Hello, I'm new here and also recently renewed my interest in literature. I would love to hear some recommendations from you pros on the classics. List ten that you think everyone in world should read.
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Hello, I'm new here and also recently renewed my interest in literature. I would love to hear some recommendations from you pros on the classics. List ten that you think everyone in world should read.
My Top 10
Jude the Obscure and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Quiet American and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
:banana: :banana: :banana:
Well I cant really tell, the list may be change in times..cause it can happen that when i read it at the first time i dont really like it, but when i read it again it may happen that i'm beginning to like it..
so no list for me
Ferber: Giant
Camus: The Stranger
Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment
Dickens: Tale of Two Cities
Mishima: Forbidden Colors
Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Kingsolver: Poisonwood Bible
St.-Exupery: The Little Prince
Salinger: Catcher In the Rye
Steinbeck: Grapes of Wrath
Maugham: Of Human Bondage
Boyle: Tortilla Curtain
Not a Top Ten list, but some books that I have greatly enjoyed which come to mind.
I appreciate the lists and look forward to discussing them with you.
HMac
well... here goes: stuff I think people should read (I'll try and stick to what are classics as much as possible)
- The Island of Dr. Moreau (H.G. Wells)
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- Dune (Frank Herbert) (it's a sci-fi classic, hehe)
- Rurouni Kenshin vol. 1 (Nobuhiro Watsuki)
- The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)
Here are 10 mainstream classics:
- The Catcher in the Rye
- 1984
- Great Expectations
- Wuthering Heights
- Crime and Punishment
- Heart of Darkness
- The Republic
- The Great Gatsby
- War and Peace
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
hm..I just didnt get hte Grapes of Wrath, all that anger growing at their maltreatment, throughout the entire book, and you think, yes! now they will finally rebel, and do they? no, its ends like that. lame.
My top 5 (cant remember enough)
Gone with the Wind
Catcher in the Rye
I am David
Lord of the Flies
Heart of Darkness
I'm really enjoying this topic, and while I agree with most, I'll add a few more classics that haven't been included yet.
French lit:
by Jean Jacques Rousseau:
The Social Contract
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
by Albert Camus:
Caligula
The Fall
The Myth of Sisyphus
by Jean-Paul Sartre:
Nausea
English lit:
by Aldous Leonard Huxley:
Antic Hay
The Perennial Philosophy
Canadian lit:
by Margaret Laurence:
The Stone Angel
The Diviners
by Michael Ondaatje:
The English Patient
by Leonard Cohen:
Beautiful Losers
American lit:
by Paul Bowles:
The Sheltering Sky
by Hunter S. Thompson:
Hell's Angels
Generation of Swine
(ok maybe not `classic' yet but great contemporary American stuff)
Oh jeeze, and forgot to add:
Japanese lit:
by Yukio Mishima:
The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Chinese lit:
by Lao-tzu
The Art of War
and:
English lit:
the poetry of Ted Hughes (husband of Sylvia Plath)
and
by Sylvia Plath:
The Bell Jar
Uhm, everyone in the world? I'll try to spread the experience of my wee bit of reading out as well-roundedly as I can then. Haven't read as much from around the world as I'd have liked, nor as much from any given genre or style, so here goes...
Chinua Achebe; Things Fall Apart
African life was not "simple" or "savage" before stumbled upon by the rest of the world, and its rich heritage was irreparably strangled by those trying to "help".
Ralph Ellison; Invisible Man
If you're black and someone's paying attention to you, then you're probably in trouble.
Josepeh Heller; Catch-22
War is ridiculous, life is ridiculous. Have to match the number of missions to get out of there anyways. Oops, it went up again.
Aldous Huxley; Brave New World
The efficient future is loveless; removal of the low points of life make the highs that much less defined.
George Orwell; 1984
The government's a wee bit out of control. Free will was only holding you back, anyways.
Erich Maria Remarque; All Quiet on the Western Front
From the German side of WWI, war wasn't any better, nor were the reasons that the soldiers were fighting it.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Ivan's in a Russian work camp in Siberia, which may or may not be worse than being outside of the work camp.
John Steinbeck; The Moon is Down
A town surrendering to you doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy going from thereon in.
J.R.R. Tolkien; The Lord of the Rings
If you're going to dip into the world of fantasy, you may as well start here. Plus you'd be the only one that hadn't...
Elie Wiesel; Night
A son recounts he and his father's struggle to survive concentration camps in WWII.
Oooh Capnplank, good choice on The Moon is Down, I don't think most people know that Steinbeck wrote a war novel, but it ranks up there with All Quiet... Have you ever read A Midnight Clear? This is also a good work about war in which two sides stage a surrender that goes terribly wrong.Steinbeck also wrote one political farce of types, in which a lowly man in france, I beleive, is momentarily in power of the country.
Gogol - Dead Souls
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita & Pale Fire
Turgenev - Fathers and sons
Zola - Germinal
Zola - The Earth
Kafka - The Trial
my suggestions:
1. The Catcher in the Rye
2. Foucault's Pendulum by Eco
3. Clockwork Orange
4. stories by EA Poe
5. The Master and Margarita
6. 1984
7. Crime and Punishment
8. Ulisses by Joyce (at least one third of the book if you can't stand it)
9. The Trial
10. Lord Jim
I can only say that I agree on that I agree on that Catcher in the Rye has to be on that list. I have hardly read any of the other books reguested. Guess I should. Well, but a classic I HAVE read and which is nor yet reguested is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. That I think every1 should read atleas once in a life time. Oh, and Lord of the Rings is also woth getting trooth (I havent yet finnished it. I have like 100 pages left and have been reading it ever since the first movie was out, and I have problems making myself finnish it, but I think I should.)
I should also have suggested Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country, which hasn't made any of the other lists either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tabac
Ten Classic books
1. Earth Abides by George Stewart
2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
4. Heidi by Jonathan Sypri
5. I am Legend by Richard Matheson
6. Tess of D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
7. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
8. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
9. Animal Farm by George Orwell
10. The Silmarillion by Professor Tolkien
Quote:
Originally Posted by nothingman87
I love every book in your list (that I have read) except for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. For some reason I HATED that book. I cant even put my finger on why I hated it. I like most of Joyce's other works.
It did have a section or two that I really enjoyed, but overall it was a dissapointment for me.
I'm going to list a few books that are by no means a best of the best list, but just books that I have grown to appreciate for what they are. Most of you probably have never heard of the first three!
1. The Book of Daniel, by E.L. Doctorow
2. White Noise, by Don DeLillo
3. Foe, by J.M. Coetzee
4. Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
5. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
6. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Lover, by MARGUERITE DURAS
The Izu Dancer,by Kawabata Yasunari
Dr. Zhivago, by BORIS PASTERNAK
david copper feild by chales dickens
les miserables by victor hugo
hunch back of notra dame by victor hugo
phantom of the opera(forgot the authers name)
come to greif by dick frances
without remorse by tom clancy
rainbow six by tom clancey
jungle book by rudyard kipling
venum factor by diana duan
any of the diskworld novels by terry pratchard ar also good
Anyone heard of The Fire of Origins, where the life of one man sums up the entire history of Uganda. I recommend it, definetly on my top ten.
my top reads at the moment are les miserables and david copperfeild
les miserables:- this is set in the great setting of the french revolition it has a main plot of jean valjean prisnor 24601 starting a new life after fleaing from parrolle he becomes maror of a town and calls him self monsueire madeline there are also subplots in thsi book my favorate of which is police inspector javert's persuite of 24601
david copperfeild: i have only just starting reading this book but it is a good book as it is writin as if it where an autobiography the first chapter explanes david's early years
Books for the whole world to read? In no particular order of importance:
The Odyssey
The Bible
Tao-te Ching
The Koran
Paradise Lost
Transformations of Myth Through Time
"On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" - assuming essays count as books
King Lear
Cry, The Beloved Country
Ramayana
1) 1984 - Orwell
The book that killed Orwell. Writing away on the island of Jura, a gloom falls upon both Orwell's world and the world of 1984.
2) Brave New World - Huxley
Huxley's portrayal of modern society is arguably more prophetic than Orwell's. This is the world of meaningless consumerism and self-centered hedonism that seems far nearer to what we have now than Orwell's dystopia in my opinion.
3) Jude the Obscure - Hardy
Its hard to believe that this book caused enough storm, for Hardy to vow never to publish a novel again. The finale is distressing and a massive critique of the Victorian moral social system that some would, unbelievably, like to see us return to.
4) Regeneration Trilogy - Barker
For those not familiar with Pat Barker's work, this trilogy is a great unweaving of arguments for the futility of war. I think all three books won prizes, including the Booker.
5) History of Bombing - Lindqvist
Sven Lindqvist is a brilliant writer of history. This book is truly eye-opening. The passages on the bombing of Hamburg are just simply harrowing.
6) Philosophical Works of George Berkeley
Berkeley is a profound critic of common sense reality. His arguments are easy to follow and he has a knack of uncovering the real problems. His greatest failing is the solution he provides to the problem of perception and epistemology.
7) On the Natural History of Destruction - Sebald
Like Lindqvist's book, completely engaging and heart-rending. A testament of man's inhumanity to man, often perpetrated by people who thought they were doing what was right.
8) An Intimate History of Humanity - Zeldin
A great work of social anthropology by the Oxford don, that manages to be both a history of women and a history of modern France at the same time. I loved its conversational style.
9) Reasons and Persons - Parfit
Extremely difficult read, but well worth persevering with. One of the first intelligent attempts to show that we do not have a 'soul' or a 'self' and that the idea of personal identity is misguided. Parfit claims we continuously make our selves up.
10) Straw Dogs - Gray
Much easier to read than Parfit, and similar direction of argument. Gray and Parfit are surely right: there is no special quality about human beings, we just have more complex brains.
You all ought to feel ashamed for forgetting The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. I highly recommend it.
I guess we'll all burn in hell for that.:)
Bring on the fire.
Who forgot it? I simply wouldn't put it on a list of ten works that every person in the world should read.Quote:
Originally Posted by mono
I didnt like Cry, the beloved Country at all. So much so that I didn't even bother finishing it after reading 40-50 pages.
The story isn't all that great, but Paton's prose in that novel is absolutely gorgeous. There are parts of that novel that make me weep. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by EAP
I've read the book several times. I can't get past the first page without having tears form.Quote:
Originally Posted by trismegistus
I thought the story was all that great. The passion of the two men who must have compassion for each other because of the ironic situation in which they find themselves is riveting.
This isn't a top ten because, frankly, how could on epossibly read all the books eligible for the best ever? With my knowledge, here are some ones I've gotten a lot out of.
RAND -- The Fountainhead
MAUGHAM -- Of Human Bondage
FITZGERALD -- This Side of Paradise
BURGESS -- A Clockwork Orange
BRADBURY -- Fahrenheit 451
CHOBSKY -- Perks of Being a Walflower
THOMAS -- Rats Saw God
TOLSTOY -- Anna Karenina
JOYCE -- Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
MOORE -- Lamb
FAULKNER -- As I Lay Dying
DICKENS -- Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities
SHAKESPEARE -- Macbeth
ORWELL -- 1981
Geez, didn't know 1984 was part of a quartet!:)
It's actually a quintet. In 1985, ajoe was born.Quote:
Originally Posted by atiguhya padma
I just finished reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm too stunned right now to be able to list ANY book I've ever read, much less 9 more of them; but this one definitely has to make the list. All my lofty college-educated vocabulary has deserted me, and about the best I can do right now is just sit and stare and say "wow" over and over again. Maybe after I've recovered a little I can do better.
Wow.
Ms. Jackson does that to many people, including Stephen King.
Good to know I'm not alone! Sheeeesh!
Haha glad you liked it, rereading may bring back some of your literary analysis skills and vocabulary prowess.
Do I detect a tone of smugness? lol.
I'm not entirely sure "liked" would be an appropriate word. Somehow, "wow" still seems to fit the best.
I just got finished watching "The Haunting" again as well. It is an interesting movie when taken separately, but does not have the power or mastery of Jackson by any stretch of the imagination.
Wow!