??? Greatest Reads ???

[dpike13]

Hey Everyone,

I recently just finished off 'Dante's - Devine Comedy'. Honestly loved it. It is the first book of its kind that i have read. I usually stick to Action/Thriller type books.
Favourite Author is Matthew Reilly and for anyone out there who hasn't had a chance to read anything he has written i would suggest 'Temple' which i would say is his stand out...

However more to the point i have run out of books to read and was wondering if you people out there could give me some titles (sort of) must reads. I would love to know your opinion, i will read anything because there is nothing better then a good book that you just cant put down.

So get to posting please?

[johann cruyff]

First,I suggest you search the General Literature sub-forum a bit,you'll find at least 5 threads dealing with the same question.

Anyway,what literary period are you interested in? Good literature is a broad term,spanning for a few thousand years,and there are way too many must-reads to list unless you know specifically what you're looking for.

What might be of some help to you is Harold Bloom's Western Canon (http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/theocraticcanon.html),an exhaustive list of books that would qualify as mandatory reads. Obviously,the list is not without its flaws,and these are by no means the only books worth reading,but there you'll find an almost infinite amount of reading material.

So,to reiterate,you should be a little more specific about what exactly it is that you're looking for,or start with Ancient Literature and work your way up...

[sun & sky]

Oh , I didn`t read that much of books ..! so , what I can say ??? I read some books which I like it so much as Jane Eyre .. da vinci code .. life of ma parker .. pall`s case .. the garden party .. etc , but those were for school (not da vinci code ) ..

I would say books of Dan Brown are great ..

oh , now I`m about to finish Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw .. it is some how comic & it is dealing with life .. showing the life of poor girl and so on .. I don`t know if you will like it but it is up to you

and I`m planing to read the Arabian Nights .. I read just one story , like it .. kind of !!


mmmm .. the were nice book .. but Gosh ! it is got out of my head ! I`ll back !!:D

[Pecksie]

If you liked the Divine Comedy, you might enjoy other medieval authors, such as Chaucer (who is very funny) or Boccacio... or even other works by Dante himself, such as the Vita Nuova, which is the story of his love for Beatrice...

But of course it would be better if you told us more about the type of book you like.

[stlukesguild]

Whatever you do, avoid Dan Brown. To follow Dante with Dan Brown is like following Michelangelo's Sistine with Charmin toilet paper ads.:sick:

Boccaccio and Chaucer are good suggestions in keeping within a similar time span... and both are also, like the Divine Comedy, "frame stories"... or larger overarching tales that collect a series of "smaller" tales or narratives. To these suggestions you might also add Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Arabian Nights, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes' Don Quixote, etc... I agree with the others who suggested that you give us some idea as to what sort of reading you like so that we can gear our suggestions a bit more in that direction. Poetry? Non-Fiction? Theater? There are great works of literature in each and every genre.

[PeterL]

The possibilities are almost unlimited. Now that you have learned that classic literature can be good, I would suggest that you sample in a more or less random fashion and se what else you like.

[carlin08]

I suggest you read _Maus_ by Art Spiegelman. Certainly not a canonical text, but important to the comic genre.

[Jozanny]

Since this thread is superlative, I am going to pretend to be Michael Jordan flying over the hoop and assert that the greatest novels I have ever read are, in no particular order:

Henry James,
The Portrait of A Lady
The Golden Bowl

John Gardner,
Grendel

Gunter Grass,
The Tin Drum

David Mitchell,
Cloud Atlas

That's it, in terms of sheer emotional impact and influence on me as a writer myself.

But I will create a possible point of contention and assert that not every reader should read these authors, and that the quality of your education needs to be more than decent if you do.

Plays and poetry are a bit more complicated, as I don't do theatrical drama and rarely get to see stagecraft in an actual theater, but for theater it's Shakespeare and Ibsen.

Poetry? Donne, Creeley, and an ex-professor who shall not be named. Weird I guess, but I am an impatient poet myself, and for some reason I am equally impatient with it as a genre.

[Dori]

If you liked the Divine Comedy, you might enjoy other medieval authors, such as Chaucer (who is very funny) or Boccacio... or even other works by Dante himself, such as the Vita Nuova, which is the story of his love for Beatrice...

But of course it would be better if you told us more about the type of book you like.


Whatever you do, avoid Dan Brown. To follow Dante with Dan Brown is like following Michelangelo's Sistine with Charmin toilet paper ads.:sick:

Boccaccio and Chaucer are good suggestions in keeping within a similar time span... and both are also, like the Divine Comedy, "frame stories"... or larger overarching tales that collect a series of "smaller" tales or narratives. To these suggestions you might also add Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Arabian Nights, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, Cervantes' Don Quixote, etc... I agree with the others who suggested that you give us some idea as to what sort of reading you like so that we can gear our suggestions a bit more in that direction. Poetry? Non-Fiction? Theater? There are great works of literature in each and every genre.

I second both of these claims; Boccaccio and Chaucer, though I only sampled them, are good.

[djy78usa]

To follow Dante with Dan Brown is like following Michelangelo's Sistine with Charmin toilet paper ads.:sick:


:thumbs_up :lol:

Nice.

[Jozanny]

and I`m planing to read the Arabian Nights .. I read just one story , like it .. kind of !!

Arabian Nights is much like The Decameron, and fairly accessible to any reader. I believe my edition is a decent translation, as it came from the Readers' Subscription, a high end club I belonged to when I had money.

This is how it worked in the old days. Tales were strung together.

[Tersely]

Whatever you do, avoid Dan Brown. To follow Dante with Dan Brown is like following Michelangelo's Sistine with Charmin toilet paper ads.:sick:

I happen to think the Charmin Toilet paper ads are an astounding piece of work. :lol:

Congrats dpike13, you've now been sucked into the Literature black hole where every book you read will lead to at least 5 more interesting authors.
I understand how you feel, Dante was my first too.

[stlukesguild]

I happen to think the Charmin Toilet paper ads are an astounding piece of work.:lol:

You just can't escape all these Mr. Whipple groupies, can you?:D

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/MrWhipple.jpg

[Guinivere]

I just finished reading a book called The end of Mr Y
by Scarlett Thomas and the story just keeps buzzing around in my read. I can't stop thinking about it.

[Mockingbird_z]

I 'd recommend Hemingway Fiesta (Sun also rises), Orwell 1984, and Austen Pride and Prejudice, of cource there are many others you might be interested to read, these are just for you to try and find out in which diraction to go on read