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Thoughts Your Favourite Authors?

blue kringle said:
A friend has been telling me to read Dostoyevsky quite a while. Gnetly, but i can tell he meant it v super seriously.

Anyone have opinion on a good book to start with? Otherwise ill just jump in on that prison experience one. Sounds like the soul spark for me rn.
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IMO his two best works are Crime and Punishment and then The Brothers Karamazov, which may or may not be cliche in that everyone says those are his two best works. I recently learned that the two aforementioned works can be considered part of a trilogy with the addition of Demons, which I have sitting on a bookshelf but have not yet read. Another couple of popular notables that are shorter in length are Notes From Underground as well as The Double. I think there is another book called The Gambler but I'm pretty sure it is just an excerpt or single chapter from The Brother Karamazov so I never bought it.

I would definitely start with Crime and Punishment. It may help to read reviews of different translations because IIRC most of the books have been translated to English multiple times by different people. I didn't know this with Crime and Punishment or with The Brothers Karamazov but when shopping for Demons, I made sure to buy a copy that had the most positive reviews and least negative ones. In addition to actually reading the reviews to kind of triangulate which translation I thought would be best.
 
Jerry Atrick said:
IMO his two best works are Crime and Punishment and then The Brothers Karamazov, which may or may not be cliche in that everyone says those are his two best works. I recently learned that the two aforementioned works can be considered part of a trilogy with the addition of Demons, which I have sitting on a bookshelf but have not yet read. Another couple of popular notables that are shorter in length are Notes From Underground as well as The Double. I think there is another book called The Gambler but I'm pretty sure it is just an excerpt or single chapter from The Brother Karamazov so I never bought it.

I would definitely start with Crime and Punishment. It may help to read reviews of different translations because IIRC most of the books have been translated to English multiple times by different people. I didn't know this with Crime and Punishment or with The Brothers Karamazov but when shopping for Demons, I made sure to buy a copy that had the most positive reviews and least negative ones. In addition to actually reading the reviews to kind of triangulate which translation I thought would be best.
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Thanks JAtrick. I seem to recall ..Karamazov was the one my friend kept mentioning. Excellente
 
Jerry Atrick said:
IMO his two best works are Crime and Punishment and then The Brothers Karamazov, which may or may not be cliche in that everyone says those are his two best works. I recently learned that the two aforementioned works can be considered part of a trilogy with the addition of Demons, which I have sitting on a bookshelf but have not yet read. Another couple of popular notables that are shorter in length are Notes From Underground as well as The Double. I think there is another book called The Gambler but I'm pretty sure it is just an excerpt or single chapter from The Brother Karamazov so I never bought it.

I would definitely start with Crime and Punishment. It may help to read reviews of different translations because IIRC most of the books have been translated to English multiple times by different people. I didn't know this with Crime and Punishment or with The Brothers Karamazov but when shopping for Demons, I made sure to buy a copy that had the most positive reviews and least negative ones. In addition to actually reading the reviews to kind of triangulate which translation I thought would be best.
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I seriously can’t finish Brothers.. I have tried. Crime and Punishment and The Gambler are astounding haven’t read Demons but will shortly
 
My top five favorite books are:

"Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey
"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
"Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" by Joe Bageant
"Going to Extremes" by Joe McGinniss

Out of that list, "Bonfire of the Vanities" is probably my all-time favorite. Before I read that, I had read only "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (for a school assignment) and didn't much care for it at all, so I had very low expectations for BOTV, a moldering copy of which I randomly strayed across in my parent's bookcase. I was totally hooked and read the novel in like 2 or 3 days though lol. It's interesting, because if you were to simply explain the plot of BOTV to me in a few brief sentences, I'd probably say that it didn't sound like something I'd want to read...I also think that someone with the opposite political leanings that I have could read BOTV and really get a kick out of it, as it pretty brutally satirizes "social justice warriors" (along with many others)...yet it's still my all-time favorite novel. The writing is so intricate yet simultaneously never comes across as pretentious, heavy-handed or inaccessible...and Wolfe is just a master at satire and humor in general IMO
 
I am also a fan of Russian lit, at least the entries I've read ("The Brothers Karamazov" and "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky and "War and Peace" by Tolstoy)

As I've said before re: Dostoevsky, my favorite thing about his writing is reading depictions of how people talked back in Russia during his time. The dialogue is my favorite part of his books...the themes always remain the same (people talking shit, spreading gossip, being braggadocious or self-aggrandizing, etc.) in these depictions of Russian social life during that time, but it's just very creative how he rendered those interactions I thought

Another book that I like from that general time period in Russia was "Memoirs of a Revolutionist" by Vera Figner. Although I wouldn't say that she was a great writer overall, her memoir about being an underground terrorist associated with the "People's Will" group (which ultimately succeeded in assassinating the Czar) was interesting, as well as just her reflections on the social context of Russian life during that era, her experiences in prison etc
 
Burnt Offerings said:
Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey
"Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad
"Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" by Joe Bageant
"Going to Extremes" by Joe McGinniss
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I read the first two last year (re-read for OFOTC) and loved them. I remember waking up early and reading the majority of BOTV over several hours… such a long fucking book with so much detail, but that’s part of its brilliance.
 
no specific order

Oscar Wilde
Tolkien
Franz Kafka
Wilhelm Voigt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Franz Kafka
George Arg Arg Martin
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Franz Kafka
Shakespeare
Nietzsche
Kant
Descartes
Franz Kafka
Berthold Brecht
Hesse
Heine
Goethe
Kafka
Schiller
Fontane
Eichendorff
Franz Kafka
 
arrall said:
A few of my absolute favorites:
  • Kurt Vonnegut
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • Chuck Palahniuk
I enjoyed Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky when I read Beyond Good and Evil and the first quarter of Brothers Karazamarov at age 14. Plan to return to them soon, but I haven’t read enough of either to count them as favorites at the moment.
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Love all three.
What are your favourite Palahniuk books? So far I've read Fight Club, Haunted and Invisible Monsters.
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Love all three.
What are your favourite Palahniuk books? So far I've read Fight Club, Haunted and Invisible Monsters.
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I didn't care much for Haunted (other than a couple of the short stories. Guts is what got me into Palahniuk as a teenager who loved morbid stories, and the one about the police detectives and the dolls was horrifying).
My favorites are Choke, Invisible Monsters, and Survivor. Fight Club is great too, I just prefer the movie and Chuck himself has said that the movie had a better ending.
 
December Flower said:
no specific order

Oscar Wilde
Tolkien
Franz Kafka
Wilhelm Voigt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Franz Kafka
George Arg Arg Martin
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Franz Kafka
Shakespeare
Nietzsche
Kant
Descartes
Franz Kafka
Berthold Brecht
Hesse
Heine
Goethe
Kafka
Schiller
Fontane
Eichendorff
Franz Kafka
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Well 4 sure you did not leave out Kafka..nice list!!
 
December Flower said:
no specific order

Oscar Wilde
Tolkien
Franz Kafka
Wilhelm Voigt
Arthur Conan Doyle
Franz Kafka
George Arg Arg Martin
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Franz Kafka
Shakespeare
Nietzsche
Kant
Descartes
Franz Kafka
Berthold Brecht
Hesse
Heine
Goethe
Kafka
Schiller
Fontane
Eichendorff
Franz Kafka
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Ken Kessey
Edgar Allain Poe
From Sci Fi-Robert Sheckley
Strugatski brothers
Ray Bradbury
Erich Maria Remark
Jonh Stainbeck
Charles Boudelaire
William Worten
Aldous Huxsley
Joseph Cambell....there is some others too.many great authors...
 
Nas47 said:
Ken Kessey
Edgar Allain Poe
From Sci Fi-Robert Sheckley
Strugatski brothers
Ray Bradbury
Erich Maria Remark
Jonh Stainbeck
Charles Boudelaire
William Worten
Aldous Huxsley
Joseph Cambell....there is some others too.many great authors...
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O i forgot Poe
 
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