[Archaea]

After reviewing your reading lists, I feel as if I'm completely uneducated. My sister was an English lit major and Masters. Every day she came home with loads of books, including many of the works read here.

For those of us, who are not being drilled into different techniques, it's often very tedious to study great works of literature. Why do "great" authors often have unreadable works? I guess we could say the same about philosophers, so I'm a little like the pot calling the kettle black.

The field of lit so vast. We have the English language based lit, the great European translations, and untouched Islamic and Asian translations.

I like Victor Hugo, both of his great works, Hunchback and Les Mis.

I like War and Peace, Anne Karenina, the Brothers Karamasov (don't ask me to remember the storyline any more).

I liked Heinrich Boell, Draussen vor der Tuer, Dr. Faustus from Thomas Mann, Faust from Goethe, the Five Rings, Sun Tzu the Art of War, A Stranger in a Strange Land, and Madame Bovary.

Rand's stuff is okay, Joyce is awful, and Faulkner is passable for a nonliterature guy.

Steinbeck is readable.

Has anybody read Kennedy O'Toole, "A Confederacy of Dunces"?

In terms of literature, this group seems well-read, as most of my reading involves pulp, philosophy and linguistics.

So for an uninitiated, should one start chronologically, or with genres? What makes the most sense?