Which "classics" should everyone have read and why?

[ivan astikov]

I'll be honest, Shakespeare makes me cringe with all that doth and verily bollox, Joyce makes me throw the book at the wall every 20 minutes, and I can always find something better to do than pick up a book by any of the Bronte sisters, so, tell me where I should be looking for my essential reading, and give me a hint why.

[What Exit?]

Does Lord of the Rings count yet?

Macbeth was the best of Shakespeare.

Ivanhoe was damn good reading as was Huck Finn and a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

[Oliveloaf]

Infinitely readable, absolutely engrossing and deeply troubling: 1984.

By far, the most compelling book I've read.

And, if you know someone who uses "Big Brother is Watching You", but hasn't read the book, beat them.

I suspect most Domers, er, Phantians have read '84.

I, too, am on a quest to read significant books, and also do not enjoy Shakespeare.

[pepperlandgirl]

Nobody should be forced to read Shakespeare, but everybody should see a good production of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. I would also suggest productions of Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus. I blame the Romantics for propagating the notion that Shakespeare should be read by anybody. NO! It must be performed. The words that are so lifeless on the page come to beautiful life when they're being spoken. Just watch Marlon Brando give the best speech ever written. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..."

[NAF1138]

Nobody should be forced to read Shakespeare, but everybody should see a good production of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. I would also suggest productions of Henry V, Julius Caesar, and Titus Andronicus. I blame the Romantics for propagating the notion that Shakespeare should be read by anybody. NO! It must be performed. The words that are so lifeless on the page come to beautiful life when they're being spoken. Just watch Marlon Brando give the best speech ever written. "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..."

Word. This is a hot button item for me, so I will restrain myself, but Shakespeare should only be read by people who are studying his work, or people who are about to perform his work. Go see the plays, and go see them performed by quality performers. This means it is probably NOT a good idea to go catch your local community theatre's production of Hamlet. Hamlet is hard to do right, and odds are they didn't manage it.

Shakespeare's best works (IMO) include, but are not limited to, the Scottish Play, Hamlet, King Lear, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelth Night, and Henry V.

As for classics that are must reads? How old does it have to be to be considered a classic? I would say 100 Years of Solitude is a must read. I would say Catch 22 is a must read. The Great Gatsby and one of the Hemmingway novels (I like The Sun Also Rises, but take your pick). I would say Huck Finn is a solid recommendation, as was 1984. I would also put The Slaughterhouse Five and One Flew Over The Cuckoos nest on the list of must read books.

As for why those books? Because they are all interesting fun reads, and they have all changed the way the world tells stories to some extent, many of them in a significant way.

I also think that everyone should read something by Ayn Rand, if only so they know what everyone else is making fun of (or soaking with praise.)

There is also some more fun stuff that I would put in. Alexander Dumas, any of it. Take your pick. Action adventure and really wild things abound. Same with Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, and HG Wells. All of it is great.

I am sure there are others...

Oh, read some real classics, stuff from the Greeks. I like Lysistrata and the Odyssey myself, but I guess that depends a lot on the translation. Oedipus is a bit heavy handed for my tastes, and I don't think I actually finished the Orestia cycle, but still its "important" stuff to read if only because so much of our culture is built on what was written by those guys.

[Zuul]

Tough question. If I was putting together the required reading list for a western literature class that I didn't mind if people cheated in, I might pick these:

• The Bible. If not the entire thing, then at the very least Genesis, Exodus, Job, and either the Gospel of Luke or Matthew. Why? Because having read those, you'll then recognize all of the references to them in western literature. And there are a lot of references. If you're not into it for linguistics or poetic language, go with the NIV.
• The Iliad and the Odyssey. References to these two are peppered throughout western literature as well. They can be difficult to wade through, though, and I wouldn't blame someone for simply reading the Spark Notes.
• Oedipus the King. Irony, tragedy, hubris, catharsis.
• Poetics by Aristotle. It's our earliest surviving work on literary theory, AFAIK. Whether you agree with what he wrote or not, it's a valuable place to begin to understand the arguments.
• The Aeneid. I hated reading this, to be honest. Just having a basic idea about it would be helpful, though...
• The Divine Comedy. ...particularly because it factors into this classic.
• The Life of King Henry the Fifth. Yes, by Shakespeare. Again, this has had a massive impact. Quotes from it have shown up in everything from WWII movies to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But, Shakespeare's plays were meant to be performed, not read. I'd go with watching the Kenneth Branagh film, frankly.
• The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. At the very least a few parts of it.
• Paradise Lost. It was tedious getting through this, but it's valuable for getting the references to it if nothing else.
• The Heart of Darkness. This was the novella that made me fall in love with literature. I read the entire thing in one sitting with my mouth gaping open. It's well-told and kept me hanging while also meandering in a lazy, disturbingly inescapable way.
• The Metamorphosis. A bit more difficult to read than the Heart of Darkness, but fascinating and chilling. It leaves you asking yourself a lot of questions. Not just the basic "...the hell just happened?" but also "how would I react in that situation?"
• The Waste Land. It's a 434 line poem. It's weird. Very, very weird. It's also up there with my favorite poems of all time and has become a classic of modern literature.
• Animal Farm. There's also 1984, but I always felt that Animal Farm was the better book. It's more subtle and more horrifying because of it.

...damn you people sneaking in while I was compiling my list. Sigh.

[NAF1138]

Brave New World! That's what I was forgetting. So 1984 is one possibility right? It's a terrible horrifying possibility. Well Brave New World is the other side of that coin, and frankly it's the more likely scenario. Great book.

[Zuul]

Brave New World! That's what I was forgetting. So 1984 is one possibility right? It's a terrible horrifying possibility. Well Brave New World is the other side of that coin, and frankly it's the more likely scenario. Great book.

Oh, oh, oh, yes. Absolutely. Actually, if one wanted to go for a proper paranoid view, one should read both books and then try to mentally combine them.

[pepperlandgirl]

If you were ever going to read one book in your life, I would suggest it be The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Every word of every page. The depth, the brilliance, the beauty, the humor, the pathos, the history, it boggles my mind every time I think about it. It's often cited as the first novel, but I think it goes beyond genre.

Strangely enough, while I agree with both the suggestion of Heart of Darkness and The Metamorphosis , I found Heart of Darkness far, far more difficult to get through. I literally would read a page and fall asleep. I wasn't even bored with it, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Read a page, fall asleep, read a page, fall alseep. But with The Metamorphosis, I was completely and utterly riveted. I barely even noticed the time passing.

For my own contributions, I'd add Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Death Comes to the Archbishop because it's beautiful and lyrical and it took my breath away. Frankenstein because even though I hate it, it did have a huge impact on literature and culture.

[Zuul]

Oh, God, Frankenstein. Another hugely influential one that isn't actually much fun to read. It was like Victor created a giant emo bastard.

[NAF1138]

Strangely enough, while I agree with both the suggestion of Heart of Darkness and The Metamorphosis , I found Heart of Darkness far, far more difficult to get through. I literally would read a page and fall asleep. I wasn't even bored with it, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Read a page, fall asleep, read a page, fall alseep. But with The Metamorphosis, I was completely and utterly riveted. I barely even noticed the time passing.

I had a similar experience. I read The Metamorphosis, and I probably finished it faster than anything else I have ever read. It took me, 2 hours? 3? Anyway, I blazed through it in a single sitting on a long dinner break between classes in college. Some of the images from that book are still vivid enough that they give me the creeps just thinking about it.

[OtakuLoki]

I want to begin by seconding Zuul's vote for the Bible. I'd add one more book: Revelations, even though I don't much like it, because it's the source (Or at least the most common transmission vector) of so much imagery in Western literature. But choosing just a few books will short change you, I believe. The ones listed leave out the saga with Saul, David, and Solomon for example. There are many classic stories in the Bible, and it's fascinating to see what's in there, I believe.

I also want to add my voice to those who are saying that Shakespeare isn't best read, but experienced. What works on paper is not always what works when spoken. Similarly, I contend that most poetry is best read aloud for similar reasons.

Other nominations that have been mentioned I endorse include: The Divine Comedy, even if you just read Inferno; Lysistrata, you'll be shocked at how modern it can feel, too. Personally, I love comparing classic versions with more modern retellings, so if you read Sophocles Antigone, it's worth looking for Jean Anohil's Antigone. Ostensibly the same story, with two very different foci. But that's just me being a bit of a word geek.

My first nomination will be Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Dennisovich. It's a brutal, and beautiful, book, describing one day in the life of a prisoner in one of Stalin's Gulags. One of the very few books I was assigned for school that got devoured in one night.

To Kill a Mockingbird is on my list, also.

[Zuul]

Loki, I'd debated about which "bare minimum" books from the Bible to include, but you're probably right that Revelations should be in there simply for the common imagery if nothing else. It's difficult to really advocate leaving much of it out, though. Yeah, it's taxing to get through, but so much of it is the basis of not just western literature but western thought itself. Each book borrows from and adds to the others in many ways, too.

[pepperlandgirl]

Oh, God, Frankenstein. Another hugely influential one that isn't actually much fun to read. It was like Victor created a giant emo bastard.

No, Victor was the giant emo bastard. The Creature had a legit grievance, Victor was just a whining sack of shit.

I really do hate that book, and I've had to read it 6 times now. My loathing of Victor grows with each one (though don't let that dissuade anybody from reading it!).

[ivan astikov]

Oh, I don't seem to be doing too bad. Here's the ones I've read already mentioned.

Ivanhoe
Huck Finn
1984
Catch 22
Slaughterhouse 5
One FOTC Nest
Treasure Island
ATWI80Days
War Of The Worlds
The Bible
The Waste Land
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Frankenstein
Heart Of Darkness
To Kill A Mockingbird

Thanks for the pointers, everyone!

[Oliveloaf]

If you were ever going to read one book in your life, I would suggest it be The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. Every word of every page. The depth, the brilliance, the beauty, the humor, the pathos, the history, it boggles my mind every time I think about it. It's often cited as the first novel, but I think it goes beyond genre.

Strangely enough, while I agree with both the suggestion of Heart of Darkness and The Metamorphosis , I found Heart of Darkness far, far more difficult to get through. I literally would read a page and fall asleep. I wasn't even bored with it, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Read a page, fall asleep, read a page, fall alseep. But with The Metamorphosis, I was completely and utterly riveted. I barely even noticed the time passing.

For my own contributions, I'd add Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Death Comes to the Archbishop because it's beautiful and lyrical and it took my breath away. Frankenstein because even though I hate it, it did have a huge impact on literature and culture.

Agree on the Metamorphosis. Read it in a sitting or two. Couldn't put it down. Also enjoyed, though admit didn't entirely comprehend The Trial, another Kafka web of surrealism.

[Sarahfeena]

For my own contributions, I'd add Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Death Comes to the Archbishop because it's beautiful and lyrical and it took my breath away. Frankenstein because even though I hate it, it did have a huge impact on literature and culture.

I recently read Death Comes for the Archbishop, and loved it.