Best Novels Yet Written

[DrumNFeather]

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa

I once read: "Ric Flair: To Be The Man".....right after I read Atlas Shrugged no less.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Hey, it's OK. You don't need to make excuses. It's not like you committed rape or something.

That's odd. I think the worst novel I have ever read (The Simple Truth) was written by David Baldacci. What a truly horrible piece of writing.

Well sometimes I feel like the English Department Head will show up and snip a corner off my degree like my scoutmaster did to my Totin' Chip Card.

Never read The Simple Truth. To be honest I've only read Absolute Power and Last Man Standing which was about the HRT of which my dad was a member.

Christopher Whitcomb's novel Black we believe used my father as a character. Other than that, it was okay.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by surfah33

Well sometimes I feel like the English Department Head will show up and snip a corner off my degree like my scoutmaster did to my Totin' Chip Card.

Never read The Simple Truth. To be honest I've only read Absolute Power and Last Man Standing which was about the HRT of which my dad was a member.

Christopher Whitcomb's novel Black we believe used my father as a character. Other than that, it was okay.

HRT?

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

HRT?

FBI Hostage Rescue Team

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage_Rescue_Team

[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?

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Archaea

After reviewing your reading lists, I feel as if I'm completely uneducated.

No kidding. I wish I had more reading time.

Novels are wonderful, but I enjoy a well-written history book just as much.

[Surfah]

Originally Posted by Archaea

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

Arch, I love how self-deprecating you are sometimes. You are well read and your grasp of philosophy and language is enviable. Uninitiated my ass.

Anyway, personally I prefer a study of literature by genre and then try and read chronologically in that genre. I seemed to enjoy my genre focused classes much more than period study stuff that often spanned a century or two and was really too broad a focus to enjoy or immerse yourself in.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

No kidding. I wish I had more reading time.

Novels are wonderful, but I enjoy a well-written history book just as much.

Most of my readings outside of philosophy, work or sport fall into this category as well.

I looked up In Search of Lost Time and found that it is a novel known for its length and published in SEVEN volumes. Seven Volumes? I guess you'll be searching for a lot of lost time after completing that monster.

[Archaea]

Hey, lost time is about sex with more than one female. Hmm, no wonder SIEQ loves it:

Note from cough, cough, wikipedia:

Homosexuality is a major theme in the novel, especially in Sodom and Gomorrah and subsequent volumes. Though the narrator himself is heterosexual, he invariably suspects his lovers of liaisons with other women. Similarly, Charles Swann, the central figure in much of the first volume, suspects his mistress Odette (whom he later marries) has had such encounters, something she subsequently admits to him is true. Several lesser characters are forthrightly homosexual, like the Baron de Charlus; while others, like the narrator's good friend Robert de Saint-Loup, are only later revealed to be closeted.

[creekster]

[quote=Archaea;106787]

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

quote]

This is one of the funniest books I have ever read.