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Recommend a Classic

War and Peace.

Right now, I'm the only person I know who has read that book. I'm not sure why everyone is so down on it. That book completely changed the way I think about history.

ETA Jorghnassen beat me to it!
 
Hawk one said:
Let's not forget "Les Miserables", eh? Or "The Miserables" if you like, though the original title's got a certain tone to it...
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Halfway through it now. Not particularly fond of the romantic melodrama. It also doesn't seem to have anything particularly interesting to say about the human condition.

Moby Dick, on the other hand... wow.

ETA and if you want an amazing post 1900 book, Gabrel Garcia's 100 Years of Solitude will knock your socks off.
 
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delphi_ote said:
ETA and if you want an amazing post 1900 book, Gabrel Garcia's 100 Years of Solitude will knock your socks off.
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Apart from being a superb work, it also has the best opening sentence in the history of literatrue. Talk about hooking the reader from the start.
 
Skeptic said:
I've read it, and know many who do. Yes, it DOES change your view of history.
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Apparently I hang out in the wrong crowds. Computer science majors never read anything.
Skeptic said:
Apart from being a superb work, it also has the best opening sentence in the history of literatrue. Talk about hooking the reader from the start.
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It has a hell of an ending as well. You can definitely close the book at that point. After I read it, I couldn't help but think the book couldn't possibly have ended any other way. But at the same time, I know I never could've imagined anything so perfect myself.
bigred said:
:confused:
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Like I said, I'm only halfway through it. My opinion may change by the end. While I enjoyed War and Peace, I didn't see what Tolstoy was constructing until the end. Maybe the same can be said of Les Miserables. So far, the only messages I see are, "You really really really really really can't escape your past" and something vague about redemption.
 
TriangleMan said:
It's shorter than the Lord of the Rings trilogy but that didn't seem to put anyone off reading LotR.

That said -- I haven't read War and Peace :p
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You definition of "anyone" seems to be pretty narrow. ;) I thought the hobbit was great but gave up ever reading the LOTR trilogy and precisely because it often is so pointlessly wordy...zzzzz....
 
I tried W&P again recently. Got to page 4 hundred and something before losing interest. Maybe it's an age thing.
 
Soapy Sam said:
I tried W&P again recently. Got to page 4 hundred and something before losing interest. Maybe it's an age thing.
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Or just a difference in taste, maybe.

You do really have to be patient with that book for the payoff. It's brilliantly written, but the interweaving of multitude of perspectives he gives of the human condition from different scales of space and time and intimacy don't tie together into a coherent whole until the end of the novel.
 
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