What are the best pieces of Literature?

[Nostromo]

"The man without qualities" by Robert Musil and "Remembrance of things past" by Marcel Proust. Two truly great works of 20th century "fiction".

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
Censorship blows.

Heh, heh, heh! I was wondering why Boris Godunov wrote Moby D!ck...

Books I like a lot and have read several times:

1984 - George Orwell

At the beach - Neville Shute (generally very weak portraits of women (with one exception), otherwise very good)

A new day (at least that's what it's called in the Swedish translation) - Ira Levin

Kallocain - Karin Boye (Swedish author; the book was written before Orwell's 1984 and has a similar theme)

All are books with a gloomy perception about the future of man kind (only Levin's book has a happy ending). So, I'm a pessimist... All I need right now is that Sweden is eliminated against Senegal tomorrow...

Carolus

[JohnIII]

Originally posted by El Awrence
I tried this one last summer, I couldn't manage to get through it. Too bloody dense. I loved the imagery and what not, but it was too dense for my liking.

HERETIC!!

It is a masterpiece of controlled violence and vivd imagery. The scene with the Indians attacking the Kid and the mercenaries he has joined is absolutely fantastic.

[DarkCloud]

Scarlet Letter- worst by far... although Hawthorne's supernatural short stories are good, Skarlet letter """"ed

As for the best?
I don't know- I think that Catcher in the Rye was well structred, but I hated the book... As for One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest, well structured, but not one of the best books.

I would reccomend my favorites- JRR Tolkien in the Hobbit... and Robert Jordan's fantasy series... The first 4 books make you hate the main characters, but by book 5, they start becoming likeable.. and throught the series, the plot is amazing!

[JohnIII]

I'm not willing to read through four Robert Jordan novels to get to a good bit.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I'll pick Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy-

"Cider with Rosie" (Boy grows up in West Country and tries to get laid)

"As I walked out one Midsummer Morning" (Boy wanders around Spain trying to get laid)

"A moment of war" (Boy fights in Spanish Civil War and tries to get laid).

Ignore my flippancy- they're great books.

[Buck Birdseed]

Literature-literature-Literature? Er, I vaguely liked Don Juan by Lord Byron.

Dislike: Anything by Virginia Woolf.

[Kropotkin]

Best:
Tons of good litterature of cource. The more the better. One fly don't make a summer and one good book is and shouldn't be enough.

Worst:
All forms of recent fantasy.

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Sava
I read that Doom book and I enjoyed it ... I misinterpreted Imran's comment as being elitist.

Book? There are four of them. You need to read the forth to really appreciate the series on a whole 'nother level. The forth book finally explains what the war is all about.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
How wrong you are. Literature gives insight into the human condition. Clancy, Crichton and Koontz are simply entertainment.

So what part of the human condition have you missed such that you need to read about it?


Boris,

I like your definition. Shakespeares plays, for example, are as entertaining today as they must have been when they were written.

[Traianvs]

well, a very good book i've read recently is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.. in english of course, some books just can't be translated i think...

anyway it's extremely hilarious (litterature doesn't necessarily have to be 'serious') and it's definately worth it.

i got myself a whole list of classics but well, i'd say anything from Marquez is very good!

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Sava
My point is that "great" literature doesn't give any better insight than the incoherent ramblings of a bum on heroin.

I wouldn't know--I don't hang around incoherent rambling bums on heroin.

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Sorry, Zcrib, but as reader of Crichton, I have to say that if that is all you think of Crichton, you don't know Crichton.

You might be right. I've read Andromeda Strain--which is great fiction but not literature, Sphere and is it Timescape [?], both of which started out as great fiction but ended poorly, and I've seen movies based upon his works. He's repeatedly demonstrated his facility with projecting scientific possibilities but I've not yet seen any demonstration of any extraordinary insights into humanity.

Originally posted by SpencerH
So what part of the human condition have you missed such that you need to read about it?

F'instance, I came across 1984 while I was still in high school. It clued me into the concepts of double speak and double think. They exist today, both in Washington D.C. and in real life. Later on, I came across Orwell's Keep the Apidistra Flying, where I met a character who loathed money--a personality type I had never met in real life. Currently I'm reading Bellamy's Looking Backwards. Written in 1888, it explains why Socialism is the utopian society that human nature will naturally lead to. I'm not buying into Bellamy's thesis because IMO he's underestimated human greed and has overestimated human beneficience--but it's interesting seeing his thought processes work.

[SpencerH]

So 1984 is literature because you learned that governments (can) deliberately lie. You could have learned the same from a Tom Clancy novel that you may not define as literature. Isnt that doublethink?

[Panag]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
(psst...Catcher IN the Rye. )

hi ,

it was 02:30 , ......

thanks

have a nice day

[Imran Siddiqui]

Go with Terry Pratchett and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though many will argue that it isn't really literature.

Read em . Good fiction.

So 1984 is literature because you learned that governments (can) deliberately lie.

Actually that isn't the reason. 1984 includes some really nice stuff about the thinking of a man trying to hide from a massive government. His paranoia and covering his tracks.