Favorite Literary Works

mista geechee

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What are yall's 10 favorite books ? Not necessarily author.

1. Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift.

Best thing I ever read. Now that I'm older I can appreciate the multiple perspectives this book is written from.

2. The Illiad by Homer.

A dreamteam of ancient Greek characters

3. This Side Of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

So underrated

4. One Man In The Universe by Aristotle

He and Plato are the closest we will ever get to Socrates since he had no written works of his own.

5. Five Great Dialouges by Plato

See Aristotle. I'm suprised he wasn't put to death like his mentor , Socrates.

6. The Pearl by John Steinbeck

One of the most graphic books I read as a child

7. Meditations by Marcus Aureilis

8. The Old Man And The Sea by Hemmingway

Shit was kinda bittersweet to me. But that's just me.

9. The Odyssey by Homer

I would do anything to have an adventure like this

10. On Politics And Education by John Locke

He had some ideas that could be viewed as pretty radical for his time.
 

D_Ivana Dickenside

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in no particular order

1. les miserables - victor hugo
2. memoirs of a geisha - arthur golden
3. the great gatsby - f. scott fitzgerald
4. animal farm - george orwell
5. on the road - jack kerouac
6. the awakening - kate chopin
7. post secret - frank warren
8. tell me - kim addonizio
9. what we carry - dorianne laux
10. the dreamer's dictionary - lady stearn
 

Hugh Mann

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After some thought, I can't come up with 10...the best I can do is my top 5.

1. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

2. Ulysses - James Joyce

I can't honestly rate one of these above the other. Ulysses is a masterpiece; simultaneously an intimate examination of the consciousness of an ordinary man and a bold experiment in the English language. Blood Meridian is, in my opinion, the Great American Novel. In my (admittedly limited) reading experience, this is the greatest novel ever written by an American author. Every time I read it, this book chills my bones from the opening until the last paragraph. Incidentally, there is a movie adaptation scheduled for release next year, and I have never dreaded a movie like I do this one. I just don't think it's possible to pull off Blood Meridian as a major Hollywood movie while remaining true to the book.

3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

4. 1984 - George Orwell

The only book I've read whose ending made my eyes cloud up.

5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
 

Xcuze

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7 Harry Potter books
ChiChi Larues Making it Big; Sex stars, porn films & Me.
Halliwells 2008 film guide
Food bible - Judith Wills

Sorry if Ive lowered the tone...!
 

erratic

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Favourites, not all "the best." But they're all damn good yarns.

1. the Iliad

2. War and Peace

3. Crime and Punishment

4. the Stand, Stephen King

5. the Road, Cormac McCarthy

6. Obasan, Joy Kogawa

7. Inferno

8. Treason, Orson Scott Card

9. (insert honourary shout-out to Dr. Seuss)

10. Vice Dos and Don'ts, Gavin McInnes
 

sdg475

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100 Years of Solitude- Marquez
The Baron in the Trees- Calvino
Lolita- Nabokov
Memories of My Melancholy Whores- Marquez
The Garden of Eden- Hemingway
Grapes of Wrath- Steinbeck
Slaughterhouse Five- Vonnegut
The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin- Twain
Cosmicomics- Calvino
Jude the Obscure- Hardy
Autumn of the Patriarch- Marquez

Oops, that was 11. The list goes on though...
 

Bbucko

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Hmmmmmmmmmm...

I don't really enjoy a lot of fiction. I'm much more of a history, biography and architectural criticism kind of guy. But these books have always stood out for me as meaningful and well-written, if not especially literary:

Tender Is The Night: F Scott Fitzgerald
It's looser than The Great Gatsby but still superb.

The House of the Spirits: Isabel Allende
Was given to me by a guy I was seeing in the late 90s and have always cherished it.

Juliette: Marquis de Sade
This is a brilliant turn on the Justine theme, substituting wanton libertinage for outraged virtue, and because The 120 Days of Sodom is just too extreme.

Six Weeks: Elinor Glyn
One of the original dirty bestsellers (in the UK & America) and, perhaps the first instance of a literary Cougar.

The Love Machine: Jacqueline Suzanne
Because it's the best of her books and she's a much better author than anyone ever gave her credit for being.

Yeah...I know. And I'll admit to enjoying Fanny Hurst much more than DH Lawrence (Women In Love remains half-read on my bookcase). I'm a weirdo.
 

tripod

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I am not much into novels but thoroughly enjoy short stories and novellas.

1). Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth

2). Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

3). The Sun Also Rises by Hemmingway

4). Everything That Rises Must Converge - A collection by Flannery O'Conner

5). Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

6). Great Expectations or anything by Charles Dickens

7). The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkein

8). The Teachings of Don Juan or anything by Carlos Castaneda

9). The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

10). Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
 

Deno

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I haven't read many books but one I do remember reading was The Other by Thomas Tryon. I remember it not for its writing but also because I got one of the worst sunburns laying on the beach reading that book. And in school I really like reading The Red Pony and The Old Man and the Sea.
 
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ManlyBanisters

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I'll post what I've (probably) posted before:

Catch 22 - Heller
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Against a Dark Background - Banks
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Written on the Body - Winterson
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five - Lessing
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
 

D_Fiona_Farvel

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The Winner by Donald E. Westlake
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Kiss the Girls by James Patterson
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Call of the Wild by Jack London
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Diary by Anais Nin (yeah I'm calling it fiction)
The Return of Simple by Langston Hughes
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
The Riki Tiki Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare
 

B_lamdellboo

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1984
Catcher In The Rye
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Odyssey
Death of a Salesman
Frankenstein
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(And, if you consider the Harry Potter series of literary merit-- which I do!-- then all 7 of those books, as well.)
 

Shelby

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Well I've read lots of books in my time. Some made me laugh and some made me cry. The best were the one's that made me think about things in ways I had never before imagined.

But I'm going to have to say I probably got the most pure joy from the prose poetry and art of Theodor Geisel.
 
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ZOS23xy

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Well I've read lots of books in my time. Some made me laugh and some made me cry. The best were the one's that made me think about things in way I had never before imagined.

But I'm going to have to say I probably got the most pure joy from the prose poetry and art of Theodor Geisel.

Yeah Dr. Suess. He illustrated a book eighty years back called BIGGER AND BETTER BONERS.

Too bad they made a two hour movie out of THE CAT IN THE HAT. Took me five minutes to read.


Mr Pirsig's classic ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MATANANCE is overshadowing his book LILA, which is a search for human values within unlikely territories.