Alfred I know this is a challop but my entire senior seminar was on George Elliot and I was not the biggest of fans. I would like to re-read now though because I expect that my opinion of her may well have changed.
Cool! I'd love to read it. I reread Middlemarch a few years ago and was sooooo impressed by the...architecture of the thing: these discordant elements in perfect harmony, along with its considerable visceral pluses (her delight in character, the depiction of small town England, etc).
― My name is Kenny! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:34 (fourteen years ago) link
My bookshelf is several thousand miles away but off the top of my head I am sure Daniel Deronda would make the list. Also, Great Expectations; maybe Murphy.
I've always wanted to read Far From the Madding Crowd because the title is so great; have only read Jude the Obscure, which I wasn't too high on.
― The 400 LOLs (dyao), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:37 (fourteen years ago) link
i think blood meridian might have to be on there, despite the slog that is its first hundred pages.
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:37 (fourteen years ago) link
i will try to report back with a full ten after a few beers.
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:38 (fourteen years ago) link
the ones that occur to me off the top of my head (and after scanning the thread):
the brothers karamazov -- dostoyevskythe plague -- camussong of solomon -- morrisonwuthering heights -- brontebrideshead revisited -- waughheart of darkness -- conradpride and prejudice -- austenthe dead father -- barthelmeif on a winter's night a traveler -- calvinowaiting for the barbarians -- coetzee100 years of solitude -- ggm
(mostly conventional stuff, i know. karamazov and the plague stand above the rest for me, as books that i think really directly influenced my moral view of the world.)
xpost: oh yeah, blood meridian too, for sure. i don't remember any slog. i was pretty taken in by about page 20.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:39 (fourteen years ago) link
if on a winter's night a traveler -- calvino
Is def up there for me.
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:40 (fourteen years ago) link
i need to re-read Blood Meridian, but my copy got destroyed when I lent it to a friend and he took it to the beach :(
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:40 (fourteen years ago) link
i really don't go for much literature pre-20th century, and i don't quite know why that is.
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:41 (fourteen years ago) link
Not sure I would say these are my five favorites ever, but this is what popped in my head:
Invisible Cities - CalvinoGravity's Rainbow - PynchonAs I Lay Dying - FaulknerIn The Castle Of My Skin - George LammingThe Lost Scrapbook - Evan Dara
― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:43 (fourteen years ago) link
Steinbeck - Sweet ThursdayJoyce - UlyssesKluge - Biggest ElvisVidal - LincolnStephenson - Snowcrash
― Jaq, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:44 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh god I forgot about how great Invisible Cities is. #11
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Yay, Jaq! I always recommend Lincoln and Burr to people who think of Gore Vidal just as a wit and essayist.
― My name is Kenny! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:45 (fourteen years ago) link
oh hell, lolita should definitely be on mine too. pale fire would go on the runner-up list.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:46 (fourteen years ago) link
invisible cities is probably third fave calvino, with winter's night after that. second is the wildly underrated "Marcovaldo."
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Speaking of Vidal, his Calvino essay is marvelous.
― My name is Kenny! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:48 (fourteen years ago) link
I probably should have put Absalom, Absalom! on my original list too. Man, this is tough.
Other thread could be favorite quotes from novels but again . . . tough!
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:52 (fourteen years ago) link
i wanna read a book now
― harbl, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:53 (fourteen years ago) link
harbl war and peace is a traet!
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:54 (fourteen years ago) link
harbl, read the white people by arthur machen.
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:54 (fourteen years ago) link
harbl read this, harbl read that, harbl do my book report for me.
As I Lay DyingInfinite JestJR Absalom, AbsalomDrop City
this is tough. . .
I would say Moby Dick, too, but I just reread it, and parts of it were as amazing as I remembered, but I dunno. . .
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:54 (fourteen years ago) link
Vidal is such a master of dialogue, also perfect pitch for cattiness.
If I were going for 10: Lolita, definitely, and also Moby Dick. Possibly Bleak House too. Possibly Auster's New York Trilogy but maybe not.
― Jaq, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:55 (fourteen years ago) link
ok "the white people" sounds right up my alley
― harbl, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:56 (fourteen years ago) link
i wanna read JR. even though i know on other threads i've poured the haterade on gaddis. xp to que
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:56 (fourteen years ago) link
haha actually the white people sounds like something i would not like at all but i am willing to try. i thought white people meant like...white people.
― harbl, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:58 (fourteen years ago) link
ahhaha.
― ian, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 01:59 (fourteen years ago) link
i am going to go drink now.
Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy. (Trilogies = maximizing the "desert island" list, though Powell's Dance to the Music of Time would really spike it.) Oh wait! Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God
― Jaq, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:00 (fourteen years ago) link
I spent most of summer '07 reading Dance to the Music of Time -- entertaining, but a disappointment, esp. the volumes dealing with the war.
― My name is Kenny! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:03 (fourteen years ago) link
Proust is lovely so far but I just started the third book
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:04 (fourteen years ago) link
1. B.S. Johnson - The Unfortunates2. James Joyce - Finnegans Wake3. B.S. Johnson - House Mother Normal4. Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea5. Georges Perec - A Void6. B.S. Johnson - Albert Angelo7. B.S. Johnson - See the Old Lady Decently8. B.S. Johnson - Christie Malry's Own Double Entry9. B.S. Johnson - Trawl10. James Joyce - Ulysses
I really like B.S. Johnson!
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:05 (fourteen years ago) link
JR is an amazing book. Gaddis is emotionally exhausting but totally worth it.
...waiting for the barbarians -- coetzee...
This would be one of mine too, tipsy mothra.
Others on the list would probably be The Recognitions (which I love marginally more than JR), Owls Do Cry, The Man With the Golden Arm, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge...
― franny glass, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Oh shit, I forgot Travelling People. Swap that with Trawl, maybe.
xpost
― emil.y, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Harriet the Spy - FitzhughThe Lake - KawabataFrom the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler - Konigsberg
Maybes:
Wiseblood - O'ConnorMy Romance - LishZuleika Dobson - Beerbohm
I have to think about more.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:11 (fourteen years ago) link
Maybe I don't become attached to things.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:12 (fourteen years ago) link
Yes! Harriet the Spy might be my favorite novel -- the one that showed me what fiction can do.
― My name is Kenny! (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:14 (fourteen years ago) link
i prefer V. to Gravity's Rainbowalso read Burr ages ago, didn't think much of it at the time
― velko, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:15 (fourteen years ago) link
why would anyone rep for moby dick its just some dudes on a boat
― (╬ ಠ益ಠ) (cankles), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:16 (fourteen years ago) link
Good troll.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:16 (fourteen years ago) link
it's an earnest question, sip dis dick
― (╬ ಠ益ಠ) (cankles), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:17 (fourteen years ago) link
ilb is jealous right now.
And I am sipping yr dick with a bendy straw.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:17 (fourteen years ago) link
(that sound when there's just ice and almost no drink left)
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:18 (fourteen years ago) link
you could read this, harbl. short stories, though.
― horseshoe, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:36 (fourteen years ago) link
i prefer V. to Gravity's Rainbow
The scene in V. where he envisions machine gunning people from behind the salad bar may be my favorite Pynchon moment.
― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:37 (fourteen years ago) link
I hated Moby Dick. In fact, I had a professor who basically told us it was ok to skip all the technical whaling parts because even he thought they were boring.
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:39 (fourteen years ago) link
i actually really dug moby-dick. took a while, but i got into it enough that i thought all the whaling stuff was cool. it doesn't make my top tier just because it didn't grab me or shake me or otherwise compel me the way my real favorites did. but i understand its classic-ness.
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:42 (fourteen years ago) link
i loved the technical whaling parts!
― collardio gelatinous, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:42 (fourteen years ago) link
I just couldn't do it. I have this unfortunate thing where if a book doesn't really grab me within a couple days of reading then I'm likely to abandon it. I can't force myself to read something that I'm just not enjoying. That happened to me with M Dick.
― ☺☻☺☻come on ppl now smile on u brother☺☻☺☻ (ENBB), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:44 (fourteen years ago) link
I didn't finish The Confidence Man, but it was weird feeling all of these undercurrents of Melville's symbolism coming to life, instead of just being something you write a hackneyed term paper about. It's sort of like seeing a ghost.
― bamcquern, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:44 (fourteen years ago) link
winter's tale, mark helprin -- here's one that is on my all-time list because of how much i loved it as a teenager, but when i reread it some years later all of its overblown romantic flaws were much more evident. still, some great stuff in it. (my appreciation for it has been further dimmed by helprin's increasingly vocal right-wing curmudgeonliness over the years.)
and in the i guess you'd say non-literary realm, the original four books in gene wolfe's book of the new sun series, and the original three earthsea books are probably at the top. (ok, along with LOTR and watership down, if we're counting their impact on a 12-year-old.)
― us_odd_bunny_lady (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 June 2009 02:48 (fourteen years ago) link