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Recommend a Classic

A pre 1900 book which I found fascinating was The Persian Letters. I think it was by Montesque(?). It is a satire of French society told in the form of letters from a Persian diplomat to his folks back home. I don't know if it is really a classic, but it appealed to me.

Post 1900 I have to say Lord Of The Rings. Sorry.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is my favourite Heinlein.
Evolution by Stephen Baxter is post 2000, but should be read by everyone.
 
Wodehouse! Wodehouse! -jumps up and down clapping-

Oh. After 1900. Oh well, read it anyhow! SO fun! (:
 
brooklyn44 said:
KC440 wrote:

Nabokov has managed to write a beautiful prose work who's central theme and character are despicable. I guess it's difficult to be transgressive and brilliant at the same time. "Lolita" is an important book, but I never plan to reread it....it's too painful to witness human degradation.
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I don't think of Humbert Humbert as despicable. The girl is underage but she is so attractive. I think Humbert is a very sympathetic character. It is a great book. Today, of course, readers will look down at it because, say, of JonBenet Ramsey. But the girl in the book is more or less jail bait.

I thought the 2 movies were good, but I prefer the first one. Peter Sellars was great as usual.

kc440
 
kc440:
huh? humbert humbert sympathetic?
he's a narcissiistic, pederastic murderer. in your opinion "jailbait" is a good thing?
 
Well, not to be contrarian, but I loved Ulysses. And Lolita as well. I didn't really have an opinion about Humbert Humbert - I kept getting distracted by Nabokov's virtuoso use of the language. Extraordinary!

The writer I keep going back to more than any other, though, is Beckett. He's simply become more and more important to me. I read Waiting for Godot and Endgame in high school, and was interested...then much later I started on his prose (which he considered his important work - more so than the plays). His trilogy Molloy; Malone Dies and The Unnamable are brilliant, funny and very moving. Imagination Dead Imagine is unlike anything else I've ever read. (Originally, it was 250 pages. He kept editing it until he arrived at the final published text - 4 pages. But it really is a full novel, just unbelievably concentrated. Reading it is like staring into the sun.)

And then, his very late "trilogy" (he never called it that): Company, Ill Seen Ill Said and Worstword Ho. These last, IMO, are serious contenders for being the finest English work since Shakespeare. (Pretty amazing, too, is the fact that he wrote Ill Seen Ill Said, like many of his works, in French, and then did his own English translation. And the French version is equally great.)

Of course, Joyce, Nabokov, and Beckett are all relatively recent guys, so I guess they don't count as classics for the purposes of this thread. For an older geezer, I recommend Dante. Allen Mandelbaum has a very fine translation of the Commedia, available in a bilingual edition. Very nice.
 
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and another thing...

oooh, I forgot this one: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

Okay, so it's post-1900. But it will become a classic. Just give it time. And it's so funny.:czlaugh:
 
Re: Joyce

About Ulysses: it helps to have read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first - especially Portrait. And also to have a good guidebook. I recommend James Joyce's Ulysses by Stuart Gilbert.

Might seem like a lot of work, but it's worth it. And these books are all good reads in and of themselves.
 
boooeee said:
Skeptic - You have me intrigued. I had never heard of "Three Men in a Boat", nor its author, Jerome K. Jerome.
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I was intrigued as well -- in fact, I went and got it from the library. I'm a third of the way through, and it's hilarious. Hard to believe it was written in 1889. Wodehouse that's pre-Wodehouse.
 
Another book I would recommend, highly, is the collection of short stories by Saki (H. H. Munro). Wodehouse was clearly influenced in his writing by both Jerome and Saki, which, of course, does nothing to diminish Wodehouse's own genius.
 
Skeptic said:
Another book I would recommend, highly, is the collection of short stories by Saki (H. H. Munro). Wodehouse was clearly influenced in his writing by both Jerome and Saki, which, of course, does nothing to diminish Wodehouse's own genius.
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Hell, yes. I can't believe I forgot Saki. He's what you'd get if PG Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde had a baby.
 
Dune by Frank Herbert

Then watch the movies.

Then re-read the book.

Then after you think you know what's going on.... read the other dozen or two books.

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Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series by Fritz Leiber

Any of the works of Howard and Lovecraft (I really like the old Conans)

Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne.

The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. (Read The War of the Worlds... it was written in 1898!)

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Old man and the sea by Hemmingway (Don't read it for all the symbolism crap they try and shovel you in school.)
 
Angus McPresley said:
I was intrigued as well -- in fact, I went and got it from the library. I'm a third of the way through, and it's hilarious. Hard to believe it was written in 1889. Wodehouse that's pre-Wodehouse.
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Yes. I forgot to mention that that was the book I ended up reading. Absolutely fantastic. Had me tittering like an idiot all the way through. As a bonus, the version I bought also included "Three Men on the Bummel", a sequel of sorts. I'm reading that one now. So far, just as funny as "Three Men in a Boat".

I also bought "War and Peace", but my progress through that has been considerably slower.
 
boooeee said:
Yes. I forgot to mention that that was the book I ended up reading. Absolutely fantastic. Had me tittering like an idiot all the way through. As a bonus, the version I bought also included "Three Men on the Bummel", a sequel of sorts. I'm reading that one now. So far, just as funny as "Three Men in a Boat".

I also bought "War and Peace", but my progress through that has been considerably slower.
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The fun thing about the book is that it sticks in your memory. You'll never look at the Hampton Court maze or at picture-hanging the same way again...
 
Jon. said:
Most anything by Shakespeare - read it first, then find a good film adaptation to see what they do with the text.

Personal favourites are King Lear, Titus Andronicus (the film from about five years ago was fantastic!), Twelfth Night, and Henry V.
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ugh, I quite disagree with film adaptations, but excellent call overall.

I'd also nominate most anything by Poe, if you can handle the dreariness/darkness of it that is.

And if you dare to go past 1900, I highly suggest "Animal Farm" off the top of my head. Short read but a most excellent book IMO.
 
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Post 1900 -- The Master and Margarita, Bulgokov (sp?)

Many good ones listed here...throw in:

The Tale of Genji by the Lady Murasaki (11th Century Japanese Court novel)
The Alexiad by Anna Comnena -- history and intrieg at the Byzantine Court
The Secret History by Procopius -- sex and corruption at the Byzantine Court
The Satyricon by Petronius, sex and corruption in ancient Rome
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons -- history has overtaken it, but still wonderfully written.

And, I second the Arabian Nights.
 
Pre 1900....

To second some of what's already been said...

Huck Finn -- You must, must, must read this book again. This book is 19th century America. This book is American literature. I can't say enough about it. I can't think of any other work which is so emblematic of an epoch and a nation, and at the same time so amazingly brilliant in its pathos, its linguistic virtuosity, and its humor.

Don Quixote -- My only regret in recommending this book is that it's so much better, and so much funnier, in the original Spanish.

Heaney's translation of Beowulf -- Not only does he return the work to a poetic form truer to its roots than earlier translations, but he breathes life into what is, after all, an epic adventure.

Moby Dick -- Perhaps the most brilliant novel ever composed in English. But a virtuoso work, highly referential, not for everyone. Definitely not a must-read for casual readers, but if you love literature and religion, nothing compares.

Gulliver's Travels -- Absolutely hilarious, and as politically relevant today as it was in its time.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds -- The antiquated diction can be offputting, but there's nothing else quite like it. A true classic, and a fascinating read.

Dickens -- All of what has been mentioned, and more. This man invented the contemporary novel as we know it. A superb marketer who knew his audience and how to craft a book (or a serial) so that it would sell, and also a brilliant stylist and a master of concise description and quick humor.

The Bible -- Also not for everybody. Reading the Bible is a life's work, but well worth the effort, I think. It contains just about every genre you can think of, from liturgy to fable to allegory to ecstatic vision to political allegory to erotic poetry to genealogy to political diatribe to parts lists, on and on... amazingly rich and undeniably of central importance to Western literature. But very hard to understand, requires an enormous amount of reading in secondary texts to make sense of it. Right now I'm re-reading the Torah in order of composition, oldest bits first -- very enlightening... I'm seeing connections I hadn't guessed at before, and debunking spurious connections I'd assumed were meaningful.

To these I would add:

Leaves of Grass -- The foundation of modern American poetry. At least read Song of Myself. Or find a good selection which includes this and the best of the war poems.

Pinocchio -- Don't get anything dumbed-down or abridged. I highly recommend the edition illustrated by Greg Hildebrandt.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -- It's not the truth... anyone can tell the truth... it's much better than that!

Bacon's Essays -- Even today the man seems amazingly modern. If you're interested in thought and literature, you can't ignore this one. The best of the English Renaissance.
 
Piggy said:
Moby Dick -- Perhaps the most brilliant novel ever composed in English. But a virtuoso work, highly referential, not for everyone. Definitely not a must-read for casual readers, but if you love literature and religion, nothing compares.
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That's the one book I disagree with you about... yes, I've actually read it, but I just don't see what's so great about it. Perhaps the "whaling manual" parts in it put me off.
 
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