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Must-read classic novels

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Dick Whitman, Mar 21, 2012.

  1. Yodel

    Yodel Active Member

    Reading Martin Chuzzlewit (Charles Dickens) now. When the title character lands in America, oh my gracious.

    This particular portion stood out:
    "Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe."

    Good to know things have changed.
     
  2. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    Read "Blackberry Winter," by Robert Penn Warren, a highlight of my freshman year survey American Lit class.
     
  3. TrooperBari

    TrooperBari Well-Known Member

    You`re not kidding -- that book was a killer. I can`t even see Heathcliff the Cat anymore without grinding my teeth.
     
  4. Yodel

    Yodel Active Member

    "Noli me Tangere" (The Social Cancer) by Jose Rizal is an interesting book if you're interested in world literature. I see some "Hunchback of Notre Dame" in it. Rizal was a revolutionary hero for the Philippines. His works got him executed but inspired the revolution from Spain (I know less than I should about that, but I've been to Rizal Park, where he suffered in exile before his execution). It's interesting to me.
     
  5. Lieslntx

    Lieslntx Active Member

    I think I mentioned it already on this thread, but As I Lay Dying is one of my all-time favorites.
     
  6. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member


    A classic segment, which has gained renewed notoriority in these trying times . . .
     
  7. murphyc

    murphyc Well-Known Member

    Don't know that it would fit exactly into the heading of classic novel, but I'll go ahead anyway and nominate "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig. The follow-up novel "Lila" was also outstanding.
     
  8. clintrichardson

    clintrichardson Active Member

    V, by Thomas Pynchon. It may sound like an asshole move for a writer to pull the "incomprehensible, just like life" card. But he deals it well.

    Or if not V, the more comprehensible Crying of Lot 49.
     
  9. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    I quote this extremely late, but this the one book I remember my sophomore high school English class - almost as a whole - devoured. Great quick read, which gets more fun the more you know about the Russian Revolution.
     
  10. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Gravity's Rainbow may be the most difficult book I have ever gotten through, yet kept reading because I had the nagging feeling throughout that there was a genius (not a pretension) at work that was beyond my abilities.
     
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