Goodreads top 100

[Anonymous No.10457493]

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/13086.Goodreads_Top_100_Literary_Novels_of_All_Time

is this list good for a beginner who wants to get into seriously reading novels? should I start at the top and work my way down?

pic not related

[Anonymous No.10457540]

There are plenty of great books on there but no, you shouldn't read them in that arbitrary order. Look up the ones that interest you and read those. If you enjoy them, find more by the same author, look up related authors, find books with similar themes etc. In this way you will develop your own tastes and interests and I think would be more conducive than trying to cross off a bunch of books from an arbitrary list.

[Anonymous No.10457564]

>no homer
>no dante
>no virgil
>no shakespeare

what an awful list

[Anonymous No.10457565]

>>10457493
If you want Goodreads advice go there. This is /lit/. Take your fucking medicine and start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.10457595]

>>10457493
No.

[Anonymous No.10457611]

whenever you start doing something "seriously" it's important to understand the difference between genuinely wanting to educate yourself and wanting to appear well read.

Anybody can absentmindedly read through great books, check them off your erudition application, and then parade them around saying that you read them and how that is somehow an achievement. Genuine understanding is about depth, not volume: understanding the cultural context, reading about the author, the criticisms of the work, etc.

Great books are challenging to read, and even more so to understand, but they're so rewarding that it's justified tenfold. I'm not saying reading can't be fun, it's just that if you hop in expecting it to be easy, then you're going to be let down.

Read great books and don't trust normies' opinions about anything.

>tldr reading is srs bizness

[Anonymous No.10457668]

>>10457611
>Great books are challenging to read, and even more so to understand
>who is Joseph Heller
>who is Mark Twain
>who is William S. Burroughs
>who is David Foster Wallace
>who is Kurt Vonnegut

[Anonymous No.10457698]

>>10457668
I said great books, pleb

[Anonymous No.10457711]

>>10457698
>a great book more accessible than Finnegans Wake isn't great
Pseuds get out.

[Anonymous No.10457731]

>>10457668
You know this is an interesting point. Some things are harder and denser to read than others, but just because they are doesn’t mean they aren’t great.

For instance, I would consider Fahrenheit 451 a great book, but it is very easy to read.

I would also consider The Elements of Pure Economics a great book, but every ten pages takes me a half hour.

[Anonymous No.10457774]

>>10457611
>>10457731
i'm happy to read this honestly, it's been taking me a while to get through blood meridian and i thought i was stupid
>inb4...

[Anonymous No.10458600]

>>10457564
hahahahahahahahahaha those authors didn't write novels; VERY AMUSING anon

[Anonymous No.10458633]

>>10457493
That list is okay, I wouldn't read it in that order though.

Another anon mentioned the "checking great books off a list" situation, which is arguably worse than having never read at all: if you ever wanted to return to those works from a place of passion, you're already too familiar with it to have the same impact.

Would recommend taking a list like this, reading the blurb/general background for each book and picking out what appeals to you. You should be reading a book because something about it interests you, not because it's the next stepping stone on the path to being "well-read".

That list has so much filler, it'd be a bit of a chore going through the general background of all 100. Look through these instead, most of them are on that list, they're good introductory works, and aren't total shit:

>Crime & Punishment - Dostoevsky
>Lolita - Nabokov
>Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
>Catch-22 - Heller
>Don Quixote - Cervantes
>David Copperfield - Dickens
>Blood Meridian - McCarthy
>The Magic Mountain - Mann
>The Stranger - Camus

[Anonymous No.10458908]

I swear to got I'm tired of seeing 1984 everywhere I look. It's not that good.

[Anonymous No.10459291]

>>10458908
Yeah, everyone seems to think it's like the greatest fucking book ever written. It's really quite shit. Maybe I should give it more credit for effectively inventing the dystopian novel, but I'm not sure how much of an honor that it when most if not all dystopian novels are utter trash.

[Anonymous No.10459397]

>>10459291
>inventing the dystopian novel
ay blyad

[Anonymous No.10459401]

>>10459397
>wuz

[Anonymous No.10459437]

>>10457493
Why do americans love Lolita so much? I pity Nabokov. Imagine writing Ada or Ardor but being remembered for Lolita.

[Anonymous No.10459490]

>>10459437
>Ada, or Ardor
>not the immensely more funny, touching, and less pretentious Pnin

[Anonymous No.10459499]

>>10459401
top zozzle

[Anonymous No.10459508]

>>10459401
>kangz

[Anonymous No.10459524]

>>10459508
n sheit

[Anonymous No.10459530]

>>10459437
Americans are filthy fucking animals

[Anonymous No.10460589]

>>10457774
I have news for you anon

[Anonymous No.10460608]

>>10457493
>first 3 positions
>1984
>Great Gatsby
Annnd im out.
Dont get me wrong, 1984 is a decent enough books, but a half assed third act a slew of plot threads that go nowhere and ending that tries too hard puts its far from a perfect book. Its a book that has more value in its message rather than its plot, yet from a book to be best of the best it has to do both well.
Great Gatsby is just garbage, seems like a joke pick. Im not even sure anyboody outside of US reads it, in my country nobody i ever meet ever heard of it even among my friends who read as much as me.

[Anonymous No.10460615]

>>10459530
this

[Anonymous No.10460651]

>>10457668
Burroughs' lesser known surrealistic science fiction is hard to understand though