If you're gonna read Shakespeare, go for Hamlet. It's a predictable choice, but it's worth the hype. And it's probably the most referenced, so it helps to know it a little. Otherwise, Shakespeare is just a brain exercise for people with lots of time. He's great to read sometimes, but too much work to worry about.

1984 is good (and Bowie's Diamond Dogs is almost completely based on it). Animal Farm, though...I saw the movie, and satire or not it was boring as hell. No thank you.

I've always wanted to read Tristram Shandy just because of the name. I have no clue what it's about, but the title rolls of the tongue. It's like a word that gets stuck in your head.

I really want to read: Crime and Punishment, Moby Dick, and Lolita. I bought a nice hard-cover edition of Moby Dick, but I can't read it until I slay Joyce. I've already read like 6 books in the midst, so I need to start focusing.

That's exactly what I do with Treasure Island. I love it, too, but I just trail off and stop every time.

Sure they can, read "The Traveler" instead if you ever get to reading a novel of that nature.

I used to get upset when "literary types" bashed him. Then I read half of "It". Holy fuck. I'm sure he's hard working and all, but have at him.

I have a lot to say on this thread. I think I'll let some others reply so I don't end up having 20 posts in a row...

I read Crime and Punishment in my mid teens and it completely blew me away, although i do think it's quite a young person's novel - in much the same way that I think Kafka is a young person's writer. It's all about intense situations and philosophical dilemmas which seem very important and profound when young, but which seem slightly less so as you get older. Which isn't to say that it still isn't a great book, just not quite the life changing event when I re-read it a few years ago to the one I had at about sixteen.

Moby Dick is one that I've had on my shelf for ages and still not properly read. I've gotten so far with it a number of times, but always get sidetracked and end up not finishing it.

Lolita is excellent. So is Speak, Memory. Nabokov is exquisite.

King's a hack. And dull.

I think that, alongside Conrad, he's, at least in terms of his style, one of the greatest writers of the last century. Interestingly, I think both he and Conrad were writing in what was their second language. Makes them all the more incredible.

Keep meaning to read William Burroughs Junkie and Queer series.

Yes, I agree. I think John Updike in a review says that Nabokov writes the way all writers of English prose should write--ecstatically. It is pretty amazing what he does with the English language, regardless of his country of origin--but even more amazing considering he grew up as a native Russian speaker. The man was simply brilliant.

John Updike is another favorite novelist of mine, even though his stuff can become a little Wasp-ish. The Centaur is a great book, though.

How to Mutate and Take Over the World, by R.U. Sirius

you should read both.
it will help us in the fight to come against china and russia.

There are lots of books that I have abandoned halfway through and would like to try and read again, to see if they are as overrated as I thought or if I was just in a strange mood when I tried to read them and they are actually good.

To The Lighthouse is one. Too many long sentences (every statement has multiple sub-clauses) and I got stuck with ambiguous pronouns, i.e., she will mention a 'he' at the end of a sentance in which she has introduced a dozen or so male characters, so which one is now being referred to as 'he'? Maybe it has an internal logic which you learn after a while.

Lolita too. I found it boring; no matter how well-written it was, it didn't seem to have any momentum or substance (unlike my favourite books by Flaubert, Proust, which are also well-written and do have those things). Maybe it gets better.

The young person's novel is one of my least-favourite of book categories - interesting you'd put Kafka in there though. I was reading an essay about him just today. And, contrarily enough, I haven't read him since 'the great wanky book summer of '99'. But then you say it seems less profound and important - that's true of most things, surely?

Anyway, I digress. I can't think of any novels I've always intended to read because I'm still this side of 30 and I'm thinking, health-and-eyesight willing, I've got a good 40 years of reading ahead of me. I know that's a very dull thing to say, but I've read a sizeable proportion of 'classics' already to the point where I might do something ridiculous like start reading everything Hardy wrote.

Animal Farm and 1984 I wouldn't recommend for Cantankernine - I suspect she's past the (mental) age of finding them blinding. Not to be dismissive or condescending, I just don't think it'll click.

well it's a fucking obvious book but it's kinda like watching chicken run-- mildly amusing, occasionally funny-- but only better, because it provides you with some good good laughs.

the reason it wouldn't blow her mind though it's cos she's already a cynic.


"wow, man, he turned into a bug!" may be a young person's book

but the trial? the castle? america? no fucking way. he's not hermann hesse.


it's not the paragraph or no paragraph. it's paradise that's shit, no matter how you cut it. a bunch of old theologies illustrated for didactic purposes-- no fun.

Inferno is cool because that's where the hyena takes revenge against all his enemies.

By the way, most verse translations are shit because they force the language and betray the meaning. My first read of this book was in a prose translation and it was AWESOME. All the imagery and symbolism are preserved, rather than the less important terza rima. Now some people could say no, the terza rima is inseparable. Sure, if you love poetics, but don't most people read this shit to see flying dragons and hear the condemned screaming in hell?

Agreed - the problem being that, with its proliferation on the left, the ideas can inspire the naive-leftist, but it'll go from an 'ok' book to something risible in the already-jaded* mind, methinks.

*This isn't necessarily a criticism - depends on context and intention.
Yarrr.


Yarrr. I read the Satyricon of Petronius recently - first the 1600s translation. There was a few passages that I found a bit iffy, so I referred to an online, more contemporary translation. The 'zeitgeist' of writerly-translations dictated that quite a few passages in the second translation (which I returned to to skim in full) changed the interpretation of sentences. Some whole paragraphs turned from '[protagonist] didn't like that' to '[protagonist] thought that was great'. I find the whole process quite maddening, especially as I'm a mono-lingual.

Sounds like the texts I had to read for Roman History. It basically boiled down to flipping through pages and pages of footnotes and explanations of the humor, puns, and double-meanings that won't translate from Latin to English. Most of them were about passive homosexuality.

I always have a little list of novels I'd like to read, but I am always sidetracked by non-fiction books

middlemarch.