Ivanhoe (just skip the maunderings of architecture) by Sir Walter Scott
The Divine Comedy - Dante Aligheri
There's more, I just gotta remember their names.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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My "literary" favorites, pretty much in the order I read them:
As I Lay Dying -- William Faulkner
Slaughterhouse V -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Mayor of Casterbridge -- Thomas Hardy
Candide -- Voltaire
Martin Eden -- Jack London
Gargantua and Pantagruel -- Rabelais
Was -- Geoff Ryman
No Telephone to Heaven -- Jamacia Kincaid
July's People -- Nadine Gordimer
Jesus's Son -- Denis Johnson
Naked Lunch -- William S. Burroughs
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- Hunter S. Thompson
--Erik
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Anything by Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, or Jorge Luis Borges. Invisible Cities by Calvino is amazing.
Also, when people get a little older, they begin to realize that Mark Twain really was THAT GOOD. I always hated his stuff when I was in High School and college. I would wonder why teachers felt compelled to force students to read his work. Then, when I was really bored last summer, I picked up Huck Finn. Yep, there's something in there that can resonate with anyone.
I also like Graham Greene. Brighton Rock is good, but The Quiet American is better.
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is fantastic if you can get through it. It is worth the effort. In the same vein is House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Despite being "newer" books, they are already being included in the required reading for many Graduate programs.
Paradise Lost - Milton (but not until after the fourth time I read it)
An American Tragedy - Dreiser
The Golden Notebook - Lessing
Candide - Voltaire
Slaughterhouse V - Vonnegut
Bleak House - Dickens
The SOund and the Fury - Faulkner
Ubik - PKD
...to name a few.
I've gotta second Mona on Jack London's Martin Eden. (I don't think I've thought of that book in ten years.) It's got a section three chapters in length that details Eden's 100 hour work weeks and perfectly captures exactly how soul crushing a job can be.
Great thread, btw.
All time:
Grapes of Wrath. I know it's a long political diatribe wrapped up in narrative form, but the narrative is pretty awesome (the diatribe isn't that bad either).
Others:
Things Fall Apart. Kids read this one in high school now. Does that make it part of the canon? Full disclosure: this was the subject of my undergraduate thesis.
Frankenstein. I'm fascinated by the intertextuality of this one. Read through the various editions and you'll see how Shelley changed the story repeatedly. Then look at the many retellings of Frankenstein. It really is an empty vessel in which a lot of cultural hangups can be dumped.
Pride and Prejudice. Austen creates a setting about as well as anyone. When reading this book, it's helpful to pretend that you're reading an ethnography of some exotic culture instead of some dusty old book.
Texaco. This one isn't all that well known in the English-speaking world (hence the link), but it should be. I'd sum up Texaco in one word: Creole. Niot just in language or culture, but in the sometimes conflicted, often confusing Postcolonial experience kind of creole.
Underworld. With Grapes of Wrath as my #1, it's obvious that I've got a thing for the Great American Novel (GAN). Underworld is Delillo's GAN. Some people think that White Noise is his best, but I think Underworld stacks up with just about anything written in the US in the last 50 or so years. Long, sometimes rambling, but distinctly American, it's the literary equivalent of a cross-country roadtrip.
El Skootro
I’ve not been moved overmuch by what is typically considered signature literature, although Lolita was notable. If we're just going on favorite books, this one will always have a special place on the bookshelf:
Gormenghast (Mervyn Peake) - probably the most brilliant use of English in a fantasy drama that I've ever encountered.
The Razor's Edge (Somerset Maughan) - great writing and a great philosophy of life.
Democracy in America (de Tocqueville) - you won't find a more insightful analysis of the USA and its people than this book.
The Histories (Herodotus) - as amusing and entertaining as it is informative about the Classical world.
The Divine Comedy (Dante) - immensely evocative and beautiful poetry.
Borges, Dickens, Marcus Aurelius, Pynchon and Kafka are also great.
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The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
Letters from the Earth, Sam Clemens
"Ligeia", Edgar Poe
Bleak House, Charles Dickens
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
Paradise Lost, John Milton
House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bridge to Teribithia, Katherine Paterson
Anything by Emerson and Thoreau
"Good Country People", Flannery O'Connor
in Our Time, Earnest Hemingway
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
(I'll end it here. This list could go on forever.)
Three Musketeers-Dumas: Made me realize, reading classics doesn't have to be only for school work. The humor in this surprised me.
Cat's Cradle-Vonnegut: Anything by V. is high on my list. This one is a good introduction to him.
Tower of Fear-Glen Cook:...of Black Company fame. Difficult to understand at first because he drops you in a new, fully developed world. Captures the chaos and helplessness felt by regular people, and soldiers, living in a walled city during a siege.
Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive-Gibson: To enjoy a book, you've got to find the authors "voice". These read like Dashiel Hammett sci-fi.
The PUBLISHER of Paizo shares his favorite books with us and we take it in stride. We must be spolied.
Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton is worthwhile. Undine Spragg is an unforgettable character.
Nothing can top Ulysses,even if just for the snot and Gorgonzola sandwich. And the brothel scene might make you think you're reading Poppy Z. Brite. Hm. . . that's not such a good thing, is it?
But Flannery O'Connor is my favorite. Her descriptions of characters are perfect, and her black humor is delicious.
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I've gotta second Mona on Jack London's Martin Eden. (I don't think I've thought of that book in ten years.) It's got a section three chapters in length that details Eden's 100 hour work weeks and perfectly captures exactly how soul crushing a job can be.
That's a great book for anyone who wants to be a professional writer, in my opinion. God bless Doctor Coffee at Emerson for forcing us to read it (and Candide!). I question whether Martin Eden is a key book in Western Civilization, but I do think I'm a better person for having read it.
--Erik
great thread!
one flew over the cuckoo's nest - ken kesey
lord of the flies - william golding
robinson crusoe - daniel defoe
epic poems :)
Beowulf (in Old English) was one I read in college and loved. Dante's Inferno and Paradise Lost also come to mind. The Iliad and the Odyssey, which I haven't read since middle school. Tolkien, of course.
Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad
The Outsider -- Albert Camus
Candide -- Voltaire
Hamlet -- William Shakespeare
Dr Faustus -- Christopher Marlowe
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- James Joyce
5th Business -- Robertson Davies
to name but a few
I've gotta second Mona on Jack London's Martin Eden. (I don't think I've thought of that book in ten years.) It's got a section three chapters in length that details Eden's 100 hour work weeks and perfectly captures exactly how soul crushing a job can be.
Alright then, I'm taking a copy of that home from work (at a library).
Thanks to Erik and Jebadiah for bringing it to my attention
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BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
ANIMAL FARM and 1984 by George Orwell
DUNE by Frank Herbert
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
The ODYSSEY by Homer
STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
and my own vote for "Most Worthy of being Proclaimed as a Classic even if It Isn't" - GOOD OMENS by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
My top three are:
1) the Burton translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night;
2) the Hobbes translation of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides;
3) the Oxford University translation of The Histories by Herodotus.
I also love anything by Alan Furst and Eric Ambler...
Lolita is beautiful and disturbing and wonderful. I would read sections of it and feel like I needed a shower before I could go back to it.
Candide is hilarious and the first 'classic' I ever read.
The Once and Future King felt like the Disney movie but not in a bad way. Very very enjoyable.
American Gods is the perfect book and I'll cut anyone that disagrees.
My $.02
To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (This is a special one to me b/c it makes me remember my Grandmaw quoting the opening in old english to me)
The Name of the Rose by Eco
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
and last but not least a western (ie, cowboys) classic
The Sackett series by Louis L'Amore
Classics: The Iliad- Homer- translatd by Martin Fagles
Don Quixote-Cervantes
Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevsky
I think alot of the guys on these boards would like Huck Finn by Twain and I loved it.
Pride and Prejudice-Austin, it killed me
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire- Hume. You dont have to read the whole thing. Just dip in anywhere.
Ivanhoe is a great book too, by Sir Walter Scott
Also, there is a great one out there called something like "Two Years Before the Mast" I can't remember who read it.
More recent: The Hours- Micheal Cunningham
For Whom the Bell Tolls-Hemingway
Also, Vox. Not a classic, but it has lots of wierd sex and I really enjoyed it. As far as I know, there isn't another novel out there like Vox. If there is. please tell me.
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The Once and Future King felt like the Disney movie but not in a bad way. Very very enjoyable.
I don't cry easily, especially over a book or movie, but that book got me sobbing.
Pride and Prejudice by Austen
Calvino, Borges, Eco (espcially Invisible Cities by Calvino)
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Importance of Being Earnest by Wilde (Dorian Gray was pretty good too, though it's been a long time I read that).
Now this thread I like.
I love Homer, I studied Greek in school, and have read the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek and just about any translations I can find. I always find something new in them.
I am reading War and Peace right now. I'm beginning to think I'm just wired to like Russian authors, as I'm also a huge fan of Dostoevsky.
Love anything by Eco, Borges, Calvino, Rushdie and Pynchon.
Took a course in college on the Inferno. Best way to read it is with someone who has spent the last 20 years studying it.
Surprised myself with how much I love Jane Austen's writing, especially Pride and Prejudice (fun fact: This novel might make for a good movie).
Arabian Nights are awesome, I prefer the Mardrus and Mathers versions myself.
Great Gatsby is another favorite I have read a few times when I don't want to commit to a long book.
Also Herodotus, Vonnegut and Twain - before I shut up.
I was lucky enough to get to interview Eco in college for our school literary magazine. Very friendly, fascinating, and great sense of humor. We were supposed to get a 20 minute time slot to interview in, but he said he was enjoying our talk so much he blew off his next appointment and spent a full hour chatting with us. That evening, after his dinner with various school grandees and such, he got in contact with our editor to go drinking. Several of my friends took him out to our favorite dive bar and drank martinis out of plastic cups until the bar closed. Unfortunately I missed the call. I was out on a date, had I not ended up marrying the girl I would have been really upset.
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I was lucky enough to get to interview Eco in college for our school literary magazine. Very friendly, fascinating, and great sense of humor. We were supposed to get a 20 minute time slot to interview in, but he said he was enjoying our talk so much he blew off his next appointment and spent a full hour chatting with us. That evening, after his dinner with various school grandees and such, he got in contact with our editor to go drinking. Several of my friends took him out to our favorite dive bar and drank martinis out of plastic cups until the bar closed. Unfortunately I missed the call. I was out on a date, had I not ended up marrying the girl I would have been really upset.
That's awesome!!!
American Gods is the perfect book and I'll cut anyone that disagrees.
Get your switchblade at the ready, sister, because I have to say I disagree. I recently re-read it and once you've read The Sandman comics and some other Neil Gaiman work, it's kind of apparent that the author is repeating himself. The "metaphysical as character" theme continues unabated and there's more of the Alice In Wonderland kind of normal protagonist (the reader's proxy) in a strange secret world thing that he's also done in other work. And everybody in America seems so darn charming and English. It's a decent novel with some interesting insights into America's discarded spirituality, but it's not perfect.
And my favorite quote about Kurt Vonnegut came from The Onion on the week he died.
"I think we had better check the ruins of Dresden for his younger self, just to make sure."
Love Vonnegut.
The Plague and The Stranger by Camus were great. I made a puppet show of The Stranger with sock puppets for my (mandatory) sculpture class my first year of college. It kind of sucked, but I tried.
I enjoyed the Divine Comedy. Especially since Dante put people he hated personally into Hell. What a jerk.
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Director of Sales
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Get your switchblade at the ready, sister, because I have to say I disagree. I recently re-read it and once you've read The Sandman comics and some other Neil Gaiman work, it's kind of apparent that the author is repeating himself. The "metaphysical as character" theme continues unabated and there's more of the Alice In Wonderland kind of normal protagonist (the reader's proxy) in a strange secret world thing that he's also done in other work. And everybody in America seems so darn charming and English. It's a decent novel with some interesting insights into America's discarded spirituality, but it's not perfect.
American Gods is the perfect book and I'll cut anyone that disagrees.
Didjya want me to hold him down for ya, Yeux, or would you rather have the thrill of the hunt?
'Cause I will... Hold him down for ya...
;)
How come the only people that want to "hold me down" are dudes on the internet?
Texaco. This one isn't all that well known in the English-speaking world (hence the link), but it should be. I'd sum up Texaco in one word: Creole. Niot just in language or culture, but in the sometimes conflicted, often confusing Postcolonial experience kind of creole.
I actually saw a very interesting paper on Texaco a few months ago at a regional MLA convention. I haven't read the book myself, but the paper dealt with the messiah motifs in it.
My (current) top 12:
Lord of the Rings, Tolkien
The Amber Chronicles, Zelazny
Appleseed, Masamune
Sandman, Gaiman
Credo, Bragg (published in the USA as The Sword and the Miracle)
MacBeth, Shakespeare
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
Ulysses, Joyce
Four Quartets, Eliot
The Age of Anxiety, Auden
Gilgamesh
Go Rin No Sho, Miyamoto
Get your switchblade at the ready, sister, because I have to say I disagree. I recently re-read it and once you've read The Sandman comics and some other Neil Gaiman work, it's kind of apparent that the author is repeating himself. The "metaphysical as character" theme continues unabated and there's more of the Alice In Wonderland kind of normal protagonist (the reader's proxy) in a strange secret world thing that he's also done in other work. And everybody in America seems so darn charming and English. It's a decent novel with some interesting insights into America's discarded spirituality, but it's not perfect.
American Gods is the perfect book and I'll cut anyone that disagrees.
Vaild points, but I see "American Gods" as the penultimate of his works. Its like he tried to reach what he did with "American Gods" with his others but couldn't.
/niceities
Would you like a head start, Mr. Keegan, or should we just get this over with now? ^_^
I've gotta second Mona on Jack London's Martin Eden. (I don't think I've thought of that book in ten years.) It's got a section three chapters in length that details Eden's 100 hour work weeks and perfectly captures exactly how soul crushing a job can be.That's a great book for anyone who wants to be a professional writer, in my opinion. God bless Doctor Coffee at Emerson for forcing us to read it (and Candide!). I question whether Martin Eden is a key book in Western Civilization, but I do think I'm a better person for having read it.
--Erik
Emerson '96. Coffee was a great teacher, that was a great class. I can still see/hear him in my head reading from his handwritten notes, acting out the role of every character in the Bible. I miss Boston. Erik, do you have any idea if he's still alive?
And everybody in America seems so darn charming and English.
Agreed. The guy at my comic book shop does a hilarious bit about how the main character, a convict, talks/thinks/acts like the graduate of an English boarding school
Get your switchblade at the ready, sister, because I have to say I disagree. I recently re-read it and once you've read The Sandman comics and some other Neil Gaiman work, it's kind of apparent that the author is repeating himself. The "metaphysical as character" theme continues unabated and there's more of the Alice In Wonderland kind of normal protagonist (the reader's proxy) in a strange secret world thing that he's also done in other work. And everybody in America seems so darn charming and English. It's a decent novel with some interesting insights into America's discarded spirituality, but it's not perfect.
American Gods is the perfect book and I'll cut anyone that disagrees.Vaild points, but I see "American Gods" as the penultimate of his works. Its like he tried to reach what he did with "American Gods" with his others but couldn't.
/niceities
Would you like a head start, Mr. Keegan, or should we just get this over with now? ^_^
You'll never take me alive.
Jorge Luis Borges - The book of imaginary beings. Labyrinths.
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics. If on a Winter's night a traveller. Difficult loves.
Hemingway- For whom the bell tolls. The old man and the sea.
Umberto Eco - The name of the rose. Baudolino. Foucault's pendulum.
Dostoevsky - The devils.
Roald Dahl - Kiss kiss. Switch b%$!$. Over to you. Tales of the unexpected. Danny, the champion of the world.
Neal Stephenson - The baroque cycle.
Turgenev - Fathers and sons.
Nabokov - Lolita.
Dickey - Deliverance.
Borumil Hrabal - Too loud a solitude. I served the king of England.
Milan Kundera - Life is elsewhere. The unbearable lightness of being. The joke.
William Burroughs- Junkie
Lyndsay Clarke - The chymical wedding. Sunday white man.
Dalene Mathee - Fiela se kind (Fiela's child) Kringe in 'n bos (Circles in a forest)
Herman Hesse - Siddharta. Narziss and Goldmund.
Joyce - Finnegan's wake. Ulysses. Portrait of the artist as a young man.
Fowles - The Magus.
Michael Mann - The magic mountain. The confessions of Felix Krull, confidence man.
di Lampedusa - The Leopard.
Orwell - 1984.
Kafka - The trial. Metamorphosis and other stories.
And some classics that are not novels
Sir Frasier - The golden bough.
Campbell - The hero's journey.
Robert Bly - Iron John.
Johnson - A history of the American People. Birth of the Modern. Modern Times. The intellectuals.
Robertson Davies - The Isles. Europe.
H.G Wells - An outline of world history.
Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid.
Stephen Jay Gould - Too many to list.
Plus the graphic works of Alan Moore, particularly Watchmen and Promethea and League of extraordinary gentlemen.
Apologies for not using Title Case, as there were too many for my pinkie to withstand.
Classics: The Iliad- Homer- translatd by Martin f*@les
Don Quixote-Cervantes
Crime and Punishment- Dostoyevsky
I think alot of the guys on these boards would like Huck Finn by Twain and I loved it.
Pride and Prejudice-Austin, it killed me
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire- Hume. You dont have to read the whole thing. Just dip in anywhere.
Ivanhoe is a great book too, by Sir Walter Scott
Also, there is a great one out there called something like "Two Years Before the Mast" I can't remember who read it.More recent: The Hours- Micheal Cunningham
For Whom the Bell Tolls-HemingwayAlso, Vox. Not a classic, but it has lots of wierd sex and I really enjoyed it. As far as I know, there isn't another novel out there like Vox. If there is. please tell me.
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Is by Gibbon.
If you like bizarre and surreal sex, look up William Burroughs. Bring a strong stomach.
Well, this thread deserves a Resurrection spell.
I have plenty of literary favourites, but A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitj by Aleksandr Solsjenitsyn is probably my number one.
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Among others I've read (I wouldn't call all of these "favorites," but some, certainly):
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Flatland by Edwin A. Abbot
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels
the works of H.P. Lovecraft
The Cartoon History of the Universe/Modern World Vol. I-V by Larry Gonick