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/lit/ - Literature

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3192182 No.3192182 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: Those 5 Books that you feel others MUST read.

I'm going to show some restraint, I'm going to curb my book buying. At least until I can read down my stack or find room in the flat for a fourth bookcase, so before I stop, what are the five books Lit feels are essential.
Inb4 Any Ebook talk, I've already got one.
Inb4 HG Wells, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, or Mark Twain, Got those complete already.

>> No.3192193

>>3192182
Game of Thrones 1-5
Just kidding,

>> No.3192202

the republic by plato
metaphysics by aristotle
ethics by spinoza
critique of pure reason by kant
phenomenology of spirit by hegel
philosophical investigations by wittgenstein

>> No.3192224

The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Dubliners
The Iliad
Paradise Lost

I would've also said the complete works of Shakespeare but you inb4'd it.

>> No.3192228

>>3192182
no longer human

>> No.3192239

>>3192202
philosophy 101 seems a little dull for a list

>> No.3192250

Max Stirner - The Ego and Its Own
Friedrich Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals
Tom Wolfe - The Electric Koolaid Acid Test
William Gibson - Neuromancer
Aldous Huxley - Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell

>> No.3192262

Stoner
Notes From The Underground
1984
The Sorrows Of Young Werther

>> No.3192263

>>3192239
what?

>> No.3192272

>All this shit

>Fahter Goriot
>Hero of our Time
>Taras Bulba
>Black Cat/Fall of House Usher/ Poe's Collected stories
>1984

>> No.3192279

The Brothers Karamazov
Les Misérables
The Grapes of Wrath
The Count of Monte-Cristo
Anna Karenina

>> No.3192285

>>3192279
So only the shortest books then?

/lit/ sometimes makes me wish that I were unemployed so that I could just devote my life to reading.

>> No.3192287

>>3192202
>Kant
>Hegel
>Plato
Nobody really needs to read that shit.
Mine:

Schopenhauer's On the Will in Nature
Machiavelli's The Prince
García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
Stirner's The Ego and Its Own
Wittgenstein's On Certainty

I'd recommend Lautreamon's Les Chants de Maldoror. But not for everybody, since it's hard to properly understand (most surrealists understood it wrong).

>> No.3192288

>>3192262
You're missing a book.

>> No.3192298

>>3192287
>LaumtreamonT

>> No.3192300

>>3192298
>Lautreamont
Fuck, I'm retarded today.

>> No.3192310

Catcher in the Rye
Great Gatsby
Lord of the Flies
Ender's Game
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

>> No.3192313

>>3192287
>Nobody really needs to read that shit.

says the guy who preaches

>Machiavelli's The Prince
>Stirner's The Ego and Its Own

loled heartily. 8/10 if you're trolling though. you got me, you got me good.

>> No.3192315

>>3192279
Anybody of the opinion that Anna Karenina is worth seeing?
>>3192285
Personally, I think the best work of some authors is their short stories, but the longer novels allow them to flesh out their ideas more.

>> No.3192325

Trainspotting
A brave new world
Doors of perception
Solitude

>> No.3192339
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3192339

>>3192285

>> No.3192353

The Death Of Ivan Ilyich
If This Is A Man
The Truce
Crime and Punishment
In Search Of Lost Time

>> No.3192363

>>3192182
I reject your premise,
Keep buying until your place is stuffed.

>> No.3192372

>>3192325
>Trainspotting
Are you a scot?

>> No.3192377 [DELETED] 

My mom works at a preschool and has told me about this five year old kid who spends his days memorizing street maps and reading. He taught himself to read and knows literally every street in the surroundings towns and the city. Maybe he'll be a genius when he's older?

>> No.3192383

>>3192377
That or he'll be the biggest autist ever to grace /trv/ at the age of 15.

>> No.3192412

>>3192339
pls go
>>>/mu/

>> No.3192464

>>3192412
No u.
>>>/jp/

>> No.3192481
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3192481

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Punishment and Crime - Fjodor Dostojevski
1984 - George Orwell
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoj

>> No.3192488

>>3192272

>Black Cat/Fall of House Usher/ Poe's collected stories

marry me, anon?

>> No.3192490

Women & Men - McElroy
The Third Policeman - O'Brien
Mason & Dixon - Pynchon
The Naked and the Dead - Mailer
The Recognitions - Gaddis

>> No.3192520

>>3192412
We're e/llit/es, just deal with it.

There will always be a social stratification on /lit/ where everyone will look down on others for not reading what they deem high brow. If it's not pleb, it'll be roach, if it's not roach it'll be prole. Typing "pls go" and then linking to /mu/ isn't funny and just shows how truly plebeian you've become.

>> No.3192728

OP:
This is great stuff, I've added all the ones available for free online to my E-Reader,(Except for the ones I've already read or own like Les Miserables and Brothers K. of course) and I'm looking at the rest.

>>3192363
I'm already passed the point of getting rid of a chair to make room for books. Gotta draw a line.

>> No.3192747

>>3192520
please return to /mu/, an environment which i would deem much more conducive to your attitude and posting

>> No.3192763

>>3192520

No, go back to /mu/ with that shit.

>> No.3192781
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3192781

Look Homeward, Angel
A Confederacy of Dunces
Demian
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
On the Road

entry level, sure, but I find these all to be vastly important books that could ultimately better humankind if everyone took the time to interpret their messages.

>> No.3192786

>The Stranger
>Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>Infinite Jest
>1984/Brave New World(Whichever, I don't give two shits)
>Illusions by Richard Bach

Do I have taste that's worth a damn, /lit/?

>> No.3192787

>>3192182
i'm glad you asked. i have been waiting a long time for someone to ask me this question.

i will make a list which, i HOPE, will make you as glad to read as it has been to think, and even gladder perhaps than i am to write it out for you, monsieur.

1. thomas thomaston, a novel by alice chatterton, 1745.
2. sarah bernstein, a novel by brian brythwane
(all english and scots so far!!)
3. edgar igor habakkuk jonadab nehushtan, a novella by hymenaeus isaiah abraham raothgilead.
4. herodias, by adeline albert, a short epic in verse (alcaic diphodes cut in israeli stanzas)
5. puer makkedah, a collection of aphorisms and sententiae dedicated to the hindoo god, shiva and the hebrew marking shewa.

my favourite quote is from this last work, which begins:
"if you listen to the wine of your heart, you will know ancient wisdom." dr. duhkham laodicea.

mostly entry level, but still very edifying in the spiritual and algaebraikal sense, astrological and technological truths for a modern blue-collar worker.

>> No.3192808
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3192808

none. i would gear any book i recommend to the reader. i wouldn't give a chinese seven year old raised on a farm the same book i'd give a seventy year old russian war veteran dying in a frozen village.
[lit anons, i'd motion towards dune and blood meridian.]

>> No.3192828

>>3192287
Schoepnahuer's Idealism
Sitrner's Indivudualism

Man, you'd just confuse people.

>> No.3192830

>>3192786
>Decent
>lolno so quirky
>hurr am I /lit/, yet?
>not even knowing which of these is better
>Go away.

>> No.3192872

>>3192830
What did I do?

>> No.3192962

>>3192182
I feel like everyone else is going to do the Tolstoys and Dostoevskis and McCarthys and Dumases, so let's go for something a little different, eh?

1. Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass. (Technically two books, but they're often sold as a unit today.) No explanation does them justice. Just read them.
2. The Gormenghast Trilogy. (I've cheated again: you can only get this as a trilogy.) Contains literally some of the best English writing ever. Orgasmic.
3. Dune. This is the bar for all good sci-fi literature.
4. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This one deserves more than a blurb. Just get it and read it.
5. Gone with the Wind. One of the very few romances that are decent. Expand your horizons.

Uh, yeah.

>> No.3192998

Cat's Cradle
No Country For Old Men
Ishmael
Crime and Punishment
Infinite Jest

>> No.3193065

>>3192962
I've had Gormenghast for a while but I've been forbidden to read it until I find a copy of Titus Groan, going to use the library cause I feel like I'm missing out on something.
Gone With the Wind was awesome, Dune is one of the reasons I'm going to stop buying and clear some shelves from my unread bookcase,
I've actually been making good progress, but whenever you're in a situation where you're buying two or three for every one you read you're going to get them piling up.

>> No.3193099

>>3193065
>I've actually been making good progress, but whenever you're in a situation where you're buying two or three for every one you read you're going to get them piling up.

I've got the same problem. 71 books are waiting for me. And that's just the physical copies.

>> No.3193140

>>3192781
I read the first 150 pages of Look Homeward, Angel. Couldn't do it. But I love your other books. Just curious what you see in this book. I couldn't stand how the author seemed to have all this padding in his descriptions. Just seemed too verbose to me. Enlighten me.

>> No.3193171

>>3193140
This is me.

Here's my 5

Catch-22 - the funniest book I've ever read.

The Republic - This book contains so many amazing ideas and understands so much that would supposedly come long after its composition. It might be the best book, but yes it is a bit dry.

Foucoult's Pendulum I saw elsewhere in the thread, and I second its importance. Such an interesting book and it may get you thinking about the occult in a serious manner. Which is fine. Can't rely on logic all the time. It makes you boring.

The Killer Inside Me - great noir pulp fiction

Something by Faulkner. I like Go Down Moses, or The Sound and the Fury

>> No.3193228

>>3192287

>Schopenhauer's On the Will in Nature
>Machiavelli's The Prince
>Stirner's The Ego and Its Own

How the hell can you put that together. And to top that, Wittgenstein. What the fuck dude.

>> No.3193315

Antigone (get a prose translation without archaisms)
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
The Birth of Tragedy
Paris Spleen
ABC of Reading

>> No.3193365
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3193365

One Dimensional Man - Herbert Marcuse
Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord
The Capital - Karl Marx
Nationalism and Culture - Rudolf Rocker
Modern World-Systems Analysis - Immanuel Wallerstein

>> No.3193371

>>3193365
who would want to read any of those? an quick explanation of their importance to you or their supposed greatness would be nice

>> No.3193381

>>3192182


Naming and Necessity - Kripke
Sense and Reference - Frege
Principia Mathematica - Russell and Whitehead
Meaning and Necessity - Carnap
Pursuit of Truth - Quine

with the tremendous number of popular positive opinions regarding wittgenstein, i gather that none of you will be able to get through a single one of these works.

>> No.3193388

>>3193381
they may have good ideas. I read Naming and Necessity for an epistemology class. But your list is entirely devoid of a single ounce of literary chutzpah. are all so dry and boring... my girlfriend wants to read these. crazy slut

>> No.3193403

>>3193388
were you/are you a grad student of philosophy ? it doesn't seem likely that an undergraduate level phil course would teach kripke.

>> No.3193458

>>3193403
took two grad courses to earn my degree. One was on epistemology.

>> No.3193487

>>3193171
Foucault*, I believe.

>> No.3193655

>>3192250
>Max Stirner - The Ego and Its Own
mein negger

>> No.3193687

Crime and Punishment
Lolita
Dracula
Paradise Lost
Hannibal

>> No.3193689

>>3193315
>Antigone

I have officially found muh nigga on this board.

>> No.3193717

My top five Aleister Crowley books

Magic in Theory and Practice
The Confessions: An Autohagiography
Konx Om Pax
The Book of Lies
The Simon Iff stories - Crowley's version of detective stories. Surprisingly excellent.

>> No.3193719

Don Quixote
Meditations
Absalom, Absalom!
Gravity's Rainbow
The Bros K

>> No.3193749

The Dream of Eagles saga, by Jack Whyte. Or the Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik.

>> No.3193756

>>3193140
I think the way he describes the way we go through life trying to understand people, be it close family, friends, or just people in general, is so incredibly detailed and personal that it really struck me when I first read it. Also, W.O. Gant is such an incredibly saddening, complex, and ultimately hilarious character. He's probably my favorite character in any book I've read.

>> No.3193777

>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
>Catcher in the Rye
> Animal Farm
>Great Gatsby
>tbh i want to say Atlas Shrugged


i'm assuming this is traditional books and not including obligatory shakespeare, bible etc

>> No.3193780
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3193780

>>3193381
2edgy4me

>> No.3193784

>>3193756
but of course you would say that, monsieur. isn't that true? your soul needed to say those words, a prayer. it is the wine of your soul's dark winter nights, of your longing for a Cunt.

>> No.3193794

>>3193784
haha reminds me of the david spade character on the office. Everything is sex!

>> No.3193800

>>3193794
Brainfart. I meant James Spader not david spade

>> No.3193803

Slaughterhouse Five
Island
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
The Year of Living Biblically
From Hell

no fuck you from hell is a book fuck you

>> No.3193841

>>3193794
ah, you must be cool?

it's a pleasure. a rare pleasure. i am a cool dude too. i am pleased to meet you, monsieur, one dude to the another, i fuck your Cunt.

>> No.3193850

>>3193841
your making me wet. I wish I was as romantic as you.