewell to Arms, E. Hemingway

10) Through the Looking Glass, L. Carroll

[BellaRose]

From the limited amount that I have read so far:

1. Phantom of the Opera
2. Frankenstein
3. To Kill A Mockingbird
4. A Tale of Two Cities
5. Great Expectations
6. War and Peace
7. The Bell Jar
8. Gone With the Wind
9. Little Women
10. Jane Eyre

[wokeem]

I need to read more

1.Crime and Punishment
2.Tale of Two Cities
3.1984
4.Notes From The Underground
5.Blood Meridian
6.The Invisible Man
7.Suttree
8.Tortilla Flat
9.To Kill a Mockingbird
10. Slaughterhouse-Five

[victorianfan]

1. A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov

2. Chronicles of Travnik by Ivo Andrić

3. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

4. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

5. Middlemarch by George Eliot

6. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

7. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy

8. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

9. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

10. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

[jdalvarado]

Latin American Literature

1. Ficciones and El Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges
2. Sobre Heroes y Tumbas by Ernesto Sabato
3. La Invención de Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
4. Rayuela by Julio Cortazar
5. La Región Más Transparente by Carlos Fuentes
6. El Llano en Llamas and Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
7. El Astilladero by Juan Carlos Onetti
8. Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Marquez
9. Los Detectives Salvajes by Roberto Bolaño
10. Paradiso by José Lezama Lima