November 19, 2003, 15:48
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#1
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Emperor
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What classic books should I get?
There's a store in my town that sells classic works of literature for between £1-£5 in paperback. I want to stock up on my classical collection and expand it beyond a tattered copy of, *cough* The Hitchhiker's Guide. Any suggestions on what I should get?
A brief summary of the work would also be appreciated.
So far, I want to buy:
Wuthering Heights
Dante's Inferno
The Prince
1984
Brave New World
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Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard Dawkins
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November 19, 2003, 15:52
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#2
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Emperor
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These are the ones for which copyright has ended, right?
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November 19, 2003, 15:55
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#3
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Emperor
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*shrug* Any book and I'll see if the store or some of the second hand books stores have it.
__________________
Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard Dawkins
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November 19, 2003, 16:08
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#4
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Prince
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Quote:
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Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
These are the ones for which copyright has ended, right?
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yep, thats why they able to sell them so cheaply
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November 19, 2003, 17:03
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#5
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King
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Pilgrim's Progress is classic!
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'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'"
G'Kar - from Babylon 5 episode "Z'ha'dum"
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November 19, 2003, 18:01
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#6
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Prince
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Theyre all good, except for the prince
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"I work in IT so I'd be buggered without a computer" - Words of wisdom from Provost Harrison
"You can be wrong AND jewish" - Wiglaf :love:
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November 19, 2003, 18:08
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#7
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Emperor
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I liked the Prince. That's why it's already on my "to buy" list. I want other suggestions for that list!
__________________
Exult in your existence, because that very process has blundered unwittingly on its own negation. Only a small, local negation, to be sure: only one species, and only a minority of that species; but there lies hope. [...] Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence [and the] gift of revulsion against its implications.
-Richard Dawkins
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November 19, 2003, 21:36
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#8
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Les Miserables isn't just a good play  . Great classic.
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“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
- John 13:34-35 (NRSV)
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November 19, 2003, 21:44
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#9
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King
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Quote:
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Theyre all good, except for the prince
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besides being close to irrelevent whats wrong with the prince?
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November 19, 2003, 21:53
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#10
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Deity
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Stock up on Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers, for instance.
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I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891
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November 19, 2003, 22:17
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#11
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Local Time: 23:51
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Emma
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I'm building a wagon! On some other part of the internets, obviously (but not that other site).
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November 19, 2003, 22:18
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#12
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King
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The Bernstein Bears. All of 'em.
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November 19, 2003, 23:29
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#13
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Deity
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"To Kill a Mockingbird"
"Uncle Tom's Cabin"
"Billy Budd"
Mark Twain's "Letters from Earth"
"Beat to Quarters"
"Cyrano de Bergerac"
and maybe "Two Years Before the Mast"
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November 20, 2003, 01:52
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#14
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Emperor
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The Republic of Plato
Gone with the Wind (even with its anacrhonistic views on race, and distortion of Recnstruction, I enjoyed reading it for other reasons)
Grapes of Wrath
The Fire Next Time
Alexis Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"
Catcher in the Rye
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STFU and then GTFO!
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November 20, 2003, 02:07
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#15
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King
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I own the Republic of Plato as well, great one
I strongly suggest
"Momo" and "The Neverending Story" of Michael Ende
Anything of Guy de Maupassant
Some russian literature as well, if the author's name end with kj, then is a good one
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I will never understand why some people on Apolyton find you so clever. You're predictable, mundane, and a google-whore and the most observant of us all know this. Your battles of "wits" rely on obscurity and whenever you fail to find something sufficiently obscure, like this, you just act like a 5 year old. Congratulations, molly.
Asher on molly bloom
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November 20, 2003, 02:12
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#16
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Prince
Local Time: 22:51
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EDIT: For quick summaries of the books
"All quiet on the Western Front"
Tells the tale of World War One through the eyes of an alienated German soldier. An amazing book which fully describes the horrors of that war and of war in general in a narrative that was gripping (for me at least).
"Pride and Prejudice"
A comedy/romance written by the famous author Jane Austen, this book is at times very funny and is also well written.
"Don Quixote de la Mancha"
A parody of the "knight in shining armour" genre of the Middle Age's novel writers, this is probably the most famous book ever written by a Spaniard. It is quite funny and well written.
"Catch-22"
This is another anti war novel about the experiences of a pilot in World War Two. It is very dark, and has a lot of dark humour in it, but is very well written and a great read.
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I'm working on it. Must find some witty
quote or ironic remark or somesuch.
Last edited by Zevico; November 20, 2003 at 20:34.
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November 20, 2003, 04:21
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#17
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King
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I would recommend for your perusal and purchasing:
Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year.
First writer in English to turn journalism into an art form. The ‘Journal’ still packs a punch even now. The economy of his style is aptly suited to describing the horrors of the plague run riot and the mounting death toll. All the more effective for not being sensationalized.
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels.
Or a collection of his shorter satires, such as Tale of a Tub, A Modest Proposal, Battle of the Books. One of the very best satirists in the English language, with works replete with scatological references and mordant humour. Gulliver’s Travels is too often dismissed as a work for children, but it’s much more than that.
Mary Seacole: her autobiography.
Think of her as the black, unsung Florence Nightingale, she spent her own money treating the sick and wounded of the Crimean War. It’s a very touching insight into what it was like to be an outsider in Victorian society.
Charles Dickens: Bleak House.
A vast labyrinthine book, with mistaken identities, hidden children, hypocrisy, an interminable law case and a ‘murder’ mystery. Also possibly the first record in literature of a death from ‘spontaneous human combustion’.
Oscar Wilde: Collected plays, or The Picture of Dorian Gray, often found together with Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.
The plays’ll make you laugh, the novellas will give you that fin-de-siecle, louche bohemian feeling.
Sophocles: The Theban Plays.
One of the bedrocks of European literature and culture, the playing out of the story of Oedipus and his family is haunting, melancholy, and gripping. After I read the Theban Plays the first time, and certainly after I first saw them performed, I felt exhausted, but exhilarated too.
James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
A marvellous portrayal of a crisis of faith, it has been said that if you’re a Catholic and read this book, you either have your faith reaffirmed or you reject it.
I love the way the language of the book develops, the way Joyce uses sounds and words to create pictures in the mind’s eye, the way he shows us the development of the young Stephen Daedalus from the baby speech infant of the first page, to the self-assured arrogant young bohemian of the last.
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw.
Or a collection of his short stories (with an emphasis on the ghost stories). I love the way the atmosphere builds up languorously in his ghost stories- the way a sense of dread or unease creeps up like sea mist out of a clear morning.
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Cherish your youth. Mark Foley, 2002
I don't know what you're talking about by international law. G.W. Bush, 12/03
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November 20, 2003, 06:49
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#18
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Emperor
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Books by Joseph Conrad. Penguin Popular Classics sells cheap for instance. Titles like Heart of Darknessof cource, but also Nostromo or Lord Jim will do.
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer
In GAIS we trust!
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November 20, 2003, 06:56
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#19
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King
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Jane Eyre
Treasure Island
The Fountainhead
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November 20, 2003, 12:24
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#20
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King
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When I read the thread title I immediately thought of Wuthering Heights, which I just read for the first time. Terrificl!
Some personal favorites you might like:
Thomas Hardy, Mayor of Castorbridge
Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, The American Senator
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November 20, 2003, 13:09
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#21
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Prince
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
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November 20, 2003, 14:54
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#22
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Emperor
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Get some Robert Louis Stevenson. Christ knows why he's considered a kid's writer- he was the best and tightest plotter of the Victorian age.
"Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped" are the picks.
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November 20, 2003, 14:58
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#23
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Emperor
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Plato's Republic is utter proto-fascist excrement. Avoid!
If you want more Macchiavelli might I suggest Discourses on the first ten books of titus livius? That's his biggie, The Prince was just a calling card.
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November 20, 2003, 16:35
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#24
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Emperor
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Quote:
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Originally posted by Buck Birdseed
Plato's Republic is utter proto-fascist excrement. Avoid!
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Yes, stay away from it. Complete crap.
Some more suggestions:
Herodot, Histories is great and easy lecture spicked with anecdotes. Perfect reading at night before going to sleep.
The naughty ballads of Francois Villon
The little prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Alice in Wonderland (if you want it more freaky, get Carrolls complete work and think about Michael Jackson)
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"The world is too small in Vorarlberg". Austrian ex-vice-chancellor Hubert Gorbach in a letter to Alistar [sic] Darling, looking for a job...
"Let me break this down for you, fresh from algebra II. A 95% chance to win 5 times means a (95*5) chance to win = 475% chance to win." Wiglaf, Court jester or hayseed, you judge.
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November 20, 2003, 16:58
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#25
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Emperor
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No one has mentioned the Ruskies yet? Check out Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
Of the French, I don't believe Zola has been mentioned.
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"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-Bokonon
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November 20, 2003, 17:11
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#26
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Settler
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Definitely Dostoevsky. "White nights and other short stories" (don't know exactly how it is translated in english).
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November 20, 2003, 17:12
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#27
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Settler
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Try to get the whole of the Divine Comedy - purgatorio is possibly even better than the inferno.
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November 20, 2003, 17:16
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#28
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Emperor
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If we're to dive into the wast sea of good russian literature, we might as well add Gogol's "Dead Souls".
__________________
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Schopenhauer
In GAIS we trust!
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November 20, 2003, 17:21
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#29
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Settler
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Oh how could I forget?
Plato's Symposium, I think you'd find it... of particular interest Starchild 
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November 20, 2003, 17:27
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#30
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Prince
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Read the Meno for sheer sadistic comic purposes
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"I work in IT so I'd be buggered without a computer" - Words of wisdom from Provost Harrison
"You can be wrong AND jewish" - Wiglaf :love:
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