/lit/ - Literature

26. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell.
28. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
29. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
30. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
31. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
33. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
34. His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman.
35. The Stranger by Albert Camus.
36. Various by Dr. Seuss.
37. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
38. Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
39. The Monster At The End Of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin.
40. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.
41. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
42. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick.
43. A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
44. The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
45. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.
46. Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
47. The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons.
48. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
49. The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various.
50. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

51. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
52. Odyssey by Homer.
53. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Western
54. A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin.
55. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
56. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
57. Ringworld by Larry Niven.
58. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin.
59. The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick.
60. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
61. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt.
62. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein.
63. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
64. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.
65. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.
66. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
67. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.
68. Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
69. Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi.
70. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
71. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X with Alex Haley.
72. John Dies at the End by David Wong.
73. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
74. Contact by Carl Sagan.
75. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

76. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.
77. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
78. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
79. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
80. The Stand by Stephen King.
81. The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.
82. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.
83. Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
84. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
85. Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer.
86. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.
87. Asimov's Guide to the Bible by Isaac Asimov.
88. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
89. Collapse by Jared Diamond.
90. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallave.
91. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
92. Chaos by James Gleick.
93. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
94. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
95. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime by Mark Haddon.
96. You Can Choose to Be Happy by Tom G. Stevens.
97. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler.
98. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
99. Candide by Voltaire.
100. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

why the hitchhiker's guide as number 1??

plus c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker!!

guaranteedreplies.jpg

>>1428458
fail at that you c-c-c-cunt

>no atlas shrugged

0/10

>>1428447
Wow, that is hilariously bad. Where did you find that abomination?

>>1428467
#77?

>>1428470
it's a art

interesting list ....

Whose made it? And with what criteria?

>>1428467
Actually:

>77. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

>>1428468
"LOL NEEDS MORE PRETENSE"

Not all of them are bad books.

>>1428474
Looks like books that are part of American pop culture.

Mein Kampf? Really?

Song of Ice and Fire as well as A Game of Thrones...

You do realize that one is the name of the series yeah?

This list is filled with half crap, half reasonable books, in a seemingly random order.

>>1428467
#77

but no HP Lovecraft? blasphemy

>>1428539

this.

>Calvin and Hobbes

Also, fan of sci-fi are we, OP?

>>1428546

Shit I didn't even think of that. Are we all agreed this list is terrible?

>>1428552
i vote in favor of this motion

>>1428552
The list sucks, but honestly HP Lovecraft sucks even harder.

>harry potter before to kill a mocking bird

>>1428566
u mad hipster trash?

>>1428562
>your taste
>good taste

pick one

>>1428562
you are obviously a nigger who hates racism.

>>1428573
Lovecraft is all such a waste of language. "The thing was indescribable. I will describe this indescribable thing with tons of words. Telling you all this makes me crazy. I'm crazy now."

He's iconic and set the stage for a lot of fiction that came later. He wasn't a good writer though.

>>1428587
so says the hipster who doesnt like detailed explinations or big words

>>1428587
>lovecraft not a good writer
laughinggirls.tiff

oh look it's the braindead high school crowd.

>>1428447
so are theese in order or do you just have realy weird taste?

>>1428603
oh look its the "im Superior because im claiming not to be in highschool" singularity

>>1428598
Have you even read Lovecraft? He's not about detailed explanations or big words. The things he describes are supposed to be impossible to visualize. To represent that, he uses "indescribable" "unspeakable" "unimaginable" "impossible" over and over and over again. Then the main character goes insane.

Rinse and repeat for every Lovecraft story, ever.

>>1428612
well how are you supposed to describe the octopus dragon god fish thing?

>>1428607
fucking TOLD

>>1428616

shut up bart

> 8. The Bible

>>1428616
actually, the kid is just mad.

>>1428607
>implying i need to feel superior to you retards

hurr lovecraft and racism are so cool durr

>>1428658
>>1428641
/.mfw tripfags

Where's The Grapes of Wrath?

Ender's Game at #5? Does anyone else here hate that book? The characters didn't feel believable. The universe didn't feel believable. Ending came a bit sudden, but it surprised me (in a good way) so I won't really complain about it much.

>>1428660
>implying i enjoy racism
arguing on the internet and claiming others are retarted? and if you dont want to feel superiorwhy would you try to set yourself above the braindead high school crowd instead of comenting on the OPs list and telling him how bad it is?

>>1428665
No I, Claudius either.

We can shrug with disdain together fellow anon.

A Clockwork Orange should be much, much higher on the list.

>>1428675
Really? Clockwork Orange is your biggest problem with the list? Are you 16?

>Rand is on the list
>Hitler is on the list
>Everybody Poops is on the list
>It is ranked higher than Don Quixote, War and Peace, etc.
>House of Leaves is on the list
>The Stand is just below War and Peace
>Contact by Carl Sagan
>Calvin and Hobbes is on the list
>5 of the first 7 books on the list are high school required reading
>No Pynchon
>No Joyce
>The Selfish Gene is on the list
>It ranks higher than On the Origin of Species
>Dr. Suess is on the list
>Breakfast of Champions is not on the list, but Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five are
>Sci-fi is on the list

>100 greatest books
>#1 is low-tier science fiction with humanoid aliens/humorous fiction and/or any POORLY explained technology

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

>catcher in the rye only 7th
>1984 2nd
0/10

>>1428612

I, for one, love Lovecraft's verbose writing, he's writing about things that are completely and utterly alien to humanity and the way he explains things sort of lets your imagination go wild.

>The Forever War
>Neuromancer
>Ender's Game
>Snow Crash

Good enough for me.

>>1428671
because lists like this one are obvious trols and it's more fun trolling people who like things that i don't care for.

OP you are so dumb.

>>1428728
true, but when has /lit/ ever been one to care about troll threads? usually its starts out with people staying on topic for a few posts then it starts to derail with people doing nonsense and a few people arguing.... oh... well shit

>>1428740
/lit/ has fallen for every troll thread ever posted. f

look at all the e/lit/ists

>>1428740
i agree. /lit/ takes far more skill and dextrity to troll than say /v/. i remember i trolled the fuck out of them several times around when duke nukem was out.

>>1428788
yea its easy to spot a troll but noone on /lit/ gives a damn and will still tear into whatever it is

>>1428688
>5 of the first 7 books on the list are high school required reading
really? dune is high school required reading?

>37. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

...but not Blood Meridian?

>>1428795
you didnt read dune in highschool?

>1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
obvious troll is obvious

Alright
Should I be glad, mad or indifferent that Terry Pratchett isn't on the list?

Or should I just...forget about it.

worst lists ever:
1. this

This list is stupid because it is reddit's compiled list of favorite books, based on some douchebag's analysis of book-related threads and the votes each book received.

Those guys really suck at literature.

http://www.reddit.com/r/raerth/comments/cpxkq/reddits_favourite_books/

>>1428873
Go back to your piece of shit website. No one invited you here.

>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Wait..
>1984
What
>Ender's Game
Dohoho.
>House of Leaves
Stop it.
>stoppedreadingrightthere.jpg

>>1428881
That's not nice. We're /lit/, we accept all types of people. Welcome ;)

>>1428897
/lit/ is not accepting at all. It's the crankiest of all boards.

>>1428940
I like to pretend most people on /lit/ are 60 year old literature professors.

>100 Greatest Books

>49. The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights by Various.

Since when are these books?

>>1428981
Since they became some of the most important written documents in the history of the world?

>>1428995
This is not a good answer. They are still not books.

>>1429000
Why? The Odyssey was transmitted exclusively orally for hundreds of years. Does that mean it's not a book either?

>>1429004
But it is a book now.

>>1428995
>>1429004

Who in their right mind would consider those documents books in any way? I'm not denying their importance, I'm one of the few people in the U.S. who actually appreciates the meaning of these documents, but they're in no way books.

>>1429006
If you buy it in book form. Guess what? I can buy the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights bound in book form as well.

>>1429010
But they are not literature.

>>1429009
Anyone who understands that a collection of documents sandwiched between covers and sold as one bound unit is a book.

37. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Are you fucking serious? I got to page 11 on that book and couldn't read any further. The complete lack of quotations around speech as well as its terrible run on sentences made me rage.

> He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup.

This book is the only book in my collection that I can't bring myself to read.

>>1429017
Why are they less literature than Feynman's biography, Dawkins' ranting, Darwin's discoveries, Hawking's exploration of time, or comics?

>>1429020
why are you such a pedantic faggot

>>1429010

But they are still separate documents (The Declaration and the Constitution, not the Constitution and the Bill of Rights obviously, which begs the question as to why they separated them on this list). The Odyssey is one story. I'm not sure if you're trolling or not...

>>1429021
Non-fiction isn't really literature.

>>1429020
He tries to be Hemingway with the declarative sentences and lack of commas, but forgot that Hemingway had talent.

>>1429028
>>1429020
they mad and jelly

>>1429025
Is that why we never discuss non-fiction on /lit/? Or is it why this is a list of 100 Greatest Works of Literature?

Oh, wait. Neither of those things are true.

>>1429023

Well fuck if the writing style is fucking irritating what the fuck is the point of reading the book? These sentences sound like they were written by a 7 year old child.

K I'm gonna open it to a random page and see if his writing improves any.

Page 69
>He took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and the boy took it and stood drinking.

Nope.jpg

How about I unbutton my jeans AND unzip them AND pull them down AND pull my boxers down AND you can suck my dick AND I'll blow my load in your face.

Am I a talented writer yet?

>10--Harry Potter

BAHAHAHAHAHA

>>1429028
He has talent, he just had a style change that sucks. I was okay with it for one book, but by second book it was just fucking annoying.

>>1429048
ITT we don't know shit.

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

>100 greatest books
>1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
Stopped reading here.

>>1429053

Did you read most of the examples in there? Aside from the Hemingway quote, the conjuntions are followed by commas to emphasize the statements. This author lacks the use of commas. Commas make a huge fucking difference. Without the commas it turns it into a giant run on sentence.

At least the Hemingway quote used it properly.

I said, 'Who killed him?' and he said 'I don't know who killed him, but he's dead all right,' and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights or windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was right only she was full of water."

By the sounds of the quote, it seems that the character is just coming out of whereever the fuck he was before a storm and seeing the mess and conveying the idea of "WTF SHITS EVERYWHERE, EVERYTHINGS A MESS"

Now for the Mccarthy quote again

> He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup

Sounds like a fucking grade 1 student standing at the front of the class narrating what he did over the christmas holidays.

>>1429082
I like you.

>>1429082
inb4 you learn that writing isn't always about dickflexing, it's more often about mood.

>>1429082
Let me guess: sophomore in college?

Literally judging artistic merit on comma usage.

>>1429092
Let me guess: faggot mouthbreather?

literally thinks that sentence structure doesn't affect the quality of literature

>Expect to see The Prince on this list

I did not see it.

>>1429128
I'm not going to argue for the merit of the guy's style since I've never read any of his books but the sentences you've quoted are not run-on sentences since they contain conjunctions.

>>1429142
>The Prince
>piece of shit that can't even be funny and is misinterpreted by pratically everyone

>Calvin and Hobbes better than Lolita
>Harry Potter better than Brothers Karamazov
>Declaration of Independence
>Mein Kampf

>>1429142
#76

>>1429128

Glad I could make you smile

>>1429092

Nope, Not even in college. I'm a framer and I simply read for the joy of reading.
>>1429156

>>1429088 is not me. Just someone else who agrees with me.

Ok, fine I'll let you have your little victory. They aren't technically run on sentences.

The reason I hate on this book so much is because it is the ONLY book in my collection that I haven't been able to read. I tried reading it but his style is just plain awful in my eyes.

Page 69, The Road

He took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and held it out and the boy took it and stood drinking. He lowered the bottle and got his breath and he sat in the road and he crossed his legs and drank again. Then he handed the bottle back and the man drank and screwed the cap back on and rummaged through the pack.

Does this not sound like 1st grade narration?

sage

>>1429909
Like some other guy said earlier, McCarthy tried to do the Hemingway thing but had none of Hemingway's talent. McCarthy doesn't understand that Hem's sentence structure was only one part of what made him great.

>>1430221
Leave Cormac McCarthy alone!

a lot of these books are bad, sorry op

>>1429909
If it does read that way, it's a stylistic choice. Writer's don't always write in the most balls-out, high literary way possible.

>>1430582
McCarthy always disappoints. Skip this gobbler.

>>1430221
>>1429909
Another truly awful thing McCarthy does is breaks up his narration with huge, white gaps. I think he does this to pander to a lazy audience that doesn't want to read blocks of chapters, and also to fill 90 pages with 40 pages of content.

Overrated and boring.

>>1430654
you say this about mccarthy but you don't complain about neal stephenson or william gibson being on the list...

>>1430680
Because they write pulp/trash sci-fi, and it's a given that those don't belong on any list of good literature.

>>1430691
thank you~

>>1430640
His early stuff is good. Child of God, Blood Meridian, Suttree, Outer Dark. Boarder Trilogy is pretty good too. He is in quite a slump though, yet his slump is quite popular amongst most people.

How is McCarthy getting so much hate with garbage like Orson Scott Card on this list... also fuck Jack Kerouac.

>>1430722
>also fuck Jack Kerouac

done & done B)

>>1430722
Fuck this whole list. It reads like a mentally deficient high-school student tossed a bunch of random best-sellers down his throat and shit them out into a /lit/ post.

>>1430735
>VidalYoung..jpg

>>1429082
>Implying McCarthy's the first author to eschew the use of commas for aesthetic/style.
Marquez, Saramago, Pynchon all fuck with commas and/or run-ons (often to the extreme.) Same with Faulkner in the really twisted parts of The Sound and the Fury, and the like. This isn't anything new.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! sounds excellent. I will check that out.

>>1428447
>House of Leaves

Ooooooh, you almost got me.

For people who are too dumb to not be able to tell that this guy is trolling, go die. Cancer. Seriously, 100 as Mein Kampf? You have to be retarded not to see he's trollin

>>1430778

Either that, or, as I believed when I saw it, it's a subjective list. People have opinions that differ from yours you know.

>>1430792
There is no getting around the fact that this list is objectively bad.

>>1429156

Those sentences would be called polysyndetic.

>>1430795

And who exactly decides what is objectively bad?

I was about to say that you could say that critics consider all these books bad, but after looking at the list again, they wouldn't (at least not a great deal of them). So that's it. Just learn to calm down and respect other peoples opinions. This isn't /b/

"69. Everybody Poops by Tarō Gomi."
lol'd

>>1430806
No, you don't understand. This list is an aberration - a clusterfuck of awful taste and misguided thought. That someone compiled this list, with these books, in this order, is a clear indication that a rift has opened in the universe and stupid is pouring in through that hole.

You are part of that stupid. You are an extra-universal stupid entity that has managed to sneak through a gap in the space-time continuum solely for the purpose of ruining my day. You are a blight on the world of literature, learning, and love of reading.

Since I've read 100 books at most I'm not gonna stay here and talk shit, instead I'm just gonna say
>10. Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling.
>29. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
>MYFACE

This list would be better if it were about 80 books shorter.

>>1430860

LOL you're quite the drama queen aren't you?

>>1430860
Rock on, bro. You're awesome.