Unoriginal desert island topic-your top 100 books and 50 movies...

[Vota]

You are on an island. It's about 72 degrees with a 2-3 mph wind on most days. It rains lightly during the middle of every night. You have fresh water, somehow, wild boar, fish, chickens, crab, fruit, coffee, tea, access to homebrewing, vegetables, even a cow for raw grass fed milk and butter, hey it's my fantasy. Let's even say you have the partner of your choice to share your time with there. Let's also say you have a spacious dry cave with a nice large bookshelf in the back right corner and the reading seat of your choice, plus a desk, typewriter, every thing necessary to write and record your thoughts, or to compose works. You also have unlimited kerosene or oil to power your reading lamps. Let's also say you have the screen of your choice on the back wall and another smaller shelf for your dvd's, betamax, blueray, whatever, on the left rear corner wall.

Which 100 books and 50 movies would you want? You are never leaving the island. I'll allow an elaborate audiophile quality sound system to go with the movie entertainment. An extensive music collection, with a few of your choicest instruments to enjoy playing will be available, but I have not added your music selections to the list because it would make such an unwieldy list even more unwieldy. In many respects you live an austere and savage lifestyle, but with some choice belongings to lend comfort and fine enjoyment to your days. Let's even say you have an awesome canopied outdoor gym that has a squat rock, bench press, punching bag, dip bars, chinup bar, olympic rings and every piece of exercise equipment you could ever want for physical or martial development. Basically you live the ideal desert island fantasy lifestyle.

Complete works of a single author, such as Shakespeare's plays are considered one choice. I would hold the same for the complete works of Charles Dickens or whichever authors you feel you can't live without. Fug it, even a complete encyclopedia would be one choice. Why not? The same applies to movies. In this category, documentaries and tv shows, any type of film media is acceptable. The complete Breaking Bad dvd series would be one selection.

I know this has been done to death, but I feel like a more extensive list that includes both your reading choices and viewing pleasures would create a more balanced representation of each individuals personal preferences.

I'll start, and add that I have several books and tv series that I have not read yet, but have high hopes for on my lists.

BOOKS

1. The Iliad
2. The Odyssey
3. Paradise Lost
4. King James version of The Bible
5. Shadow strategies of an American Ninja Master
6. Path Notes of an American Ninja Master
7. Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao
8. Practical Programming for Strength Training
9. War and Peace
10. Anna Karenina
11. The Complete Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy
12. Moby Dick
13. The Jungle
14. The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne
15. Complete dialogues of Plato
16. Complete works of Nietzsche
17. Complete works of Shakespeare
18. Complete works of George Bernard Shaw
19. Dune
20. The Lord of the Rings
21. The complete works of Thomas Mann
22. The complete works of Goethe
23. The Life of Samuel Johnson
24. The Demolished Man
25. The Library of America two volume American Science Fiction
26. The Book of the New Sun
27. The First Law Trilogy
28. Starship Troopers
29. Old Man's War
30. Armor
31. Ender's Game
32. Altered Carbon
33. Broken Angels
34. Woken Furies
35. the complete Robert E. howard Conan
36. The Wheel of Time series
37. The Glass Bead Game
38. Robert G. Ingersoll's greatest lectures
39. complete short stories of Ray Bradbury
40. The Night's Dawn trilogy
41. The Stand
42. complete Lanny Budd series
43. The Grapes of Wrath
44. The Agony and the Ecstasy
45. Cander Ward
46. The First Circle
47. complete short stories of Anton Chekhov
48. Voss
49. Embers
50. Gravity's Rainbow
51. Humboldt's Gift
52. Les Miserables
53. The Magus
54. The Education of Henry Adams
55. short stories of Guy de Maupassant
56. Lolita
57. Library of America Jack london two volumes
58. Library of America Flannery O' Connor collected works
59. Library of America Raymond Carver short stories
60. Library of America Dashiel Hammett two volumes
61. Library of America Raymond Chandler two volumes
62. The Master and Margarita
63. The Brothers Karamazov
64. Crime and Punishment
65. Notes from Underground
66. Rabbit tetralogy
67. Ulysses
68. Great Expectations
69. F. Scott Fitzgerald Short stories
70. A Mencken Chrestomathy
71. Walden
72. Absolute Dark Knight
73. Arthur Miller collected Plays
74. Henrik Ibsen plays
75. Eugen O'Neill plays
76. Anton Chekhov plays
77. Metamorphosis and other stories
78. The Jungle Books
79. A Farewell to Arms
80. The Theodore Roosevelt treasury
81. Candide
82. Of Human Bondage
83. Harvard Classics(here's my big cheat, lot's of essays and poetry snuck in here)
84. Gargantua and Pantagruel
85. Growth of the Soil
86. The Count of Monte Cristo
87. A Dance to the Music of Time
88. In Search of Lost Time
89. The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
90. Wuthering Heights
91. Invisible Man
92. All the King's Men
93. Oxford English Dictionary
94. The Snopes trilogy
95. The Name of the Rose
96. The Naked and the Dead
97. The Savage Detectives
98. Augustus
99. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
100. A hunter's Sketches

MOVIES

1. Big Trouble In Little China
2. The Thing
3. The Ten Commandments(Heston)
4. Ben-Hur
5. The Godfather
6. The Fifth Element
7. Batman trilogy(Bale)
8. The Shawshank Redemption
9. Star Wars trilogy(original)
10. It's a Wonderful Life
11. Saving Private Ryan
12. Braveheart
13. Dances with Wolves
14. Goodfellas
15. Rebel Without a Cause
16. Alien
17. Blade Runner
18. Legend
19. The Matrix
20. Back to the Future
21. Contact
22. Forrest Gump
23. Heat
24. The Right Stuff
25. 2001: A Space Odyssey
26. The Great Escape
27. The Seven Samurai
28. Die Hard
29. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
30. Enter the Dragon
31. True Romance
32. True Lies
33. Watchmen
34. Avatar(the visuals man, the visuals!)
35. The Goonies
36. Gone With the Wind
37. Groundhog Day
38. Labyrinth
39. The Breakfast Club
40. The Princess Bride
41. Highlander
42. Bloodsport
43. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
44. Band of Brothers HBO series
45. Ghostbusters
46. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
47. The Usual Suspects
48. Top Gun
49. Dumb and Dumber
50. Conan the Barbarian

Wow this is tough. I'm sure if I looked at this next the very next day I would change something, let alone if I saw this list 5 years from now, but hey, its a nice waste of time and its raining here.

[Marbles]

Now, that's a good frame story to post another book list. And it comes with a bargain of 50 films! :D

[R.F. Schiller]

1. Dao De Ching - Lao Zi
2. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
3. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
4. Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Luo Guanzhong
5. Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
6. Speak, Memory - Vladimir Nabokov
7. A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
8. Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
9. Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. The Zhuangzi -Zhuang Zi
11. The Death of Ivan Illyich - Leo Tolstoy
12. American Pastoral - Philip Roth
13. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
14. Despair - Vladimir Nabokov
15. The Trial - Franz Kafka
16. The Stranger - Albert Camus
17. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight - Vladimir Nabokov
18. Ada, or Ardor - Vladimir Nabokov
19. The Counterlife - Philip Roth
20. Native Son - Richard Wright
21. Glengarry Glen Ross - David Mamet
22. The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov - Anton Chekhov
23. The Human Stain - Philip Roth
24. Essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
26. The Complete Stories of Herman Melville - Herman Melville
27. Native Son - Richard Wright
28. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
29. The Luzhin Defense - Vladimir Nabokov
30. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
31. Herzog - Saul Bellow
32. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
33. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
34. Walden - Henry David Thoreau
35. The Complete Stories of Ambrose Bierce
36. My Antonia - Willa Cather
37. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
38. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
39. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
40. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
41. The Complete Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway
42. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
43. Outlaws of the Marsh - Shi Naian
44. Black Boy - Richard Wright
45. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
46. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
47. The Devil's Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce
48. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
49. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
50. Animal Farm - George Orwell
51. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
52. The Master and the Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
53. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
54. The Doctrine of the Mean - Zi Si
55. Up From Slavery - Booker T. Washington
56. Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace
57. King, Queen, Knave - Vladimir Nabokov
58. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
59. Laughter - Henri Bergson
60. The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth
61. Oblivion - David Foster Wallace
62. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. The Complete Poems of Coleridge - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
64. The Fall - Albert Camus
65. 1984 - George Orwell
66. Money - Martin Amis
67. The Complete Stories of Vladimir Nabokov - Vladimir Nabokov
68. Bend Sinister - Vladimir Nabokov
69. Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en
70. Billy Budd - Herman Melville
71. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass
72. The Kreutzer Sonata - Leo Tolstoy
73. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
74. The Souls of Black Folks - W.E.B. DuBois
75. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose - Flannery O'Connor
76. The Illiad - Homer
77. The Complete Stories of Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy
78. The Complete Stories of Kafka - Franz Kafka
79. Flower Terror - Pu Ning
80. MacBeth - William Shakespeare
81. The Complete Stories of Stevenson - Robert Louis Stevenson
82. The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
83. The Odyssey - Homer
84. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Benjamin Franklin
85. The Complete Stories of Dostoevsky - Fyodor Dostoevsky
86. The Cossacks - Leo Tolstoy
87. The Complete Stories of Poe - Edgar Allan Poe
88. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
89. The Analects - Confucius
90. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
91. The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
92. The Complete Maus - Art Spiegelman
93. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
94. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God - Jonathan Edwards
95. Silas Marner - George Eliot
96. Invitation to a Beheading - Vladimir Nabokov
97. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
98. The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
99. The Violent Bear it Away - Flannery O'Connor
100. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West

[Vota]

No movies Schiller?

[Pompey Bum]

Big Trouble in Little China? I mean, at least The Thing was funny. ("Maybe we at war with Norway.")


Let's even say you have the partner of your choice to share your time with there

I want Ginger and Mary Ann.


In many respects you live an austere and savage lifestyle

Well, true enough. Is that from a fortune cookie?

Anyway, I would build an enormous beacon from the fruit trees and fuel it with my endless supply of kerosene, throwing in kindling from the coffee and tea plants, and even the cow if it got on my nerves. After being rescued by a passing plane or ship, I would go get my Ipad, which has between 800 and 1000 books on it (who counts anymore?), apologize to my wife for the Ginger and Mary Ann business, have a nice hot mocha, and read whatever I chose. You have your fantasies, I have mine.

[Ecurb]

I like G.K. Chesterton's answer the the question: "Thomas' Guide to Practical Shipbuilding".

[R.F. Schiller]

Eh, I watch very few movies. I doubt I could come up with a top-10 even.

[Vota]

Well some of you are just no fun. All your answers are perfectly valid, but at least I present some backstory to the usually even drabber top 10 or 25 lists. No fun at all.

P.S. Poo! on your beacon fire and shipbuilding guides! Fie!

[mande2013]

What if you opt for bringing your 'to read' list to a desert island along with some proverbial bibles like Crime and Punishment, Sound and the Fury and what not?

P.S. Being 26 and a bit of a late bloomer, perhaps I see things from this vantage point. It's just me perhaps. It's not that I haven't read anything but rather that I don't entirely trust value judgments I made at 17.

[ennison]

A couple of marvellous lists. I admire both but especially Schiller's admirable range. Pleased to see a fellow who'd take Edwards and O Connor to such a sybaritic retreat . Desert island indeed. More like Dessert Island

[Eiseabhal]

For pete's sake Ennison have you no shame. That's so corny!

[Ecurb]

Ok, since you didn't like my Chesterton quote, Vota, I'm thinking of trying again. I have one problem with your scenario, though:



Let's even say you have the partner of your choice to share your time with there.

I can already hear my girlfriend kvetching about my choice of books and movies. You can't tell me that anyone's list would be spared similar complaints. No doubt R.F. Schillers significant other would say, "Another Nabokov novel? You know I'm sick of Nabokov. If you wanted to bring 'Pale Fire' and 'Lolita', fine. But I'm not going to reread "The Luzhin Defense" or "Ada" a dozen times! You should have shown some more consideration! We're finished, as far as I'm concerned."

All of a sudden, the desert island becomes a little lonelier, and the movie chooser starts wishing he'd added one or two pornographic films to his list.

[Vota]

I said partner of your choice. If you had to live on a desert island, that person could be anyone, it could be your perfect dream girl, whatever. It doesn't have to be your significant other heh.

Also, porn would probably be a good idea anyhow. I'd probably want ones with the best story, so I could enjoy the cheese. Salami slappin would get old after awhile without some real plot.

[Vota]

Oops, wrong thread.

[R.F. Schiller]

Ok, since you didn't like my Chesterton quote, Vota, I'm thinking of trying again. I have one problem with your scenario, though:



I can already hear my girlfriend kvetching about my choice of books and movies. You can't tell me that anyone's list would be spared similar complaints. No doubt R.F. Schillers significant other would say, "Another Nabokov novel? You know I'm sick of Nabokov. If you wanted to bring 'Pale Fire' and 'Lolita', fine. But I'm not going to reread "The Luzhin Defense" or "Ada" a dozen times! You should have shown some more consideration! We're finished, as far as I'm concerned."

All of a sudden, the desert island becomes a little lonelier, and the movie chooser starts wishing he'd added one or two pornographic films to his list.

Haha, my girlfriend still hasn't even read a single Nabokov novel yet. I'm trying to get her to read Lolita for the Winter Break, but it remains to be seen if she actually will take the time to do so. She's a science geek and doesn't really read literature.

[Vota]

Schiller, no disrespect to your girlfriend, but I really get annoyed when intelligent people don't read literature. Ok, that's massively overstating as I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, nor does it boil my blood, but I've seen this more than a few times with people in the sciences or other fields.

I remember my anthropology teacher, who's close to retirement, telling the class on the first day that he didn't read books anymore. I was like WTF!? I came to know a little about his schedule, so it wasn't time constraints. I tend to look at people differently when I find out that they don't read much if at all. I can't help it.

My philosophy teacher only read philosophy and nothing else. He could harp all day about philosophy, but take him out of the field and his capacity radically diminished.

It just blows my mind that there are intelligent people out there that completely ignore such a rich and enjoyable area of interest. There are so many intelligent subjects covered in good books that I feel most anyone could be stimulated by the reading of them.

Not trying to rant. It just kinda makes me wonder sometimes.

[R.F. Schiller]

Schiller, no disrespect to your girlfriend, but I really get annoyed when intelligent people don't read literature. Ok, that's massively overstating as I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, nor does it boil my blood, but I've seen this more than a few times with people in the sciences or other fields.

I remember my anthropology teacher, who's close to retirement, telling the class on the first day that he didn't read books anymore. I was like WTF!? I came to know a little about his schedule, so it wasn't time constraints. I tend to look at people differently when I find out that they don't read much if at all. I can't help it.

My philosophy teacher only read philosophy and nothing else. He could harp all day about philosophy, but take him out of the field and his capacity radically diminished.

It just blows my mind that there are intelligent people out there that completely ignore such a rich and enjoyable area of interest. There are so many intelligent subjects covered in good books that I feel most anyone could be stimulated by the reading of them.

Not trying to rant. It just kinda makes me wonder sometimes.

Well, she's only 20 years old (I'm 21) and we're both still in University. She's a pre-med so she has very little time on her hands, most of which is spent with me or her friends/family. She also grew up in China, where literature outside of a few main pieces of the classical canon isn't really widely read by the younger generation, and only came to Canada in high school. We just met not too long along so I'm trying to convert her. I got her Lolita for Christmas haha.

[Vota]

You can do it. You can turn her into a future literature lover and forum member. Use your close proximity and access to the illogical realms of her mind(love does this) to logic her into loving books! haha

[ennison]

I don't think I can type fast enough to put so many books in a list before being timed out but here's a pair for Dessert Island "Josie, Boney, Marie and Me" by A de Montholon and "Escape to Las Vegas" by Henri Charriere

[Marbles]

Well, she's only 20 years old (I'm 21) and we're both still in University. She's a pre-med so she has very little time on her hands, most of which is spent with me or her friends/family. She also grew up in China, where literature outside of a few main pieces of the classical canon isn't really widely read by the younger generation, and only came to Canada in high school. We just met not too long along so I'm trying to convert her. I got her Lolita for Christmas haha.

I hope it works out well, but you may not want to try too hard. A friend of mine, a dedicated reader of serious literature, tried to get his girl of five years of companionship into serious literature. She liked reading but not to his liking. To dissuade her from wasting time on "pop fiction" from writers like Danielle Steel, Sophie Kinsella, Sidney Sheldon et al, he presented her a copy of Kafka's collected stories and recommended as first read his favourite The Metamorphosis. Only two pages into the story she threw the book away and said, "What is this nonsense, a children's story? How can a guy change into an insect in bed? Give me something serious!" He asked her to give it another try and "discover the meaning." She said life's too short to pore over an untrue story. Lolita came soon. She read about half of it and gave up. "It's like written porn LOL", and many other similar comments loaded with a lot of verbal abuse for the "pervert."

Humanity is so diverse and perhaps some people aren't attuned to serious literature?

[Clopin]

I had a longtime girlfriend who was a science student and had a pretty scoffing attitude towards literature in general, she ended up reading and enjoying War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, A Confederacy of Dunces, Resurrection, The Brothers Karamazov, Franny and Zooey and a few other novels in addition to her normal science stuff while we were together. She had a similar attitude to the girl Marbles is talking about, a sort of "well this is nice, but what's the point?" reaction to literature.

Oh, she liked Virginia Woolf too.

[Ecurb]

Schiller, no disrespect to your girlfriend, but I really get annoyed when intelligent people don't read literature. Ok, that's massively overstating as I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it, nor does it boil my blood, but I've seen this more than a few times with people in the sciences or other fields.

I remember my anthropology teacher, who's close to retirement, telling the class on the first day that he didn't read books anymore. I was like WTF!? I came to know a little about his schedule, so it wasn't time constraints. I tend to look at people differently when I find out that they don't read much if at all. I can't help it.

My philosophy teacher only read philosophy and nothing else. He could harp all day about philosophy, but take him out of the field and his capacity radically diminished.

It just blows my mind that there are intelligent people out there that completely ignore such a rich and enjoyable area of interest. There are so many intelligent subjects covered in good books that I feel most anyone could be stimulated by the reading of them.

Not trying to rant. It just kinda makes me wonder sometimes.

The idea that R.F. Schiller's girlfriend (or anyone else) has some sort of moral obligation to read novels is ridiculous. We are all obliged to educate ourselves, toward which end a working knowledge of science, history, philosophy, and current events is a necessity. But if Mr. Schiller's young lady wants to spend her time preparing to save lives as a physician, it hardly seems reasonable to become "annoyed" by her choices in reading.

It wasn't so long ago that novels were considered frivolous -- not worth the time of a serious-minded person. Here's Jane Austen, defending novel-reading:


Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

I agree with Austen that censuring novel-reading is almost as silly as censuring people for NOT reading them -- but Vota appears to have turned the opinions of Austen's contemporaries on their heads. He wants to censure Schiller's girlfriend for reading biology, chemistry, and medical texts when she could be reading novels. Good grief! What's next? Will we all be morally obligated to read comic books, according to fans of that genre? I'll allow Schiller's friend (as well as Vota's anthropology and philosophy instructors) to make her own educational choices. If she wants to waste her life saving lives and curing deadly diseases instead of reading novels, that, surely, is her prerogative.

[Marbles]

It wasn't so long ago that novels were considered frivolous -- not worth the time of a serious-minded person. Here's Jane Austen, defending novel-reading:

This attitude is still alive and kicking, everywhere in the world. Those who don't know literature do not consider it a field worth devoting your life to. Contrast this with almost any other field, and people don't look down upon you if you're committed to the study of, say, maths or sociology even if they have no idea of either. Even in the US some public figures such as politicians or some sort of media celebrities would start with "I read a lot but I don't read novels...", as if admitting to reading fiction or poetry will somehow make them appear frivolous.

But I agree that people have different natural inclinations and in that we can't expect homogeneity in the choices people make and the material they choose to read, although I believe for a well-rounded personality one should have a diverse reading list.

[Vota]

Ecurb, do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I'm just wondering because the pile of horse crap you posted leads me to believe that.

I'm not even going to bother giving you a good rebuttal because that post of yours makes me question whether you would even understand it.

[Clopin]

Hahahahaha

[Eiseabhal]

There's a few jokers on this thread!

[Ecurb]

Ecurb, do you have a problem with reading comprehension? t.

I believe that "I really get annoyed when intelligent people don't read literature" means "I really get annoyed when intelligent people don't read literature." Does that constitute a "problem with reading comprehension"? Perhaps you meant something else by the sentence. A little advice: the word "really" is redundant.

Here's another of Vota's posts: "You can turn her into a future literature lover and forum member. Use your close proximity and access to the illogical realms of her mind(love does this) to logic her into loving books!" The word "logic" is a noun. If you use proper grammar, Vota, perhaps your readers could "comprehend" what you write. Until then, I think you should stick to watching "Top Gun", "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Breakfast Club" over and over again on your desert island.

[R.F. Schiller]

*Grabs Popcorn*

[Vota]

Channels Jim Belushi, "That's it? That's the best you got?" Duh na na na dun duh...

hhahahhahaha

[Poetaster]

What has this thread devolved into?

[Marbles]

What has this thread devolved into?

What every thread devolves into :D

[Lykren]

Well, on the topic of people's various tolerance for and intolerance for literature, I do agree that it isn't fair to ask people to generate an interest in something that they've been exposed to yet still don't like. That said, that relatively few people I know share my interest to the degree I do makes me feel rather lonely. So I certainly understand the urge to convert!

As for the list, I haven't been reading seriously for very long, just a couple of years, and I'm slow to boot, so I can't make a list of books (nor of films for that matter) that's as long as suggested.

[ennison]

"Midnight Mountaineer" : A Rowan "What Makes Porn Perverse" : Ruth Paddel The View From the Seychelles: T Clarke "Yesterday's Gifts" : R Sukaharto "The Evaders" Elleston Trevor "Paddle Your Own Canoe" A Dunnett

[Eiseabhal]

You, sir, are an incorrigible rogue. I see what you are doing though.

[Clopin]

You two are such qt's

[ennison]

Drat. Rumbled. What gave it away? I do hope it was Escape To Las Vegas! Qt? Beyond me. On the qt? Hope it's good whateffer whateffer as Angus Og would say. Ah Eau du Nappe. Must go and attend to it. Not an an activity for the literary sybarites of Dessert Island but childers demand attention at all states of the tide

[Eiseabhal]

Nope it was the Dunnett that dun it. I have actually read his book and when I saw your ploy I put two and three together and up popped seven. Feumaidh tu a bhi faicailleach. M dheanadh tu cus tarraing as bi iad ag radh bi dol as! As for childers if you got 'em then you gotta do what's necessary. Bliadhna mhath ur nuair a thigeas e.

[Lady19thC]

Nice thread!! Let me see..in no particular order...

1. Jane Eyre~Charlotte Bronte
2. Wuthering Heights~Emily Bronte
3. Northanger Abbey~Jane Austen
4. Little Women~Louisa May Alcott
5. Emma~Jane Austen
6. A Pilgrim's Progress~John Bunyan
7. The Imitation of Christ~Thomas A Kempis
8. Madame Bovary~Gustave Flaubert
9. Dracula~Bram Stoker
10. Frankenstein~Mary Shelley
11. Lark Rise to Candleford~Flora Thompson
12. The Country Child~Alison Uttley
13. Jamaica Inn~Daphne Du Maurier
14. Age of Innocence~Edith Wharton
15. The Woman in Black~Susan Hill
16. The Secret Garden~Francis Hodgson Burnett
17. A Little Princess~Francis Hodgson Burnett
18. 84 Charing Cross Road~Helene Hanff
19. Enchanted April~Elizabeth Von Arnim
20. The Old Curiosity Shop~Charles Dickens
21. Great Expectations~Charles Dickens
22. A Christmas Carol~Charles Dickens (or a volume of all the Christmas books)
23. Fahrenheit 451~Ray Bradbury
24. The Halloween Tree~Ray Bradbury
25. Dandelion Wine~Ray Bradbury
26. The Martian Chronicles~Ray Bradbury
27. Alice in Wonderland~Lewis Carroll
28. Alice through the Looking Glass~Lewis Carroll
29. The Mill on the Floss~George Eliot
30. Middlemarch~George Eliot
31. Return of the Native~Thomas Hardy
32. The Mayor of Casterbridge~Thomas Hardy
33. Tess of the D'Urbervilles~Thomas Hardy
34. The Alchemist~Paulo Coelho
35. The Hobbit~Tolkien
36. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy~Tolkien
37. The Bible KJV with Apocrypha
38. Book of Common Prayer
39. Oxford Dictionary
40. Roget's Thesaurus
41. Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
42. Sonnets by Shakespeare
43. Complete Poems of Robert Frost
44. Doctor Zhivago~Boris Pasternak
45. Diary of Anne Frank~Anne Frank
46. The City of Dreaming Books~Walter Moers
47. Remains of the Day~Kazuo Ishiguro
48. Never Let Me Go~Kazuo Ishiguro
49. The Sketchbook of Washington Irving
50. The House of the Seven Gables~Nathaniel Hawthorne
51. Grimm Fairy Tales
52. Anna Karenina~Leo Tolstoy
53. Vanity Fair~William Makepeace Thackeray
54. Memoirs of a Geisha~Arthur Golden
55. The Night Circus~Erin Morgenstern
56. The Phantom of the Opera~Gaston Leroux
57. Stardust~Neil Gaiman
58. Neverwhere~Neil Gaiman
59. A London Life~MollyHughes
60. Girl with a Pearl Earring~Tracy Chevalier
61. Hamlet~William Shakespeare
62. Romeo and Juliet~William Shakespeare
63. MacBeth~William Shakespeare
64. Journal of George Eliot
65. Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow
66. Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth
67. Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson
68. Complete Poetical Works of Byron
69. Complete Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti
70. Beauty~Robin Mckinley
71. Lorna Doone~R.D. Blackmore
72. Where Angels Fear to Tread~E.M. Forster
73. A Room With a View~E.M. Forster
74. A Passage to India~E.M. Forster
75. Howard's End~E.M. Forster
76. Rebecca~Daphne Du Maurier
77. The Wind in the Willows~Kenneth Grahame
78. The Complete Winnie the Pooh books
79. Cranford~Elizabeth Gaskell
80. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories~Angela Carter
81. The Turn of the Screw~Henry James
82. Walden~Henry David Thoreau
83. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone
84. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
85. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
86. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
87. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
88. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
89. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
90. The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy
91. Wisdom of the Desert Fathers~Thomas Merton
92. Letters of Jane Austen
93. Complete Essay of Emerson~Ralph Waldo Emerson
94. The Crimson Petal and The White~Michel Faber
95. I Capture The Castle~Dodie Smith
96. The Woman in White~William Wilkie Collins
97. The Moonstone~William Wilkie Collins
98. Seven Gothic Tales~Isak Dinesen
99. Out of Africa~Isak Dinesen
100. Firmin~Sam Savage

I'll have to work on my movies later!

Movies:
1. Phantom of the Opera (newer, musical version)
2. Age of Innocence
3. Lady Jane
4. Howard's End
5. Scrooge (the musical)
6. Jane Eyre (BBC version)
7. Wuthering Heights (Ralph Fiennes, Juliet Binoche)
8. Empire of the Sun
9. The Pianist
10. Master and Commander
11. Doctor Zhivago
12. Lawrence of Arabia
13. Girl with a Pearl Earring
14. Valmont
15. The Tudors (series)
16. Harry Potter (all of them)
17. Lord of the Rings (all of them)
18. Marie Antoinette
19. Memoirs of a Geisha
20. Amadeus
21. Out of Africa
22. Little Princess (Wonderworks version)
23. Nicholas Nickleby
24. Sleepy Hollow
25. Tess of the D'Urbervilles
26. Room With A View
27. Jesus of Nazareth (mini series)
28. The Time Machine
29. Game of Thrones (entire series)
30. Avatar
31. Middlemarch
32. Little Women
33. Fairy Tale
34. Gladiator
35. The Old Curiosity Shop
36. Great Expectations
37. Anne Frank, the Whole Story
38. Babette's Feast
39. A Child's Christmas in Wales
40. Dead Poet's Society
41. Inception
42. Schindler's List
43. The Illusionist
44. The Prestige
45. Amazing Grace
46. Pan's Labyrinth
47. Beauty and the Beast (Tv series from the 80's)
48. The Red Violin
49. Les Miserables (the musical version)
50. The English Patient

[Marcus1]

Top 100 lit is a little too difficult for me to decide. But my 50 films would look something like this:

1. Sans Soleil (Marker)
2. The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
3. Scattered Clouds (Naruse)
4. Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
5. The Golden Thread (Ghatak)
6. Early Summer (Ozu)
7. Charulata (Ray)
8. Harvest: 3000 Years (Gerima)
9. A Brighter Summer Day (Yang)
10. When the Tenth Month Comes (Đặng)
11. The House is Black (Farrokhzad)
12. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
13. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
14. The Mirror (Tarkovsky)
15. Yearning (Naruse)
16. In Search of Famine (Sen)
17. A City of Sadness (Hou)
18. Minamata: the Victims and their World (Tsuchimoto)
19. Distant Thunder (Ray)
20. Where Chimneys Are Seen (Gosho)
21. The Cloud-Capped Star (Ghatak)
22. The Naked Island (Shindo)
23. Sound of the Mountain (Naruse)
24. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica)
25. Sambizanga (Maldoror)
26. Memories of Underdevelopment (Gutiérrez Alea)
27. In the Heat of the Sun (Jiang)
28. The Ritual (Kasaravalli)
29. The Hour of the Furnaces (Solanas)
30. An Inn at Osaka (Gosho)
31. The Adversary (Ray)
32. Yeelen (Cisse)
33. Life... and Nothing More (Kiarostami)
34. Alexander the Great (Angelopoulos)
35. A Time to Live and A Time to Die (Hou)
36. La Libertad (Alonso)
37. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang)
38. Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (Bae)
39. Maboroshi (Kore-eda)
40. The Perfumed Nightmare (Tahimik)
41. Muddy River (Oguri)
42. A Dedicated Life (Hara)
43. My Memories of Old Beijing (Wu)
44. Nostalgia for Countryland (Đặng)
45. He Fengming (Wang)
46. Extraordinary Stories (Llinas)
47. Black Girl (Sembene)
48. Barren Lives (Santos)
49. Platform (Jia)
50. Al-ard (Chahine)

[Vota]

Revision of my booklist:

1. The Iliad
2. The Odyssey
3. Paradise Lost
4. King James version of The Bible
5. Shadow strategies of an American Ninja Master
6. Path Notes of an American Ninja Master
7. Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao
8. Practical Programming for Strength Training
9. War and Peace
10. Anna Karenina
11. The Complete Short Stories of Leo Tolstoy
12. Moby Dick
13. The Jungle
14. The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne
15. Complete dialogues of Plato
16. Complete works of Nietzsche
17. Complete works of Shakespeare
18. Complete works of George Bernard Shaw
19. Dune
20. The Lord of the Rings
21. The complete works of Thomas Mann
22. The complete works of Goethe
23. The Life of Samuel Johnson
24. The Stars My Destination
25. The Library of America two volume American Science Fiction
26. The Book of the New Sun tetralogy
27. The First Law Trilogy
28. Starship Troopers
29. Old Man's War
30. Armor
31. Ender's Game
32. Altered Carbon
33. Broken Angels
34. Woken Furies
35. the complete Robert E. howard Conan
36. The Wheel of Time series
37. The Glass Bead Game
38. Robert G. Ingersoll's greatest lectures
39. Complete short stories of Ray Bradbury
40. The Night's Dawn trilogy
41. The Stand
42. Complete Lanny Budd series
43. The Grapes of Wrath
44. The Agony and the Ecstasy
45. Cander Ward
46. The First Circle
47. Complete short stories of Anton Chekhov
48. Voss
49. Embers
50. Gravity's Rainbow
51. Humboldt's Gift
52. Les Miserables
53. The Magus
54. The Education of Henry Adams
55. Short stories of Guy de Maupassant
56. Lolita
57. Library of America Jack london- two volumes
58. Library of America Flannery O' Connor collected works
59. Library of America Raymond Carver short stories
60. Library of America Dashiel Hammett- two volumes
61. Library of America Raymond Chandler- two volumes
62. The Master and Margarita
63. The Brothers Karamazov
64. Crime and Punishment
65. Notes from Underground
66. Rabbit tetralogy
67. Ulysses
68. Great Expectations
69. F. Scott Fitzgerald Short stories
70. A Mencken Chrestomathy
71. Walden
72. Absolute Dark Knight
73. Arthur Miller collected Plays
74. Henrik Ibsen plays
75. Eugen O'Neill plays
76. Anton Chekhov plays
77. Metamorphosis and other stories
78. The Man Without Qualities
79. A Farewell to Arms
80. The Theodore Roosevelt treasury
81. Candide + philosophical dictionary
82. Of Human Bondage
83. Harvard Classics set(here's my big cheat, lot's of essays and poetry snuck in here)
84. Gargantua and Pantagruel
85. Growth of the Soil
86. The Count of Monte Cristo
87. A Dance to the Music of Time
88. In Search of Lost Time
89. The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
90. Wuthering Heights
91. Invisible Man
92. All the King's Men
93. Oxford English Dictionary
94. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
95. The Name of the Rose
96. The Naked and the Dead
97. The Savage Detectives
98. Augustus
99. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
100. A hunter's Sketches

[Eiseabhal]

Supposing now a vessel came to this sybaritic retreat and the cap'n said "Sir, I can restore you to the bosom of your family and what passes amongst us humans for civilisation but alas due to BoT restrictions I cannot take but three of your texts" What would you do? Run off like Alexander Selkirk into the forest?

[ennison]

What! And be mobbed by squads of exotic literary beauties lurking in the woods waiting for just such an unwary moment in the life of their reading idols to pounce as in the after shave ad' Hmm. Lemme think.
I reckon I'd pinch three random texts from vota and take that skipper's offer.