The five books you've always wanted to read...

[cloudy]

Newsweek polled it's readers, asking which five books they've always wanted to read, but haven't.

These are the top responses (in alphabetical order):

The Aeneid - Virgil
The Bible
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Human Condition - Hannah Arendt
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
The Major Works - John Donne
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Pilgrim’s Progress - John Bunyan
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
Ulysses - James Joyce
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

I confess, I've only read three on that list. I was surprised by some of those listed, and not surprised at all by works such as War and Peace (which I understand is a bear to get through), and Ulysses being chosen.

I have to wonder, though, how many people really want to read these, and how many listed works they consider "great literature" without thinking about it.

So...how 'bout it? What books would be on your list?

 

[Guest]

"Call me Ishmael."

moby's dick... great porno flick...
moby dick, long read but interesting in a pyscho-obsessive way.


im not all that well read and i certainly never made it all the way through war and peace... i did what i could before leaving it.*cringe*

 

[CharleyH]

Newsweek polled it's readers, asking which five books they've always wanted to read, but haven't.

These are the top responses (in alphabetical order):

The Aeneid - Virgil
The Bible
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Human Condition - Hannah Arendt
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
The Major Works - John Donne
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Pilgrim’s Progress - John Bunyan
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
Ulysses - James Joyce
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

I confess, I've only read three on that list. I was surprised by some of those listed, and not surprised at all by works such as War and Peace (which I understand is a bear to get through), and Ulysses being chosen.

I have to wonder, though, how many people really want to read these, and how many listed works they consider "great literature" without thinking about it.

So...how 'bout it? What books would be on your list?

Well, that's more than five?

Read the bible

Read almost everything by Dostoevsky, but for that one.

I want my first son to be named Ulysses.

I want to read... Infinite Jest and Harry Potter books.

 

[3113]

I got through Gravity's Rainbow thanks to the dirty parts. Honest. There's some really kinky scenes in that book and I knew if I kept reading I'd get to another one. But oh, the getting there was tough....

As for what I'd want to read that I haven't?

Remberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust.

I think that counts for all five books and then some

 

[cloudy]

Well, that's more than five?

You didn't answer my question, Ms. Smartypants....

 

[Guest]

You didn't answer my question, Ms. Smartypants....

i didnt either but im not a smartypants and im not good with numbers.

 

[CharleyH]

You didn't answer my question, Ms. Smartypants....

I did LOL - sort of. :|

 

[cloudy]

i didnt either but im not a smartypants and im not good with numbers.

pffffft!

Are too.

 

[CharleyH]

i didnt either but im not a smartypants and im not good with numbers.

As always, a woman in my spirit.

 

[CharleyH]

You didn't answer my question, Ms. Smartypants....

PS Cloudy, I did: Infinite Jest and Harry Potter books (I think there must be at least five of them? )

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

This got my curious roused as to what I had/hadn’t read and whether I’d want to read any of the latter. The one thing I’m sure of is, no matter how many books I read, other folks always seem to have read cooler ones.

Rumple Foreskin

==

READ MOST OF IT/STILL DO = The Bible
READ/GOOD READ = Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
READ/LONG-WINDED = The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
READ/BRILLIANT = The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
READ/TEDIOUS = Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
READ/LONG TIME AGO = Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
READ/SOME = The Major Works - John Donne
READ/MORE SHOW THAN SUBSTANCE = Ulysses - James Joyce
READ/GOOD READ BUT AFTER AWHILE, MAGIC-REALISM GETS BORING = One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
READ/TOO MUCH NARRATIVE/HIS “ANNA KARENINA” IS A BETTER READ = War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

DON’T KNOW/NEW TO ME = The Human Condition - Hannah Arendt

HAVEN'T READ/NOT INTERESTED = The Aeneid - Virgil
HAVEN'T READ/NOT INTERESTED = Paradise Lost - John Milton
HAVEN'T READ/NOT INTERESTED = The Pilgrim’s Progress - John Bunyan
HAVEN'T READ/NOT INTERESTED = Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
HAVEN'T READ/WON’T/TOO DEPRESSING = The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach

HAVEN'T READ/MIGHT SOMEDAY = Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
HAVEN'T READ/MIGHT SOMEDAY = Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
-The only one I can think of in addition to those two would be, Pride and Prejudice.

 

[Guest]

HAVEN'T READ/MIGHT SOMEDAY = Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
-The only one I can think of in addition to those two would be, Pride and Prejudice.

*blink*
*blink*
i've read two books you havent.



im stunned.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

There are books that it pains me not to have read, because I believe they are fonts of wisdom that enrich one's appreciation of life and the human condition. I've read a little Aristotle, and really need to read his Nichomachean Ethics. I've read enough about Montesquieu and sufficient tidbits from him to realize I am less than I could be for not having read more. I've read Macchiavelli's The Prince but not his Discourses, which I understand provide the context that makes the former much less immoral than a superficial understanding of it suggests. I've read all of Smith's Wealth of Nations but only part of his Theory Moral Sentiments. Same with Hume's ethical and philosophical works, and Mills. I've read Locke (good) and Rousseau (evil), so that is good.

It gives me no pain to have not read many of what are considered "great" works of literature, including some of those on the list in the opening post. (From what I understand some of them are mere self-absorbed posturing anyway.) But it does pain me not to have drunk from the cups of wisdom cited above, and some others I could think of. (Here's one I'm ashamed of: I've probably only read 15 percent of the Federalist Papers. )


Edit: I have probably read 2,500 popular novels since around the age of 10, and 500 works of history. That is a conservative estimate - it could be double that. The novels mostly run together; the history means I have a pretty good idea of what happened before ( ), and a pretty good appreciation of the context in which what happens now is happening.

 

[cloudy]

I read the Iliad and the Odyssey in high school (advanced literature class), but for years I've thought about going back, and rereading them.

May do that this year.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I've read exerps (that just doens't look spelled right) of Paradise Lost, and the whole thing of Moby Dick.

Most of what I read when I was in school was science fiction. Dune, Asaic Asimov's robot and Foundation books, someone elses stuff that I can't remember the name of...

The rest that I have read over the last few years has been on forums and porn stories.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I've read exerps (that just doens't look spelled right) of Paradise Lost, and the whole thing of Moby Dick.

Most of what I read when I was in school was science fiction. Dune, Asaic Asimov's robot and Foundation books, someone elses stuff that I can't remember the name of...

The rest that I have read over the last few years has been on forums and porn stories.

The reason "exerps" doesn't look right is due to a missing "C" and "T" as in "excerpts." I know, picky details.

Fourtunately, ah'm a purfect speiler.

Pedantically yours,

Rumple Foreskin

 

[ElizabethWest]

Edit: I have probably read 2,500 popular novels since around the age of 10, and 500 works of history. That is a conservative estimate - it could be double that.

Are you 150?

I could never get through that many in a normal lifetime.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I read the Iliad and the Odyssey in high school (advanced literature class), but for years I've thought about going back, and rereading them.

May do that this year.

Hey, if you do, you should listen to this informative and entertaining series of lectures first, "Hebrews, Greeks & Romans: The Foundations of Western Civilisation" by Timothy Shutt, which does an excellent job of exlaining why these works are important to who we are, ie, why you might want to read them in the first plade. I read the Oddyssey in middle school; it was pretty cool, I guess (the inner-12 year old remembering. ) Your library can probably get this for you through interlibrary loan. (Might charge you a few bucks - no biggie, and they like doing that sort of thing.)

Synopsis
http://www.wfhowes.co.uk/catalogue/titles.php?&t=1880
Our purpose in this course will be to examine the foundations of Western Civilization in antiquity. Through literature that has survived the ages we will look at the culture of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, and likewise look at how these cultures interacted with each other, sometimes happily, sometimes not. We will for the most part be paying attention to events taking place and ideas coming to birth in the Mediterranean basin, the fundamental homeland, or cultural hearth of Western Civilization from about 1200 BCE, before the Common Era, to about 600 CE: that is to say, from about the time of the events memorialized as the Trojan War and the Exodus to the end of Antiquity, when the Western Roman Empire, if not the Eastern, was a cherished memory, but little more.

In the process we will focus on the questions they addressed and how the answers they found live among us and continue to shape our lives to this very day. For in a very real sense we are all of us, as participants in Western culture, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans still.

 

[Stegral]

recently my interest has gone off on another tangent..

the story of "O"
clockwork orange
any ann rice books I hear of
catcher in the rye


I would like to read war of the worlds as well tho..

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Are you 150?

I could never get through that many in a normal lifetime.

I am older than most here (sadly), but not that old. I'm guessing between 50-100 books a year. There have been years when I probably read more, but none when I read less.

 

[Guest]

recently my interest has gone off on another tangent..

the story of "O"
clockwork orange
any ann rice books I hear of
catcher in the rye


I would like to read war of the worlds as well tho..

very interesting book, the story of 'o'...but i expected more than the book entailed.
ann rice, sleeping beauty series, i suspect? very very enthralling...
you'll love them if you can get passed some of the more harsh details.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

recently my interest has gone off on another tangent..

the story of "O"
clockwork orange
any ann rice books I hear of
catcher in the rye


I would like to read war of the worlds as well tho..

I though Clockwork was cool, and scary. I've read the naughty bits of O (which were enough to realize I wasn't very interested in the rest.) Somehow I dodged around Catcher, and have mixed feelings about ever picking it up.
I haven't read Rice but am open-minded and willing to be convinced (it better be good though - my tempus is fugiting.)

 

[impressive]

Newsweek polled it's readers, asking which five books they've always wanted to read, but haven't.

These are the top responses (in alphabetical order):

The Aeneid - Virgil
The Bible
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Human Condition - Hannah Arendt
The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
The Major Works - John Donne
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Paradise Lost - John Milton
The Pilgrim’s Progress - John Bunyan
Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
Ulysses - James Joyce
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

I confess, I've only read three on that list. I was surprised by some of those listed, and not surprised at all by works such as War and Peace (which I understand is a bear to get through), and Ulysses being chosen.

I have to wonder, though, how many people really want to read these, and how many listed works they consider "great literature" without thinking about it.

So...how 'bout it? What books would be on your list?

Hmm. Read Ulysses, The Aeneid, Moby Dick, and some of Paradise Lost. If I've read any of the others, I've long since forgotten.

I don't feel particularly deprived. Depraved, yes. Deprived, no.

 

[cloudy]

Hey, if you do, you should listen to this informative and entertaining series of lectures first, "Hebrews, Greeks & Romans: The Foundations of Western Civilisation" by Timothy Shutt, which does an excellent job of exlaining why these works are important to who we are, ie, why you might want to read them in the first plade. I read the Oddyssey in middle school; it was pretty cool, I guess (the inner-12 year old remembering. ) Your library can probably get this for you through interlibrary loan. (Might charge you a few bucks - no biggie, and they like doing that sort of thing.)

Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm wondering if my full year of Western Civ wouldn't serve as well.

 

[cloudy]

Depraved, yes.

This is a good thing.