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/lit/ - Literature

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533795 No.533795 [Reply] [Original]

What are some books that you have NOT read and feel you're really missing something, but just never come around to read it?

+1 if you actually own it and you feel like it's looking at you every time you see it.

Pic related. One of mine.

>> No.533804

The Brothers Karamazov
The Sound and the Fury

>> No.533820

pudd'nhead wilson

>> No.533823

The Holy Bible

>> No.533822

OP here, I'll name some of mine.

Dante's Divine Comedy
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
Everything by Tolstoi
Sartre's Being and Nothingness

>> No.533840

basically everything that already has been or will be mentioned in this thread

>> No.533841

>>533822
You should knock out Anna K or something. Tolstoy is really easy to read. His stuff is just long.

>> No.533843
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533843

Infinite Jest

>> No.533849

>>533843
It makes me cry every time somebody says they'd like to read IJ, but can't get around to it. It's so unbelievably good.

>> No.533850

>>533849
I can get around to it, but I don't.

>> No.533855

Sitting in my house: Don Quixote, The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, and at least trying to spend time with Finnegan's Wake.

I'd love to take on that same book, OP.

>> No.533862

Over 60,000 books are published every year in the United States alone.

you'd never know it from this board

>> No.533863

>>533862

>Over 60,000 books are published every year in the United States alone

Of which 59,999.9 are shit.

>> No.533865

>>533862
Yeah and about 59,845 of them are utter shit.

>> No.533870

>>533863
/lit/ does not talk about those .1 good ones

>> No.533871

tale of genji

I'LL GET TO YOU EVENTUALLY

>> No.533876

There are very few books enough of us have read to have sustained conversations about.

>> No.533877

Slaughterhouse-Five

>> No.533890

>>533870

I don't think I've even read anything more recent than Harry Potter 4...

I rarely take the risk of reading a book that isn't at least 10 years old, or you're about certain to fall on these 59,999.9 books.

Just ten years is enough to filter out 9 tenth of the shit, it makes book-selection much easier.

Did you read a good book from, say, 2009?

>> No.533903

>>533877

It takes about 2 days to finish that one.

>> No.533989

"What are some books that you have NOT read and feel you're really missing something"

>>533795

i think maybe the feeling never goes away no matter how much you read

>> No.534022
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534022

>>533989

>> No.534026

>>533890

Rawi Hage's Cockroach

>> No.534053
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534053

This is sitting in the queue along with the aforementioned Ulysses, The Bible, and Moby Dick.

I did finish The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Metamorphoses, The Golden Ass, Plutarch's Lives, The Jugurthine War, and Caesar's Gallic War this winter, but it barely dented the to-read pile. This is why I never read anything twice.

>> No.534055

>>534026

Why are every talented Quebecer writers foreigners?

>> No.534086

>>534055
Réjean Ducharme, Marie-Claire Blais, Germaine Guevremont, Felix Leclerc, Louis Hemon, Emile Nelligan, Gaston Miron...

>> No.534104

>>533795
The House of Leaves

>> No.534109

>>534053
I read Illuminatus and liked it, but the other books on your list should really come first.

>> No.534112

>>533795
House of Leaves totally

>> No.534121

Oh shit yeah, the House of Leaves is my number one!

>> No.534131

Don Quixote
Catcher In the Rye
A lot of Shakespeare
Chaucer
Moby Dick

>> No.534135

>>534109
Well, I feel like I want some kind of critical background to inform my reading of Moby Dick and Ulysses. That's the main reason I've been waiting.

I've been waiting on The Bible because I'd like to find a self-aware translation with footnotes. I don't want a translation that glosses 'Lilith' as 'Owl' is what I'm saying.

>> No.534136

Basically any book over 500 pages. I say to myself, I'll read that later when I have more time.. then I grab a 200 page book.

>> No.534145

>>534131

The Catcher in the Rye is short and easy to read... It's an afternoon book.

>> No.534165

>>534161

I have Moby Dick but I CAN'T*

>> No.534162

>>534145
I know, but I think I will totally hate it.. then again, I feel like I'm the only person who hasn't read it..

>> No.534159

>>534086

All my internets to you for not naming Michel Tremblay.

>> No.534161

I have Moby Dick but I can bring myself to read it; I read the firs few pages when I first bought it, and I have to admit that I was quite bored with it almost immediately.

Am I missing anything?

I also want to read Don Quixote, but I have a forty-something-year-old old copy, and it's been beaten to hell...my parents probably wouldn't buy me a new copy, either, and I really don't want to read a 150 year old translation that's in the public domain.

>> No.534180

>>534162
I read it one summer because I never had to read it for class and figured it was 'required reading' for life. It didn't do much for me.

>> No.534193

>>533795
HOUSE OF LEEEEAVES!

>> No.534199

House of Leaves takes a week to read, tops.

>> No.534206

>>534162

Well, there are a lot of books you will probably hate (a lot of well-received 'classics', that you will dislike in the minority), but I'd give The Catcher in the Rye a shot if you're still a teenager; if you're an adult (I mean--if you're in your 30s or 40s, or whatever), then you probably won't see much in it, and it probably won't have much of an effect on you.

tl;dr If you're in high school give a go, if you're not then you could live without it--to be honest, you could live without it even if you were in high school.

>> No.534223

>>534199
Whaaat? It took me 3-4 days you lazy, slow reader. 3 tops. 4 if you go on the net and look up a what the song means and the references.

Some of us can read more than an hour a day, fuckcunt.

>> No.534226

>>534206

Basically, what you're saying is that everyone who says "I just finished The catcher in the Rye and it was awesome" should be b&?

>> No.534235

>>534226
Catcher in the Rye encourages kids to kill Beatles!

>> No.534239

>>534223
Ah, reading speed e/lit/ism. It's how you know you're home.

>> No.534246

Paradise Lost
The Catcher in the Rye
Don Quixote
Something by Vonnegut
The Divine Comedy (I read the first twenty Cantos of Inferno and decided that I must be missing something, and that that something must be called "Italian". I ended up finding the book in its original language, saw that the prose rhymed with an ABA pattern, and stopped reading right then and there. Fuck translations... usually).

>> No.534247

>>534223
Some of us have real jobs and lives.

>> No.534249

>>534206
High School was about 6 years ago. Maybe I will read it though. It sounds like I will hate it though.

>> No.534251

>>534226
That would simplify things. Unless they read it as teenagers when it first came out and are sixty now. They're the exception.

>> No.534259

>>534249

As a work about teenage angst...it sucks; there are more sophisticated books out there that have better points to them, and less whiny, bitchy main characters too.

>> No.534263

Mein Kampf.
I bought it a while ago and still have not read it.
It's especially bad since I studies the political sicence and history.

>> No.534268

>>534239
its not elitism if you need over a week to read a few hundred pages. this is READING a BOOK. not 'how long will it take if I spend my entire lunch break to go through half a chapter'

>> No.534279

>>534263

I plan on majoring in political science. If you don't mind, could you tell me what some "essential" works are? Everyone I ask says that I should read Tocqueville's Democracy in America. I've been studying Plato's Republic (but I guess that's just political philosophy?).

Anyway, some help on that subject would be appreciated, as I'd like to study a little bit over the summer before I start college.

>> No.534286

>>534247
This is /lit/. This is not for people who go "oh, I like, totally, read a book once". This is for people who like reading. If your "reading" consists of reading a chapter or two on and off every week or so and taking a month to get through a book, then you obviously don't give a shit about reading.

We have jobs and lives. Strangely enough we can find 4 hours in a day or two to finish a book.

>> No.534295

>>534279
The Prince by Machiavelli is probably the best place to start; its basics for modern political science.

>> No.534300

>>534268

Let's say you read 6 hours a day. That's a LOT for most people.

Finishing a 500 pages novel in 3 days means that you read a stable 30 pages an hour.

I just can't reach this speed and follow the book. And I'm sure I'm not alone.

If the book is good, I even slow down even more. I spent two months on One hundred years of solitude, spending never less than 2 hours a day on it. I just kept reading back and forth all the time because it was so good.

I also take a shit ton of notes, which slows me down.

tl;dr: different people do things differently.

>> No.534302

>>534286
I'm a student with a heavy course load. All my time is spent reading - not literature, though. If I could find four hours a day to spend fiction, I'd be ecstatic. But it's just not realistic for me.

>> No.534337

Who spends 4-6 hours a day reading? Don't you guys have friends?

>> No.534346

>>534337
>friends
>/lit/

>> No.534354

>>534346

>friends
>4chan

Fixed.

>> No.534364

>>534354
Taking special cases and turning them into general ones? Nice inductive skills, you'd make a good scientist.

But yeah. I'm usually really fucking busy all the time and don't really have time to sit down and read a novel. I make up for it with language-learning and exercise though. Maybe. Probably not for you all.

>> No.534362

>>534337
NO, FAGGOT, THIS IS THE INTERNET!!!

>> No.534369

>>534337
I bet a lot of people spend something close to that reading. It's just that most of those people are reading job-related stuff, or wasting time at work. I know a ton of people who waste 4-6 hours at work reading blogs and whatnot.

>> No.534373

>>534337

I have friends and go to college, but I still read about 4 hours a day.

>> No.534418

>>534373
enjoy failing college

>> No.534430

>>534418
I have going for years, I have a pretty good GPA too.

>> No.534722

>>534418
Textbooks?

>> No.534727

>>534418

Indeed.

>> No.534743

>>534418
>Implying you actually have to study to make it through college

>> No.534750

Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
The Trial
Ulysses
Don Quixote
Moll Flanders
The Bible
House of Leaves
How We Die
The Fountainhead
Taras Bulba
Tale of Two Cities
Candide