Ten Favorite Novels

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

Dear Members,

My selection is as under.

1)War & Peace

2)Crime & Punishment

3)Razor's Edge.

4)My Cousin Rachel

5)David Copperfield.

6) Grapes Of Wrath.

7)Wuthering Heights.

8)The Mayor Of Castor Bridge.

9)Gone With The wind.

10)The Mill On The Floss.

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


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

(in no particular order)

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

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

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

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remarkable

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

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

---

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kafka's Crow

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

---

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

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

5) Persuasion by Jane Austen

6) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

7) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

8) The Crucible by Arthur Miller

9) Wings of the Dove by Henry James

10)The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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

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

In no particular order

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

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LadyWentworth

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

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by amalia1985

2) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4) The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

5) Persuasion by Jane Austen

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

In no particular order:

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

And so many still out there...

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

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

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