Favorite books

[way74]

how do you pronounce dostevsky? ive never heard any body actually say it.

My guess is das toe yev skee, but my Russian has gotten a bit rusty over the years

[denimdestroyedmylife]

how do you pronounce dostevsky? ive never heard any body actually say it.

dust-o-YEV-ski

[viahelsinki]

that was tolstoy.

read C&P already!

and Brothers K.

oh god you're right. i got so caught on dostoyevsky, i was thinking about crime&punishment at the time and wrote that.

embarrassing.

[denimdestroyedmylife]

don't be embarassed, my brain's broken too!

[viahelsinki]

haha yeah.. at least i didn't show off my obvious brain damage by writing something like sweet valley high by dostoyevsky

[almondcrush]

sweet valley high by dostoyevsky

arguably his most personal work

[viahelsinki]

arguably his most personal work

oh yeah.

[dnarnya]

atlas shrugged

[derdankhund]

Point/Counterpoint - Huxley

Eyeless in Gaza - Huxley

The Trial - Kafka

Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche

Nearly all Dostoevsky

Gulag Archipelago - Solzhenitsyn

The Man Who Died - D.H. Lawrence

and to toss out something nice and lowbrow since this whole thread has kept things pretty highfalutin thus far...

Conan - Robert E. Howard

[Roland]

Some good recent reads

On food:

Heat - Bill Buford

Pig Perfect - Peter Kaminsky

Fiction:

Death in Venice - new Thomas Mann translation

Crying of Lot 49 (could be a fav book)

Other:

Then We Set His Hair on Fire - Phil Dusenberry

[CitySparrow]

Saikaku- short stories

Castaneda- Journey to Ixtlan

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

P.K. Dick

Douglas Adams - the Hitchikers Guide to The Galaxy Trilogy

Neil Gaiman "American Gods"

James Clavell "Shogun" - buy this book you won't regret it. This is what a samurai soap opera written by Dostoyevsky woul be like, once he got over his Christianity.

Every intellectual snob seems to list Dostoyevsky as his fave- well the guy is boring and his characters pathetic. If you kill an old lady, walk over the damn body and don't look back.

I much prefer classic Chinese novels - same moral message but more entertaining. read some Pu Songling.

Simply amasing. And it was written in the 17th century.

Tolstoy was a moralist wanker . Nabokov never did it for me. Too much self pity and an obsession with words as a means to an end. And too much god in the wrong places.

Out of the Russian bunch I have great respect for Pushkin and Chehov (that's the right way to say it, screw spelling, think Che as in Guevara and ho as in you da).

Also Bulgakov. Amazing writers. You should read them- they are available in translation online, for free.

I read too many books and just can't take serious literature anymore. You keep seeing this wanker trying really hard to impress someone with how much words mean.

Words are just bullshit.

Good books let me be free of words for a while, or at least make you laugh.

plum blossoms, where?

snow falls in clumps

among the sparrows

Issa

[prufrock]

damn. really good books. but i agree with sybaritical. theres just too many. does this include novellas? essays? ill list a few ive enjoyed:

war and peace

crime and punishment

notes from the underground

the stranger

the rebel

homage to catalonia

1984

brave new world

doors of perception

anthem

fountainhead

atlas shrugged

slaughter house 5

cats cradle

choke

for whom the bells toll

sun also rises

farewell to arms

old man and the sea

blah blah blah

great gatsby

catch-22

naked and the dead

executioners song

man in full

grapes of wrath

catcher in the rye

in cold blood

ulysses

portrait of an artist

and those are just on top of my head, so ill quit while i can. honestly, ive enjoyed just about all the books ive read. as you can tell, ive hardly had the time to read more modern works. and my list of "to reads" just keeps on getting longer and longer. damn.

you are a gentleman and a scholar. ayn rand and james joyce are my heroes.

my addition to the list, i havent gone through the rest of the posts yet - your list just blew me away:

dubliners

Fear and trembling

the crack-up

nine stories

franny and zooey

harold bloom - genius; great little snippits on his heroes.

faust

crying of lot 49, hilarious

lord of the flies.

Every intellectual snob seems to list Dostoyevsky as his fave- well the guy is boring and his characters pathetic. If you kill an old lady, walk over the damn body and don't look back.

i wouldnt agree with that. most intellectual snobs will say james joyce. haha. dostoyevsky has interesting characterization though, a tad boring but interesting. i would have walked over the damn body.

-later days.

[CitySparrow]

I had a chance to walk over the body. Thank uncle sam for that.

And you know who understands human nature much better? certainly not christians and not Dostoyevskiy.

Buddhists. The thing about killing, you suddenly understand just how fragile YOU and YOUR LOVED ones are. I had no regrets about killing. But you certainly will never have innocent days in your life again.

A killer is looking out for killers that are coming for him- I can usually tell by the eyes - and they can tell me too.

As far as Joyce. This motherwanker wanted to write a book thick enough that the title could be writeen on the spine horisontally.

And he did. It's called Ulysses.

This was told by my professor in lit class, I never bothered to look up the source for the quote, as to me the self-assured smugness of the writer is self-evident.

[prufrock]

As far as Joyce. This motherwanker wanted to write a book thick enough that the title could be writeen on the spine horisontally.

And he did. It's called Ulysses.

Too true and it all took place on one day.

i think it would apply to war and peace too. did tolstoy really need to write that much? i enjoy short novels myself. its amazing how much hemingway can pack into his short stories. check out: in our time, great read.

[CitySparrow]

Hemingway brought along a revolution in writing and thinking. His influence on global culture cannot be overestimated. What we see in movies today- and even the articles in pop magazines- have directly been influenced by his writing.

But all of "the classic" writers made an impact of some sort or other. Hemingway was influenced by Tolstoy. At least he didn't love Tolstoy, praise the Muse. Here's what he had to say:

"War and Peace is the best book I know, but imagine what a book it would have been if Turgenev had written it."

We are sliding into lit theory.

I'm gonna go read some fantasy by King, I'm done being all smart for the day.

[dnarnya]

you are a gentleman and a scholar. ayn rand and james joyce are my heroes.

my addition to the list, i havent gone through the rest of the posts yet - your list just blew me away:

dubliners

Fear and trembling

the crack-up

nine stories

franny and zooey

harold bloom - genius; great little snippits on his heroes.

faust

crying of lot 49, hilarious

lord of the flies.

Wow! Someone else likes Ayn Rand too? Her philosophy isn't the most popular with intellectuals and college professors now a days... but, who said a phd makes you smart?

[faust]

how do you pronounce dostevsky? ive never heard any body actually say it.

If you want to pronounce it properly it's "do-sta-yev-ski-y" , last syllable has a strong "y" (like "Y" sound in "Yemen") at the end, as opposed to "ski" the way english-speaking people pronounce it.

Some good lists here, very impressive

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig

The Fall - Camus

The Little Prince - st. Exupery

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Bach

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Thompson

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - Joyce

Mao II - Don Delillo

Siddhartha - Hesse

Choke - Pahlaunik

Notes from the Underground - Dostoevskiy

Immortality - Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Kundera

Lolita - Nabokov

Doctor Zhivago - Pasternak

1984 - Orwell

There are many more, which I can't think of right now.

[faust]

that was tolstoy.

read C&P already!

and Brothers K.

Hey, looks like you are a big Dostoevskiy fan. I think you should read "Problems of Dostoyevskiy's Art" by Bakhtin - it will blow your mind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakhtin

[lil brown brother]

The Last Gentleman Adventurer - Edward Beauclerk Maurice

LOTR Trilogy, The Hobbit - Tolkien

Lenin for Beginners, Mao for beginners, Marx for beginners ..... shit taught me a lot

[prufrock]

me talk pretty one day - david sedaris

funny as hell.

[girlwonder]

in no particular order:

catch-22 - heller

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - adams

the unbearable lightness of being - kundera

the delta of venus - nin

franny and zooey - salinger

scoop - waugh

the odyssey - homer

lolita - nabokov

women - bukowski

post office - bukowski

kafka on the shore - murakami

a brave new world - huxley

thus spoke zarathustra - nietzsche

the outsider - camus

i'm sure there are plenty others but i can't think right now.. when i need to make a list, i can never think of one.

i need new books to read.

[lil brown brother]

i'm sure there are plenty others but i can't think right now.. when i need to make a list, i can never think of one.

i need new books to read.

me too..........

[red]

in no particular order:

catch-22 - heller

the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - adams

the unbearable lightness of being - kundera

the delta of venus - nin

franny and zooey - salinger

scoop - waugh

the odyssey - homer

lolita - nabokov

women - bukowski

post office - bukowski

kafka on the shore - murakami

a brave new world - huxley

thus spoke zarathustra - nietzsche

the outsider - camus

i'm sure there are plenty others but i can't think right now.. when i need to make a list, i can never think of one.

i need new books to read.

really? i just cant seem to stop. whenever i read one book, i find like 5 more i want to read.

[viv1984viv]

Wow red, well read, well read red!

War and Peace goes at the top of my list too,

I just cant break ullyses, find the first pages just too much,

dubliners, great.

Camus

Houllebecq

Bourdieu

B E Ellis

Loita, by Nabakov blew me away too

JGBallard

and a load of Contempory Art theory for my course

Descartes and JSMill too, left such an impression on me...

Tolstoy tops though, im looking forward to reading Ivan Ilyich and his Art essays this summer.

[prufrock]

Tolstoy tops though, im looking forward to reading Ivan Ilyich and his Art essays this summer.

you should read this essay:

Baudelaire - modernity and flaneur

baudelaire's essay on modern art is interesting.

other esaymust reads:

Orwell - Politics and the English Language

scott fitzgerald - the crack up

[viv1984viv]

Yeah I keep meaning to get round to Baudelaire but just never do, jeans are a question of money, books are a question of time, and the lists of must haves are allways accelarating away to the unattainable.

Guess we're all eflaneurs in our denim obsessed mileu,

thanks for the suggestion, another one for amazon wish list!

[viv1984viv]

prufock, fancy giving me link to the book that baudelaire essay is in, I cant find it in amazon, im guessing it could well be amongst a collection of his essays...

[ryandenim]

Infinite Jest-- David Foster Wallace

My Life in Heavy Metal-- Steve Almond

War With the Newts-- Karl Capek

Stranger Things Happen-- Kelly Link

[girlwonder]

really? i just cant seem to stop. whenever i read one book, i find like 5 more i want to read.

yeah, i mean.. once i start reading i can't stop. but i'm quite fussy as to WHAT i read and what i see in bookstores most of the time (like the best sellers and what they have lying around on the desks, not the alphabetical-order-go-look-for-yourself kind) are shite, or what i consider to be ..literature that should be avoided, so i need book recommendations. anyone?

[prufrock]

the essay is called "the painter of modern life"

mind you, modernity is a different concept to baudelaire, modern when he lived. but he does make some great points such as the homme-enfant "man-child." really some good writing, dense - but good.

here is a link:http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/coupe/wk1/baudelaire.pdf