the brothers karamazov, dostoyevsky
moby dick, melville
great expectations, dickens
franny & zooey, salinger
the return of the native, hardy
i, claudius, graves
der steppenwolf, hesse
the count of monte cristo, dumas
one hundred years of solitude, marquez
treasure island, stevenson
creation, vidal
leaves of grass, whitman
watership down, adams
light in august, faulkner
blood meridian, mccarthy
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Welcome to the Monkey House – Vonnegut
Steppenwolf – Hermann Hess
Of Human Bondage – Somerset Maugham
Madame Bovary – Flaubert
Vanity Fair – Thackeray
Bonfire (she wore brown lipstick!) of the Vanities – Tom Wolf
A Suitable Boy- Vikram Seth
Metamorphosis – Kafka
The Outsider – Camus
The Trial – Kafka
Washington Square – Henry James
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
In the Penal Colony – Kafka
King Lear – Shakespeare
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Solzhenitsyn
1984 – George Orwell
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
The Sirens of Titan – Vonnegut
The Magus – John Fowles
Battle Cry – Leon Uris
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Water Babies – Charles Kingsley
The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
aww i love ‘the magus’’ and ‘of human bondage’! and yay, ‘watership down’ xD
i couldn’t decide on a single shakespeare play so i left him out lol.
it seemed like cheating to add ‘complete works’
yeah I wanted to put The Gap Series (Stephen Donaldson) but that’s three books …& there’s so many others
I was able to choose King Lear fairly easily as it was my dad’s favourite and he kind of drummed into me that it was mine too :) well he read it to me a lot anyway
I can’t even think of the cover of Watership Down without getting emotional!
I need an almond cookie and a cup of tea now to get over the brain strain of choosing
@Meg and Ruby
I was just talking to my wife about Watership Down, and I tried to convince her to give it a second chance. (She had trouble with the rabbits being the primary characters.) The last hundred pages of the novel is some of the most exciting, nail-biting moments I’ve read, too. Love that book.
Watership Down is one of those great surprises where the book is better than it has any right to be, given it’s subject matter. I came in with the same trepidations as Mrs. Jazz and they were wiped away almost immediately. Glad to see it getting credit here.
The Last Night of the Earth (Charles Bukowski)
The Book of Disquiet (Fernando Pessoa)
VALIS (Philip K Dick)
Memories of the Space Age (JG Ballard)
Finnegan’s Wake (James Joyce)
Ada or Ardor (Vladimir Nabokov)
The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)
Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
House of Incest (Anais Nin)
Try (Dennis Cooper)
Labyrinths (Jorge Luis Borges)
Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Victor Serge)
Exile and the Kingdom (Albert Camus)
Chroma (Derek Jarman)
Blood and Guts in High School (Kathy Acker)
Tender Buttons (Gertrude Stein)
Cows (Matthew Stokoe)
Project for a Revolution in New York (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
Dirty Havana Trilogy (Pedro Juan Gutierrez)
The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O’Neill)
Europe Central (William T Vollmann)
Story of the Eye (Georges Bataille)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
Les Chants de Maldoror (Comte de Lautreamont)
Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
Against the Day Pynchon
House of Leaves Danielewsky
1984 Orwell
The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer Stephenson
Fiasco Lem
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Joyce
Numbers in the Dark Calvino (short story collection but I recite stories from this collection in everyday conversation often)
Confederacy of Dunces Toole
Frankenstein Shelley
Ficciones Borges, (same parenthetical as Numbers in the Dark. )
The thing is, there are several general areas that are my favorites, like epic poetry, that I don’t have any specific text to set aside for. I love epic poetry but I cannot claim The Odyssey, the Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, for instance, as favorite books. They all to me work together as one larger aspect of literature that defines my ‘favorite.’
—PolarisDiB
1. Life is Elsewhere – Kundera
2. Slowness – Kundera
3. Anna Karenina
4. Infinite Jest – Wallace
5. The Pale King – Wallace
6. Atonement – McEwan
7. Garden, Ashes – Danilo Kiš
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Marquez
9. Billiards at Half-past Nine – Heinrich Böll
10. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
11. What is Literature – Sartre
12. The Road – McCarthy
13. The Plague – Camus
14. Obedience to Authority – Milgram
15. Germinal – Zola
16. Essays – Orwell
17. Catch-22 – Heller
18. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Adams
19. The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin – Voinovich
20. Sun Under Wood – Robert Hass
21. The Metamorphosis – Kafka
22. Postwar – Tony Judt
23. Pnin – Nabokov
24. Johnny Got His Gun-Trumbo
25. And a graphic…thing The Vagabond of the Limbs – Ribeira, Godard
oh, books……
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky (my all time favorite book, hands down! Especially “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter….)
Hm, pretty much all other books seem of lesser importance to me than this one, in terms of fiction. :)
Another book I love is “Ethics of the Dust” by John Ruskin…..
I bet nobody here has ever read it or even heard of it, but it’s a great little recording of lectures to children about how the integrity of human beings and growth are compared with crystal formation in nature, and what we can learn from such observations…..it’s completely genius….basically philosophical ethics from a totally metaphysical and crazy perspective of an insane Victorian mystic, who is probably more famous for bashing modern art and being a weirdo than he is a writer, which is insanely sad because his works are totally great but….yeah, well…let’s just forget all the history and appreciate his ideas already!
Catch-22, because it’s the only book I’ve read recently that I remember liking!
But all-time, I don’t know.
And a book I’m sure many people have read: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind-Shunryu Suzuki
The Electric Koolaid Acid Test-Tom Wolfe
The Reader-Bernard Schlink
Pentimento-Lillian Hellman
To Kill A Mockingbird-Harper Lee
The Hounds Of Baskerville-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1984-George Orwell
Sons and Lovers-D.H.Lawrence
Dr Zhivago-Boris Pasternak
War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit-J.R.R. Tolkien
Watership Down-Richard Adams
Tracks-Robyn Davidson
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy-Douglas Adams
Still Life With Woodpecker-Tom Robbins
Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
Pride And Predjudice-Jane Austen
The Last Picture Show-Larry McMurtry
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey
Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby-F.Scott Fitzgerald.
The Count Of Monte Cristo-Alexander Dumas.
Lorna Doone-R.D.Blackmore
A revised list:
Ulysses-Joyce
A la recherche du temps perdu-Proust
The Third Policeman-Flann O’Brien
Austerlitz-Sebald
Cold Comfort Farm-Stella Gibbons
King Lear-Shakespeare
Moby Dick-Melville
Poems-Seamus Heaney
Poems Patrick Kavanagh
Poems-Derek Mahon
Poems-Tomas Tranströmer
Independent People-Halldór Laxness
The Untouchable-John Banville
Our Mutual Friend-Dickens
Les Célibataires-Montherlant
The Secret Agent-Conrad
The Slaves of Solitude-Hamilton
Back-Henry Green
That They May Face the Rising Sun-John McGahern
Letters- Vincent van Gogh
Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne-Brian Moore
L’éducation sentimentale-Flaubert
Stories and Plays-Chekhov
The Master and Margarita-Bulgakov
Add The Information by James Gleick to my list.
—PolarisDiB
I’m only about 300 pages into Infinite Jest and it usually bothers me when someone else passes judgement so early on a book… but… you can’t stop me…
Infinite Jest – Wallace
Putting me at 25. The 5 or 6 pages on the failure of videophones were enough.
25 in chronological order:
1. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha
“The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” – Part 1 + 2
(Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra / 1605, 1615)
2. Les Trois Mousquetaires “The Three Musketeers”
(Alexandre Dumas / 1844)
3. Brat’ya Karamazovy “The Brothers Karamazov”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky / 1881)
4. Also sprach Zarathustra “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
(Friedrich Nietzsche / 1885)
5. Pan
(Knut Hamsun / 1894)
6. Na Srebrnym Globie “On the Silver Globe”
(Jerzy Zulawski / 1903)
7. On Baile’s Strand
(William Butler Yeats / 1904)
8. Amerika
(Franz Kafka / 1927)
9. Narziß und Goldmund “Narcissus and Goldmund”
(Hermann Hesse / 1930)
10. Eine unglückliche Liebe “A Sad Affair”
(Wolfgang Koeppen / 1934)
11. Tropic of Cancer
(Henry Miller / 1934)
12. Black Angel
(Cornell Woolrich / 1943)
13. La pelle “The Skin”
(Curzio Malaparte / 1949)
14.Nineteen Eighty-Four
(George Orwell / 1949)
15. Romulus der Große “Romulus the Great”
(Friedrich Dürrenmatt / 1949)
16. The Catcher in the Rye
(Jerome David Salinger / 1951)
17. Memushiri kouchi “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids”
(Kenzaburo Oe / 1958)
18. Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? “What is Cinema?” – 4 Volumes
(André Bazin / 1958 – 1962)
19. Ansichten eines Clowns “The Clown”
(Heinrich Böll / 1963)
20. Aa,Koya “Ah,Wilderness”
(Shuji Terayama / 1966)
21. Kagirinaku tōmeini chikai burū “Almost Transparent Blue”
(Ryu Murakami / 1968)
22. Die unendliche Geschichte “The Neverending Story”
(Michael Ende / 1979)
23. It
(Stephen King / 1986)
24. Die 13½ Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär “The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear”
(Walter Moers / 1999)
25. Kar “Snow”
(Orhan Pamuk / 2002)
EDIT: Forgot to read the introductory post, and as I don’t want to edit my numbering, you can replace the Bazin book(s) with:
André Bazin
(Dudley Andrew / 1978)
On The Silver Globe and the other two books, still haven’t been translated into english right? Did you read it in Polish? French?
I read it in German. Didn’t know they haven’t been published in English, yet. These are total Sci-Fi classics!
Not long left, further submissions welcome.
I’ve made a start on Return of the Native and Woman of the Dunes
Antes que anochezca / Before Night Falls – R. Arenas
Bartleby, the Scrivener – H. Melville
Ceremonias – J. Cortázar
Cien años de soledad / One Hundred Years of Solitude – G. García Márquez
El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha / Don Quixote – M. de Cervantes
Dune – F. Herbert
La familia de Pascual Duarte – C.J. Cela
Fahrenheit 451 – R. Bradbury
The Fall of the House of Usher – E.A. Poe
Ficciones – J.L. Borges
Hamlet – W. Shakespeare
Life Is Elsewhere – M. Kundera
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon – T. Spanbauer
Meu Pé de Laranja Lima – J.M. de Vasconcelos
Un mundo para Julius / A World for Julius – A. Bryce Echenique
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – K. Kesey
Ordinary People – J. Guest
Pedro Páramo – J. Rulfo
The Sun Also Rises – E. Hemingway
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – M. Kundera
Lovecraft & Derleth – The survivor and others
Raymond Queneau – Les Fleurs Bleues
Boris Vian – L’écume des Jours
Céline – Voyage au bout de la Nuit
André Breton – L’Art Magique
Hubert Selby Jr – Last Exit to Brooklyn
Friedrich Nietzsche – Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
Carl Gustav Jung – Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins. Studien über den Archetypus
Philip K. Dick – The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Philip K. Dick – Valis Regained
Isaac Asimov – The Foundation Cycle
Joel-Peter Witkin – The Bone House
William S. Burroughs – The Naked Lunch
Salvador Dali – Journal d’un Génie
Wassily Kandinsky – Du Spirituel Dans L’art Et Dans La Peinture En Particulier
Goethe – Faust part 1
Stephen King – It
Nobuyoshi Araki – Self, Life, Death
Primo Levi – Se questo è un uomo
George Orwell – 1984
Stefan Wul – Niourk
Stefan Sweig – Schachnovelle
Charles Baudelaire – Les Fleurs du Mal
Lautréamont – Les chants de maldoror
Arthur Rimbaud – Une Saison en Enfer
Choosing 25 is brutal, but no poetry makes it a little easier. In no order:
Madame Bovary – Flaubert
Salammbo – Flaubert
Sentimental Education – Flaubert
The Trial – Kafka
Short Stories – Kafka
Diaries – Kafka
Collected Fictions – Borges
Selected Non-fictions – Borges
Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Hardy
Jude the Obscure – Hardy
Ulysses – Joyce
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Carroll
The Invention of Morel – Casares
Brighton Rock – Greene
High Rise – Ballard
Naked Lunch – Burroughs
The Invisible Man – Wells
Ubik – Dick
The Day of the Triffids – Wyndham
The Easter Parade – Yates
Fear and Trembling – Kierkegaard
The Historical Figure of Jesus – E.P. Sanders
Letters to a Young Poet – Rilke
Meditations- Marcus Aurelius
Tao te ching – Lao-Tzu
Lots of Russians as well but no room, I love ‘Demons’ and ‘Karamazov’ too. I read them when I was younger, would be interesting to revisit them
Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
Borges, Brodie´s Report
Casares, The Invention of Morel
Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
García Márquez, A Hundred Years of Solitude
Gogol, Dead Souls
Guimarães Rosa, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
Hoffmann, The Devil´s Elixiers
Hölderlin, Hyperion
Joyce, Ulysses
Kafka, A Country Doctor
Kawabata, Snow Country
Kleist, The Earthquake in Chile
Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman
Mahfouz, The Children of Gebelawi
Mann, The Magic Mountain
Musil, The Man Without Qualities
Ôe, The Silent Cry
Onetti, A Brief Life
Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
Schulz, Street of Crocodiles
Sábato, On Heroes and Tombs
Stendhal, The Red and the Black
now i’ve thought on it a bit i’ll add 10 more if i may, since i only listed 15
labyrinths, borges
tales of mystery & imagination, poe
walden, thoreau
jane eyre, c.brontë
funeral games, renault
the great railway bazaar, theroux
farewell, my lovely, chandler
tom jones, fielding
grimm’s fairy tales
tao te ching
The Light in August—William Faulkner
The Blind Owl—Sadegh Hedayat
Gargantua & Pantagruel—Rabelais
The Three Tales—Flaubert
The Big Windows—Paedar O’Donnell
Collected Poems—Primo Levi
Wolf Solent—John Cowper Powys
Offshore—Penelope Fitzgerald
Monkey—Wu Cheng’en
Toddler-Hunting (stories)—Kono Taeko
Diary of the War of the Pig—Adolfo Bioy Casares
Coming Through Slaughter—Michael Ondaatje
El Presidente—Miguel Angel Asturias
Hotel Savoy—Joseph Roth
The Underdogs—Mariano Azuela
History: A Novel—Lisa Morante
Life & Times of Michael K—J.M. Coetzee
The Left-Handed Woman—Peter Handke
Selected Stories—Robert Walser
The Sea Wall—Marguerite Duras
October Ferry to Gabriola—Malcolm Lowry
The Song of the World—Jean Giono
Freely Flowing—Wassily Grossman
The Gift—Vladimir Nabokov
Ramayana—Valmiki
Miguiel Cervantes – Don Quioxte
Thomas Hardy – Mayor of Castebridge
Feydor Doestoyevsky – Bros Karamazov
Donald Barthelme – 60 Stories
Laurence Sterne – Tristrim Shandy
Michel Houllebecq – Atomised
Mikal Bulgakov – Master and Margurita
Witold Gombrowitcz – Ferdyrdurke
Janet Turner – Hospital – Borderline
Thomas Wolfe – Life and Legend of Leadbelly
Franz Kafka – The Trial
Phillip K Dick – Man In The High Castle
Wallace Stevens – Collected Poems
Emily Dickinson – Collected Poems
Osamu Dazai – No Longer Human
Nicolson Baker – Mezzanine
Dashiell Hammett – 4 great Novels
HP Lovecraft – Call of the Cthulhu
Nikolai Gogol – The Overcoat (Collected Stories)
Anton Chekov – Collected Stories
Gilbert Hernandez- Heartbreak Soup
Arthur Rimbaud – Illuminations
Witold Gombrowicz – Cosmos and Pornagraphia
Baudalaire – Flowers of Evil
Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights
Probably missed someone but who has the motivation to sit around all night playing fiddlesticks?
The Fall (Camus)
Molloy (Beckett)
The Trial (Kafka)
The Box Man (Kobo Abe)
Exile and the Kingdom (Camus)
All That Fall (Beckett)
Exit the King (Ionesco)
The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Brecht)
Snow Country (Kawabata)
Hell Screen (Akutagawa)
Dead Souls (Gogol)
Chaturanga (Tagore)
Pratinidhi Kavitayen (G.M. Muktibodh)
Yayati (V.S. Khandekar)
Labyrinths (Borges)
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Murakami)
Demons (Dostoevsky)
Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky)
The Lover (Duras)
Brave New World (Huxley)
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
inbefodaclose
Meg ͏
oh this is a poll – that makes it a bit different.
gonna redo it