Top 10 novels I need to read before I die

From your list:

1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Haven't read it, but hope to get to it
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
Read it. A very difficult read, especially at the beginning. I think it gets better as it goes along. May re-read it at some point in the future.
3. Howards End by E.M. Forster
Read it last year and thought it was ok.
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Read it when I was young, may reread it at some point in the future
5. War and Peace by Leo Tostoy
Haven't read it, but plan to some day
6. The Stranger by Albert Camus
Way down on my reading list. If I'm not dead before I get to it, it will probably kill me.
7. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
Don't know if I will read this one or not.
8. Mrs. Dalloway by Virignia Woolf
To the Lighthouse was far more than enough Virginia Woolf for me.
9. Washington Square by Henry James
I have read 3 novels by James and have had my fill. Doubt I will read this one.
10. The Cather in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Read it in high school. Plan on reading it again soon.

My reading list is very long, but these are the next 10 novels on deck:

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
Light In August - William Faulkner
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
Parade's End - Ford Madox Ford
The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton
Zuleika Dobson - Max Beerbohm
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
Death Comes For The Archbishop - Willa Cather

10 I have read in the past few years and liked:

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowery
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell
The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
U.S.A. Trilogy - John Dos Passos
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
 
Eran of Arcadia said:
Seriously though, I have a copy of The Brothers whose last name I can't spell, Doestoevsky or something but I lost it; what I had read up to that point seemd interesting. There are a few others.
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The Brothers Karamazov is one my favorite books. It's a long read (my copy was over a thousand pages) but just when its about to get boring, Dostoyevsky kicks it up a notch, so its good reading.


Here's my list, in no particular order:

10. Gone With the Wind by Magaret Mitchell
9. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
8. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
7. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6. Don Quixote by Cervantes
5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Thousand and One Nights by Schezereade? ( I know that's spelled wrong and that she didn't 'write' it per se)
3. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
2. The Canterbury Tales by Geofrrey Chaucer
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
 
Funny thing with books, I loved Catcher In The Rye when I read it for school. It was actually the first book I ever enjoyed as an assignment before college. The only other one I can think of was The Pearl by Steinbeck.

In contrast, I also read Dickens Tale of Two Cities that same year and absolutely hated it, dispised it, it was 'even considered getting the cliff notes' bad. I long considered it the worst book in all of english literature.

But a funny thing happened. I read it again as an adult because my sister said she loved it...

and I still hated it. Just not quite as much.

Anyhoo, there is no accounting for taste.
 
1. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
2. Ulysses by James Joyce - Never read this, too daunted by its reputation
3. Howards End by E.M. Forster - I enjoyed this, even though I found A Passage to India a bit dull at times
4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (I've read Huckleberry Finn) - Nowhere nearly as good as Huck Finn, but still enjoyable
5. War and Peace by Leo Tostoy (good luck to me)
6. The Stranger by Albert Camus (again hopefully in French) - good book, and every easy to read in French
7. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
8. Mrs. Dalloway by Virignia Woolf - Some more readable stream of consciousness
9. Washington Square by Henry James - This is my dad's favorite James and you'll like it if you like his understated writing style
10. The Cather in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
One of my favorites, although the recent appropriation by the "emo" movement is fairly disturbing.

And how could anyone be more sympathetic than George Costanza? He's my idol.

Personally, there's no way such popular books could be on my must-read list, because that means they are in the library, so I'd go and read them, and a week later, my list would be empty. My actual list would be all less popular works by my favorite authors.
 
Where's Wally/Waldo seriously that guys hard to find.

That or my first letters, a real eye opener into the consistently baffling world we call alphabet.

That or the Brothers Karamazov, or the Idiot.

I think Moby Dick is a great book.

Don Quixote is a must if you like ironic comedy.

Ullysees I have never been able to read, you need some sort of qualification just to understand it.

Albert Camus: the myth of sysiphus is better than the stranger IMO. The stranger's a good tale much in the vein of Crime and punishment I suppose.

A Brave New World is a good one.

Also read some Poh or Lovecraft.

The lord of the rings.

Some Kafka is nice.

I've heard Nausea is ok by Sartre, but I haven't got round to reading it yet.

Oh and the Siddharta is pretty good. Short novel, well worth a read if you want to understand Buddhism.

Don't read the Bible though, it starts off ok but then it just ends up as some sort chronology, then we get some odd stuff about prophesy and then the whole book seems to flip into another key, and one of the protagonists God, turns from a really vengeful God into some sort of lovey dovey hippy through his avatar or "son" Jesus, then Jesus "the son of God" if that isn't hokey enough and the Main character dies half way through the last part and the ending just seems tacked on, had promise but kind of lost the plot at the end. when it devolves into some sort of semi coherent rambling, I personally think the Author was on drugs at that point? 6/10
 
I love that damn essay "Myth of Sysiphus." Hell of a way to be defiant toward your maker or fate.

For everybody,i recommend to not read most of these books.Too much reading is bad for your teeth.
 
CartesianFart said:
I love that damn essay "Myth of Sysiphus." Hell of a way to be defiant toward your maker or fate.

For everybody,i recommend to not read most of these books.Too much reading is bad for your teeth.
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I seem to remember it was me who recommended it to you about 8000 years ago after a game of civ nay? your right though it's the atheists guide to existence :)
 
:mad:
Sidhe said:
I seem to remember it was me who recommended it to you about 8000 years ago after a game of civ nay? your right though it's the atheists guide to existence :)
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Damn you!:mad: I don't like the idea of you influencing me of existentialism.I damn and curse you to ingrain bad thoughts into me by realizing my absurdity of my existence!!!:mad:
 
I loved Catcher in the Rye. It's the best book I've ever read, actually.

I'd also recommend Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby and Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
 
I would add

One Hundred Years of Solitude
Brave New World
and Crime & Punishment to that list.

Personally I would remove The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is really much more of a children's book compared to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It isn't even really considered a classic in the academical sense while Huck Finn is.
 
No, I think you should die before you read Tom Sawyer. Or die in place of reading Tom Sawyer. That's the only book that I have ever been literally in pain when reading. It's just such an annoying book, and I feel sorry for Injun Joe and want him to kill Tom and Huck.... just once please!
 
I'm not one for reading the classics, but it appears few people are. The important thing is to be able to pretend you've read the classics. Occasionally though, I will pick up a classic, read it, and discover why exactly it's rated as such.

I loved Homer's Odyssey, though I think entirely too much time is spent on Odysseus's return to Ithaca and the massacre of his wife's suitors. I read it in (Dutch) translation, and though it is structured as a poem, you can quite easily read it as a narrative.
Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo is probably among my favourite books ever, and I appreciated it all the more when I realized how the eponyomous Count is eventually held up as an example of what happens when somebody carries their power way too far.
Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano took five attempts before I eventually finished it. It's relentless, and sobering in its description of the effects of alcohol abuse and alcohol's effect on human relationships. It leaves you not drunk but punch-drunk to witness the final self-destruction of the main character.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller I thought was brilliant because buried beneath all the irony and absurdism lies an at times absolutely wrenching story. That's also why I would list it here in favour of The good soldier Svejk, which was very funny but had nowhere near the impact on me.
 
brennan said:
Dante's Inferno
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The massive levels of pure interest almost collapsed my brain :p TBH, it's very dry text.

I want to read, at the very least..

1984
Beowulf (Bragging rights if I understand a single word :crazyeye:)
Beyond Good and Evil, Thus Spoke Zarathustra - these books are very intense reading.

For all of you, I recommend Ed Greenwood's Elminster in Myth Drannor, and Elaine Cunningham's, say.. Windwalker.
 
I've just finished "The Last of the Wine", and have begun "The King Must Die" by Mary Renault. The next 6 books I read will be the rest of her historical novels. Absolutely brilliant stuff!

The Last of the Wine (1956) — set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War
The King Must Die (1958) — the mythical Theseus up to his father's death
The Bull from the Sea (1962) — the remainder of Theseus' life
The Mask of Apollo (1966) — an actor at the time of Plato and Dionysius the Younger
Fire From Heaven (1969) — Alexander the Great up to his father's death
The Persian Boy (1972) — Alexander after the conquest of Persia
The Praise Singer (1978) — the poet Simonides of Ceos
Funeral Games (1981) — Alexander's successors
 
my favorite fiction author is Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons (AKA The Posessed), The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground and various short stories.

Still haven't read The Gambler.

I did a project on Knut Hamsun last year (thanks to suggestion from luceafarul) and enjoyed him a lot, especially Pan.
 
Canterberry Tales varried for me. Some of the stories were just not good. In general though, I wish it was completed. Thousand and one nights was similar, but had a higher percentage of good stories I'd say. Don Quixote is better in english I find, but only because it's my first language. Spanish translates pretty fluidly. My list is....
1. The Shannara books by Terry Brooks. (I know, it's many more than one, I stopped after Elfstones)
2. I'd LOVE to finish The Tempest one day. I've started that one So many times.
3. The Three Musketeers (again) by Dumas
4. The last two Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony
5. 1984 Wells
6. Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard Just to find out how bad it really is
7. Any one of Mick Foley's books about wrestling. I'd love to see what happens 'behind the scenes'
8. Any Harry Potter to see what all the hooplah was about
9. Dragon Riders of Pern because of all the good things I've heard
10. The Green Mile by Can't Remember... cause the movie was great, and we all know books are better than movies :)
 
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