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The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
1984, George Orwell
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
^THESE book are AMAZING and YES should be read
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Grapes of Wrath, John Stienbeck
^These books were very good
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
^I still need to read these. They're on the top of my list.
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
^Heard this book sucks to read...
IMHO, These books should have been on the list as well:
Clockwork Orange
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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I agree everyone should read like one (if more okay) of these brave new world / 1984 / etc.
its basic knowledge and also helps to easier understand many movies of today (e.g. the island)
Also i ld like to throw in Faust, which I thought was a pretty cool book to read in school.
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May I suggest the following list of 10 books?
May not be considered "literary" stuff but something that I thoroughly enjoyed.
1. Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin)
2. Ring ( Koji Suzuki)
3. The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss)
4. Silent Witness (Richard North Patterson)
5. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
6. The Reality Dysfunction (Peter F. Hamilton)
7. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
8. Temeraire (Naomi Novik)
9. Hyperion (Dan Simmons)
10. Starship Troopers (Robert A. Heinlein)
Out of the list in the OP, I've only read the following
1984, George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Animal Farm, George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
And out of these I would say I enjoyed The Great Gatsby and 1984 the most.
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I'd say 95+% of the books/authors people bring up are on the list, they just didn't score as high.
Also, I went and bought 1984/animal farm (2 in 1) today.
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On January 19 2011 05:42 Akash wrote:
If ur interested into Sci-Fi books,u can't start without reading the Dune series.Both the ones written by Frank Herbert and the sequels written by his son Brian Herbert.
Really awesome books.
If you're interested into fantasy,u can start with the Sillmarillion from Tolkien or the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.
I agree about the Dune books written by Frank Herbert. However, the new ones written by his son are juvenile (if not stupid) by comparison. I especially can't stand what Brian did with Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune. I simply don't believe that those books encapsulate what Frank had in mind. Don't get me wrong, Brian's books are enjoyable in their own right as "plot mover" books, but they completely lack the depth of Frank's work.
I recently started rereading Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune because it had been more than fifteen years since I last read them. I'd forgotten how fascinating the philosophy in those books is -- especialy in God Emperor. Definitely good reads.
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I read all of these books and I must say it's a decent list of books you must read. I definitely think you should force yourself to read them, it'll evolve your mind exponentially. I would leave off Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen because it's a piece of shit book from a shitty author. It's funny that The Great Gatsby is the only one you've read because that's probably my least favorite on the list after anything by Jane Austshit.
Oh and upload the spreadsheet if you haven't already.
Side note: John Steinbeck is my favorite author read everything by him.
Double Side note: I just noticed there's nothing on there by Charles Dickens. Add something from him ASAP. Tale of Two Cities is a good start.
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read these ones
1984, George Orwell
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
The Grapes of Wrath, John Stienbeck
Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (give it a chance mr. darcy is a boss lol)
BURN THE REST.
but seriously catcher in the rye is a waste of time and so is brave new world
Also if you are looking for the best sci fi book ever read Enders game by Orson scott card
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On January 19 2011 04:34 Mactavian wrote:
I've read most of these books (English Lit major in Uni) and if you enjoy reading, or wish to read more books (really any books) in the future, I think you should read all of them. I don't know what you will like or hate, that isn't really the point, but regardless of your personal feelings on these particular books, they are by far the most influential modern novels of all time.
It doesn't really matter if you liked the dream like diction, ominous tone, or overbearing sense of doom and insanity in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," because once you read it, you can trace the evolution of his theories on race and racism through Ghandi, Chinua Achebe, Martin Luther King, Malcolm-X and even to Spike Lee and his films.
Fitzgerald's plucky and heavily ironic tale of Jay Gatzby may not pull on your hearts strings or make you want to pull your hair in frustration, but it does lay the groundwork for many modern stories of the American Dream, and particularly New York. Martin Scorsese owes a a lot to Gatzby, as does Francis Ford Coppola, (hell even Sofia Coppola's newest flick "somewhere" leans heavily on themes developed in Gatzby), and Ben Affleck's movie "Gone Baby Gone" plays on a lot of similar themes about morality and acceptance.
Orwell's 1984 is a central log that fuels the fire of much american discourse when it comes to Socialism, Communism, Individuality, and political power. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage have all read 1984 and had it resound with them deeply.
I could go on with basically every book on this list, but I think you get my point. I would be disappointed to hear that you didn't read a book because you thought you wouldn't like it, or didn't finish a book because you weren't enjoying it. You are probably not going to like all these books, but reading them will make you like other books more, and appreciate them more deeply. Reading an influential book that you didn't enjoy isn't a waste at all, it still gives you a framework to approach new novels, plays, cinema, and I'm told, even music (I don't really listen to much music, but I've heard my friends say so). I say if you like reading, read them all. It might now pay off in enjoyment right away, but it will, over time, increase the joy get from other books.
This is so true, and can't be restated enough. Well said.
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On January 19 2011 09:48 Zim23 wrote:
I read all of these books and I must say it's a decent list of books you must read. I definitely think you should force yourself to read them, it'll evolve your mind exponentially. I would leave off Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen because it's a piece of shit book from a shitty author. It's funny that The Great Gatsby is the only one you've read because that's probably my least favorite on the list after anything by Jane Austshit.
Oh and upload the spreadsheet if you haven't already.
Side note: John Steinbeck is my favorite author read everything by him.
Double Side note: I just noticed there's nothing on there by Charles Dickens. Add something from him ASAP. Tale of Two Cities is a good start.
I think that had 4.
EDIT: full spreadsheet added to op.
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EPT
