unfortunately i dont read nearly as much as i feel i should, but Confederacy of Dunces is a phenomenal book.
I think this thread is showing that all of us don't read as much as we should. I spend a lot of time reading and I've already seen a lot of books I've always meant to get around to...
Man, this is really tough... I've actually read a lot of the "classics" as a former English major, but they weren't generally my thing. Just three. Hmm... Monster - Sanyika Shakur Watership Down - Richard Adams The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle Ahhh! That was so hard. I also loved Ender's Game by Card, Mossflower by Jacques, Hitchhiker's Guide (all of 'em) by Adams, Good Omens by Gaimen & Pratchett, Harry Potter series (especially #5) by Rowling, Autobiography of Malcolm X, and the Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Adams. Books are awesome.
1)Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe:great read-reminds me of Hakeem the Warrior 2)The Great Gatsby 3)A Seperate Peace
Dune - Frank Herbert Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card (I am surprised no mentioned this one! Probably my fav of all time!!!)
Don Quijote de la Mancha - I echo FranchiseBlade, but I'd like to add that it's a very serious book too, WAY ahead of its time. Read it in Spanish, tried reading it in English, but I had to stop, the Shakespearean style drove me crazy, not as bad as that other book, Canterbury Tales I think. For Whom the Bell Tolls - I read this book when I was 16, I'm not sure if I'd think the same of it now, but it was the first, which makes it special, it's the one that started my love of books. Second Wind - One of Bill Russell's autobiographies. Why not delve into the mind of the most successful and one of the most eccentric athletes in American history? Especially when he lived through one of the most turbulent times in American history. I also loved Hitchhiker's Guide, Malcolm X's autobiography, A Farewell to Arms, Confederacy of Dunces, Fahrenheit 451, Huckleberry Finn... Too many to list. I don't remember many books that I didn't like, so maybe I'm a bad literary critic. Also, I'm almost finished with Cien años de soledad, and it's well on it's way to supplanting Second Wind.
Confederacy of Dunces- I've probably read that book 6 or 7 times and each time I noticed something new. Brilliant. Huckleberry Finn- This book is so profound and a great adventure tale at the same time. I think Huckleberry and Jim may be the most deeply moral characters in American literature. Huckleberry helps his friend Jim escape slavery, even though he believes it will damn him to hell. Jim risks being captured back into slavery to help Tom. Guns, Germs, and Steel- Basically explains how the modern world came to be.
FICTION (huge fan of early 20th century european writers) Demian - Hermann Hesse (on the back of Santana's Abraxas album there's a paragraph that starts something like, "I call it a mother, father, etc." When I was reading Demian, I found the same paragraph. I freaked, although I should not have because the term Abraxas (god of good and evil) was found throughout the book). Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (hey, I'm an Apocolypse Now fan) Father & Son - Ivan Turgenev (okay, I had issues growing up ) NON-FICTION Psyco-Cybernetics - Maxwell? (the book that made me realise some of the strengths I had...basically my first self-help book) A Course in Miracle - (found God in this one) Urantia - (had to figure out how to combine science and religion)
There's a reason those books are assigned in high school. The fact that they've stood the test of time means that they have truths they articulate so forcefully that they transcend the particularities of a given time. Maybe they haven't read much in high school, but most of the stuff you read there is Picasso compared to the crushed velvet Elvis paintings that tend to dominate the Bestseller lists.
Ender's Game was great but I thought that the books that followed Ender's story where even better. Speaker for the Dead was probably my favorite from all of the Ender and Bean books. I remember one line from it when they were sorting through all of his books to the effect of "reading a translated book is like looking at a tapestry from the back, you can still see what it's a picture of, but you miss the true beauty of it". I thought that was kind of fitting, like you mentioned the style made it tough to read but it was worth it for the great story.
Exactly, and if I'm not mistaken that was el Cura who said that while burning don Quijote's book, said it about an Italian book. EDIT: It is the most translated book of all time so there has to be some great English translations out there.
I did enjoy most of what I have read from High school and they definitely led me to other great books. You need to put one of Kafka's books on the list.
