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/lit/ - Literature

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1167946 No.1167946 [Reply] [Original]

So /lit/, what are the must read books? Those classics that everone has read and you are expected to have as well. Things like 1984 and Catcher in the Rye and The odyssey.

My english teachers always went against the grain so I never really ended up reading any of them. We read The Hobbit, The Awakening (shittiest book ever), The Winter of our Discontent (another shitty book), The Good Earth, and things to that effect.

So for the sake of this thread, just assume I haven't read anything.

>> No.1167948

everyone*

my bad

>> No.1167949
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1167949

>Things like 1984 and Catcher in the Rye and The odyssey
maybe if you're still in high school....

>> No.1167956

>>1167949
My point was that I never read them in high school, and feel like I missed out on something everyone else didn't as a result.

I don't see how any of them with the exception of Catcher in the Rye is really only for high schoolers.

>> No.1167957

ok,

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading

>> No.1167975

>>1167957
Thanks, but I was hoping for a something a little more specific. I mean, a lot of these catch my interest, but this is like 500 books. I was looking for maybe five or ten recommendations.

Although I do plan to read them both, which would lit say is better, 1984 or Brave New World?

>> No.1168001

>>1167975
1984

>> No.1168003

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

If you haven't read every single one of these books, you are smaller than small time.

>> No.1168009

>>1167946
I can give 10 books that are recognized to be must reads, although they're by no means only the books to read.

1. Ulysses - James Joyce
2. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
3. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
4. Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
5. Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
6. The Stranger - Albert Camus
7. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
8. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

>> No.1168011

>>1167975

Brave New World.

>> No.1168013

>>1168011
I'd trust this opinion OP. I found 1984 boring even in high school.

>> No.1168017

Frankenstein
Lolita
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby

But please, don't focus on reading "classics" and books everyone has read. The best approach to learn and appreciate literature is to look at the authors themselves -- not necessarily putting their works in context with their lives, but seeing what works by other authors influenced them. Likewise, see which authors your favorites enjoy.

>> No.1168019

>>1168009
These are all good books, but if you read Snow Country, be aware that its English translation is shit.

>> No.1168022

>>1168013

1984 isn't boring, but it's the lesser book for a variety of reasons. If you want to read Orwell's best (that I've read to date, at least), read "Shooting an Elephant."

>> No.1168025

>>1168013
>>1168022
So why do you guys find Brave New World appealing? Strangely, I found it as boring as you seem to have 1984.

>> No.1168027

Six books I would recommend in no particular order, except maybe OHYS; such a beautiful book.

# One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
# The Outsider (Or Stranger depending on Translation) - Albert Camus
# Go Tell it on The Mountain - James Baldwin
# Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre
# War and Peace - Tolstoy
# Notes From the Underground - Dostoyevsky

>> No.1168029

>>1168009
Great novels that are must reads, yeah.

Hate Ulysses, though.

>> No.1168036

>>1168025

I think the description of how excess and pleasure were used to control a population, thereby causing that population to love the means of its subjection, was a pretty good example of forward thinking.

>> No.1168038

Books I read in high school:

Lord of the flies
Brave new world
1984
catcher in the rye
tale of two cities
of mice and men
grapes of wrath
to kill a mockingbird
my antonia (garbage)
ethan frome
A tree grows in brooklyn


umm I'm sure I'm missing quite a few, but those are the first to come to mind.

>> No.1168043

>>1168036

See, I found that idea - which, of course, the whole book revolves around - quite boring. It didn't strike me as particularly innovative or meaningful, and I guess because of that the entire novel lost its appeal.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed 1984. One of the first real books I read.

>> No.1168049

>>1168025
i never said i read it. I just meant that 1984 is a really forgettable book compared to other novels i've read.

>> No.1168050

>>1168043

Shrug. Generally speaking I think Brave New World probably contains more of theoretical interest than 1984. All the nonsense about newspeak in 1984 was evocative but deeply confused. In either case, it's not something I really feel too strongly about.

>> No.1168051

>>1168049
Sure. Cheers anyway.

>> No.1168055

>>1168017
I've read Frankenstein a few times. Love it. The author seems to get a little too wordy when unwarranted, but all in all a great book. I've read a few things by Steinbeck and found them dreadfully boring though. The Time Machine was required reading my senior year and I have to say it was the first sci fi I had ever read that I did not hate.

>> No.1168056

>>1168050
Yeah, I agree about newspeak. Generally speaking, introducing new languages into English novels doesn't go well.
In retrospect, I think Brave New World was simply too uneventful to really capture my interest when I first read it. I may re-read it at some point.

>> No.1168067

>>1168056

Oh, it wasn't even that. It was more that it started off with an interesting and perfectly reasonable observation: that is, that language is influenced by power structures and that language contributes to highly effective forms of sociopolitical control (that quote by Wittgenstein comes to mind, although it's connoting something totally different here: The limits of my language are the limits of my world). That being said, Orwell marries his concern (also evident in his essay "Politics and the English Language") with this completely unclear prescriptive standard. It's as if he thinks that language isn't constantly changing already, or as if he thinks that language is the sort of thing that could be reduced through mere syntactic modification to a structure admitting of no changes.

>> No.1168095

>>1168067
So your problem is with the real-world impracticality of implementing something like Newspeak, rather than the concept itself?

>> No.1168098

>>1168095

It's not about impracticality; it's about conceptual confusion. Also, I don't think this was simply a "neat idea" for Orwell. As evidenced in his writings on composition (and the essay on newspeak following the book in some editions), issues regarding control of language were a very deep concern for him. Insofar as that concern had to do with "conceding the battlefield," as it were, I think that concern was totally justified. Insofar as he inflated the issue from a tactical matter into a deeper, philosophical one, I think he erred.

>> No.1168100

>>1167975
We

>> No.1168104

>>1168098
Okay, no offence, but it seems like you enjoy demonstrating your verbosity even at the expense of practical communication, so to speak.

Break it down for me (and I agree with you here, so please indulge me) - what's your chief problem with newspeak?

>> No.1168118

>>1168104

I'm sorry. Let me try again.

It can only function on the assumption of an extremely impoverished general theory of language.

In other words, the idea of newspeak only makes sense if language is static, which it is not. If language isn't static, then conflating the serious concerns that motivated Orwell's development of the idea of newspeak with the flaws in the concept of newspeak itself hopelessly confuses the issue.

What are the concerns that motivated Orwell's development of the idea of newspeak? At the very least, the insight (not original to Orwell, it should be said) that language and sociopolitical power are intrinsically linked.

Better?

>> No.1168183

So what you are saying is basically this: Language is not static, therefore Orwells basic premise (connection between language and power) fails which in turn renders the concept of newspeak invalid. Hope I got it right.

>> No.1168185

>>1168118
Sorry, I was busy wrangling with class signups and other such bollocks. Thanks for your reply.

>In other words, the idea of newspeak only makes sense if language is static, which it is not.
This isn't strictly true. In the novel, the population (or whichever group you want to name here) is slowly working towards a "perfect" incarnation of the language, intended to be spoken exclusively with no deviations being tolerated. You have to remember that this is a novel considering a very unlikely socio-political scenario. I wouldn't even call this poetic license; simply the exploration of remote possibilities.
Also, this is what I meant by "practicalities". In the real world, languages evolve.

But let's assume that the language would continue to change - an idea not subscribed to in the novel. If language isn't static,
>then conflating the serious concerns that motivated Orwell's development of the idea of newspeak with the flaws in the concept of newspeak itself hopelessly confuses the issue.
So you're saying that the aforementioned flaw in combination with the whole "language = socio-political power" thing "confuses the issue." From this I'm going to take away that your main problem with the idea is that its impracticality in a real-world setting ruins the expansion of the final concept.
However, I'm not yet completely sure what you're trying to say. Personally, I see the final execution (i.e. the use of newspeak in the novel) as one and the same as Orwell's idea of language as power, so this paragraph seems kind of recursive to me. Perhaps it would help if you were even more specific ("confuses the issue" - what?).

>> No.1168190 [DELETED] 

>>1168183
I think this is his point, but it it was, I would have thought he would have agreed with me when I attempted to summarize his thoughts as

>So your problem is with the real-world impracticality of implementing something like Newspeak, rather than the concept itself?

By which I meant, keeping a language static is not really practical in real life - as he mentions in the post this quote is responding to: >>1168095

>> No.1168197 [DELETED] 

>>1168183
>>1168183
I think this is his point, but it it was, I would have thought he would have agreed with me when I attempted to summarize his thoughts as:

>>1168095

By which I meant, keeping a language static is not really practical in real life - as he mentions in:

>>1168067

>> No.1168204

>>1168183

I think this is his point, but if it was, I would have thought he would have agreed with me when I attempted to summarize his thoughts as
>>1168095

By which I meant, keeping a language static is not really practical in real life - as he mentions in
>>1168067

>> No.1168216

Sorry, I was eating lunch.

>>1168183

Not exactly. Because language is not static, Orwell's concept of newspeak (at least) obscures relations between language and power. That's rather simplified, but it's a formulation with which I'd be more comfortable.

>>1168185

>slowly working towards a "perfect" incarnation of the language, intended to be spoken exclusively with no deviations being tolerated

Right. I'm inclined to contend that this project is fundamentally incoherent. What do I mean by incoherent in this context? Well, I doubt that you could have a semantically meaningful language at all "with no deviations being tolerated." Refer to Donald Davidson's paper "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" on idiolects. That's not to say that Orwell doesn't try his damnedest to detail what such a project would look like politically, but I don't think he ever implies that the political project will fail because the project is linguistically incoherent.

>I see the final execution (i.e. the use of newspeak in the novel) as one and the same as Orwell's idea of language as power

That's fine. But I think it would be far too simplistic to say that the only way to conceive of a relationship between language and power is Orwell's way. Of course I'm not implying that this is what you're saying. Rather, the point is that there is an interesting issue here: the relationship between language and power. Orwell addresses this issue (personally, I think that the vision in 1984 is significantly stronger than that in "Politics and the English language") in what could be an interesting manner, but he ultimately only confuses the issue by introducing the concept of newspeak.

>> No.1168217

>>1167946

There are no such books; the number of quality books written is so huge that you'll always be missing some - unless you are a book worm, which you clearly aren't.

>> No.1168221

>>1168217
Well herp derp. I had no clue there were many books. I fail to see how not reading any is going to make that any less of a problem.

>> No.1168222

>>1168204

I don't disagree with you exactly.

Is newspeak impractical in real-life? Yes, of course, especially insofar as newspeak tolerates no deviations.

But this isn't the full extent of the criticism, either. The criticism is a conceptual one, that is to say, it's a matter of coherence and not simply practicality.

>> No.1168239

>>1168216
Second paragraph:
So again we come back to the "impracticality" business. I now understand that what you are arguing is that not only is the idea of a static language ("with no deviations being tolerated") is not only impractical but also fundamentally flawed as a concept and hence doomed to failure, even in the novel.

Final paragraph:
I think my understanding of these ideas is a good example of what you are trying to outline here - the obfuscation of alternative relationships between language and power. I think the confusion lies in the fact that I'm considering this topic only as Orwell portrays it in the novel (not having read anything on the subject aside from the book itself and the postscript you mentioned earlier), whereas you are fairly well-read on the subject, and would prefer the novel to do justice to the wider array of ideas.

Anyway, thanks for explaining - and for an excellent read. I've not visited /lit/ before today, but I think I'm here to stay.

>> No.1168251

>>1168009
God, I think your list made me sleepy just reading it.

Terrible.

>> No.1168255
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1168255

William Golding: Lord of the flies

L.P. Harley: THe Go-between

J.D Salinger: The catcher in the rye

Mark Haddon: The curious incident of the dog in the night-time

Alice Sebold: THe Lovely Bones

Lionel Shriver: We need to talk about kevin


BTW Do any of you guys happen to have those books in data format for me to download??

>> No.1168394

>>1168216
well my problem with your criticism is that youre forgetting the entire premise of the story in 1984.
let me recap it just so everyone is on the same page: that society's advancement is entirely frozen for the preservation of keeping big brother in power. if aspects of society are not frozen, they are strictly controlled by BB and only for the purposes of keeping the power in BB's hands.

the development of newspeak here is part of this; the people are being introduced to newspeak. yes language is a changing entity but in this book, especially at the point in Oceania's history where we tune in, newspeak is in a transitional phase. it is just being introduced to the people of oceania. so change of language is still happening; under the control of Big Brother. once newspeak fully takes root, it will be completely frozen in that state like the rest of oceania society. how? enforcement through terror, torture, propaganda, etc. like the rest of life in Oceania.

however yes, the sapir-whorf hypothesis has been at least shown to be much more limited than previously thought, this in our free society, not under the control of Big Brother.

>ctnd

>> No.1168409

>>1168394
tl;dr newspeak is part of the world of 1984 (fiction); not our current reality. so the author can do whatever the fuck he wants with the language and the people contained therein.

the point is not that this would never happen in real life because language isnt static, the point is that Big Brother would MAKE language static, whatever the means. in reality its not a once-and-done concept, there would need to be upkeep for NEWSPEAK to continue. but once the boundaries are set, it becomes easier to identify and eliminate all that stand outside the boundaries.

>> No.1168412

>>1168409
or rather as close to static as is feasable

>> No.1168433

read "as i lay dying" faulkner. "the crying of lot 49"-not a classic but good-pynchon. "candide"-voltaire

just look at books by classic well accepted authors and you'll be good. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, London, ppl like that

>> No.1168440
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1168440

>>1168255
who's this?

>> No.1168452

>>1168440
Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes"

>> No.1168455

>>1168433
'As I Lay Dying' is easier Faulkner.

Read Absalom, Absalom, after The Sound and the Fury, after reading a good introduction to him like The Unvanquished or Go Down, Moses. As I Lay Dying can come later.

>> No.1168470

>>1168455
i never liked what i saw at a cursory glance at Faulkner's other books. i had to force myself to drudge through "Light in August" But, I loved as i lay dying. one of my favorite books ever

>> No.1168478

>>1168452
Nickelodeon made a TV show of him? It must have been awful, I've never heard of it and I recognize all of those other shows.

>> No.1168482

>>1168470
Light in August was amazing imho And pretty easy reading.

>> No.1168498

>>1168455
Before I loved Faulkner, I hated him. I failed The Sound and the Fury three times before I manned up and just tried to focus. I was nearly in tears with the awesomeness of the book by the time I got to finishing it.

The same thing happened with Absalom, Absalom. I'm not saying he's an easy author, but he's a damn good one. Beyond all the thematic complexity, at least he respects the reader enough to tell a compelling story. I didn't find this with Joyce's later works.

>> No.1168505

>>1168478

They didn't make a TV show of Calvin and Hobbes; I'm guessing the people in that picture are all just childhood cartoon / comic characters from the 90's. A large majority of them just so happen to have been from Nickelodeon.

Notice how the teacher is the chick from Magic School Bus.

>> No.1168509

>>1168498
let me get this right...you read a book you didnt find appealing three times, four in all

>> No.1168535

>>1168505
miss frizzle

>> No.1168561

>>1168498

>at least he respects the reader enough to tell a compelling story. I didn't find this with Joyce's later works.

What the fuck am I reading?

Faulkner "respects" the reader by holding to convention?

>> No.1168629

>>1168561
I've always believed that telling a story was the purpose of literature, no matter how mundane that story was.

Convention? Have you even read Faulkner?

>> No.1168644

>>1168561
>I like Finnegans Wake so I'm better than you.

Fuck you.

>> No.1168694

>>1168222
so, every military on the face of the earth is impractical? the first thing they control is a recruit's vocabulary, limiting it to just barely above survival level. it is an amazing process and quite throroughly practical in turning boys into soldiers.

>> No.1168716

I never got the emotion and connection out of Joyce that I got out of Faulkner.

>> No.1168728

>>1168716
This. The latter Joyce is for the academics and critics. Faulkner is for the true reader.

Brofist.

>> No.1168738

My must read list:

The Sound And The Fury
Moby-Dick
Lolita
The Stranger
The Great Gatsby
Fathers and Sons
The Trail
Blood Meridian
War and Peace
Candide

>> No.1168743

>>1168728

Being unable to appreciate prose does not make you a true reader.

>> No.1168753

>>1168728
>This. The latter Joyce is for the academics and critics. Faulkner is for the true reader
serious amerifag shit going down ITT

>> No.1168800

>>1168743
Being an elitist prick doesn't make you smarter.

>> No.1168824

>>1168800


bro, books can be enjoyed in different ways. Haven't you ever read Lolita and fell in love with the language? Once you get acclimated to Joyce you'll probably enjoy Ulysses for what it is, too. I'm sure it took time for your critical faculties to develop to the point where you could comprehend and enjoy Faulkner.

>> No.1168825

>The Catcher in the Rye
>good

fuck you all

>> No.1168834

>>1168824
Wrong. I hate Joyce and love Faulkner. Why? Because Faulkner actually tells affecting stories. I don't make myself to be an academic and say OH SHIT HE JUST IMPLIED THEY FUCK OH WHAT AWESOME LANGUAGE DEPICTING THE SUBTLETY OF FUCKING AND FARTING

I fucking read Ulysses and can't see the deal with it. But I appreciate Faulkner and Woolf. Don't give me that bullshit that Joyce was an awesome historian with Ulysses. Joyce was great, he was a master prose stylist, but his later works were bullshit.

>> No.1168856

>>1168834
I don't like Ulysses too, but chill, bro. I think most of /lit/ doesn't really like Ulysses, although we respect its effect on the English language and literature in general.

>> No.1168875

>>1168834

You don't like books where the main focus is on aesthetics instead of narrative, that's fine. But why are you such a faggot about it? Calling yourself a "true reader", saying anyone who could dare to enjoy novels purely for prose is an "elitist". jesus fucking christ

>> No.1168921

>>1168875

>aesthetics over narrative

Seriously, I am not a native English speaker, but I am quite sure word "aesthetics" can't be used in that way; aesthetics is a branch of philosophical studies, not some word you can use to describe "nice wring".

>> No.1168928

The Awakening was a good book.

>> No.1168935

>>1168921
aesthetic also means "the impression that is left by experiencing something, as in 'the aesthetic of a room.'"

Now you know.

I didn't read the guys post, though, so I don't even know what he's talking about.

>> No.1168942

>>1168921

You clearly haven't read much literary criticism

>> No.1168968

>>1168027
the only people I know who have read War and Peace were my teachers in High School. The gifted students adviser and my physics teacher. I wouldn't call it a "required" or "must read" in any way. Though it was pretty good, in my opinion, at least.

>> No.1168972

>>1168942

Not in English; in my language, you can't use the word that way.

>> No.1168980

>>1168972
Then why are you telling us native English speakers?

>> No.1168985

>>1168980

Completely forgot Anon is US.

Anyway, it still doesn't sound right, but I'll take your word on it.

>> No.1169012

>>1168972
that's because it's an English word, not a "whatever the fuck language you speak" word

>> No.1169021

>>1168972
Protip: Learn a language before correcting a native speaker. Even then, tread cautiously.

>> No.1169030
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1169030

>>1169012

Baumgarten objects