Ten Favorite Novels

[bazarov]

Alighieri, D. - La Divina Commedia
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Milton, J. - Paradise Lost
Calderón de la Barca, P. - Life is a dream
Shakespeare, W. - Hamlet
Goethe, J. W. - Faust
Gundulić, I. - Osman
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game

I couldn't find Derviš i Smrt nowhere on Interliber but I really want to read it. Život je san, a san su i sami snovi - De La Barca ?

[Joreads]

1. The Catcher in the Rye
2. To Kill a Mocking bird
3. 1984
4. A Passage to India
5. Lord of the rings

These are in no special order I love them all

[thegreenthing]

Here goes (no order)

1984
Crime and punishment
A farewell to arms
Silmarillion
A tale of two cities
The silent Don

[IrishMark]

Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.

For my part, my ten ould be (in no specific order)
1. Catch 22
2. Great Expectations
3. A Farewell To Arms
4. 1984
5. The Lord of The Rings
6. Gulliver's Travels
7. Frankenstein
8. Jane Eyre
9. In A Glass Darkly
10. Pudd'nhead Wilson

[bazarov]

Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.

Les Miserables is a play?!?!?!?

[Etienne]

Les Miserables is a play?!?!?!?

One could argue that Paradise Lost is somewhat a novel in verse too... although I'm not very scholarly in literature theory... (at least I know that Les Misérables is a novel though...)

[IrishMark]

lol, sorry, my mistake, i meant to say hamlet lol- apologies...

[LadyWentworth]

Well, top 10. The first 5 always remain the same. The last 5 tend to jump around or get knocked off the list by something else based on my mood. So these are my current choices....

1) Jane Eyre - Bronte
2) Persuasion - Austen
3) The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
4) A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
5) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Lewis
6) Maurice - Forster
7) The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Dickens
8) Gone With The Wind - Mitchell
9) Nicholas Nickleby - Dickens
10) A Long Fatal Love Chase - Alcott

Honorable mention: The "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

[IrishMark]

Well, top 10. The first 5 always remain the same. The last 5 tend to jump around or get knocked off the list by something else based on my mood. So these are my current choices....

1) Jane Eyre - Bronte
2) Persuasion - Austen
3) The Phantom of the Opera - Leroux
4) A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
5) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - Lewis
6) Maurice - Forster
7) The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Dickens
8) Gone With The Wind - Mitchell
9) Nicholas Nickleby - Dickens
10) A Long Fatal Love Chase - Alcott

Honorable mention: The "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

yes the lion the witch and the wardrobe is a brilliant book- first captured my imagination in primary school and has never let go...hopefully it never will...

[aabbcc]

I couldn't find Derviš i Smrt nowhere on Interliber but I really want to read it. Život je san, a san su i sami snovi - De La Barca ?

There is a DiVič edition of Derviš i smrt (Zagreb, 2001.), and my own copy is of that edition, and most of the copies I have been coming across in Croatian libraries over the years had either that edition, or Svjetlost edition (Sarajevo, year depending on edition). I could not find DiVič on web, but you might wish to attempt to contact them, probably there is only some address or some way to get to them if you really wish.

And yes, those are Calderón's verses. I remember from school, it was something like:
... O, malen je dar nam dan, Jer sav život - to je san, A san su i sami snovi...
God I love that work.

Anybody notice that a lot of the material being quoted are not even novels but poems and plays such as les miserables and paradise lost. i move to propose that the list be kept solely to novels and hence a greater range of names will appear instead of simply the literary canon that has been taught in schools across the western world this past 20/30 years.

I feel alluded to - though, unlike some, I clearly warned that I was not making a list of 10 favourite novels since most of my literary favourites happen not to be novels - since my post was relatively recent at the time you replied, so alright, let me modify the post of my "top 10" according more to the form and less to the content.

If we insist on the form of novel, then:
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game (these four remain from my old response, if I exlude the non-novels off the list)

And, in addition to those, right now if I had to compose a list of another six, they would be:
Kundera, M. - Life is Elsewhere
Zweig, S. - The World of Yesterday (strictly speaking, that is also not a novel, it is sort of mixture of his memoirs?)
Lermontov, M. Ju. - A Hero of Our Time (though again, strictly speaking, one could argue this is not a novel in full sense)
Yourcenar, M. - Alexis
Pushkin, A. S. - Evgenij Onegin (we defined it as "novel in verse" at school when studied, so... )
and, say, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.

Equally predictable and "school"-ish list as the one I had before, except that these are novels, and that I tried not to have the same author twice (otherwise I could have composed an addition to the list out of Kundera and Dostoevsky only) ...
I had a hard time composing it, though. I really prefer other types of works, so this was a nice challenge.

[Ana Lovejoy]

1 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands - Guimarães Rosa
2 1984 - George Orwell
3 Budapeste - Chico Buarque
4 Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
5 A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
6 Dom Casmurro - Machado de Assis
7 The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
8 São Bernardo - Graciliano Ramos
9 High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
10 The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

[IrishMark]

I feel alluded to - though, unlike some, I clearly warned that I was not making a list of 10 favourite novels since most of my literary favourites happen not to be novels - since my post was relatively recent at the time you replied, so alright, let me modify the post of my "top 10" according more to the form and less to the content.

If we insist on the form of novel, then:
Selimović, M. - The Death and the Dervish
Dostoevsky, F. M. - The Brothers Karamazov
Mann, Th. - Doktor Faustus
Hesse, H. - The Glass Bead Game (these four remain from my old response, if I exlude the non-novels off the list)

And, in addition to those, right now if I had to compose a list of another six, they would be:
Kundera, M. - Life is Elsewhere
Zweig, S. - The World of Yesterday (strictly speaking, that is also not a novel, it is sort of mixture of his memoirs?)
Lermontov, M. Ju. - A Hero of Our Time (though again, strictly speaking, one could argue this is not a novel in full sense)
Yourcenar, M. - Alexis
Pushkin, A. S. - Evgenij Onegin (we defined it as "novel in verse" at school when studied, so... )
and, say, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.

Equally predictable and "school"-ish list as the one I had before, except that these are novels, and that I tried not to have the same author twice (otherwise I could have composed an addition to the list out of Kundera and Dostoevsky only) ...
I had a hard time composing it, though. I really prefer other types of works, so this was a nice challenge.

im sorry if i gave you this impression, as I was actually looking through the pages and I seen several people doing it so no I shall not blame you lol...

[packersfan]

A Tale of Two Cities

And out of curiosity, what exactly did you like in The Alchemist? I read it because some people told me they really liked it, but I really, really hated that book. I think it's probably the worst book I've ever read honestly.

That's what i meant-im the kind of person who thinks of something else why they're talking (in this case typing), and so i sometimes say (or think) of what im thinking-not what i really mean

I love the alchemist- its a universal book that gives universal lessons, and its a story about a boy on a journey-and that's what life is-a journey...

i first thought it was awful because i was forced to read it in school (any book i'm forced to read is a terrible book for me at the time)-but then i read it again and saw the beauty of a book like that )

[Ana Lovejoy]

i first thought it was awful because i was forced to read it in school (any book i'm forced to read is a terrible book for me at the time)-but then i read it again and saw the beauty of a book like that )

Now I'm really curious. Could you please say where are you from? I'm really surprised, especially because here in Brazil the only time I 'have to' read Coelho was when my Literary Theory teacher asked us to read "in order to understand why people love so much Coelho's works".

[Scheherazade]

There is a The Alchemist discussion thread if anyone is interested

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=27870