Novels everyone needs to read (1 Viewer)

  • Thread starter egg_
  • Start date
  • Replies 47
  • Views 4K
  • Watchers 1

egg_

nerd/hippy
Supporter
Since 1999
Joined
Nov 15, 1999
Messages
13,720
Location
Where dogs wear hats and birds fly backwards
I know there's a "top 5" thread for books at the minute, but I was thinking about this while on hols - what are the novels that everyone needs to read, books that maybe have changed the way you look at things, or yo've re-read a zillion times, or just haunted you for years

Here's a little list from me to start off with:

John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
Kurt Vonnegut - any 2 of: Slaughterhouse 5, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Breakfast of Champions, Mother Night, plus Timequake (you need to read a few to understand Kurt's buzz I think)
Franz Kafka - any book (just so you'll understand the word "Kafkaesque")
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the time of Cholera
Henry Miller - Sexus

Oh and one extra, not necessarily a great book, but sowed the seeds of my atheism when I read it at 16 - Illusions by Richard Bach
 
No one I know has ever read Richard Brautigan...
He is amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing

anyone else I could reccomend are pretty much the usual
 
Ian said:
No one I know has ever read Richard Brautigan...
He is amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing

anyone else I could reccomend are pretty much the usual
he's the guy who always gets caught behind women in bank queues who are trying to cash the shadow of a fridge :) yeah brautigan is great.

thomas pynchon is my hobby horse. he aint fucking barbara cartland but he definitely gets me off.

havent read henry miller in a while but certain passages (ahem) in his rosy cricifixion trilogy is the best, most life affirming and exhilerating writing i've ever read. thanks _egg.
 
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

n21909.jpg


And the rest of the Fighting Fantasy series
 
Still love some of those FF illustrators

Ian McCaig rocks.

A combination of Kafka / Hesse / Lovecraft / P.K. Dick / Kurt Vonnegut in my teens made me what I am today. Don't hate them.
 
Donkey OJ said:
he's the guy who always gets caught behind women in bank queues who are trying to cash the shadow of a fridge :) yeah brautigan is great.

eye thats him
 
Riders is fantastic. As is Polo, and the Man who made Husbands Jealous.

The surreal trashiness and preponderance of hoity-toity assholes is amazing.
 
ICUH8N said:
I read that Warlock one when I was 10.
.|..|[dragons, zombies].|..|

i read "the forest of doom" at around the same age. deeaaaadly stuff alright.

i can remember the first time i was actually actively enjoying reading a book (Y'know, inability to put it down and all that cool tingly stuff in your head-or is that just me?-will elaborate and compare notes on request just in case i'm defective or something like that) was the witches, so maybe dahl.

also, i'm starting the third policeman by flann o brien now just coz it was in so many of your polls, i read some criticism and stuff just there and i'm very excited about it.:D :D :D :D

since this seems to be more about "important" than "good", i'd have to say that no logo was an important book for me too. maybe that has somethng to do with my age when i read it. it might not be as good now ya dig?

Erich Fromm- the sane society

Simone de Beauvoir - the second sex

Friedrich Nietzsche - on the genealogy of morals/the gay science

Declan Kiberd - Inventing Ireland

David Lodge - Consciousness and the Novel

and for good measure

Sartre - Existentialism and Humanism

those all left their mark on me.
 
I see your Polo and I raise you Mistrals Daughter, by Judith Krantz. Possibly her finest work.
ICUH8N said:
Riders is fantastic. As is Polo, and the Man who made Husbands Jealous.

The surreal trashiness and preponderance of hoity-toity assholes is amazing.
 
I'm going to have to go with the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy again, such a good message in that story, and what a story too.

Also, I think most of the Modernist stuff is very important - Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Beckett, Faulkner (Sound and the Fury - Wow)

But at the end of the day everything goes back to Plato.
 
david said:
If you wanna get modernist, how about William Gaddis? 'The Recognitions' is awesome.

I'm talking specifically about the Modernist movement that was a reaction to WWI where artists felt it was necessary to portray the post-war landscape in the fragmentary, disorientating and bleak manner as they saw it, in exactly that way in their art, and not in the moralistic, stoic way the Romantics and the like had before. The quintessence of this movement is pretty much surmised in Eliot's 'The Wasteland'.

I know very little about William Gaddis (although I would like to know much more), but he is a modernist writer, not a Modernist.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Activity
So far there's no one here
Old Thread: Hello . There have been no replies in this thread for 365 days.
Content in this thread may no longer be relevant.
Perhaps it would be better to start a new thread instead.

21 Day Calendar

Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Mohammad Syfkhan 'I Am Kurdish' Dublin Album Launch
Bello Bar
1 Portobello Harbour, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland
Gig For Gaza w/ ØXN, Junior Brother, Pretty Happy & Mohammad Syfkhan
Vicar Street
58-59 Thomas St, The Liberties, Dublin 8, Ireland
Bloody Head, Hubert Selby Jr Infants, Creepy Future - Dublin
Anseo
18 Camden Street Lower, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, Ireland

Support thumped.com

Support thumped.com and upgrade your account

Upgrade your account now to disable all ads... If we had any... Which we don't right now.

Upgrade now

Latest threads

Latest Activity

Loading…
Back
Top