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Literature everyone should read?

sourlemone

sourlemone

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Novels, theatre, short stories, poetry...what works of literature do you think everyone should read at some point in their life? For whatever reason - cultural significance, insight, beauty in prose...just interested to hear some opinions.

T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' (just to kickstart proceedings) would be up there, my personal favourite of all his poetry that I've read.
 
Hmmm....

Well the default answers for me are Shakespeare, Chaucer & Tolkien. Granted they're not to everyone's tastes, but it's hard to see how one's life wouldn't be enriched at least in part by partaking of their prose; I know mine certainly was.

I've also always adored the works of Robert Frost - again, perhaps another default suggestion, but no less valid for that. His ability to present simple but essential truths that were based on his observations of nature has been an inspiration to me, & in fact I credit much of my love of nature & desire to spend my life working in animal conservation to the seeds that were sown in appreciation of both his & Tolkien's work.

Then of course there's the rejection of conformity & a desire to question societal norms that is expressed brilliantly in the work of Kesey, Kerouac & Hunter S. Thompson. Reading all of these guys work at the tender age of 16 helped change my whole perspective on life, & 8 years on I still go back to them & learn new things. Many a lost teenager could learn a thing or two from them in my opinion....

There's plenty of others that are perhaps a little more obscure, but that's a little selection to start with.



;)
 
The Catcher in the Rye--JD Salinger
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?--Edward Albee
The New Journalism--Thomas Wolfe
Notes From Underground--Fyodor Dostoyevski
Meditations--Marcus Aurelius
Walden--Henry David Thoreau
 
I agree with all the other suggestions

Walt Whitman
Ernest Hemmingway
Charles Bukowski
William Burroughs
Chuck Palahniuk
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (sp?)
Sylva Plath
Anne Sexton
J.D. Salinger
Lewis Carroll
Irvine Welsh
Carlton Mellick III
James Frey
 
***Dante - The Divine Comedy *** The best book!
Homer - Iliad , Odyssey
Virgil - Aeneid
Mary Shelly - Frankenstein
John Milton - Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, & Othello.
 
God's Politics--by Jim Wallis, even though I'm not a Christian I still love this well-written book because it challenges both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Interplay, the Process of Interpersonal communication-- It's actually the textbook for one of my classes. It covers topics like listening, perception, conflict, intercultural communication, and more. This book is actually very useful for developing better communication habits which are extremely important in our everyday relationships.
 
James Joyce - Ulysses (just started reading this, totally enthralled and captivated...)

Alexander Solzenhitsyn (read Cancer Ward, yet to read more in particular his premier novel, Life of Ivan Devinosivich (sp?)

George Orwell (leaves hemingway in the dust)

Mervyn Peake ( will teach you a new word or 100. Written in an archaic, descriptive and poetic english)

Franz Kafka (The trial, The Castle, Amerika [the man who disappeared]

I don't like much beat literature apart from the poetry and William Burroughs' stuff, so i guess William Burroughs (the naked lunch) qualifies.

and my poems on this very forums ffs
:P:\ :p
 
^i dont like solzhenitsyn.. dont know why

above all, and thats coming from a die-hard atheist, - read Quran (simply because after you do, you'll finally be able to not feel like a sheep every time you hear something about islam on TV)

in no order:

Bulgakov - Master and Margarita (truely amazing even in translation)

William Golding - Lord of the Flies

Myth of Prometheus (in my opinion its the greatest story ever told, the unabridged one.. and the entire greek epos if you are hooked)

Tolkien - Silmarillion (everyone seems to have read LOTR these days.. but it was Silmarillion that was his life's work)

Herman Hesse - Siddhartha (its like ~50 pages, just do yourself a favor.. get it online and read it in one sitting)

Friedrich Niezsche - Thus Spake Zarathustra

Gabriel Garcia Marques - One Hundred Years of Solitude

cant think now, i probably want to put down something else, but i cant remember what that is! I am seriously jealous of the people who are just starting to cover the classics, because quite simply, everything just goes downhill from there... :(




skjalff
 
The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and
umm..
hmm..
1984, George Orwell
 
skjalff said:
Tolkien - Silmarillion (everyone seems to have read LOTR these days.. but it was Silmarillion that was his life's work)
Click to expand...

:) :) :) :) :)

......truly a masterwork. It's also where my name comes from! (My real one).
 
The Brothers Karamazov -- Fyodor Dostoyevski
Sons and Lovers -- DH Lawrence
Thus Spake Zarathustra -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Pulp -- Charles Bukowski
Midnight's Children -- Salman Rushdie
 
salman rushdie- Beneath her Feet, The Satanic Verses, Midnights Children
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides
Umberto Eco - Focaults Pendulum
Marquis De Sade - The Mystified Magistrate, 120 Days of Sodom (some pretty heavy reading) Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and other Tales.

I also second most of the authors posted already :)

and for a first time author - DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little
 
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