Books you just couldn't live without

[TheFifthElement]

A little while ago we were thinking of selling up and going to live on a narrowboat. The idea didn't work out (sadly) but one of the dilemmas that I faced at that time was this: what would I do with my book collection? I love my books, I have lots of them, but being honest I can't really read them all all of the time (I just can't bear to let them go) and if we had to downsize to a boat I'd have to seriously downsize my book collection. As an avowed hater of e-readers of all types, that route wouldn't be open to me, so I had a serious think about, honestly, the books I couldn't ever bear to get rid of and I was surprised to find it was a relatively short list. And it was a list that was filled with books which were not necessarily the best on literary merit, or particularly timeless books, but books with which I have, weirdly, managed to form a kind of emotional attachment. Strange, I know, but there it is.

So, if you had to dispose of all of your books and couldn't keep more than, say, ten, which books would you keep and why?

[BienvenuJDC]

The Bible

[Paulclem]

Is this a kind of desert island books - on a narrowboat? Perhaps you should call it narrowboat books.

Tough to choose. I have a kindle though, so I'd be travelling from internet hotspot to internet hotspot...sorry. I wouldn't get rid of books.

I'll have to think.

[Dark Muse]

That is a tough question, as I have to deal with a Millar thing. Due to space issues I have had to start giving up books which I already read (I used to like to keep them all) but I began to have really reevaluate the books I choose to keep and get a lot more picky about the books I keep. Though I could not imagine having to give up the books I haven't got to read yet.

If I had to pick only 10 books I could keep I think this would be my list.

1. The Legend of Nightfall by Mickey Zucker Reichert (It was one of the earliest fantasy books I have read, and became one of my all time favorite books. It is one that I would love to re-read but cannot seem to find the opportunity to do so. It had some great characters I thought)

2. The Magus by John Fowles (One of the most mind-bending books I have read, I absolutely love this book and thought it was brilliant)

3. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (I hope that is not cheating, but I could not give up my Poe)


4. Dracula by Bram Stoker (One of the best vampire books ever written. And I have a really awesome leather bond edition of it)

5. The Odyssey by Homer

6. The Inferno by Dante

7. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

6. Nine Stories by J.D Salinger (I love Salinger, and I was really torn between this collection of his stories of Catcher in the Rye, or if I should keep them both, but than what other book I should give up. But as I have Catcher in the Rye pretty well ingrained within my mind I decided to keep this collection)

7. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (Sentimental value, it was one of my favorites as a kid and I have a fondness for this book)

8. No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre (One of my all time favorite plays, and a work I think is brilliant)

9. The Complete Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson (I love fairy tales so I would want to keep at least one of my collections, and though I have a preference for the Grimm Brothers, I just got this collection so I would want to hold on to it for a while)

10. The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (It is a personal favorite, and I have a long time love of the stories of Alice. )

[Darcy88]

Camus' The Plague, Nietzsche's Gay Science, Plutarch's Lives, The Bible, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Emerson's Essays, One Hundred Years of Solitude, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover or his Collected Poems, and finally Don Quixote, those are the books I would grab off my shelf if my house was on fire. Then I'd go back in for the dog.

[lawpark]

I wanted to say that if life's circumstances be as such, one does not need to bring any books around.
If the point of bringing a book is something that I'll keep reading, then I probably will bring something fun that I keep returning to (for me that is the two sets of long Jin Yong novels - Tian Long Ba Bu and Lu Ding Ji, 5 volumes each).
If the issue is space, I probably will bring a thin book like The Little Prince (but, I actually lost my copy, so maybe I should go out and buy myself a new copy!)
If the issue is a book that I don't want to lose - it will be Marshall Hodgson's The Venture of Islam. (3 vols)
If the issue is having something useful on hand when needed - it will be reference works (my Oxford Dictionary of English 2nd edition; Stearn's Encyclopedia of World History; a world atlas, a historical atlas, and a big Chinese dictionary (the one in mind is Gu Ji Hui Zuan)
If it is a Robinson-type scenario, and need something that I can read for life, I probably will bring my Taisho vol. 38 (one volume of Chinese Buddhist Tripitaka that includes commentaries on Vimalakirti Sutra and Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

This is my list of 10 books ...

[Desolation]

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Three Novels by Samuel Beckett
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I haven't read these yet, but I'd still bring them to keep me busy...
Ulysses by James Joyce
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Recognitions by William Gaddis

[Sancho Panza]

I could never live without Don Quixote!

Other books include:
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
120 Days of Sodom - de Sade
Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
The 500 Best Poems Anthology

[kasie]

Wonder why you have such a rejection of e-books, Fifth? No, sure, they aren't like the Real Thing, but they solve a lot of problems if you are strapped for space (or weight, if you're travelling) and you get used to the physical difference of the reading experience very quickly.

I'm in just the situation you decribe, downsizing, but to a bungalow from a house, not quite so drastic as compressing into a narrowboat. I've made a first cull and passed on books to people who might make use of them or made donations to the local library and charity shops. Several so-called 'friends' have gleefully suggested now might be a good time to 'get rid of the books'. Get rid of the books!! How could I ever have become friendly with such Philistines? They're off the Christmas Card List, for a start. And a certain relative is Out Of The Will for making a similar suggestion, though she has apologised profusely, so maybe I'll consider putting her back.

Seriously, I think I will be able to keep most of them but for the first few months, they will have to stay packed until the bookshelves can be put up after a possible refiguring of rooms. So, my present dilemma is - which books shall I keep to hand on the small amount of shelving I shall have? I think I have settled on

the dictionary (surely I will have time for the odd crossword or two?);

a basic cookery book (Delia or Good Housekeeping) as I can never remember temperatures and cooking times;

a gardening reference book (plants to rehouse, new garden to plan);

the Oxford Companion to Eng Lit (because I keep looking up something or other);

a general reference book, Pears or Hutchinsons (crossword puzzles);

the bird book (new kinds of birds in the garden, I hope);

a poetry anthology - haven't decided which one yet - as I half remember poetry and have to look up the lines I've forgotten.

Hmmm - three in hand - Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Dalloway, Complete Works of Shakespeare - because I can open any of them at random and go on reading with great pleasure.

Now, back to the packing....

[mal4mac]

Schopenhaeur's WWR and Essays (four books!)
P. Hadot: What is Ancient Philosophy?
Complete Shakespeare
Seneca's Letters
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Epictetus Discourses & Handbook
Montaigne Essays

I'd need lots of stoic reading material if I was living on a longboat... (but aren't we all living on a longboat... too little space, an uncertain environment, stroppy neighbours...)

[Micky Fudge]

I'd choose ten books given to me by people I care about, so they'd be: Pacific War Diary by James Fahey; The World's Greatest Idea by John Farndon; Time Must Have A Stop by Aldous Huxley; Typee by Herman Melville; The Seven Symphonies by Simon Boswell; Images Of Burnley published by the Burnley Express; The World's Most Evil Psychopaths by John Marlowe; Sir John Franklin And The Arctic Regions by P L Simmonds; Killing The Shadows by Val McDermid, and The Knights Templar by Sean Martin.

[PoeticPassions]

The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (though I have almost all of his novels, and I really couldn't bare to live without any of them... so how about a collection of Dostoevsky?), East of Eden by Steinbeck (it is my Bible, of sorts), a dictionary, A People's History of the United States by Zinn, Anna Karenina, compilation of Thomas Mann's novellas and stories, the English dictionary.... and a few (other) non-fictions ones too not listed in the above... though those would be really difficult to narrow down as well.

[JBI]

The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

[Darcy88]

[QUOTE=PoeticPassions;1119267] A People's History of the United States by Zinn, [QUOTE]

I LOVE that book! It truly is like a bible to me. Aside from the straightforward historical narrative it features all those touching and inspiring first person accounts of suffering and struggle. I've recommended it to everyone. I even bought two extra copies, one for my father and one for my best friend.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The only book I know for sure that would go on that list is Moby Dick. And, since I'm thinking about this as if I can only take so many books with me, I'd just get some giant anthologies. Unless I can bring my kindle.

But, other than that, if I had to choose just ten books (not anthologies) I'd probably take books I haven't read. I'm not that into re-reading books that often.

[JuniperWoolf]

I was surprised to find it was a relatively short list. And it was a list that was filled with books which were not necessarily the best on literary merit, or particularly timeless books, but books with which I have, weirdly, managed to form a kind of emotional attachment. Strange, I know, but there it is.

It would be the same with me. Here are ten books that I own which I am personally attached to, and would never willingly part with:

1. My biology textbook - I've had some long nights and solid breakthroughs with that book, plus the goddamn thing was $210.

2. The copy of Of Human Bondage with the painting on it (I have another copy, but I don't like it nearly as much).

3. My big, heavy, gigantic Encyclopedic Dictionary, the most comprehensive dictionary I've ever touched.

4. My Swamp Thing series by Alan Moore, which I argue should be considered one book on accounta it takes up about the same amount of space altogether as a regular large volume.

5. Ditto with Promethea.

6. The copy of The Grapes of Wrath that I stole from the creepy basement of my highschool when I was sixteen.

7. My big fancy illustrated copy of Paradise Lost.

8. The Jane Eyre with the split tree etched in gold on the cover that I randomly just found one day buried under some old boxes in my dad's house.

9. The big fancy illustrated copy of The Secret Garden that Dave got me. I traded it for a smaller and more compact (and thus more convenient) one, but then I regretted it and stole it back, real sneaky-like.

10. I have this big reference book of the twentieth century that I've grown very attached to. Someone had ripped the picture off the cover and painted it black and then lacquered it so that it would be all shiny and the paint wouldn't peel, effectively making their own cover. They did a really good job of it too, I wasn't even 100% certain that it had been altered until I peeled back the paper on the inner cover a bit and saw the paint line (but I was pretty sure, because you can distinguish the brush strokes in the light plus it has a funny texture). I've loved it since I first laid eyes on it because it's odd. I found a picture of what it orginally looked like, and it's just a normal cover, and it's really just a normal book. Why would someone put so much effort into altering it?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It would be the same with me. Here are ten books that I own which I am personally attached to, and would never willingly part with:

1. My biology textbook - I've had some long nights and solid breakthroughs with that book, plus the goddamn thing was $210.

2. The copy of Of Human Bondage with the painting on it (I have another copy, but I don't like it nearly as much).

3. My big, heavy, gigantic Encyclopedic Dictionary, the most comprehensive dictionary I've ever touched.

4. My Swamp Thing series by Alan Moore, which I argue should be considered one book on accounta it takes up about the same amount of space altogether as a regular large volume.

5. Ditto with Promethea.

6. The copy of The Grapes of Wrath that I stole from the creepy basement of my highschool when I was sixteen.

7. My big fancy illustrated copy of Paradise Lost.

8. The Jane Eyre with the split tree etched in gold on the cover that I randomly just found one day buried under some old boxes in my dad's house.

9. The big fancy illustrated copy of The Secret Garden that Dave got me. I traded it for a smaller and more compact (and therfore more convenient) one, but then I regretted it and stole it back, real sneaky-like.

10. I have this big reference book of the twentieth century that I've grown very attached to. Someone had ripped the picture off the cover and painted it black and then lacquered it so that it would be all shiny and the paint wouldn't peel, effectively making their own cover. They did a really good job of it too, I wasn't even 100% certain that it had been altered until I peeled back the paper on the inner cover a bit and saw the paint line (but I was pretty sure, because you can distinguish the brush strokes in the light plus it has a funny texture). I've loved it since I first laid eyes on it because it's odd. I found a picture of what it orginally looked like, and it's just a normal cover, and it's really just a normal book. Why would someone put so much effort into altering it?
It sounds like you have some cool, fancy books. I don't have any like that :(. The coolest books I have are a copy of The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury from the 60s that was my dad's. It's a paperback and really beat up. A corner is missing from the cover, and the pages are the yellowest I've ever seen. But that's all why it's so great. I also have an autographed copy of Bradbury's (I'm a fan of Bradbury, but not a huge fan--that my two coolest books are by him is kind of coincidental) The Martian Chronicles. I have that one in a frame. I doubt it's worth much of anything monetarily, but that's not really the point.

[Helga]

I don't like kindle or the e-book thing so that is not an option for me, but this is a very difficult question....

1. my complete Shakespeare
2. complete Auden, poems short stories and essays
3. Metamorphosis by Ovid
4. la divina commedia by Dante
5. A Hemingway short story collection
6. Wordsworth collection
7. Anna Karenina by Tolstoi
8. complete poems by Tómas Guðmundsson
9. the joke by Kundera
10. complete Poe

what can I say I love my collections

[tonywalt]

I think if i had to go with a handful of books they would be:

1. Razor's Edge - Somerset Maugham
2. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger.
3. The Death of Ivan Ilych - Tolstoy
4. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
5. Complete short stories of Somerset Maugham(best short story writer along with Salinger).
6. 9 Stories - JD Salinger
7. Complete works of Poe.
8. Yeats collection.
9. Wordsworth collection.
10. Whitman collection
11. Shaw collection.
12. Buffett: The making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein.
13. A History of the American People by Paul Johnson.
14. A. Lincoln by Ronald White

[lawpark]

I LOVE that book! It truly is like a bible to me. Aside from the straightforward historical narrative it features all those touching and inspiring first person accounts of suffering and struggle. I've recommended it to everyone. I even bought two extra copies, one for my father and one for my best friend.

I have a copy - but just find that learning about the truth is too depressing.


The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.

Really?! Maybe I should get a copy

[rootinghog]

It's interesting how there are books you can read and be absolutely moved by, but the second you finish the last page you know that you'll probably never read a word of them again. And then there are the books that beckon to be read over and over, because each new reading (at a different point in your life) brings a different understanding of the characters and of yourself. So I'd say:

Walden
Don Quixote
Infinite Jest
Gravity's Rainbow
Ulysses
The Brothers Karamzov (interesting how often that one has come up, but not surprising in the least!)
The Idiot
Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
King Lear
War and Peace

Not too familiar with narrowboats, but there could be a serious sinking risk with that collection.

[JBI]

I have a copy - but just find that learning about the truth is too depressing.



Really?! Maybe I should get a copy

As Lu Xun put it, Western Criticism has Aristotle, Eastern criticism has Liu Xie.
而篇章既富，评骘遂生，东则有刘彦和之《文心》，西则有亚理士多德之《诗学》，解析神质，包举洪纤，开源发 流，为世楷式。

[Sancho]

You guys have some cool collections.

I'm going to have to punt: I'd skip the the narrow boat and move onto a barge instead, with my books.

On a related subject, my wife once asked me what I'd take if the house was on fire and I only had time to grab one thing before getting out.

I thought a moment and said, "My guitar, what would you take, sweetheart?"

She shot me a look and said, "The dog."

[Tallulah]

I'd have to go with the books that I seem to go back to every few years or so:

1. Pride & Prejudice
2. Gone With the Wind
3. The Three Musketeers
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. The Grapes of Wrath
6. Poe collection
7. Whitman collection
8. Anna Karenina
9. Jude the Obscure
10. Faulkner's short stories collection

[stlukesguild]

Another desert island collection? Most of my choices would be almost immediately obvious to me:

1. Dante's Comedia (Although I have a soft-spot for the John Ciardi translation which was the first I read, I'd probably go with the Robert and Jean Hollander editions with all their voluminous notes)

2. The Complete Shakespeare- I have a great, huge, hard-cover edition from Yale University loaded with reproductions of the original engravings by John Boydell based upon paintings and drawings by many of the leading painters of the 18th century, including: George Romney, Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, the American John Singleton Copely, Angelica Kauffman, John Fuseli, Mather Brown, and Joseph Wright of Derby. Unfortunately, the artist best suited to the project, William Blake, was not included.

3. The Bible- King James Translation (of course)... although I would dearly miss the Robert Alter translations of large sections of the "Old Testament".

4. The Complete Essays of Montaigne- The big, hard-bound edition translated by Donald Frame.

5. J.L. Borges- Collected Works- This is a three volume hardcover set that breaks Borges oeuvre into poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. It is as close to complete as one might get with one fell swoop, although I would deeply regret loosing Other Inquisitions, Dream Tigers, and Labyrinths.

6. Edward Gibbon-The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire- A magnificent narrative (in spite of historical inaccuracies) and one of the finest collections of English prose ever published. My edition of this work is a three-volume hard-bound box-set illustrated with sepia-toned reproductions of the prints of Rome and the ruins of Rome by the Italian master, Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

7. Marcel Proust- In Search of Lost Time- Four volumes of prose as rich as any poetry.

8. Edmund Spenser- Collected Works- I most certainly must have a collection of poetry beyond Shakespeare. I toyed with thoughts of William Blake, Keats, Baudelaire, Rilke... but ultimately went with Spenser. Beyond the Baroque splendor of The Faerie Queene, Spenser's Amoretti, the cycle of sonnets that record his courtship of his wife, and the culminating wedding day poem, Epithalamion are undoubtedly among my favorite works of poetry in the English language. Add to this the mock-epic, Muiopotmos and it's a done deal.

9. Rolf Toman- The Art of the Italian Renaissance: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Drawing- As an artist, I must have at least a couple of art books. This is one of those coffee-table sized editions packed to the brim with hundreds... thousands of the finest color reproductions of masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance beginning with Giotto.

10. Edmonde de Goncourt, etc...- Japanese Woodblock Prints- If there were something approaching a catalog raisonne of the works of Pierre Bonnard, I most likely would have gone with that... but as it is I want my second choice of art books to include a body of work well-removed from the first. The coffee-table size, three-volume boxed set includes volumes devoted to the three greatest artists of the Ukiyo-e school: Utamaro, Hiroshige, and Hokusai. The volume on Utamaro is especially fine as a result of the marvelous critical writing by Edmonde de Goncourt.

Given the choice of another 10 books... the next in line would include:

11. Rainer Maria Rilke- The Poetry of Rilke- This volume contains the complete translations of Rilke's poetry by Edward Snow including The Book of Images, New Poems 1907 & 1908, The Sonnets to Orpheus, The Duino Elegies, and the Uncollected Poems.

12. R.W. Emerson- Collected Essays- As Harold Bloom has suggested, if there was an American sage... a single voice behind American literature, it was Emerson. My edition is hard-covered and boxed... part of The Library of America.

13. Charles Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du Mal- I would be torn... but only briefly... in choosing between Leaves of Grass and Flowers of Evil. Baudelaire was one of the first poets I "discovered" on my own. I would unquestionably go with the immaculate Richard Howard translation.

14. William Blake- The Collected Poetry and Prose- William Blake has long been one of my idols. I would hate losing the reproductions of his art-work... but without a doubt, of all the English Romantics I would need Blake as he struggles to create his own universe at a level not seen since Milton and Dante.

15. Italo Calvino- Invisible Cities- This novel... meditation... collection of poems... is one of the most magical and inspiring books that I have read. I have returned to it repeatedly. The only reason it did not make my "top ten" list is due to its brevity. Selecting but 10 books, I was forced in some ways to go with the more epic texts that I could return to again and again.

16. Bonnard; The Work of Art: Suspending Time, ed. Suzanne Pagé- OK... I'll go for Bonnard after all. This brilliant volume explores Bonnard as the painter most akin to Proust in his efforts to capture fleeting memories. Most importantly, the text is illustrated with reproductions of hundreds of Bonnard's finest paintings.

17. Robert Herrick- Poems- I have always held a special admiration for the "precious" (in the finest sense) poems of Herrick who sang of little more than "... of Brooks, of Blossoms, Birds, and Bowers..." and of course, always of love and beautiful women. His gem-like poems always remind me of the paintings of Watteau.

18. Theophile Gautier- Collected Poetry and Prose- Gautier seems almost unknown today... and yet he was the writer to whom Baudelaire dedicated his Fleurs du Mal, he gave name to the Art for Art's Sake (or Art pour l'Art) movement which led to Wilde, Pater, Proust, and even T.S. Eliot. His tales are akin to the tales of Poe... with the addition of a certain European sophistication and eroticism. His poetry shows the way to Mallarme, Rimbaud, Whistler, and abstraction. A grossly under-appreciated author.

19. anon.- The Arabian Nights Entertainments- This collection stands alongside Dante's Comedia, the Bible, and Shakespeare's plays as one of the greatest collection of narrative... of the art of story-telling known. I could easily have included it in the first 10. Beyond the sheer splendor of the tales, the text is rich in atmosphere... suggesting the exotic locale, eroticism, perfumes, etc... of the Middle-East (and India).

20. Lewis Carroll- The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition- This hardbound edition includes the original engraved illustrations by John Tenneil and endless notes illuminating the text. I initially thought of placing Aeschylus Oresteia, Homer's Odyssey, or Firdawsi's Shahnameh here. Certainly the latter two collect a body of narratives to rival Dante, the Bible, and Shakespeare... but Carroll's tales are something that have resonated with me since childhood.

[Drkshadow03]

It would be the same with me. Here are ten books that I own which I am personally attached to, and would never willingly part with:

1. My biology textbook - I've had some long nights and solid breakthroughs with that book, plus the goddamn thing was $210.


What biology textbook?

[mortalterror]

I think that I re-read Hemingway, Ovid, the Bible, and Shakespeare more than any other authors. If I had to downsize my collection to four, that's probably what it would be. If I were making a more comprehensive list of my favorite books like StLuke did it would probably go something like:

1. The Bible (King James)- especially the book of Job, sorrow at it's most beautiful.

2.The Iliad and the Odyssey(Fitzgerlad and Fagles)- I'm always amazed at this guy. His work is so powerful after all these years. It's so light, and free, lyrical but powerful and aggressive, poetic and adventurous, all great poetic accomplishments unite in these works.

3.Plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides- Shakespeare of the ancient world, the greatest most concise writer of plot, and the greatest writer of psychology.

4. Plays of Aristophanes- Particularly with Lysistrata, the funniest writer of all time.

5.Plato's Republic- The greatest thinker of all time. I love how his work builds on itself as it goes along, like a pyramid or a skyscraper, one level on top of another.

6.Virgil's Aeneid- The beginning is a lesson on how to begin a book, and Book 2 with the Fall of Troy is the greatest description of warfare, battle, and the fall of a city in literature. Tolstoy couldn't touch it.

7.Ovid's poems- The Metamorphoses is just the tip of the iceberg that is his work. He is the poet of variety, a scholar the likes of Petrarch or T.S. Eliot, a lover of mythology, a lover of women and sensuality, richly allusive to literature he loved. He is cosmopolitan, worldly, sophisticated, aristocratic, and moral. His major work is like the Bible: out of many stories a unity.

8.The Plays of Seneca- A passion, an energy, and a fire to his poetry and theater not seen again until the 19th century decadents.

9.Satyricon by Petronius- A first century Don Quixote, or a mock Odyssey in prose. Either way, this epic comic novel about a hero nicknamed "the crotch" who has offended the god Priapus and must voyage across the Roman empire facing monsters, pirates, philosophers, and perverts in search of his lost mojo is hilarious stuff.

10.Pharsalia by Lucan- An anti-epic poem of a world gone mad in an apocalyptic civil war. What The Book of Revelations would be like if Caesar were the anti-Christ.

11.Bhagavadgita (Edwin Arnold)- Good as The Book of Job and similar in that they both probe the nature of God and man's relation to the divine.

12.Poems of Tu Fu, Li Bai, and Bai Juyi- the first is a master of form, the second is romantic and original, the third is simple and concise.

13.Beowulf (Seamus Heaney)- Initially, I didn't think much of of this Old English poem, but under Heaney's skillful translation I see now all the praise which is heaped upon it is merited. It makes you wish more of the Finnesburg Fragment and other Anglo-Saxon poetry were preserved.

14.The Shahnameh by Ferdowsi (Arthur and Edmond Warner)- an Iranian poet the equal of Shakespeare or Homer wrote a three thousand page poem about the mythical history of Iran from it's earliest days to his own. His hero Rostam is one of the baddest mother****ers in all of literature. Think Gilgamesh, Achilles, Erra, Marduk, Samson, Hercules, or Roland. The feats in this book would put Beowulf to shame.

15.The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (FitzGerald)- one of the greatest sequences of short poems ever. Wine, song, and the transience of human life.

18.The Gita Govinda by Jayadeva- A poem about two lovers better than the Song of Solomon. A story about yearning for mystical union and the ideal mate. Almost as good as the Bhagavadgita.

17.The Poems of Rumi- If Ferdowsi is the Homer of the Middle East, Rumi is it's Dante. You will find no greater celebration of the mystery and wonder of God than here.

18.The Divine Comedy by Dante- Especially the Inferno. It has all of the structure of Plato's Republic, all the mythology of Ovid, all the religious devotion of the Bible, a never ending stream of characters and invention. The greatest book ever.

19. Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso- The best poem about Knights, the middle-ages, chivalry, and the Crusades. Epic writing better than Milton's, because it's not so stuffy. All of the energy of the earlier romances but with more polish and style.

20..The Essays of Montaigne- philosophy that doesn't hurt your head. Like talking to the world's most interesting man.

21.Shakespeare's Plays- He's the writer I look to and think "There's no better way to word this. These are the best words in the best possible combination."

22.Fuente Ovejuna by Lope De Vega- this guy's plays have all the pacing, character, and dramatic situations of Shakespeare, but without some of the poetic beauty.

23.Eight Dramas of Calderon (FitzGerald)- Another nearly Shakespearean dramatist. His poetry sparkles especially in Life is a Dream. His handling of plot is phenomenal but his characters are a little flat.

24.Plays of Jean Racine (Cairncross)- A dramatist near the level of Shakespeare, though more in tune with my personal aesthetics. Mostly a copier of Euripides, for which he's a match, but there's a structure, an order, no wasted motions or words to his writing that marks him for the premier writer of the Enlightenment. There's something surreal about the precision and control with which he writes about chaotic, irrational, wild, torturous love.

25.The Farce of Sodom and poems of John Wilmot- the best English poet of his time. Buried by posterity due to his sexual, scatological, satyrical wit. An Enlgish Marqies de Sade. The second funniest play of all time. Pity it isn't actable.

26.Maxims by La Rochefoucauld- Never has man spoken with such depth in such brevity.

27.Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon- The greatest non-fiction prose with a story the likes of the the Shahnameh.

28.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge- Romantic, brooding, and supernatural. My favorite poem.

29.Poems of Leopardi- Why do I love him so much? Is it his pessimism, his cynicism, his sardonic anger at being "turned out into the world half made up" like Richard III? He is a poet with a dark side like Baudelaire, who nevertheless finds beauty in life's tragedy.

30.Walden by Thoreau- A formative book in my high school years. It made me appreciate strolling, and nature, with a strong undercurrent of American pragmatism.

31.Danton's Death by Buchner- Witty, sarcastic, punning, dripping with dark humor and fatalism.

32.A Hero of Our Time by Lermontov- what Eugene Onegin would be if it were gloomy, romantic, and prose.

33.Pere Goriot by Balzac- the best example of plot structure for novels.

34.Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen by Baudelaire- The single greatest poet of the nineteenth century. Forget Goethe, Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning, Rimbaud, Whitman, and Tennyson. This is the high point of the age.

35.Alices Adventure in Wonderland and Through the Lookinglass by Lewis Carroll- the most inventive, original, imaginative novel for kids and adults ever.

36.Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas- More action packed and interesting than any other creation in literature. This is a page turner. It has that wonderful gift of pacing and variety which makes reading effortless and fun.

37.Moby Dick by Melville- It's one part Shakespeare, one part the Bible, and one part whaling encyclopedia, kind of weird but highly edifying.

38.Madame Bovary- Quite possibly the world's greatest novel. All the story of Anna Karenina in a little over two hundred pages.

39.Oblomov by Goncharov- The titular character is a sort of budhist saint of inactivity, or at least he would be if he weren't a lazy Russian aristocrat who can't get his life together. Like Don Quixote, he's a one of a kind comedic archetype, and he doesn't even get out of bed for the first fifty pages.

40.Les Miserables- Better than War and Peace, better than A Tale of Two Cities. Early nineteenth century France told by it's greatest author. With a prose style influenced by Dante and a novel structure borrowed from Dickens and Balzac this epic length novel is a total hit.

41.Guy De Maupassant's short stories- the master short story writer whom Hemingway learned so much from.

42.The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne- one of the great novellas. Concise and powerful. The story of guilt, corruption, society, and secrets.

43.Mark Twain's novels- Nobody makes me laugh like this guy. He knew every trick in the book and wrote a few new ones.

44.Heart of Darkness by Conrad- Darker than dark subject matter and a prose darker still. This is a book about insanity, corruption, and how men can be changed by a single incident forever.

45.The Call of the Wild by London- Nobody's ever written about the American Old West like Jack London. What's so peculiar about this story in particular is that it's narrated by a dog. This makes it more visceral, and the physical descriptions of the sublime landscape and harsh conditions come direct to the reader unmuddied by pre-concieved social structures.

46.Poems of T.S. Eliot- I'm a sucker for scholar poets and howls of despair.

47.Steppenwolf by Hesse- Description of a man torn between two worlds, two warring identities, never at peace with himself, told in a Russian nesting doll sequence of plots and narrators, and then capping off with a psychedelic dream scenario.

48.Of Human Bondage by Maugham- The absolute realism of this novel and the accuracy of the details it describes strikes a chord in me. I've had a number of experiences myself and can relate with much of the novel up to the false and contrived happy ending.

49.Akutagawa's short stories- This guy could give Hemingway a run for his money where short stories are concerned.

50.Cavafy Poems- This guy is every bit as good as Rilke, Eliot, or Neruda. His poems go back to a time of Greek antiquity, but not the golden age. His poems are about the troubled transitional times, when things were unsettled and uncertain. There is a modern anxiety running through them all, with a classical perfection.

51.Mrs. Dalloway by Woolf- Forget Joyce, Woolf was the best writer of stream of conscious prose.

52.The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald- The great American novel? Maybe. It's trim. It's slick. It's poignant. It has good characters, action, a little symbolism, and a moral. The prose style is pretty good too.

53. The Complete works of Hemingway- My single favorite writer period. He's got that Shakespeare kind of a talent where you didn't know words could combine that way and have the effect they do. He shatters me when I read him.

54.Journey to the End of the Night- darkly comic French novel. Some parts are as good as Catch 22.

55.1984 by Orwell- 1984 is the most visionary of his works but he's had a number of other hits especially his non-fiction which are worth reading. This is one of the only science fiction novels that deserves to be called art.

56.Novellas of Steinbeck- The Pearl and Of Mice and Men are tragedy perfected. Nobody makes you this sad.

57.Lolita by Nabokov- you should be grossed out by the subject matter but the prose is so gorgeous and there are so many tricks and thematic layers to the book that you simply don't care in the end.

58.The Dwarf by Lagerkvist- It's a portrait of misanthropy, avarice, pride, a strange tale with a unique voice.

59.Catcher in the Rye by Salinger- The American Notes From Underground, the secret life of a misfit teenager. I don't think anyone has so accurately detailed the psychology of a single character this way before. For many years my favorite novel.

60.On the Road by Kerouac- Page turner pacing, romantic, adventurous. It makes you want to be the kind of larger than life persons it describes, living life on the edge. Great prose style.

61.Waiting For Godot by Beckett- the most original playwright since Ibsen. Ground breaking and philosophical. Full of dramatic pauses and minimalism. He's re-inventing language.

62.Catch-22 by Heller- Maybe the funniest novel ever. Could use a better ending though.

63.Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut- a better pacifist novel than All Quiet on the Western Front

64.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Thompson- Funny, deranged, darkly humorous, bizarre.

65.Fight Club by Palahniuk- a masculine manifesto

[PeterL]

I wouldn't take any of the major classics, because they are too familiar, and they don't stand up to the fifth reading, but few books do. I would take some reference works and some of the books that can be reread several times such as the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (ssome isn't good, but some is truly great), The novels of G. C. Edmondson, The Boat of a Million Years by Poul nderson, ad as many of the works of L. Sprague de Camp as I could find. I might also bring a few by C.M.Kornbluth. Since I would be at sea, I would bring some nautical tales, maybe by Kenneth Roberts.

I was planning to take a sloop of maybe 60 feet, so I would be able to have a fair number of books. If I decided on a 100 foot brig, then I could have all the books I wanted.

[JuniperWoolf]

What biology textbook?

This (http://www.amazon.com/Biology-MasteringBiology-8th-Neil-Campbell/dp/0321543254) one. I got it a few years ago before they scratched out the original price tag. Whoever had the idea to make new "editions" of textbooks every few years for the purposes of gouging students should be shot.

[BienvenuJDC]

Whoever had the idea to make new "editions" of textbooks every few years for the purposes of gouging students should be shot.

AGREED! Where are they?

Ready....AIM...

http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/snipers-rifles-scope-photos-21.jpg?w=500&h=444

[Darcy88]

Thanks St Lukes and mortalterror. I've read most of the books on your lists but I picked up several intriguing titles from them to go on my wish list.

[stlukesguild]

Mortal... You've expanded your list to 65. I'd be interested to know just which books you would choose if you had to stick with the original limit of 10... or my expanded list of 20. In return... I'll expand my list to 65, in which case I suspect we would be in agreement on specific books more often than not.

[mortalterror]

Mortal... You've expanded your list to 65. I'd be interested to know just which books you would choose if you had to stick with the original limit of 10... or my expanded list of 20. In return... I'll expand my list to 65, in which case I suspect we would be in agreement on specific books more often than not.

Yes, but I did that since 10 is too constraining and doesn't really answer the question in a broad enough way to show individual character. Besides, I answered that at the top of the post where I explained that I really only re-read Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ovid, and the Bible; so I was being conservative and only going with 4.

1.The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Finca Vigia edition
2.Bible (King James)
3.Plays of Shakespeare
4.The Metamorphoses (Humphries)
5.For Whom the Bell Tolls
6.Dante's Inferno (Sayers)
7.The Old Man and the Sea
8.The Great Gatsby
9.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
10.A Moveable Feast

If it's got to be 10 and I don't get to bundle all my Hemingway into 1 that's about how it would look. I think I could live happily off of just those volumes for the rest of my life. However, that tells almost nothing about my taste except that I love Hemingway. Shakespeare, the Bible, and Dante are almost a given. Everyone likes them. I think it says more about who I am that I like Lucan, Racine, and John Wilmot. I think it's more telling and interesting that Tolstoy doesn't make the list but Goncharov does. This ten stuff, it's like what's the point? You're going to see a lot of the same names over and over, or you're just going to see bad lists. I liked the way you expanded and explained your answers.

Please do expand your answer. I'd be interested in seeing a post on one of these things with a little meat on it.

Oh, and if I only got 20

11.The Iliad (Fitzgerald)
12.Lolita
13.Bhagavadgita (Arnold)
14.Selected Poems of Leopardi (Grennan)
15.Catch-22
16.T.S. Eliot Collected Poems 1909-1962
17.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems (Dover)
18.The Odyssey (Fagles)
19.The Oresteia (Fagles)
20.Heroides by Ovid (Isbell)

[lawpark]

Yes, but I did that since 10 is too constraining and doesn't really answer the question in a broad enough way to show individual character. Besides, I answered that at the top of the post where I explained that I really only re-read Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ovid, and the Bible; so I was being conservative and only going with 4.

1.The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: Finca Vigia edition
2.Bible (King James)
3.Plays of Shakespeare
4.The Metamorphoses (Humphries)


Quick question - I was thinking about getting a good translation of the Metamorphoses ... Why do you like Humphries?

And btw, even up to 65, Don Quixote didn't show up (same for stlukes), yet you picked two works that are like Don Quixote in some ways ... that is interesting choice

[mortalterror]

Quick question - I was thinking about getting a good translation of the Metamorphoses ... Why do you like Humphries?

And btw, even up to 65, Don Quixote didn't show up (same for stlukes), yet you picked two works that are like Don Quixote in some ways ... that is interesting choice

I've gone over my preference for Humphries translation other places on this board; so I'll just re-quote them.

For the Metamorphoses I'd definitely go with Rolfe Humphries over Mandelbaum. He's a little too clunky for such a smooth poet, and as someone above me has already noted, the rhyme jars on the ear.

Here's Mandelbaum:

Before the sea and lands began to be,
before the sky had manteled every thing,
then all of natures face was featureless-
what men call chaos: undigested mass
of crude, confused, and scumbled elements,
a heap of seeds that clashed, of things mismatched.
There was no Titan Sun to light the world,
no crescent Moon- no Phoebe- to renew,
her slender horns; in the surrounding air,
earth's weight had yet to find it's balanced state;
and Amphitrites arms had not yet stretched
along the farthest margins of the land.
For though the sea and land and air were there,
the land could not be walked upon, the sea
could not be swum, the air was without splendor:
no thing maintained it's shape; all were at war;
in one same body cold and hot would battle;
the damp contended with the dry, things hard
with soft, and weighty things with weightless parts.

That just seems so passionless and dry to me. Ovid ought to be translated with the sensual luxuriance one would give to the writings of a French decadent (Baudelaire),

You too Silenus, are on fire, insatiable lecher:
Wickedness alone prevents you growing old.
-Ovid, Fasti, Book I

and the sort of exactness of phrase and poise which we find in scholars like Petrarch, Eliot, and Leopardi. It completely lacks the rhythm of Roman rhetoric which was as much a part of poetry then as it would be in the Renaissance. You don't get the feeling of how intensely conscious he is of poetic tradition. The phrases here don't even sound like they come from the right period. They should sound at least a little bit like Tibullus or Propertius, the way that Eliot sounds a little like Pound and Yeats.

If I had
A hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice
Of iron, I could not tell of all the shapes
Their crimes had taken, or their punishments.
-lines 835-838, Book VI, Virgil's Aeneid

If I had a tireless voice, lungs stronger than brass, and many mouths with many tongues, not even so could I embrace them all in words for the theme surpasses my strength.-Tristia, Bk. I, v. ln. 43-74, Ovid

Also, what's with some of his diction choices, "scumbled?"

Here's the Humphries:

Before the ocean was, or earth, or heaven,
Nature was all alike, a shapelessness,
Chaos, so-called, all rude and lumpy matter,
Nothing but bulk, inert, in whose confusion
Discordant atoms warred: there was no sun
To light the universe; there was no moon
With slender silver crescents filling slowly;
No earth hung balanced in surrounding air;
No sea reached far along the fringe of shore.
Land, to be sure, there was, and air, and ocean,
But land on which no man could stand, and water
No man could swim in, air no man could breathe,
Air without light, substance forever changing,
Forever at war: within a single body
Heat fought with cold, wet fought with dry, the hard
Fought with the soft, things having weight contended
With weightless things.

He should be as humorous as Chaucer, the way Marlowe makes him:

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:

Fun loving, but also moral:

I saw a man who laughed at shipwrecks, drowned
in the sea, and said: ‘The waves were never more just.’
-Ovid's Tristia, Book V

though not so severe as Horace, or pious as Virgil. One's a mercenary, the other a priest, but Ovid is a retiring man of letters. Raised to the purple, he's conscious of his aristocratic status and writes with a conscious stately nobility. Certain feelings, and people, are beneath him

One person alone (and this itself is a great wrong)
won’t grant me the title of an honest man.
Whoever it is (for I’ll be silent still as yet about his name)
-Ovid, Ibis tr. Kline

People tend to think of Roman society as chauvinistic, but like Euripides before him he shows a deep concern for the plight of women. He frequently heaps praise and tenderness upon his loving wife and in the Heroides draws many subtle portraits women who have been ill treated by their paramours.

Penelope to the tardy Ulysses:
do not answer these lines, but come, for
Troy is dead and the daughters of Greece rejoice.
But all of Troy and Priam himself
are not worth the price I've paid for victory.
How often I have wished that Paris
had drowned before he reached our welcoming shores.
If he had died I would not have been
compelled now to sleep alone in my cold bed
complaining always of the tiresome
prospect of endless nights and days spent working
like a poor widow at my tedious loom.
Imagining hazards more awful than real,
love has always been tempered by fear:
I was sure it was you the Trojans attacked
and the name of Hector made me pale;
if someone told the tale of Antilochus
I dreamed of you dead as he had died;
if they sang of the death of Menoetius' son,
slain in armour not his own, I wept,
because even clever tricks had failed
-Ovid, Heroids tr.Isbell

A monologue worthy of Browning.

I don't know any one translation that captures these various sides of him, but Humphries is the best I know of for the Metamorphoses. Mandelbaum seemed like an also ran in his translations of Dante, not even rising to the level of Ciardi or Longfellow. It's been some time since I've read Melville, but if his Ovid is half as good as his work on Statius' Thebaid it should be fine:

The strife of brothers and alternate reigns
Fought for in impious hatred and the guilt
Of tragic Thebes, these themes the Muses' fire
Has kindled in my heart.

Statius is the only writer who wears his learning on his sleeve more than Ovid. Each line of Melville's translation is lush, allusion laden, and delicious. But on the other hand, Humphries did put out a very readable Juvenal. If I recall correctly they had these beautiful long lines that show off Latin hexameter so well. I'm sure whichever you pick, it should turn out all right.

Now I have done my work. It will endure,
I trust, beyond Jove's anger, fire and sword,
Beyond Time's hunger. The day will come, I know,
So let it come, that day which has no power
Save over my body, to end my span of life
Whatever it may be. Still, part of me,
The better part, immortal, will be borne
Above the stars; my name will be remembered
Wherever Roman power rules conquered lands,
I shall be read, and through the centuries,
If prophecies of bards are ever truthful,
I shall be living, always.

and

That Melville translation really sticks in my craw. It sounds like he's updated ancient Roman poetry to a sixteenth century English idiom. It doesn't have the feel of ancient Latin with the added draw back that it doesn't even sound like 16th century English. Here's how Marlowe translated Book one of Ovid's Amores.

We which were Ovids five books, now are three,
For these before the rest preferreth he:
If reading five thou plainst of tediousnesse,
Two tane away, thy labor will be lesse:
With Muse upreard I meant to sing of armes,
Choosing a subject fit for feirse alarmes:
Both verses were alike till Love (men say)
Began to smile and tooke one foote away.

That Melville translation above feels all wrong. It's like he's reaching for something. I like the idea of translating just about anything into blank verse, but we've had developments since Shakespeare's time, Milton and Wordsworth for example; so modern blank verse doesn't sound that way anymore. If Melville isn't going to give a modern translation in a modern style, then what's the point of updating at all? Why not just take an older translation.

The Dryden translation is dated and doesn't sound any more like Ovid but it's still better than Melville's if you want to go that route.

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.

The Humphries translation may not be perfect but it has the asset of at least sounding something like Ovid.

As for my not picking Don Quixote, that's because I didn't like it. I thought it was too long, poorly plotted, and repetitious. I laughed at the gags twice early on, but then it was just more of the same thing over and over again. There also weren't enough characters to maintain my interest in such a long story. If you don't think it's funny, Don Quixote is a long book indeed. That said, I'll probably give it another go with a new translation in about ten years to see if it grows on me.

There are a number of top tier writers whose work I can't stand: Dostoyevski, Joyce, Austen, Dickens, Cervantes, Moliere. Sometimes that happens.

[lawpark]

Thank you mortal for digging up your old posts for me! Very useful, and I am convinced.

[AlysonofBathe]

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - my first real literature love; the nostalgia I have for this book is powerful!

[stlukesguild]

OK... let's expand beyond my initial 10:

1. Dante's Comedia
2. The Complete Shakespeare
3. The Bible
4. The Complete Essays of Montaigne-
5. J.L. Borges-
6. Edward Gibbon-The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-
7. Marcel Proust- In Search of Lost Time- Four volumes of prose as rich as any poetry.
8. Edmund Spenser-
9. Rolf Toman- The Art of the Italian Renaissance: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
10. Edmonde de Goncourt, etc...- Japanese Woodblock Prints-
11. Rainer Maria Rilke
12. R.W. Emerson- Collected Essays
13. Charles Baudelaire- Les Fleurs du Mal
14. William Blake- The Collected Poetry and Prose
15. Italo Calvino- Invisible Cities
16. Bonnard; The Work of Art: Suspending Time, ed. Suzanne Pagé
17. Robert Herrick- Poems
18. Theophile Gautier- Collected Poetry and Prose
19. anon.- The Arabian Nights Entertainments
20. Lewis Carroll- The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition

My initial 20 choices were aimed not so much at what I consider the "best" books ever written (although certainly Shakespeare, Dante, The Bible etc... fall into this category)... Rather, I aimed at a broad variety (narrative, poetry, history, essay, art, etc...) as well as a good amount of literature of a rather epic scale that might keep me reading for some time. Expanding my list, I would focus at this point predominantly upon what I like the most... what I think are the greatest books/writers I have read (in no particular order... or rather, clustered by genre)

Novels:

21. Cervantes- Don Quixote- Could easily have made my top 20. One of the greatest novels ever... one of the greatest narratives of friendship ever. Quixote is repeatedly mocked and beaten and fails absurdly in all his chivalric endeavors... and in the end he outshines the knights in armor with their egos and their unbeliable deeds.

22. Lawrence Sterne- Tristram Shandy- Keeping with the theme of novels that explore the subject of human friendship, here is another of the finest. Sterne also dissects the novel... nearly at the moment of its birth... in a manner that I find far more successful than Joyce.

23. Mark Twain- Huckleberry Finn- Along with Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, Huckleberry Finn forms a great trilogy of comic novels with a common theme of friendship, all of which explore serious issues of human existence with far more depth and humanity than many overly earnest, tragic novels. If there is a forth in this vein, I suspect it just might be Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.

27. Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities- My personal favorite Dickens... and Dickens at his most concise.

28. Tolstoy- War and Peace- Arguably the greatest novel ever. A brilliant tour de force that reads far more rapidly than its 1400 pages might suggest.

29. Dostoevski- The Brothers Karamazov- A pessimistic masterpiece of brilliantly drawn and highly differentiated characters. Worthy of its place if only for the "Grand Inquisitor" scene.

30. Victor Hugo- Les Miserables- I'm not certain I would go so far as to suggest this novel is greater than War and Peace... although in some ways I like it more, I do agree it is a masterpiece of the narrative of brilliantly drawn individuals played out against the larger narratives of history. For all the complaints of Les Miserables' digressions, I would not wish it edited in the least.

31. Flaubert- Madame Bovary- Romantic idealism clashes with harsh reality in a manner that echoes both Anna Karenina and Don Quixote... yet conveyed in a prose style that is honed to the absolute perfection of the finest poetry. Arguably the most perfect novel and the first "modern" novel.

32. Melville- Moby Dick- A weird hybrid, indeed. Yes... a combination of Shakespeare, the Bible, a whaling encyclopedia... and I would add Milton. Passages of the greatest visionary splendor in American literature.

33. Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf/The Glass Bead Game- The great Expressionist who repeatedly deals poetically with the challenges of the artist and creative individual.

34. Mann- Doctor Faustus/A Death in Venice Where Hesse is the German poet confronting the issues of the role of the artist, Mann is the knotty thinker... and both are masters of irony.

35. Glass- The Tin Drum- An absurdist masterpiece of post-WWII literature. The rise and fall of the Third Reich are seen through the eyes of Oscar, the dwarf and a motley crew of lunatics. I never laughed so hard.

36. Nabokov- Lolita- Is there a more perfect novel in English...? And written by a man for whom English was his 3rd language! Nabokov sets himself an impossible goal- a novel told from the point of view of a pedophile... which never employs the least profanity nor descends into the least vulgarity. We find ourselves empathizing with the villain and laughing at his wry comments on American culture.

37. William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying- A black comedy in which the repeatedly bungled attempts of a Southern "white trash" family to lay the remains of their beloved/hated mother to rest descends into absolute farce... and tragedy.

[Veho]

Novels! It's interesting to see some of your favourites. I'm currently (trying) to read Les Misérables at the moment but I'm having trouble with translations. I first bought the Penguin Classics edition translated by Norman Denny but then learnt it was abridged. So I bought the 2007 translation by Julie Rose and the language is just too modernised really for my liking. I've just compared it to another translation I found for free and this translation seemed much better but I don't know who it is by. Did you read it in English, if so what translation did you read and would you recommend it?

[mortalterror]

27. Dickens- A Tale of Two Cities- My personal favorite Dickens... and Dickens at his most concise.
I have some real difficulty reading Dickens. He's almost the same as Hugo, except everything that I love in Hugo annoys me in Dickens. I tend to dislike the characters, but I think I also hate the narrator, and I tend to read his novels just to underline passages of unintentional humor.

'Oh, go-roo!' (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head)
-David Copperfield

'I would, sir, I could see you gay again.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ blustered Bounderby.
-Hard Times

So we slanted to the right (where the East was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to hold on tight to keep my seat.
-Great Expectations
But of all his novels, I find the least to dislike about A Tale of Two Cities, and the beginning and ending are surely masterful by any standard. The dialogue that is. Let's not forget that the tale hinges upon a main character having an identical twin (for all intents and purposes).


28. Tolstoy- War and Peace- Arguably the greatest novel ever. A brilliant tour de force that reads far more rapidly than its 1400 pages might suggest.
Tolstoy is like Milton for me, more appreciated than enjoyed.


29. Dostoevski- The Brothers Karamazov- A pessimistic masterpiece of brilliantly drawn and highly differentiated characters. Worthy of its place if only for the "Grand Inquisitor" scene.
The only writer who I have nearly as much difficulty reading as Joyce. His prose style is just dirt to me and I have to stop every couple of pages and scream at the book. His philosophy is so stupid, and his characters are just vehicles for that philosophy. He drives me crazy.


30. Victor Hugo- Les Miserables- I'm not certain I would go so far as to suggest this novel is greater than War and Peace... although in some ways I like it more, I do agree it is a masterpiece of the narrative of brilliantly drawn individuals played out against the larger narratives of history. For all the complaints of Les Miserables' digressions, I would not wish it edited in the least.
Did you at least see how he was trying to write the Commedia for a modern French audience and how his Jean Valjean was like Dante on a journey to sainthood and perfection? The adventures, scaling walls, saving men, being buried alive are like something out of Dumas; while the last two hundred pages with it's emphasis on self-sacrifice and fatherhood is straight out of Balzac. His street battle might be an allusion to Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma or to Dickens Tale of Two Cities. It's like a great summation of 19th century literature.


33. Hermann Hesse- Steppenwolf/The Glass Bead Game- The great Expressionist who repeatedly deals poetically with the challenges of the artist and creative individual.
Your journey took you to The Glass Bead Game, whereas I read Demian and Under the Wheel after Steppenwolf. Most people tend to go for Siddhartha.


34. Mann- Doctor Faustus/A Death in Venice Where Hesse is the German poet confronting the issues of the role of the artist, Mann is the knotty thinker... and both are masters of irony.
To me Mann is like Kafka. I've read his shorter works, but I'm not as eager to read his longer stuff. However, Hemingway really liked Buddenbrooks so I've thought about buying that from time to time.


35. Glass- The Tin Drum- An absurdist masterpiece of post-WWII literature. The rise and fall of the Third Reich are seen through the eyes of Oscar, the dwarf and a motley crew of lunatics. I never laughed so hard.
I really liked that first chapter but it changed tone right after, just like Ellison did with Invisible Man. I guess I couldn't get into the humor of it. A dwarf hiding for his life under the skirt of a woman and banging her while she eats potatoes is absurd but it doesn't tickle me on my funny bone. But then you didn't like Catch-22 which is the funniest book I've ever read and also about ww2.


36. Nabokov- Lolita- Is there a more perfect novel in English...?
Besides Gatsby?

And written by a man for whom English was his 3rd language!
English wasn't Conrad's first language and he's just as much a master stylist.


Nabokov sets himself an impossible goal- a novel told from the point of view of a pedophile... which never employs the least profanity nor descends into the least vulgarity.

I thought the part where the kids fished used condoms out of the lake and then re-used them was kind of vulgar. Also, that part where Humbert has Lolita sit on his lap and rubs up against her through his robe was a little out of the way. Then there was their first overt sexual encounter where Humbert is listing all the little night time sounds and casually includes Lolita's soft crying as one of them. Then there is the ex-soldier with the missing fingers who makes the naked lady tattoo on his hand do an obscene dance. Or the passage where Humbert's first wife leaves him and the dude she's cheating on him with leaves a cigarette floating in the bowl full of urine as a sign of his contempt. There are lots of little passages like this, but they are minimized, thrown in as afterthoughts, and given no importance in the text. There are all these layers in the text that you can find the sad story underneath the funny story, just as you can see the hints toward an unreliable narrator, or how Quilty was stalking Lolita the whole time. It's like a mystery novel where the clues are sprinkled in with a lot of red herring.

[JBI]

Yes, but the lake was "Lake Climax". Oh the humor.

[stlukesguild]

Tolstoy is like Milton for me, more appreciated than enjoyed.

I loved both. I tore through War and Peace late evenings after working a second shift factory job just after high school. Milton initially left me unimpressed... but then I came back to him after having devoured a good deal of Shakespeare and Blake and I began to rethink my image of him as an unyielding, rigid Protestant. I was especially enthralled by the visual descriptiveness of the poetry of this man who was blind... and I found many passages of his poetry rival Shakespeare at his best.

The only writer who I have nearly as much difficulty reading as Joyce. His prose style is just dirt to me and I have to stop every couple of pages and scream at the book. His philosophy is so stupid, and his characters are just vehicles for that philosophy. He drives me crazy.

I'm certainly not among the Dostoevsky "fan boys" who made him number one on LitNet's list of authors... but I certainly find him far more pleasurable than you.

Your journey took you to The Glass Bead Game, whereas I read Demian and Under the Wheel after Steppenwolf. Most people tend to go for Siddhartha.

Thomas Mann's glowing critical comments on Hesse's Glass Bead Game is what initially led me there... although right out of high school I'll admit to having been somewhat obsessed with his work, and as a result I read nearly everything that exists in English. My one regret is that I passed up a volume of his collected poems in German that was available at some library sale some years back.

To me Mann is like Kafka. I've read his shorter works, but I'm not as eager to read his longer stuff. However, Hemingway really liked Buddenbrooks so I've thought about buying that from time to time.

Mann can be knotty... but Doctor Faustus was one of those novels that stuck with me for years...

[stlukesguild]

Epic Poems-

Beyond those already included above... Dante's Comedia and Spenser's Faerie Queene...

38. Homer- The Iliad and the Odyssey- Again, another body of narratives unsurpassed in Western literature. Who can forget the wrath of Achilles, Achilles' pain... turning to rage following the death of Patroclus, the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the return of Odysseus... his old dog, his son, and his wife?

39. Firdawsi-The Shanameh[/I] (The Book of Kings)[/I]- In some ways The Shanameh is the Persian equivalent of the Hebrew Bible, an attempt of a conquered people to record their history in an allegorical form... merged with The Iliad and The Odyssey, the Comedia, and Orlando Furioso. This grand epic poem is a collection of characters... heroes, villains, lovers... that rivals Dante, Ovid, Homer, and Shakespeare.

40. Ovid- The Metamorphoses- It is telling that the history of painting of the Renaissance and the Baroque is almost wholly divided between narratives rooted in the Bible and narratives rooted in Ovid's masterwork. This is the great compendium of the Greco-Roman narratives written in a manner that is at once sophisticated and worldly... sensuous... comic... serious.

41. Ariosto- Orlando Furioso- The tales of Orlando... Roland was the continental equivalent of the English tales of King Arthur. Probably my favorite epic "Romance"... although admittedly I have not read enough of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered nor the medieval German and Scandinavian epics.

42. Chaucer- The Canterbury Tales- The Canterbury Tales has the advantage of being the first great epic poem that I can read in the original. Certainly, the Middle English presents some challenges, but I quite enjoy the way it flows and hear its Anglo-Saxon echoes in Ezra Pound, Gerald Manley Hopkins and Seamus Heaney. Chaucer takes narratives from France, Italy... even India and sets them within a frame-story not unlike the Arabian Nights or the Decameron, but his originality is found in the voice and personalities of the narrators.

43. Milton- Paradise Lost- As I suggested above, my initial experience with Milton did not leave me profoundly moved... but returning to him later... after having devoured a good deal of Shakespeare, Blake... and others, I found myself awed by his language, and deeply moved by the visual splendor that he, a blind man, conveyed. The greatest character, ironically, was undoubtedly Satan who was surely a model for Blake, Shelley, and Melville.

44. Kazantzakis- Odyssey- I have some mixed feelings about including this book for the simple reason that it has been so long since I last even looked into it... yet I was deeply impressed with this epic continuation of narratives of Homer's Odysseus. Dante and Tennyson both brilliantly build upon the the idea of Odysseus life after his return home from 20 years of warfare and wandering. Kazantzakis constructs an epic poem of almost Homeric richness from such.

There are any number of epic poems of the highest reputation that I certainly need to read... or read more completely. Among these I would include the Mahābhārata and the Ramayana, Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões , La Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso, Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot, The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson, "A" by Louis Zukofsky... and most certainly, as a Richard Wagner fanatic,the Nibelungenlied and Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Other epics that I have read that might certainly make the cut on any other day include: Epic of Gilgamesh, Aeneid by Virgil, De rerum natura by Lucretius, Beowulf, El Cantar de Mio Cid, Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo, The Prelude by William Wordsworth. Perhaps I might also throw in Michael Drayton's Nymphidia... an epic in miniature and delicious precursor of a magical revelry such as Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

[mortalterror]

Tolstoy is like Milton for me, more appreciated than enjoyed.

I loved both. I tore through War and Peace late evenings after working a second shift factory job just after high school. Milton initially left me unimpressed... but then I came back to him after having devoured a good deal of Shakespeare and Blake and I began to rethink my image of him as an unyielding, rigid Protestant. I was especially enthralled by the visual descriptiveness of the poetry of this man who was blind... and I found many passages of his poetry rival Shakespeare at his best.


They are definitely both essential reading, and there were many parts in each that I highly enjoyed. I liked the war sections of War and Peace, I just didn't care for all the drawing room scenes, all that domestic peace stuff. I liked Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky, but I hated all of the Rostovs. For me the best parts of the book were when the first cannonball comes crashing down on that tent when the guys were shaving or something, the scene were Napoleon's soldiers are drowning themselves to impress him, the scene where a cannonball punches a whole in a perfectly marching platoon that continues marching in formation as though nothing had happened, the death of the boy Petya Rostov in a winter skirmish, the first time Andrei is wounded and lies on the field, the time he looks at a tree differently coming from and going to the Rostovs, and one of the cavalry charges, I forget if it was by a Rostov or a Kuragin. Essentially, I would rather have read a book called War and not so much Peace.

Then I really hated the way he stuck his little essays in at the back, his little lectures about Napoleon and the nature of war. Tell a story or give a lecture. Don't try to do both. Whatever you do, don't do one for a thousand pages and then break off near the end and do the other. He straight bungled the ending is how I see it. Anna Karenina worked much better, and also had the advantage of being somewhat shorter too.

That doesn't mean I don't like Tolstoy. I think he's the greatest master of psychology ever to put pen to paper. Even if I don't enjoy what he does I can appreciate how he does it. I still read his work from time to time. Just last year I read the Death of Ivan Ilyich, which deserves to be considered with his bigger novels. He manages to weigh in on all the really big dramatic subjects: war, love, life, and death. It's really quite a gem, except for an unintentionally funny section where the invalid can only rest comfortably by having his trusty manservant stand over the bed and hold his legs up on both of the servant's shoulders. That part made me snicker on a level I haven't since Moby Dick's

everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction.

When it comes to Milton, I liked Book 2 where Satan unknowingly meets his son Death and as they are about to come to blows his daughter Sin separates them and explains that through their incestuous union Death was born. This story of a journeying hero meeting and fighting a son is a great and old one I've always liked. You have the meeting of Sohrab and Rostam in the Shahnameh, the lay of Hildebrand, and several more ancient and recent. It's always powerful. That book is especially powerful because it plays up the allegorical side of things whereas Lucifer is mostly treated as an individual instead of a natural force in other parts of the book. Think Book 4:

horrour and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The Hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place:
That might as well be a psychological description of depression and self-loathing. Many attempts I think are made to humanize, or anthropomorphize this character, whereas book 2 makes him majestic, noble, aristocratic, and powerful. His decision to be first among his subjects, to take a dangerous mission upon his shoulders alone, to discover a new land is pretty bold stuff. I like when he can do stuff like that, but most of the time I'm annoyed by all of the unnecessary allusions he makes. Did this or that line really need a reference to Baal or some other obscure ancient monster? Does your poem need quite so many nods to the Talmud and ancient Greece? Why can't he state anything simply? Should every line be as dense as it is? Couldn't we get a few breathers?

[mortalterror]

38. Homer- The Iliad and the Odyssey- Again, another body of narratives unsurpassed in Western literature. Who can forget the wrath of Achilles, Achilles' pain... turning to rage following the death of Patroclus, the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the return of Odysseus... his old dog, his son, and his wife?

I find that I like Ajax more than Achilles, who sits on the sidelines for much of his poem.


41. Ariosto- Orlando Furioso- The tales of Orlando... Roland was the continental equivalent of the English tales of King Arthur. Probably my favorite epic "Romance"... although admittedly I have not read enough of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered nor the medieval German and Scandinavian epics.

I didn't like it that much. What translation do you have? I chose a prose version after Barbara Reynolds and William Stewart Rose's verse translations didn't sit well with me.


44. Kazantzakis- Odyssey- I have some mixed feelings about including this book for the simple reason that it has been so long since I last even looked into it... yet I was deeply impressed with this epic continuation of narratives of Homer's Odysseus. Dante and Tennyson both brilliantly build upon the the idea of Odysseus life after his return home from 20 years of warfare and wandering. Kazantzakis constructs an epic poem of almost Homeric richness from such.

I haven't finished it. I got through the part where his father dies and he's thinking of leaving Ithaca again but not much past that. I was struck by just how long this poem is. It's longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined if I'm not mistaken. And Odysseus isn't the Odysseus of the Odyssey. He's sort of this inhuman philosophical character that's hard to relate to. I saw a lot to like in that poem, but more to dislike about it. Kazantzakis' strengths are more those of a novelist than those of an epic poet.

[stlukesguild]

Originally Posted by stlukesguild:
41. Ariosto- Orlando Furioso- The tales of Orlando... Roland was the continental equivalent of the English tales of King Arthur. Probably my favorite epic "Romance"... although admittedly I have not read enough of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered nor the medieval German and Scandinavian epics.

I didn't like it that much. What translation do you have? I chose a prose version after Barbara Reynolds and William Stewart Rose's verse translations didn't sit well with me.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/orlando-furioso/579486

[stlukesguild]

Drama/Theater/Plays:

I've already noted the importance (to me) of the Greek playwrights. The Romans never did anything for me and I have little of no experiences with Indian, Chinese, Japanese and other Asian achievements in theater. I honestly must delve deeper into early "modern" European theater beyond Shakespeare and Marlowe. I read a couple Cornielle plays late last year, and must admit I quite liked them. My aversion to Racine, I'll admit, may have something to do with the quality of the translations... and may have something to do with my general dislike of French Classicism (as opposed to Romanticism). I also suspect that the "Golden Age of Spanish Literature" produced more than a few masters worthy of standing along side the best of any language. I'm thinking especially of Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca whose plays greatly impressed me. Unfortunately, I am grossly limited by the paltry few works that have been adequately translated into English. The same is true of the Italian theater of the Renaissance through the Baroque period... although Goldini now seems to be enjoying something of a revival among translators.

45. Christopher Marlowe- Collected Plays- Arguably the greatest British playwright after (yet before) Shakespeare.

46. Moliere- Collected Plays- IMO the finest French playwright. A master of wit and humor... both attributes so essential to French Baroque and Rococo culture. Echoes of Moliere exist in the operas of Lully, the plays of Pierre de Marivaux, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, and ultimately the operas of Mozart...

47. Oscar Wilde- Plays- Wilde's plays offer a supreme wit,humor, and irony wrought through the most glittering of dialog under which lurks a brilliance of observation, a steely social criticism, and a certain decadence and subversiveness. I would love Wilde for Salome, alone... the basis of the greatest opera (IMO) of the 20th century: Richard Strauss' Salome.

48. George Bernard Shaw- Plays and other Works- Shaw is an author I rarely see discussed, for whatever reason... but he is also a writer whose works have long stuck with me after having read them. He is a brilliant critic of Richard Wagner, a insightful social critic (even if I do not always agree with him) but most of all a marvelous playwright. Saint Joan, Major Barabara, Pygmalion (the basis of My Fair Lady) Heartbreak House, and especially the hybrid, Man and Superman are all essential reading.

49. Henrik Ibsen- Plays- Ibsen's harsh realism and stinging social criticism were eye-opening when I first stumbled upon him. I was especially stunned by An Enemy of the People which challenged accepted notions of majority rule, Egalitarianism, etc... no less than did Shaw... in spite of his declared Socialism.

50. Bertolt Brecht- Plays- Brecht was another "eye opening" read when I came upon him shortly after high-school. Not only was his social criticism and black gallows humor biting, but his formal, Expressionistic innovations were unsettling. It's been over a decade since I read them, and yet I well remember key scenes in Mother Courage and Galileo.

51. Friedrich Dürrenmatt- Plays: The Visit, A Dangerous Game (akaTraps),The Physicists, The Meteor - Dürrenmatt is something of a social critic with the same sort of gallows humor as Brecht... and yet I find him far more humorous... and far more absurdist.

52. Samuel Beckett- Plays- The absurdist playwright/author without rival. While Beckett was profoundly influenced by Joyce, I love his work... while Joyce leaves me indifferent. Endgame and Waiting for Godot are the seminal post-war texts.

53. Tennessee Williams- Plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer,
The Night of the Iguana, etc...- If Faulkner and O'Conner are the masters of the "Southern Gothic" novel and short story, Williams is the master of Southern Gothic theater. His plays are laden with disturbing explorations of sexuality and mental illness revealed through a richness of language and character.

[krishna_lit]

Harry Potter series
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer
Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe
Words from the Myths by Issac Asimov
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

and a lot more!!

[chrisvia]

In no particular order:

1. King James Bible - I would think this rather self-explanatory in its influence on western literature, regardless of personal belief.

2. The Norton Shakespeare - This is my favorite all-in-one volume of Shakespeare. Boasting a good mix of critical essays and annotations, I couldn't leave this tome of human drama and beauty of language behind.

3. The Complete Illuminated Books of William Blake - My beautifully-produced copy from Thames & Hudson is one of my prized pieces of literature. From the Songs of Innocence and Experience to The Book of Job to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, this level of visual beauty and thought provocation is hard to come by in a single book.

4. The Odyssey - Like the Bible, this has had an enormous impact on western literature, plus there's a certain chord within my being that is struck by the wanderings-against-the-will of a man longing to get home but met with impasse after impasse.

5. Ulysses - And hence one of those pieces of literature inspired by The Odyssey. Listing the reasons for including this seems redundant as Joyce's opus has had significant time in the critical eye, but who can resist a book that exhausts every literary and rhetorical device, mirrors the journey of Ulysses, has a chapter whose prose itself lays out the history of the English language, and has probably the most amazing final chapter in all western literature?

6. Goethe's Faust - Perhaps Marlowe's or Mann's Faust rendering is better, but I wouldn't know; I've only read Goethe's. But this is a classic tale of giving your soul to the devil in exchange for eternal life/knowledge/the philosopher's stone.

7. Rimbaud's poetry - I'm not much for modern or postmodern poetry--really anything before and including the Renaissance. But Rimbaud has a quality that is tough to beat; definitely my favorite French symbolist; and the story of his young, stunted life illuminates the work all the more.

8. The Divine Comedy - A trilogy that begins with a guided tour through hell by none other than the poet Virgil himself! Dante is inarguably one of the massive titans of western literature.

9. Paradise Lost - Really, all of Milton's poetry is striking, as is the man himself. Yet another bard with enormous aspirations who struggled against blindness and yet produced monumental literature. With Milton we have a poet whose first poem showcases the insertion of his own self into the Christian nativity story!

10. The Complete Calvin & Hobbes - And for some lighter literature (or is it?) comes my favorite reading as a youngster. It features plenty of humor, an inventive and wildly imaginative young protagonist, and rather complex language and subject matter for a cartoon strip/

[Dono]

Shakespeare's works for starters, and Twain's Letters from the Earth. Robert Frost. The Odyssey/Iliad, and Paradise Lost trilogy. Lord of the Rings. The Shining.

[Pierre Menard]

Very cool list Chrisvia. Is there a particular translation of Faust you enjoyed?

[Lykren]

Ulysses
Pride & Prejudice
Emma
The Tale of Genji (Tyler translation)
The Dream of the Red Chamber
Snow Country
Anna Karenina
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

And ones I haven't read yet but hopefully would like;

Don Quixote
In Search of Lost Time.


It's low on poetry, I realize. Also, there's nothing more than a thousand years old on it. Too bad!

[Vota]

If I had a gun pointed to my head and was forced to choose only 10 books or 10 collections of work by a single author, as many seem to be doing, then I would off the top of my head take:

The Iliad
The Complete Essays of Montaigne
The Complete Plays of Shakespeare
The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
The Bible-King James Translation
The Lord of The Rings
Plutarch's Lives
War and Peace
Complete Works of Plato

That's off the top of my head and if I had literally the few minutes I just had to come up with it. I haven't read all of the works contained within each of the collected works nor have I even read War and Peace yet. I have read The Lord of The Rings, The Bible, and The Iliad in their entirety and feel they are all truly worth additional reads and deeper study. Not so much the LotR, but I have to have some fantasy if I'm stuck on an island forever, and it had better be damn good fantasy. Sci-fi isn't on the list which is tragic because I like really good sci-fi even more than fantasy, but I had trouble swapping in books like Dune, The Foundation Trilogy, or other seminal sci-fi works for anything already on the list. In support of having a book on the list that I have not even read yet, I have read probably a dozen paragraphs scattered throughout War and Peace and knew I liked the author's writing style, and considering it shares a seat alongside the list of books generally considered to be the best of the best of the Western Canon, I think it is worth a gamble on. I know my list is dominated by Greek and Roman influence, but without meaning to, I realize that my list has a nice unity to it.

[Vota]

To Stlukesguild,

48. George Bernard Shaw- Plays and other Works- Shaw is an author I rarely see discussed, for whatever reason... but he is also a writer whose works have long stuck with me after having read them. He is a brilliant critic of Richard Wagner, a insightful social critic (even if I do not always agree with him) but most of all a marvelous playwright. Saint Joan, Major Barabara, Pygmalion (the basis of My Fair Lady) Heartbreak House, and especially the hybrid, Man and Superman are all essential reading.

I think Bernard Shaw writes fantastic plays, and I've only read a couple starting from his first play which is nowhere to be mentioned alongside his best plays, and thought it was delightful. His prefaces are fantastic. I would guess people don't talk about him much because he was a socialist and it's currently not hip to talk about that for fear of invoking the boogey-man. At least that's what it feels like in my social scene.

[chrisvia]

Very cool list Chrisvia. Is there a particular translation of Faust you enjoyed?

Merci Pierre! The edition I read and enjoy is the Norton Critical, translated by Walter Arndt.

[luhsun]

I read of andrew undershaft in my first year of my undergraduate, at my residential hostel reading room. A half-torn secondhand book, donated to the library with the previous owner's name still readable- it was a wonderful diversion and excuse to stop for a while the memorisation of anatomy texts. Cusins, barbara or andrew undershaft are still remembered fondly- the various muscles and small bones of the wrist i no longer recall.