Top ten works of literature ever?

[Boris Godunov]

Les Miserables - V. Hugo
The Illiad - Homer
Great Expectations - C. Dickens
War and Peace - L. Tolstoy
EDIT: All Quiet on the Western Front - E. Remarque
Crime and Punishment - F. Dostoyevski
1984 - G. Orwell
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Farewell to Arms - E. Hemmingway
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Those are my favorites among the great works, anyway.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by vulture
Oh, and by the way, anyone who picks a Dickens novel ( monkspider ) will be summarily executed for being a depressing b*st*rd.

How is Great Expectations depressing?

orange--I disagree about 1984 not being well-written, I think it is. However, I put it on my list because it has had such a dramatic impact on our culture. How often do we use the phrases "Big Brother" and "Doublespeak" these days?

[orange]

good point, Boris

Ulysses is a great choice, IMO

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by alva

Didn't understand a flippin' word of it( needed a dictionairy, even to read it in dutch, closed it after about 10 pages :

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh
This one put me of reading for 6 months,( picked it up again by reading Wilt(Sharpe) ), I did finish it though.

I loved Gravity's Rainbow, although it was anything but an easy read. I had a dictionary with me for the first two parts of the book (by that time I had learned the lingo) and it took me close to a year to finish. It is so densely written and it was like reading four books in one. Afterwards, I felt like a taken way too much acid.

The hardest thing about the book, I think, is finding Pynchon's rhythm. Some of his sentences go on for a page or more and I think that really throws some people. I didn't find the rhythm of the book until I got to part two. Overall the book was orgainized like a piece of classical music in four massive movements. (Tangent alert: another book that was written like a piece of classical music is A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess.)

One of the best things about Gravity's Rainbow is that it has left a nice aftertaste in my mind for many years.

I loved The Trial. The endless frustrations of the main character deeply resonated with me and still do.

How good was Journey to the End of the Night? I started to read it a few years ago, but I put it down for some reason. Is it worth picking back up?

* * *

Boris:

You actually read Ulysses cover to cover? I got to the part where he started the stream of consciousness rant about the modality of the visible vs. the immodality of the visible and then the modality of the audible vs. the immodality of the audible. At that point I literally threw the book across the room. It was a little too erudite and seemed to be an exercise in academic mental masturbation.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me and I will try to read it again.

* * *

Kropotkin:

Please, tell me a little about Steppenwolf. A friend of mine gave it to me years ago and I never read it. I still have it laying around here someplace. Is it really that good? I have the impression it was more of a young man's book, akin to Catcher in the Rye.

* * *

My favorite children's books are: Alice and Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Did anyone ever read Thomas Tryon? I absolutely loved "The Other" and "Harvest Home". The Other was another book that I read multiple times as I loved the American Gothic (caps?) atomosphere.

[El León]

Can we distinguish novels and literature, please?

Douglas Adams is just about the one of the best novelists I've read... But literature?

Only Wernazumatzin mentioned Homer?

I guess it will be hopeless to nominate the Bhagavad-Gita, or Jalal Al Din Rumi (I guess poetry is not literature, by the looks of it, which also leaves R.M. Rilke out). Or Cien Años de Soledad. No Dante Alighieri either. No Ovid Metamorphoses, no Aesop fables, (Brecht Threepeny Opera? Ibsen Doll House? Chekhov The Cherry Tree?)
Not to mention Bocaccio Decameron, Stendhal Stories, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón El Sombreo de Tres Picos, Jorge Manrique Coplas a la muerte de mi padre (oops, sorry, no poetry), Maxim Gorki The Mother... oh well. Not too much out there, now is there?

EDIT - Sorry Boris, you also got Homer. Sartre Le Nausee, before I forget. Virginia Woolf The Waves (yep, women can write, too, Mary Shelley Frankenstein)

[Bereta_Eder]

10 top books i've read and i remember now(with some spelling errours probably since i translate)

Homer's Odyssey
Homer's Illiad
Hesse's Sidarta
Mourselas' Vamena Kokina Malia
Triantafylopoulou's Savato vradi stin akri tis polis
Dostoyefski's White Nights
Kafka's Metamorphosis
Kazantzakis' Erga kai politeia tou Alexi Zorba
Bizentsos' Erotokritos
Eco's Name of the rose

[Boris Godunov]

MosesP: Fair enough, Ulysses isn't for everybody. I studied it in a seminar in college, so got some pretty good insights into it. However, it was least on my list of 10, and I had forgotten All Quiet on the Western Front, so I replaced it.

[alva]

I loved Gravity's Rainbow, although it was anything but an easy read.

wasn't this the only book the guy wrote? Even published after he was dead?
You do like strange books don't you , hmm might give it another go then, someday
(Still absolutely hate 'the trial' though )

How good was Journey to the End of the Night?

Still my alltime favourite, if you can't stand 'Panag... style....', don't even bother though... j/k
I read it in dutch, my french isn't good enough to read the original version wich is a great pity, as the books relies on rythm for a great deal.

[Caesar the Great]

Hamlet
Macbeth
Tale of Two Cities
Great Gatsby
Brave New World
Catcher in the Rye
Inferno
Lord of the Rings
Crime and Punishment
Odyssey

[Ramo]

After some thought, I'll have to take back what I said about Hitchiker. Adams' humor is just silly, not particularly deep (in contrast to Vonnegut or Heller). I'll replace that spot with "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo.

I don't see why 1984 is such a popular choice. I didn't think it was that well written, and the concept - while interesting - was not as developed as it could have been.

Are you serious? 1984 is certainly one of the best-written books I've read. George Orwell is an extremely talented writer, IMO.

As for conceptual development, I'd say it is very ahead of its time. Also, one has to keep in mind that Orwell was basically expanding on his own experiences with totalitarianism (after all, he was a very honest writer). "1984" is merely a fictionalized version of his much better "Homage to Catalonia."

[monolith94]

"simply due to the fact that it's not very long."
Hahahahahahhahaha!
Hahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahha hahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahah hahahahahahahhahahaha!
Hahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhaha hahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahha hahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahah hahahahahahahhahahaha!

[GePap]

Originally posted by El Leon
Can we distinguish novels and literature, please?

Douglas Adams is just about the one of the best novelists I've read... But literature?

Only Wernazumatzin mentioned Homer?

I guess it will be hopeless to nominate the Bhagavad-Gita, or Jalal Al Din Rumi (I guess poetry is not literature, by the looks of it, which also leaves R.M. Rilke out). Or Cien Años de Soledad. No Dante Alighieri either. No Ovid Metamorphoses, no Aesop fables, (Brecht Threepeny Opera? Ibsen Doll House? Chekhov The Cherry Tree?)
Not to mention Bocaccio Decameron, Stendhal Stories, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón El Sombreo de Tres Picos, Jorge Manrique Coplas a la muerte de mi padre (oops, sorry, no poetry), Maxim Gorki The Mother... oh well. Not too much out there, now is there?

EDIT - Sorry Boris, you also got Homer. Sartre Le Nausee, before I forget. Virginia Woolf The Waves (yep, women can write, too, Mary Shelley Frankenstein)

Damn it El Leon! Don't you know that such a list is far too elitist, and how many peole here have actually read all of Dante, or Marquez, or somehting like the decameron! Stick to works form the last 100 years man!

And what of the great Nordic sagas, or the tale of Gilgamesh?

[monolith94]

"Can we distinguish novels and literature, please?"
No, we can't. Or at least, I can't. I feel that when approaching things from a scholarly mindset, you can't let your guard down one bit!
And stop ragging on Adams! Admittedly his first book wasn't as deep as the others, but consider the circumstances of the other books: a cow pressuring you to eat him, a ruler of the universe who is so out of contact it is ridiculous, an alien race bred in isolation that, when discovering the existence of others, immediately seeks to eliminate them? This is pure satire of an even higher form than, for example, Gulliver's Travels, as it is subtler and, in my opinion, more layered.

[Kropotkin]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Kropotkin:

Please, tell me a little about Steppenwolf. A friend of mine gave it to me years ago and I never read it. I still have it laying around here someplace. Is it really that good? I have the impression it was more of a young man's book, akin to Catcher in the Rye.

Haven't read Catcher in the Rye so I don't know much about that. I guess it could be taken for a young man's book but I don't think that's fair at all as it's theme is much more universal than so. As far as I know the origin of the book in the mind of Hesse is some form of personal crisis. It tells the tale about a old man that lives a life on his own, outside the life of man (not literary of cource) and hunted by his neurosis and old life. Thus being as a steppenwolf. It's a story about the duality of man between desires and reason. It's a good book for all, not youngsters alike even if I guess people going through emotional changes as youngster might find it more to their liking than others. But it's really about human life, not any specific age.

[St Leo]

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Diaspora - Greg Egan
Dune - Frank Herbert
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Foundation - Asimov

Though War and Peace and Slaughterhouse-Five are quite good, I wouldn't call them classics.

[SKILORD]

Turtledove's new book Ruled Brittannia might make it to such a list one day, It beats the hell out of anything he's written before.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Kropotkin

Haven't read Catcher in the Rye so I don't know much about that. I guess it could be taken for a young man's book but I don't think that's fair at all as it's theme is much more universal than so. As far as I know the origin of the book in the mind of Hesse is some form of personal crisis. It tells the tale about a old man that lives a life on his own, outside the life of man (not literary of cource) and hunted by his neurosis and old life. Thus being as a steppenwolf. It's a story about the duality of man between desires and reason. It's a good book for all, not youngsters alike even if I guess people going through emotional changes as youngster might find it more to their liking than others. But it's really about human life, not any specific age.

My bad.

Thank you. I am putting that one on my list of must reads.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by alva

{Gravity's Rainbow}
wasn't this the only book the guy wrote? Even published after he was dead?

No, he is still living and he is still writing as densely as ever.

He's a recluse and refuses all interviews, just like Salinger. The big difference is that Pynchon still writes. I think the reason he has written so few books, is that the BIG books (V, GR, M&D) are massively researched. There is a GR companion if you are interested in seeing just how much research was involved. Obviously you don't have to go that deep to enjoy the book as it hits you on many levels, but if you wanted to, it is nice to know you could.

Thomas Pynchon:

V: 1963
The Crying of Lot 49: 1966
Gravity's Rainbow: 1973
Slow Learner: collection of short stories: 1984
Vineland: 1990
Mason & Dixon: 1997 - I still haven't finished this one. I think I'm all Pynchoned out.

The following is good for a laugh.

http://phc.mpr.org/performances/19980606/cowboys.htm

excerpt from "A Prairie Home Companion"

They strung him up, and shot him, and were about to give him poison,
And then one cowboy rose up in his saddle and cried, "Boys, in
All my days on lynch mobs, there was one sure way of lynchin'
That's to lock him in the outhouse with the works of Thomas Pynchon.


So they put the Amarillo Kid in the little house out back
With the works of Thomas Pynchon, a solid four-foot stack.
And he commenced to read The Crying of Lot 49,
And he groaned so loud and mournfully, they knew that he was dyin.


He finally finished that one but on Gravity's Rainbow,
They could hear him sighing and his breath was coming slow.
When they opened up the door, he had passed to his rest,
He had died of suffocation for the book lay on his chest.


He could see the ladies singing, he could smell his long-lost friends,
And his spirit went to Austin where the party never ends.

[VetLegion]

Is the question most influental or best?

I dont see how someone can like Quijote, Brave new world or 1984... these were influental but not an interesting read

and Illyiad and Odysey? Ok to read as a kid in an illustrated book, but to read them completely.. in verse form? That would be I think hard work and no fun

de gustibus non disputandum, so have it as you want


Btw., I m sorry I cant make a top ten at the moment.

[Buck Birdseed]

Only two of you even mentioned the greatest form of literature ever, Poetry. Shame.

[MosesPresley]

Does anyone else here think Kafka was misunderstood? It seems most people find him depressing. I always thought his works were humorous.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by El Leon
Can we distinguish novels and literature, please?

Douglas Adams is just about the one of the best novelists I've read... But literature?

Only Wernazumatzin mentioned Homer?

I guess it will be hopeless to nominate the Bhagavad-Gita, or Jalal Al Din Rumi (I guess poetry is not literature, by the looks of it, which also leaves R.M. Rilke out). Or Cien Años de Soledad. No Dante Alighieri either. No Ovid Metamorphoses, no Aesop fables, (Brecht Threepeny Opera? Ibsen Doll House? Chekhov The Cherry Tree?)
Not to mention Bocaccio Decameron, Stendhal Stories, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón El Sombreo de Tres Picos, Jorge Manrique Coplas a la muerte de mi padre (oops, sorry, no poetry), Maxim Gorki The Mother... oh well. Not too much out there, now is there?

EDIT - Sorry Boris, you also got Homer. Sartre Le Nausee, before I forget. Virginia Woolf The Waves (yep, women can write, too, Mary Shelley Frankenstein)

Are you Camille Paglia?

[monolith94]

I find Kafka funny in a depressing sort of way, and depressing in a funny sort of way.
I'm nto so sure that poetry is the greatest form of literature. Right now I'm leaning towards the novella: siddhartha, phillip k. ****, kafka, and other authors all made them. And I find that the pacing of a novella works better in constructing thematics and emotions and such.
Besides, writing prose gives a feeling of satisfaction that you don't get with poetry, I think.

[El León]

Damn it El Leon! Don't you know that such a list is far too elitist, and how many peole here have actually read all of Dante, or Marquez, or somehting like the decameron! Stick to works form the last 100 years man!

Elitist? Or inclusive? I'm not saying every work of García Márquez, but you'd have a tough time getting out of high school in Latin America without having read him. That's alot of people right there.
Or the Gita. Millions of people in India will quote it to you, I bet.
I was also shocked that no one had mentioned Dante - whereas Cervantes was mentioned. I don't think they are elitist, in fact I don't find anyone on the list as hard to read as (with the exception of Sartre and Woolf), say, Pynchon, Joyce, Gaddis, Kafka, and many others from the last 100 years, some of whom have been mentioned. The silmarillion is much harder than most of the works I mentioned.

BTW who is Camille Paglia? Yo soy El León.

And in the end, if you say literature, I asume it is related to "letters," and yes, I would say it is hard then to find people in the last 100 years who have influenced letters. But Adams, Tolkien, Gaddis, are some of my favorite authors. In fact, some of them are even starting to be influential.

Not to mention Joyce's impact on English letters...

[monolith94]

I read some Márquez… a single short story. I wish I had the time / opportunity to read more but the fact is there's only so much time and so many books!

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by Kepler


Excellent choice for a good book, though from Perez-Reverte I preferred The Flanders Panel. I'm slogging through The Seville Communion right now, but it's interminable.

Good point. I love The Flanders Panel; and I also like the chessplayer, that is called Muñoz, like I am called

It's curious that name. "The Seville Communion", the Spanish name is very, very different (The skin of the drummer [if drummer means the same than tambour]). I also encourage you to read his short story about the Spanish soldiers that were forced to join Napoleon's troops and try to resing and join the russian army. It's fun!

[loinburger]

I don't think that I've read ten books in my lifetime, so I'll just have to list the ones that I remember...

1. McGurk and the Case of the Condemned Cat.
2. Robert the Rose Horse.
3. Puff 'n Toot.
4. The Brothers Karamazov.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by El Leon
BTW who is Camille Paglia? Yo soy El León.

Literary scholar and author of "Sexual Persona".

I have One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I haven't read it. What little I read seemed to have a nice dreamlike quality to the narrative. Maybe I will have to pick that one back up.

Do you enjoy Jorge Luis Borges? I have only recently discovered him when I read the The Garden of Forked Paths.

***

Buck:

What I like about the best poetry is the way some poets poignantly dissect the anantomy of a moment. The best prose reads like poetry.

but. . .

Isn't poetry dead?

[Drake Tungsten]

1. McGurk and the Case of the Condemned Cat.
2. Robert the Rose Horse.
3. Puff 'n Toot.
4. The Brothers Karamazov.

I think Hop on Pop would've contrasted better with The Brothers Karamazov, but it still works. Cest la vie.

[El León]

I will look up Camille Paglia now, but curious about the comparison.

Try "Chronicle of a death foretold" - it is the best intro to García Márquez. 100 years is a little dense sometimes if you are not into him.

Borges was a wonderful man and scholar, not to mention a flawless writer. But I have a hard time with him, it's just a personal thing. He is definitely literature, and you can ask Cortázar, García Márquez, and all latin-american writers who engage in fantastic writing about it. Also Ende seems in debt with Borges.

Poetry in prose and another in the García Márquez circle is Miguel Angel Asturias. His short stories are good intros to the wonderful "El Señor Presidente," which can preñude "Hombres de Maíz" very well.

Poetry is dead, but so is God, so go figure.