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Old 07-27-2007, 04:41 PM   #1
Sleeping in EQ
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Default Best Novels Yet Written

There's plenty of great literature that I haven't read (Moby Dick for one), but from my readings the best novels are:

In Search of Lost Time (Proust), The Brother's Karamazov (Dostoevsky), Ulysses (Joyce), and Don Quixote (Cervantes). These are all top tier novels that are at the top of my "best books" list.

There's nothing like reading In Search of Lost Time, Benjamin's Illuminations, and Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil as a trifecta.

I also enjoy the murkiness of Finnegan's Wake (Joyce) and To the Lighthouse (Woolf).

I'm not nearly as high on To Kill a Mockingbird as many were on CB the other day. I'd take Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom over it every day of the week.



To stab at current events:

It's always dubious to guess where books will be regarded eventually, but I see the Potter Books as being in league with Peter Pan, the Wizard of Oz, and Alice in Wonderland. Tim was right the other day when he was distinguishing them from the greatest works of literature, but at the same time acknowledging their worth as stories.
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