Compulsory reading

[BookWyrm]

Macbeth - Shakespeare
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Le Morte D'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory
The Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
The Odyssey - Homer
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Life of Pie - Yann Martel
Death on the Nile (or any Hercule Poirot) - Agatha Christie
It - Stephen King
The Star Rover - Jack London
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (though this isn't a personal favorite for me)
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Old Man & the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
The Once & Future King - T.H. White
Of Mice & Men - John Steinbeck


I know some of the works in this list are not universally considered classics, but for them, the Book of the New Sun for instance, I find that the work is justified by the unreliable narrator that Wolfe writes with, which can teach you to live observantly, and the allegory to Apollo and Jesus (though the I would consider it a classic simply because of the incredible intelligence it takes to write a series like this). Wolfe even touches upon almost every category I can think of: art, history, warfare, love, revenge, betrayal, slavery, religion, space travel, time travel, incest, superstition, prostitution, civil rights, magic, predestination, greed, politics, and science.

[Dumas]

Lord Dunsany's [i]The Gods of Pegana[/i] is something I highly recommend to any fantasy fan, perhaps even more than [i]The King of Elfland's Daughter[/i]. It's a little like the Silmarillion, but not as dry.

Suetonius's [i]Lives of the Caesars[/i] or [i]The Twelve Caesars[/i] (I've seen both titles) are (mostly) not fiction, but worth a plug. It's the ancient equivalent of having Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, and Ari Fleischer cowrite a biography of George W. Bush. I would love to do an American version, but the first dozen have been written to death and doing the latest dozen might leave me open to libel suits.

If you want a way to get into classical mythology, I recommend Hesiod's [i]Theogony[/i] or Ovid's [i]Metamorphoses.[/i] Granted, both leave out major segments of the mythology (The Labours of Heracles springs to mind off hand, and I think the Golden Fleece and most of Troy as well), but they are good starting points. Appolonius of Rhodes wrote a good [i]Argonautica[/i], but I'm not entirely sure on a good source for Heracles.

For Norse mythology, I'd probably start with Snorri Sturlson's Prose Edda. And perhaps the Saga of the Volsungs. Why, no, I'm not a snobbish prick who values primary or near-primary sources too highly.

Elsewhere, Beowulf, the Poem of the Cid, and the Song of Roland give a good view of medieval stuff. Tack on the Decameron for something lighter.

My favourite non-SFF works from the 19th century and later have already been mentioned except for Le Fanu's [i]Carmilla,[/i] the original hot lesbian vampire.

[BookWyrm]

[quote name='Morcant' post='1717756' date='Mar 12 2009, 18.37']Lord Dunsany's [b]The King of Elfland's Daughter [/b] contains some of the most beautiful writing I have ever seen in the fantasy genre (and elsewhere.)[/quote]

I thought it was a little bold to say Dunsany is a classic, but Dumas' post has compelled me to say that I agree with the both of you. I think everyone should at least try Dunsany, his writing is a peerless example of beauty.

[Jaqen the FatManderly]

[quote name='MinDonner' post='1717303' date='Mar 12 2009, 12.55']Alice through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)[/quote]
[b]Carroll [/b]deserves a second, at least, especially when the objective is literacy.

In a related vein, [b]Chesterton's [/b][i]The Man Who Was Thursday[/i] is one of his lighter reads, and may appeal to a SFF crowd.

[u]Children's or young adult literature goes a long, long way to being well-read.[/u] For a proper understanding of Britain, one must read both [b]Robert Louis Stevenson[/b] and [b]Rudyard Kipling[/b]. For the US & Canada, [b]James Fenimore Cooper [/b]and (less so) [b]Laura Ingles Wilder[/b] and (still less so) [b]Lucy Maud Montgomery[/b]. Grimm's Fairy Tales for everyone; for England, Jack and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant Killer; for America, Washington Irving. [i]The Adventures of Pinocchio[/i], by Carlo Collodi.

It's often helpful to read contemporaries together: so [b]Melville [/b]with [b]Hawthorne [/b]and [b]Longfellow[/b]. Regionalism plays a role, here, too: you can't go to New England and claim to be literate without reading those three.

I'm trying to think of what else separates those who are basically well-read from those who aren't... [b]Edgar Allan Poe[/b], for sure. Hell, the guy has an NFL team named in his honor. And [i]The Tell-Tale Heart[/i], [i]The Raven[/i], [i]The Cask of Amontillado[/i] -- mostly those three, I guess -- commonly come up in (my) conversation. O. Henry isn't nearly as present. I think one can pretty easily get by without reading Milton. It would be helpful, but no one else will have read him.

[quote]I hate Dickens and Hardy so I won't recommend them, but others might...[/quote]
There's something about Hardy that just doesn't do it for me. Dickens varies: [i]A Tale of Two Cities [/i]is pretty weak, [i]Oliver Twist[/i] ... well, I probably read it too old, but [i]Pickwick Papers[/i] is phenomenal, and I've heard good things about some of his others.

[Gigei]

Pretty good lists but for non-Western reads, you cannot possibly skip:

The Tale of Genji - BUT this is very hard to read for modern readers. Our tastes don't really incline towards the stuff in here. I'm still a little taken aback by the "rapes."

Hung Lou Meng (aka Dream of the Red Chamber, Red Chamber Dream, A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, etc.) - soooo much more accessible and understandable to the modern reader than Genji but it its also much longer.

Well, on reflection, I cannot really rec both books to your average student but students of literature should at least read more than just Western works.

[Arwen]

[b]A Prayer for Owen Meany[/b]
John Irving

The library now keeps it in the 'classics' section.

[BrightSider]

Gone with the Wind-Margaret Mitchell (stay away from the sequels. They carry the plague)
Emma-Jane Austen
Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar. One of my absolute favorite poets of all time.
To Kill a Mockingbird-Harper Lee.
Tropic of Cancer-Henry Miller (because I just watched the book cop episode of Seinfeld tonight)

[add-on]

[quote name='Erzulie the Unruly' post='1717064' date='Mar 12 2009, 06.19']What would you consider to be compulsory reading for a civilised (please ignore contentious and culturally insensitive term) human being?

What poe[s]m[/s]ts?[/quote]
Pablo Neruda
Charles Bukowski
Anne Sexton
Sharon Olds
Czeslaw Milosz
Franz Wright
Denise Levertov
Gwendolyn Brooks


The list is very America-centric. Hopefully other boarders can fill in some blanks.

I kept it relatively contemporary for the sake of brevity, and also because you asked what you needed to read in order to be "civilized", not what you needed to read in order to be an English major.

Of those listed, Bukowski and Neruda are far and away my personal favorites. Get your hands on a collection of Neruda's love poems. Nobody does them nearly as well. For Bukowski, it's hard to go wrong, IMO, but Bone Palace Ballet is my favorite book of his.


Oh, I should also mention Khalil Gibran. The Prophet (his seminal work) isn't poetry so much as it's a collection of...parables? essays? Anyways, it's damned good, and it's all the rage with the cool kids, too.

[Spotted Dog]

I'd recommend The Stranger, Grendel, Siddhartha, and The Good Earth, though at times that was tedious. And, even though I don't think it's a classic, read Shogun: I just finished it a week ago and it was excellent. My grades in school may have taken a hit because I couldn't put it down, but it was totally worth it!

[lotuspixie]

I'm going to add some scifi books that i can still look back on as fantastic reads (and all of which i've reread, sometimes a couple times)

[u]the moon is a harsh mistress[/u], by robert heinlein. and then, if you like heinlein, read [u]starship troopers[/u]
[u]slaughterhouse five[/u] and [u]cats cradle[/u], by kurt vonnegut
[u]ender's game[/u] by orson scott card (although, the more i reread it, the less i like the underlying themes/messages, but it's still an awesome read, in my opinion)

happy reading :)

[Calavera]

I've never read War and Peace. I've never even considered reading it and much to my embarrasment I didn't even know what it was about (aside form the fact that there was probably a war in it.)
But after reading this thread I looked up a review of it and discovered that it sounds like just the kind of book I might like.

Gonna give it a shot now.

[Mme Erzulie]

Thanks for all the replies, guys. Loads of books to check out, and a few I have actually read!

[Tears of Lys]

[quote name='Eponine' post='1717550' date='Mar 12 2009, 15.26']I particularly liked the story of Job.[/quote]

His lolling about in the pile of brown Legos was truly a sight to behold. :lol: Thanks for that link, BTW, Min. (He never did quite heal up from the boils, did he?)


[quote name='Jaqen the FatManderly' post='1717991' date='Mar 12 2009, 22.55']I'm trying to think of what else separates those who are basically well-read from those who aren't... [b]Edgar Allan Poe[/b], for sure. Hell, the guy has an NFL team named in his honor. And [i]The Tell-Tale Heart[/i], [i]The Raven[/i], [i]The Cask of Amontillado[/i] -- mostly those three, I guess -- commonly come up in (my) conversation. O. Henry isn't nearly as present. I think one can pretty easily get by without reading Milton. It would be helpful, but no one else will have read him.


There's something about Hardy that just doesn't do it for me. Dickens varies: [i]A Tale of Two Cities [/i]is pretty weak, [i]Oliver Twist[/i] ... well, I probably read it too old, but [i]Pickwick Papers[/i] is phenomenal, and I've heard good things about some of his others.[/quote]

Poe should be on everyone's list. :love: I can still quote most of [i]The Raven[/i] from memory.

As for Dickens, I didn't care for [i]A Tale of Two Cities[/i] either. His weakest book, IMO. OTOH, I loved [i]Bleak House[/i] - some unforgettable characters and visual imagery to die for. I never look out at a rainy, gloomy day without thinking of Chesney Wold, the great estate of the Leicesters, with its fog and dripping trees, and the beyond-frustrating, never-ending case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce :bang: .

[i]Our Mutual Friend[/i] is another one I adore that often comes to my mind when I least expect it, particularly the passionate, murderous schoolteacher, Bradley Headstone - truly a frightening portrait of obsession that masquerades as love.

[quote name='Arwen' post='1718843' date='Mar 13 2009, 16.35'][b]A Prayer for Owen Meany[/b]
John Irving

The library now keeps it in the 'classics' section.[/quote]

ETA: Forgot to add my kudos to [i]Owen Meany.[/i] Irving's creations are strange brews of silliness and poignancy and characters worthy of Dickens.

[Eponine]

[quote name='Tears of Lys' post='1722180' date='Mar 17 2009, 10.12']His lolling about in the pile of brown Legos was truly a sight to behold. :lol: Thanks for that link, BTW, Min. (He never did quite heal up from the boils, did he?)[/quote]

I can't resist looking at things that I suspect might make me mad, but the end of this was hilarious:
[url="http://www.thebricktestament.com/epistles_of_paul/instructions_for_women/1co11_04.html"]http://www.thebricktestament.com/epistles_...n/1co11_04.html[/url]

[Tears of Lys]

Did you read the "Instructions to Wives"? - especially where it instructs the husband to give to the wife what she has the right to expect. :lol:

That site is a priceless pearl. It should go down in history and a day named in its honor.

[Eponine]

I like where Jesus is the head of the man, and man is the head of the woman.

And I'm sure no one ever thought they'd hear me say (see me type) that sentence.

I think a good tagline would be: where misogyny becomes hilarity.

[cseresz.reborn]

Kazantzakis: The Greek Passion (or Christ Recrucified)

Jean-Paul Sartre: No Exit and Three Other Plays

Andre Malraux: Man's Fate

Heinrich Heine: Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen ("Germany: A Winter's Tale")

Vasily Grossman: Life and Fate

Juan Carlos Onetti: The Shipyard

Raymond Chandler: The Little Sister

John Gross: The Oxford Book of Essays

Gyula Illyes: People of the Puszta

Cicero: Tusculan Disputations

Witold Gombrowicz: Trans-Atlantyk

Witold Gombrowicz: Diary (June 19, 2012)

The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun

[Iskaral Pust]

I'm surprised by the variation here. The titles I recognize here are all very well regarded and yet half of those were excellent while the other half were over-hyped mediocrity. I guess the phrasing of the OP points toward well-regarded recommendations rather than high quality ones. Or perhaps we're back to the wide variation in subjective taste.

If it helps at all, I'd echo the following as must reads for their quality, not just for how they are widely regarded:

As a kid:

Treasure Island - Stevenson

Lord of the Flies - Golding

The Once and Future King - White (though this one feels a little dubious now)

LOTR - Tolkien

The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas

All are still enjoyable as an adult, but partly for a certain nostalgia for how cool they used to seem.

As an adult

1984 and Animal Farm - Orwell

War & Peace - Tolstoy

Crime & Punishment - Dostoyevsky

The Odyssey - Homer

Pride & Prejudice - Austen

Hamlet and MacBeth - Shakespeare

The Life of Pi - Martel (this is a personal pick, there are plenty of contemporary analogues)

A Clockwork Orange - Burgess (this is more for use of language rather than just as yet another dystopian moral question)

There were plenty of other recs here that are very enjoyable reads but not quite must-reads, e.g. Wodehose, Wilde

For several of the recs here, like Steinbeck, Irving, Vonnegut, I think their reputation exceeds the actual quality. I've read plenty of each and they were OK but not earth-shattering. Some of the recs here were actually quite bad -- Catcher in the Rye, I'm looking at you.

Just my opinion, of course.

(At least no-one said Eat, Pray, Love)

[Myshkin]

The classic stuff:

The Idiot by Feodor Dostoevsky: Anything by Dostoevsky really, but The Idiot is the most beautiful, most devastating novel ever written. Fact.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: It's really a better place to start than War and Peace.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: This is the novel, and must be read.

The early to mid century stuff:

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann: Not much to add on what's already been said. This book will change you.

Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse: A surreal masterpiece. The best place to start with Hesse, before moving on to Magister Ludi.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: It's hard to call anything the greatest novel of the 20th century, but this one has to be mentioned in the discussion.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: C'mon, it's Zhivago.

The Trial by Franz Kafka: This is the novel where "Kafkaesque" truly came into being. After you've read it you can have some fun spotting all the characters named or called K. in some of the greatest modern novels.

Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov: The most beautiful prose you'll likely ever read. Nabokov can make you feel for characters you should despise.

The semi-modern type stuff:

V. by Thomas Pynchon: I think this is a much better place to start with Pynchon than Gravity's Rainbow.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A beautiful book, which influenced one of the most important literary movements of the century.

The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass: A truly profound commentary on the impossibility of escape.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie: My favorite Rushdie. You should read it just to find out what all the fuss is about.

Blindness by Jose Saramago: Don't let the boring movie fool you, this a gripping and profound read.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy: A heartbreaking novel about loss and family.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: Kundera is a master at his craft. This novel, as do most of his works, deals with identity, both personal and national.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: Murakami is brilliant, and this novel blew me away.

[Knez Snow]

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Considered a classic and praised even by literary snobs, but still interesting as anything else(more). Best thing i have ever read, including asoiaf. Other literary classics will bore most people to their deaths, but not this one.

Moby Dick is worth it, but i found out it is impossible for me to read it when not in very boring situation, like family vacation. Read first half few years ago and still was not enough bored to finish it.

George Orwell - 1984 and Animal farm.

Mikhail Ljermontov -A Hero of Our Time

Giovanni Boccaccio - Decameron

But anyway, if you are going to read just 1 book make it Catch 22.