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/lit/ - Literature

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3370150 No.3370150 [Reply] [Original]

I always get the best recommendations from the top ten lists here. Can we get another thread going?

1. Good Omens- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimen
2. Catch-22- Joseph Heller
3. Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
4. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas- Hunter S. Thompson
5. The Plague- Albert Camus
6. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
7. The Big Sleep- Raymond Chandler
8. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil- John Berendt
9. Fight Club- Chuck Palahniuk
10. Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte

I'd really like to find something with the same humor as Good Omens.

>> No.3370169

Nation, by Terry Pratchett,
... you know what, just the rest of his canon, but especially Nation, much of the humor of Good Omens was done in the style of Pratchett.
Les Miserables,
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler
Neal Stephenson,
Jules Verne,
and of course, Kurt Vonnegut, starting with Cat's Cradle and Timequake, and ending with Breakfast of Champions, With Slaughter-house 5 and Mother Night in the middle

>> No.3370184

Solanin by Inio Asano
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Othello by William Shakespeare
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

>> No.3370195

What the fuck is Good Omens? It sounds awful

>> No.3370204

cobbled together

The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Life: A User's Manual - Georges Perec
Carpenter's Gothic - William Gaddis
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Chilly Scenes of Winter - Ann Beattie
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Night Soul and Other Stories - Joseph McElroy

>> No.3370220 [DELETED] 

Thank you.
I've read quite a bit of Palahiuk, but not Lullaby. I'll check it out tomorrow when I go and get Nation. I tried reading Vonnegut back in high school, but I should give him another chance.

>> No.3370226

>>3370169
Thank you.
I've read quite a bit of Palahiuk, but not Lullaby. I'll check it out tomorrow when I go and get Nation. I tried reading Vonnegut back in high school, but I should give him another chance.

>> No.3370233

>>3370169

Is there a reason why Breakfast goes last?
I'm reading through his stuff. I'm on Breakfast right now, but I've only read Cradle. Will this somehow impede my understanding or enjoyment?

>> No.3370236

>>3370169
Why is Les Miserables stuck in that list?

>> No.3370267

>>3370236
To match Anna Karenina, I suggested another dramatic doorstopper, I'm not saying they're comparable to each other, It was just the first long classic that came to mind

>> No.3370270

>>3370150

You have the most plebeian taste.
Ever.

>> No.3370273

>>3370233
No it won't impede understanding or enjoyment, but there's a sense of finality to Breakfast. It makes a great ending novel. Besides, there's a pervasive problem with Vonnegut, people often read Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions and overlook the others, which is frustrating. You can read them in any order, and skip some of them if you like, although I would make sure to read Mother Night and Bluebeard, even though they're not really humor ones. They're good.

>> No.3370276

>>3370270
OP here.
I know. That's partly why I need some recommendations.

>> No.3370291

>>3370273

Awesome.
I'm sure I'll be happy to read it again once I'm done. Vonnegut is fantastic.

My top ten of the last few months, in no particular order:
1. The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
2. The Bas-Lag trilogy (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council), Mieville
3. Anything by Chesterton, I can't decide which I like best
4.Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Clarke
5. Snow Crash, Stephenson
6. Ender's Game, Card
7. Kafka on the Shore, Murakami
8. American Psycho, Ellis
9. Haunted, Palahnuik
10. Railsea, Mieville

>> No.3370323
File: 3 KB, 169x163, cooleface.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3370323

The Twilight Saga

Eat Pray Love

50 Shades of Grey

A Song of Ice and Fire

The Hungry Games

>> No.3370427

1. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
2. Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
3. The Famished Road - Ben Okri
4. Wild:An Elemental Journey - Jay Griffiths
5. Animal Farm - George Orwell
6. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
7. Scar Tissue - Anthony Kiedis
8. Patriotism - Yukio Mishima
9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
10. V. - Thomas Pynchon

>>3370169
Yes, finally someone whom loves Nation too!

>> No.3370431

The Brothers Karamazov
Anton Chekhov's short stories
Jorge Luis Borges' short stories
David Foster Wallace's short stories

...I read a lot of short stories. I don't read novels so much.

>> No.3370434

Preface: I have only read 18 books in my life

1. American Psycho
2. The Stranger
3. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
4. 1984
5. The Great Gatsby
6. The Stand
7. John Dies at the End
8. A Storm of Swords
9. House of Leaves
10. American Gods

inb4 it shows

>> No.3370450

Check out Pratchett's Discworld series.

>> No.3370470

my top ten on goodreads right now is (i rerate every two months for calibration), it's in no particular order and based on personal preference heavily leaning on feels felt (which you might not share since we haven't had the same life) more than aesthetic enjoyment. like a 65/35 split.

>Eugene Onegin

>Sexing the Cherry

>Goodbye to Berlin

>Lolita

>Diary of a Superfluous Man

>Oblomov

>The Fortress of Solitude

>Neuromancer

>Inherent Vice

>Fear and Trembling

>> No.3370477

Does anyone actually like War and Peace?

>> No.3370487

1.) Catch-22
2.) The Leopard
3.) Great Gatsby
4.) A song of Ice and Fire
5.) Contact

cba

>> No.3370516

>>3370477
Capsguy

>> No.3370536

The Dream Songs - John Berryman
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Poems - W.B. Yeats
Woodcutters - Thomas Bernhard
A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick
Valis - Philip K. Dick
Hunger - Knut Hamsun
Molloy - Samuel Beckett
Rivers and Mountains - John Ashbery
Selected Poems - Gerard Manley Hopkins

>> No.3370603

top ten list is too hard, so i'll just list the last ten books that i rated 5 stars on goodreads:

Anna Karenina
The Quantum Thief
Nothing to Envy
The Scar
Burning Chrome
The Cyberiad
The Uncommon Reader
A Personal Matter
Cannery Row
Silently and Very Fast

>> No.3370605

>>3370477
wtf, why would you not like WnP? it's a great book. Pierre and Andrei are awesomely developed. I will never forget Pierre wandering around Moscow with a pistol trying to take out Napoleon

>> No.3370608

Infinite Jest
The Book of Disquiet
The Brother Karamazov
Under the Volcano
At Swim-Two-Birds
2666
The Melancholy of Resistance
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby-Dick
Runaway Horses

I feel like I've forgotten something integral, but my mind is blank.

>> No.3370616

>>3370605
Lol'd wtf

>> No.3370627

>>3370616
that shit really happens man, napoleon comes and burns moscow and pierre decides it's his mission to go solo on his ass

>> No.3370637
File: 40 KB, 400x605, so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3370637

> what the fuck did I just read

Can anybody suggest books that are similar to the hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy?
It was so strange, but so funny.

>> No.3370642

>>3370637
Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, it influenced Douglas Adams a lot.

>> No.3370685

>>3370273
>>3370291
Best way to read Vonnegut is in order. Starting with Player Piano or Sirens of Titan. His first 5 books are his best. By the time you get to Breakfast of Champions you'll be good to move on to someone else. If you really love his stuff at the point you can continue after Breakfast up to Timequake, which is nowhere as good as his early stuff.

>> No.3370706

>>3370637
Pratchett but his writing is a bit too young probably and far too hit and miss.

>> No.3370714

>>3370477
yes, I for instance absolutely loved it. Would recommend it.

>> No.3370974

Pratchett is getting a lot of love here, but what about Gaiman? Is American Gods worth a read?

>> No.3370980

>>3370974

No.

>> No.3371028

>>3370974
I liked it.

>> No.3371057

No particular order:

Fluke, or I Know Why The Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore
A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Song of Solomon by Toni Moore
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Sunset and Sawdust by Joe R. Lansdale
The Hound of The Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (or The Lost World, I love them both)

>> No.3371061

>>3370974
Yes

>> No.3371082

In no real order

1. Oblomov
2. Lord Jim
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Other Road
5. The Castle
6. Absalom, Absalom!
7. The Plague
8. Euripede's plays
9. Candide
10. Portrait of the Artist

>> No.3371087

>>3371082
On the Road* oops

>> No.3371132

These won't be in any meaningful order

Gravity's Rainbow (fuck you too)
Pale Fire
Dead Souls
Master and Margarita
The Brothers Karamazov
Catch 22
Slaughterhouse 5
Invisible Cities
The Name of the Rose
Life: A User's Manual

>> No.3371175

1. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
3. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
4. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
5. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
6. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
7. The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
8. Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town - Stephen Leacock
9. Grendel - John Gardner
10. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

>> No.3371181

>Infinite Jest - 2
>Gravity's Rainbow - 1
>Ulysses - 0

You've changed, /lit/.

>> No.3371183

>>3371175

Sounds like a part of an englit 101 course suggested reading list. Seriously, nowhere else is Crying top pynchon, for example.

>> No.3371188

>>3371181
Yeah, looks like the board got less pretentious. I'm out.

>> No.3371209

>>3371183
How does The Crying of Lot 49 compare with V.?

>> No.3371212

>>3371209

V is better, imo. Reading Crying you can see that Pynchon hasn't really got his thing down yet.

>> No.3371214

>>3371209
V. is vastly superior.

>> No.3371233

>>3370150

1. Island - Aldous Huxley
2. Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
3. The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
4. Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
5. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
6. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
7. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
8. Republic - Plato
9. The Epic of Gilgamesh - unknown
10. Ulysses - James Joyce

>> No.3371398

In no particular order:

Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
Infinite Jest - DFW
Brothers Karamazov - Dosto
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72- HST
Hamlet - Shakespeare
Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
American Psycho - BEE
Mortality - Hitchens
Howl and Other Poems - Ginsberg
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner

This also is not completely representative as this list is limited to 1 work per author.

>> No.3371431

>ctrl f "confederacy of dunces"
>phrase not found

ya'll a bunch of niggas

>> No.3371466

>>3371431
Don't blow your sphincter out of whack.

>> No.3371477

1-10. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.


.. I obviously just finished it today.

>> No.3371494

>>3371477
I don't understand?

>> No.3371522

atheist here.
If your list does not includes the bible then either you don't know a good book when you read one or you hav'nt read it.
seriously, it got it all and transmits stories in a most precise manner.

>> No.3371536

>>3371522
faggot.

>> No.3371602

kkkkkafka The Trial
The Story of an African Farm Olive Schreiner
possession - AS byatt
Gut Symmetries - Jeaneatte Winterson
As I Lay Dying - Fuckner
Labyrinths - whorehay borges
Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre
Hart of Darkness - Broseph Comrade
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrisson
The Man with a few Qualities - Man Stusil

>> No.3371754

>>3371522

Bible is boring as fuck, for the most part. There are nice stories in the old testament, but there are also pages upon pages of inventories and technical descriptions of floorplans of temples and such. In the new testament you have the same story 4 times (two of which are almost identical) etc. The book has some good touches to it, but it'd have SEVERELY needed a good editor.

>> No.3371759

1. East of Eden - Steinbeck
2. Breakfast of Champions -Vonnegut
3. House of Leaves- Danielewiski
4. Crime and Punishment -Dostoyevsky
5. Grapes of Wrath -Steinbeck
6. Slaughterhouse Five -Vonnegut
7. Don Quixote -Cervantes
8. Lullabye -Palahniuk
9.The Jew of Malta -Marlowe
10. Choke -Palahniuk

>> No.3371866

>>3371759
Choke made your top ten, but Fight Club or Invisible Monsters didn't? Choke was okay, but you can definitely see where his work started to decline

>> No.3371903

>>3370150
pleb.

>>3370169
pleb.

>>3370184
borderline pleb (stranger, siddhartha, animal farm)

>>3370204
patrician

>>3370291
faggot.

>>3370427
pleb

>>3370431
wannabe

>>3370434
you read 14/18 of these for your high school english classes

>>3370487
biggest pleb thus far

>>3370536
patrician

>>3370608
patrician (personal favorite list so far aside from book of disquiet and catcher in rye)

>>3371057
you're weird.

>> No.3371937

>>3371754

Bible is great. I find the lists and so forth hypnotic and mesmerising. Reading through the division of Canaan sections in Joshua on the bus home the other day I entered a state of semi-trance.

>> No.3371941

is there like a top ten reads that lit holds high, im new to lit, want to get more into reading, i really enjoy westerns and pre1990 books

>> No.3371954

>>3370470

And here I was, thinking nobody had any appreciation for Turgenev.
My turn.

1. Dead Souls (Gogol)
2. Woman in the Dunes (Abe)
3. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Mishima)
4. Notes from the Underground (Dostoevsky)
5. Kokoro (Soseki)
6. Against the Grain (Huysmans)
7. Heliogabalus or the Crowned Anarchist (Artaud)
8. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy)
9. Diary of a Country Priest (Bernanos)
10 . No Longer Human (Dazai)

>> No.3371955

1. The Bible
2. Divine Comedy
3. Garagantua & Pantagruel
4. Moby Dick
5. Shakespeare
6. Gogol's short stories
7. Aeschylus' plays
8. The Trial
9. The Masnavi
10. Chrretein de troyes romances.

>> No.3371958

>>3371903
Sorry, this was "Recommend Books thread" not "Have your book selections evaluated by a random page-fucker."

>> No.3371959

>>3371759
I'm curious as to why you rate East of Eden above Grapes of Wrath.

>> No.3371963

>>3371903

You're in the right place boss cos you seem to know jack shit about literature.

>> No.3371966

>>3371941
Have you read much Cormac McCarthy? I haven't read many Westerns, but I just finished Blood Meridian and it is fantastic.

>> No.3371967

>>3370323
I actually like ASOIAF!
But whatever...

1. Solaris - Lem
2. The Magic Mountain - Mann
3. The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
4. Bestario - Julio Cortázar
5. El Tunel - Ernesto Sabato
6. To the Lighthouse - Woolf
7. 2001, Space Oddyssey - Clarke
8. American Gods - Gaiman
9. ANYTHING by Chekhov
10. Taras Bulba - Gogol

>> No.3371973

Wilde - The picture of Dorian Gray
Orwell - Homage to Catalonia
Nabokov - Lolita
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Baudelaire - Fleurs du mal
Beckett - Waiting for Godot
Hesse - Siddhartha
Tao te ching (the Jonathan star, I love that book because it has a character by character chinese transliteration)
Kafka - metamorphosis
Anthony Gottlieb - The dream of reason, a history of philosophy from the greeks to the renaissance (this book got me into philosophy)
Zen flesh zen bones (collection, includes the Gateless gate and 101 zen stories)

>> No.3371974

>>3370477
It is fantastic.

>> No.3371987

>>3371974
I read it like in three months or so... but it was... nice.

>> No.3371999

>>3371866
Fight Club is rather unremarkable in my opinion...
It just seemed like a very underwhelming piece of writing with some good ideas behind it.
I should probably re-read Invisible Monsters. I was going through some tough times when I read it.. I think it affected my experience, because as far as I remember it was good, I just don't ever really think of it as one of my favorites.

>> No.3372005

>>3371959
I think the overall structure and sense of wholeness the novel manages to bring together at the end is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. GOW seems almost shallow in comparison, in my opinion

>> No.3372013

>>3371966
no but i will start there :)

>> No.3372266

Long Walk, the - Stephen King
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series - Douglas Adams
Foundation trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Watership Down - Richard Adams
Lolita - Nabokov, Vladimir
Steppenwolf - Hesse, Hermann
The Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut, Kurt
The Martian Chronicles - Bradbury, Ray
Hunger - Hamsun, Knut
Mother Night - Vonnegut, Kurt
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Cyberiad - Stanisław Lem
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

>> No.3372365

Portrait of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
1984 - George Orwell
Brave New World - Alduous Huxley
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Laughing Man - Victor Hugo
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Intentions/Soul of Man - Oscar Wilde
Justine - Marquis de Sade
Any volume of the Philisophical Dictionary - Voltaire

Not necessarily in that order.

>> No.3372644

David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Chuck Closterman - Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
Douglas Adams - the Hitchhiker's series
Tina Fey - Bossypants
Lance Manion - The Ball Washer
Stephen Colbert - I Am America
Joey Comeau - Overqualified
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume
Chelsea Hanlder - Are You there Vodka? It's Me Chelsea

>> No.3372648

>pleb here
1984-Orwell
Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut
Lolita - Nabokov
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - Feynman
>the feel when you don't have more than 5 favorites

>> No.3372677

1.Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
2. Ulysses- James Joyce
3. Zarathustra- Friedrich Nietzsche
4.War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
5. The Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka
6. Infinite Jest- DFW
7. Gravity's Rainbow- Thomas Pynchon
8. Petersburg- Andrei Bely
9. In search of lost time- Marcel Proust
10. Simulation and Simulacra- Jean Baudrillard

>> No.3372721

>>3370195

>Neil Gaiman is involved
>Awful

Get the fuck out, or shut up, or both.

>> No.3372726

>>3372721
Neil Gaiman is terrible.

>> No.3372728

>>3372648
your picks are nice, but why would you even bother posting if you can't think of more than 5?

>> No.3372737

>>3372728
Well I figured I'd still contribute. And I could post 10 but they'd just be books I liked better than some other, worse books.

>> No.3372738

The Little Prince (it might be a kid's book, but it's amazing)- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Ender's Game- Orson Scott Card
In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Catch - 22- Joseph Heller
Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Thus Spake Zarathustra- Nietzsche
Candide- Voltaire
Catch 22- Joseph Heller

>> No.3372746

>>3372726

what novels have you read to make you think that?

>> No.3372756

>>3372738

-1 catch 22

>> No.3372771

>>3370427
What the fuck? "someone whom"? What the fuck even?

>> No.3372821

>>3372738
Are you in high school? nothing wrong with those books, but if they comprise your top ten then you need to read more

>> No.3372841

Don't let anyone tell you that Good Omens is a bad book, but seriously your taste is confusing

>> No.3372863
File: 28 KB, 320x303, 4245239538_4839b902f0.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3372863

1. 1984 - George Orwell
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
3. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
4. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
5. A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin
6. Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
7. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
8. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
9. Running With the Demon - Terry Brooks
10. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

How pleb am I?

>> No.3373019

>>3372821

lol dude my favourite book is a kid's book i'm not too worried about "reading for my age" or whatever.

>> No.3373579

Bumpity

>> No.3373610

>>3372648

As with everyone who has Lolita on such a list I must wonder: have you read Nabokov's other works? Like Pale Fire? Or his short stories?

>> No.3373622

>>3372726

He is not terrible. He's not a good writer either, in the most literary sense of the word (minus sandmans maybe, in context of comics). But he's fun to read and way better throught out than most bestsellers.

>> No.3373705

1. A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
2. VALIS - Dick
3. Foucault's Pendulum - Eco
4. Dune - Herbert
5. Don Quixote - Cervantes
6. Infinite Jest - Wallace
7. Blindness - Saramago
8. The Hero With A 1,000 Faces - Campbell
9. The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
10. Darkness at Noon - Koestler

>> No.3374519

>>3373705
bump

>> No.3374569

>>3373610
It's his best book I'd say (haven't read ada and couple of others though). I can see why people would rank it above Pale Fire.

>> No.3374649

These are in no particular order.
The Broom of the System-- David Foster Wallace (My all time favorite book)
Queer -- William Burroughs
Off Season -- Jack Ketchum
Infinite Jest
Crime and Punishment
Invitation to a Beheading
The Luzhin Defense
Lolita
The Plague -- Albert Camus
Billy Budd