10 Favorite NOVELS?

[lizard]

haha

btw I agree with you about translations. I always have it in the back of my mind, "are these nuances what the author intended?"

 

[Dick Sirloin]

Oh man tough subject, since I like both mainstream, underground mainstream and some classics. I'll give it a go, in no particular order.

J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings
Albert Camus - La Peste (The Plague)
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Guy Gavriel Kay - A Song for Arbonne
Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana
Jean-Paul Sartre - La Nausée (Nausea)
Umberto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco - The Name of the Rose
Tad Williams - War of the Flowers
Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of Night)

I need to read some Eco. And yeah, I've always wondered whether to pick up "Foucault's Pendulum" or "The Name of the Rose" first. FP, from its description, appears more interesting to me.

 

[lizard]

I don't particularly like books or music that require "work."

yeah, I'm shallow.

 

[lurch70]

that's another one I have here ... Name of the Rose got lumped into similar reviews with DaVinci Code.

heard that in the 80's, The Name of the Rose was the book used most on coffee tables to impress friends with how literate you are ... supposedell the first 100 pages are so heavy and complex that Eco wrote them this way to weed out casual readers ... then after the first 100 pages the real payoff of the book starts.

 

[Crimson Velvet]

btw I agree with you about translations. I always have it in the back of my mind, "are these nuances what the author intended?"

I read a translation of Harry Potter ( <3 ) to my steph-daughter, and much to my horror, they translator had given hemself a certain "artistic freedom".

Dumbledore was now Humlesnurr!

(which basically translates to a "bumblebee swirl".

The wonderful flair of the british language was of course also completely driven into the mud. Some slang was attempted to make certain similarities, but to no avail... It was horrible...

 

[Dick Sirloin]

haha, I guess I prefer more mainstream books than the classics or searching some Novel Underground for supposedly better stories.

Well, you know, a great book doesn't have to be all about a "story." Fuck, if you looked at all books that way, you could probably describe ULYSSES as "Two guys walk around Dublin all day."

And yeah, it appears that I'm a literary snob. But I grew up on King, Jordan, Brooks and almost any horror/fantasy novelist you could think of. I could enjoy a good fantasy novel from time to time for escapist reasons, but all of it seems so flimsy to me now.

I'm just glad no one has listed Dan Brown or James Patterson.

 

[Dick Sirloin]

I don't particularly like books or music that require "work."

yeah, I'm shallow.

Yet you listen to Kayo Dot...

(BTW I'm seeing them tonight, even though my homie bailed on me...)

 

[lizard]

that's awesome. hopefully they'll have copies of the new CD.

take pics.

I find KD to be very enjoyable, and I really don't have to work at it...

 

[Chromatose]

1. FINNEGANS WAKE - Joyce : yes the most important literary work of all time. The Bible? pfffffffffffft. All bibles should be burned and this put in their place. I may not have finished reading it, and I may never will, but this is on a higher plane than all your pansy "books"

2-x. ehh I don't care, uhh some random picks

Carlos Castaneda - a combination of The Teachings of Don Juan and A Separate Reality, A Separate Reality is definitely the greater of the two works, but without having a book like the Teachings of Don Juan as an intro piece, the book wouldn't hold up nearly as well imo

Tom Robbins - as a top 10 contender, I would undoubtedly pick Jitterbug Perfume, maybe as a runner up I'd toss in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates just to appease the section of my mind that beast has consumed.

Heller - Catch 22

Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions


and yes, I also really like the hobbit/LOTR

 

[cthulufhtagn]

John Kennedy Toole–A Confederacy of Dunces

man that book rocks immensely

 

[Dick Sirloin]

Tom Robbins

For a second there I thought you were talking about the self-help optimist guy.

 

[Chromatose]

hahaha

you're such a douchebag

btw I have your book GR sitting on my bookshelf, will read after I'm done with White Noise, which is going along decently.

 

[cthulufhtagn]

 

[Dick Sirloin]

btw I have your book GR sitting on my bookshelf, will read after I'm done with White Noise, which is going along decently.

Cool, Delillo is a pretty good purveyor of that dense style as well.

Have you read UNDERWORLD?

 

[Chromatose]

no, White Noise is my intro to Delillo, and based on the first third of the book that I've read, his writing style is a bit weak at points imo, umm, I guess it's an occasional structural word flow that I don't find too attractive, with a rushed feel, but his overall style is top notch, great themes, witty humor, Underworld is definitely on my list of things to come

 

[Dick Sirloin]

Postmodernism fucking rules.

I need something good to read for Thanksgiving break... I'm thinking some Roth or something. And I haven't read Nabokov's "Pale Fire" yet, which I should.

 

[Chromatose]

I never liked books until I discovered postmodernism



edit: ok not completely true, but mostly, in my young days I read fantasy junk

 

[dorian gray]

this thread makes me feel like beavis. ive never heard of many of these here books and i be college edumacated. well, in science. so, theres my excuse.

Dark Tower series does indeed rule but no one mentioned The Stand. the 1990 re-issue complete with bernie wrightson drawings rules my life to this day. im still waiting for Captain Trips.

 

[Dick Sirloin]

I never liked books until I discovered postmodernism



edit: ok not completely true, but mostly, in my young days I read fantasy junk

You ever noticed how Joyce basically started the modernism movement with ULYSSES and then moved onto FINNEGANS WAKE, which is probably post-post-post modernism (or something of that nature) and no one since has come close to broaching this new, secret expansion of literary consciousness? Even the most far-reaching postmodernism (i.e. NAKED LUNCH and GRAVITY'S RAINBOW) has barely scratched the surface of it.

 

[MadeInNewJersey]

Sheeeit, I don't think I can even remember 10 books I've read.

LOTR - Tolkien
Hobbit - Tolkien
Sword of Shannara series - Terry Brooks
Hitchhiker's Guide series - Douglas Adams
Arc Light - Eric Harry
The Stand - Stephen King
IT - Stephen King
Dragonlance Chronicles (original trilogy) - Hickman & Weis

Um, that's all I can remember right now.