I was never a kid to read a lot of books (what with beating it and playing video games) so I'm now catching up on classic books. What do I need to read?

(already read a bunch including: )
Atlas Shrugged
A Clockwork Orange
1984
Brave New World
Dracula
Frankenstein
Farenheit 451
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
and all the ones you're forced to read in school

Any more suggestions?

[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 10:24 PM. Reason : smilies]

5/9/2006 10:19:29 PM

i never had to read it in school, but the catcher in the rye is really good.

5/9/2006 10:22:07 PM

Thanks, I'll put it on the list

5/9/2006 10:24:03 PM

The Sound and the Fury

It's insanely confusing at first. Fight through it, and you'll be rewarded at the end.

5/9/2006 10:24:18 PM

Siddhartha
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse Five
A Tale of Two Cities
Moby Dick
The Brothers Karamazov
Adam Bebe
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Penrod
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon
The Time Machine
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Education of Henry Adams
The Prince

5/9/2006 10:32:30 PM

You're trying to kill me aren't you?

That Slaughterhouse-5 selection reminds me that I read Cat's Cradle last week (someone suggested it as a primer for Vonnegut)

5/9/2006 10:35:47 PM

I could list things like the republic to make a joke on the fact that the study of ancient things especially greek & roman stuff is called classics & that you can get degrees in classics... but i'm not sure that anyone would catch the reference.

5/9/2006 10:35:51 PM

Don Quixote
Notre-Dame De Paris

5/9/2006 10:41:59 PM

Quote :

"The Sound and the Fury"

i'm reading that now and i've considered skipping the whole Benjy section. gahdamn.

5/9/2006 10:44:22 PM

barnes and noble has a crapton of classics republished under their name. even hardcovers are 3 for $10. good deal. i bought like ten of em and have been knockin em out.

im also reading atlas shrugged now.. and have been for awhile.. and probably will be for awhile.. hah

5/9/2006 10:46:49 PM

4^ I would (but I'm odd), but I specifically left out things like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Discourses on Livy and anything by Ovid, et. al.

There are so many more great classics books to choose from that you'll never be done reading.



[Edited on May 9, 2006 at 10:47 PM. Reason : ]

5/9/2006 10:47:15 PM

My free reading time is usually spent on political philosophy or theological books.

So my reading queue looks more like:

Leviathan
Purity of the Heart (started this before, got depressed, set it aside)
The Abolition of Man
Democracy in America
Much Ado about Nothing
Catch 22
The Prince

Maybe one day I'll go back and read On War for completeness sake. I started it and set it aside because Clausewitz's principles of realpolitik kinda turned my stomach.

5/9/2006 11:01:49 PM

That's two of you too many who haven't read Catch-22. Get on it.

I have several classics I should probably read, but I have Mason & Dixon, Swann's Way and Infinite Jest currently at the top of my list, so I won't be getting to other books for a little while.

5/9/2006 11:08:25 PM

It took me forever to finish Atlas Shrugged, but it was definitely worth it.

Fight through it.

5/9/2006 11:09:15 PM

Is it true that The Fountainhead is a more concise overview of Rand's philosophy? If so, I may just read that first, and decide to read Atlas Shrugged well down the road.

5/9/2006 11:12:08 PM

Am I the only one who thinks reading Ayn Rand is like reading a philosophy textbook? I could only tolerate Anthem because it was short.

5/9/2006 11:15:14 PM

I've used classes to determine what I read for a while now. Picking interesting classes that you know will involve reading is a good motivator for reading & it lets you get a double benefit of entertainment & academics from reading. I’ve had 9 English, 16 Philosophy, and a few other courses mostly towards that end… but now that I’m graduating this semester I guess I’ll have to start picking things more specifically or take an occasional class for fun.

5/9/2006 11:18:09 PM

Rand is a low priority for me, which is why she wasn't on my list.

5/9/2006 11:19:35 PM

bgmims,

I'd start with A Clockwork Orange. Great read; very short as well.

5/9/2006 11:24:40 PM

Every book in this thread, and thats not a joke.

5/9/2006 11:28:36 PM

I've read it Docido, and I did really enjoy it.

Also, Rand's philosophy is very present in her books, but since I happen to endorse some of her ideas, I didn't find it tedious. I'm not sure if Fountainhead is a more concise version of Rand than Shrugged. I tried to read Fountainhead in 11th grade and made it through 300 pages before getting the Cliff's notes. I found the story line in Shrugged to catch me more than Fountainhead. Either way, it probably isn't any more concise...they're each over 1000 pages.

5/9/2006 11:29:16 PM

That's how I feel about Kundera novels, but I feel like he has a better grasp of plot.

5/9/2006 11:31:10 PM

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

and here are classics I want to read myself:
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

5/9/2006 11:40:26 PM

i'm still stuck right at halfway through the radcliffe list. that's a good compilation of worthwhile book titles

http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9807/22/radcliffe.list/list.html

5/9/2006 11:48:58 PM

The Stranger was good when I was in 10th grade, so I'm not sure how I'd take it now

I HATED Wuthering Heights, try The Mayor of Casterbridge instead

5/9/2006 11:51:37 PM

Of Mice and Men- Steinbeck
On the Road- Kerouac
Most things by Issac Asimov should be considered classics, imho.

5/10/2006 12:27:32 AM

the slaughterhouse five
the great gatsby
1984
to kill a mockingbird

5/10/2006 12:40:54 AM

I haven't read any of the books mentioned in this thread.

5/10/2006 12:44:58 AM

Atlas Shugged is a piece of shit unless you're in to Ayn Rand's bullshit philosophy, in which case YOU are a piece of shit.

5/10/2006 12:56:14 AM

^^ What do you read, then?

Them's fightin' words, spöokyjon.

PS: I agree with you.

5/10/2006 1:05:09 AM

Out of the books listed in the first post, the only ones I have really read are A Clockwork Orange, Atlas Shrugged, and part of Dracula.

But I have read The Catcher in the Rye, not for school, and when I did read it it became my favorite book for some amount of years since I was, at the time, an American boy. I haven't read The Sound and the Fury, although I intend to, and while I have started Absolom, Absolom!, I didn't finish it, and I was mainly reading it because a friend realized that it was very similar to a book he was writing/had written after he had written it. Of drhavoc's post, I have only read Moby-Dick. Slaughterhouse Five is one of the only Vonnegut novels I have not read. The Sirens of Titan used to be my favorite book. It still is, sort of. It's up there.

I've read about a quarter of Don Quixote, which I guess is all that matters since it seems so episodic. I have read The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird, and I've read Of Mice and Men. Not much Asimov, only the Foundation series, which I love. I don't think that's considered classic literature, though.

In all honesty, I don't read a lot of "classics", and generally they don't interest me. I'm a big fan of fantastic realism, modernism, and, dare I say it, postmoderism. I like contemporary settings, give or take a few decades. I like a sense of now.

5/10/2006 1:33:34 AM

I used to be in a phase where I read the last page of a book before I read the book

so I read the last page of 1984 before I read the whole thing, and it completely ruined it for me

5/10/2006 1:35:35 AM

i don't care how juvenile it seems

the great gatsby never ceases to hit me where it counts

5/10/2006 1:42:54 AM

I'm a World Lit major- I'm forced to read a bunch of weird things. So I've been forced to read things like An Artist of the Floating World (and dear god, if I'm forced to read Things Fall Apart again, I'm going to have a coronary), etc more than some of these others. But a few classics seem hopelessly dated and there's really no way to recover it. I still hate Dickens for this reason. I'm the only person I know who absolutely hates The Catcher in the Rye (Franney and Zooey was great, though). Some are indeed masterpieces- Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice will always be funny to me, and I don't know of a single girl who doesn't want to be Elizabeth Bennet at some point in her life.

I'd much rather just read a bunch of Pynchon (I'm sad that he isn't on that top 100 list- something is wrong with them) any day.

5/10/2006 1:43:21 AM

I've never read Pride and Prejudice, but I did watch upwards of two minutes of the movie before I left to vomit due to acute giggle poisoning.

5/10/2006 1:46:59 AM

Okay, I admit, I have a thing for the 6-hour A&E version. I refused to see the newest one on the grounds that they chopped out too much of the book. It can't be as good as the old one anyway. Colin Firth is the best Darcy ever.

Hahahaha, it has a 9.4 on IMDB. See, I'm right.

[Edited on May 10, 2006 at 1:52 AM. Reason : .]

5/10/2006 1:50:14 AM

All I know is that in the trailer he says "YOU HAHVE BEWITCHED ME BODY AND SOUL" and that KILLS me.

5/10/2006 1:53:40 AM

I don't think that line ever happens in the old one. Firth as Darcy is just... clumsily delightful when he's trying to say things like that. He does say some pretty... flowery... things:

Quote :

"My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. In declaring myself thus I'm aware that I will be going expressly against the wishes of my family, my friends, and, I hardly need add, my own better judgement. The relative situation of our families makes any alliance between us a reprehensible connection. As a rational man I cannot but regard it as such myself, but it cannot be helped.Almost from the earliest moments, I have come to feel for you...a passionate admiration and regard, which despite my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. I beg you, most fervently, to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife."

5/10/2006 2:04:01 AM

What he should have said was HEY GURRRRRRRL I WANNA BEAT DEM CAKES!

5/10/2006 2:05:52 AM

She'd still say no.

5/10/2006 2:08:32 AM

Quote :

"i'm reading that now and i've considered skipping the whole Benjy section. gahdamn."

I promise that it's worth it, even if you don't know a goddamn thing you've read once you finish it and move on. If you don't read it, you'll just get more confused on details and plot points as you get in deeper.

As I Lay Dying is so funny it hurts.

5/10/2006 5:03:41 AM

^ agreed.

"My mother is a fish." - Vardaman

5/10/2006 6:32:44 AM

On Rand: I'm more interested in Libertarianism than a personal ethical philosophy on the morality of greed. IE, the state cannot limit anyone from doing anything that does not infringe on the rights of others. And I'm not even sure I'd call that the ideal form of government, but perhaps the proper interpretation of our Constitution, which is a much more pertinent matter.

From what I understand of her ethical arguments on self-interest, I'm not too interested. Atheistic and devoid of compassion.. no thanks. That's if I'm understanding her right, which I may not be. In any case, I can always just pick up the cliff's notes version so I can learn what she's saying without wading through all the suspect literature.

5/10/2006 7:01:52 AM

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is awesome

5/10/2006 7:09:43 AM

PiMaster, you're pretty close but she isn't devoid of compassion. Her ideas are that people who work for a living deserve your help and those that won't deserve to starve. The compassion comes in trying to help those who ARE working for themselves. Also, keep in mind that books are almost always going to be the logical extreme of someone's philosophy. Her ideas are atheistic, as you said, but not necessarily as callous as they come across. She tries hard in Atlas Shrugged to associate people with laziness and graft before she starves them out, but unfortunately it still includes the women and children of their families.

Its a lot like Adam Smith's theory of self-interest guiding the economy in a way that works out best. If you're a communist, you are going to hate it, but if you care a lot about incentives as a guiding force in people's lives, you'll enjoy it. You also have to note that Ayn Rand was writing under communist rule and so her love for greed might be overemphasized by her situation.

5/10/2006 10:12:02 AM

Quote :

"Also, keep in mind that books are almost always going to be the logical extreme of someone's philosophy."

That is not true AT ALL.

5/10/2006 11:34:53 AM

Teenagers From Mars, Rick Spears and Rob G
Preacher, Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, et al.

5/10/2006 11:41:53 AM

there was some guy on npr who wrote about a list of major works that have affected western culture from really old stuff to shakespeare to alice in wonder land. i think he makes a living by making books that are lists of things, in this case books, with commentary. i was wondering at the time if there was any market for such a book, but with a thread like this maybe there is. i'll post his name if i can remember it later.

5/10/2006 11:42:29 AM

The Watchmen, if we're going down that road.

5/10/2006 11:42:40 AM

There's a reason I specifically didn't include it.

5/10/2006 11:43:47 AM