ITT: Books you consider to be be a "must" for any serious reader. Books that, will change your life for the better, and improve with every read.
>>7937580
bible
Check out the "Books to Hang out With" passage in Baba Ram Dass' Be Here Now.
>>7937580
>Books that, will change your life for the better, and improve with every read.
You write as though you don't read.
>>7937580
>Books that, will change your life for the better, and improve with every read.
I went from having occasional back pain and random aches and shit to a powerhouse. It's easier to read and think now.
>>7937658
Thanks for the share, I'll check it out.
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead
>>7937580
What's so great about Moby Dick?
>>7937787
Lots of things
>>7937804
Such as...?
>>7937802
Is Fagles Odyssey best Odyssey?
>>7937807
Why don't you read it?
>>7937807
the comprehensive exploration of whaling, the routine, the techniques, the traditions, superstitions, culture, the likeable characters from all walks of life, from the gay head native harpooner to the mystic arab with a turban made of his own hair to the jolly stubb who puffs away at pipe all day and embraces life for whatever it brings him, for captain ahab's mythic rage, - the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down - for the whale as a truly terrifying monster, mammoth, immortal, white, seen in multiple places at once, for the adventure story in pursuit of the whale and for the metaphysical story of man's place in nature
>>7937802
Is this better than the Illiad? I ordered the Illiad last week, still fucking waiting for it!
>>7937841
The Odyssey is the sequel. Get The Aeneid too which comes after The Odyssey. Then after The Aeneid I'd suggest reading Dante.
>>7937861
I know it's the sequel, but is it a better book?
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Metamorphoses
King James Bible
Divine Comedy
1001 Nights
Don Quixote
Hamlet
King Lear
The Tempest
Shakespeare's Sonnetts
Paradise Lost
Faust
Moby Dick
Les Miserables
A Tale of Two Cities
War and Peace
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Brothers Karamazov
The Waste Land
Ulysses
The Trial
The Great Gatsby
A Farewell To Arms
The Sound and The Fury
The Waves
The Cantos
Underworld
Probably The Bible and Infinite Jest are the most important, then maybe Shakespeare's plays.
>>7937876
>Don Quixote
What's this like?
>>7937907
4chan in a book
>>7937907
Like bags of sand
Stubb was smoking weed, wasn't he?
All Melville's adoration for hemp ...
>>7937876
this is a really good list and a pretty comprehensive abbreviated and condensed canon. Good job anon.
>>7937917
Kek.
Steppenwolf
Siddhartha
The Neverending Story
Momo
Thus spoke Zarathustra
The little prince
A Short History Of Nearly Everything
>>7937658
Damnit, really wanted to read that but can't find the download/pdf anywhere.
I'm 120 pages in to my first read of Moby Dick. Good read so far, I get excited to read it on the train all day long at work.
start with the greeks
>>7937876
>The Waves
Is this Woolf's best work? I've been looking for a book written by a woman.
>>7938129
You ain't even been on the hunt yet
you ain't seen nothing yet
>>7938129
I'm reading it and I have to read it with a phone in one hand to look up all the nautical terms and outdated language
am I the only one?
>>7937787
Something about the prose is subtly amazing, Melville has an amazing dry rhythm to him
Moby Dick got me into using semicolons
>>7938134
>
Atlas Shrugged
>inb4 shitty self help books
>>7937870
Read both and make up your own mind.
>>7938134
Yes, it's her magnum opus. After its publication, she basically became the female equivalent to Joyce.
>>7938135
so I've been told. I'm reading it pretty quickly so far so I'll be there soon.
>>7938137
my copy has some really useful diagrams in the back to help out with, but I'll definitely use google once or twice every time I read it. What I find most difficult so far is that the punctuation feels really... erratic?
>>7938137
I do that too.
I have downloaded Dictionary app on my phone because I do have to look up words every now and again.
Although I don't look up things as often as I used to though and i'm only 109 pages in.
>>7938140
My bookshelf is 100% men, I just want a waft of a women's vagina.
>>7938172
Don't start with 'The Waves'. It's her best work, yes, but read 'To The Lighthouse' first.
Or better yet read Flannery O'Connor first. Woolf's prose is difficult for some readers and you might continue avoid female writers in general out of frustration over it.
>>7937861
>The Odyssey is the sequel. Get The Aeneid too which comes after The Odyssey.
This is ambiguously worded and implies that the Iliad/Odyssey and the Aeneid are sequential in a narrative sense, like together the three of them form a trilogy or something. This is obviously not the case. The Aeneid does come "after" the Odyssey in a chronological and historical sense. But aside from that, there is no sequentiality linking them.
>>7937876
this is so generic
>>7938087
And it was then that I knew I would be edgy. Read more friend your selections aren't anything to rant and rave about.
There is only one correct answer.
This side of paradise
The sun also rises
Fountain head
Brave new world
Leaves of grass
The wasteland
Gravity's rainbow
For whom the Bell tolls
Great expectations
Discourse on inequality
Frankenstein
A thousand years of solitude
N'jal's Saga
>>7938087
hesse fanboy, eh?
>>7938287
Pretty sweet bars you got there
>>7937876
The Waste Land over Leaves of Grass?
>>7938646
I don't see why one has to be chosen over the other, on the other hand though, I wouldn't even consider Leaves of Grass for a condensed canon and considered The Waste Land first as representative of modernism.
>>7938134
Mrs Dalloway is considered her best work
The Waves was reviled in her time, and is only considered a good experiment these days.
>>7938646
are you fucking kidding me?
when will the whitman meme die
>>7938646
by a wide, wide margin
>>7938744
I mean same could be said for Melville. His earlier works (Typee) were hugely popular, and he grew more experimental and less popular until Moby Dick. The rest of his oeuvre has been forgotten and only his most daring work remains in the AmLit canon
>>7937876
Why did you pick A Tale of Two Cities over Great Expectations?
>>7937580
>Moby Dick
Ok, Im not american, should i read this book????? (yes, im serious...)
>>7937812
no it's fitzgerals's iliad and lattimore's odyssey
>>7938835
I don't see how being American or not has anything to do with it. Read the book if you think it interests you.
>>7938856
Some anons told me that theres part/chapters just about the patriotism...
Evola's Ride the Tiger.
>>7938954
are you a whaler?
>>7938152
I just bought this. What's it like?
>>7937587
this is getting so old
Not memeing.
>>7937580
Whats the best edition of moby dick to read. I've read a lot of good things about this edition: http://www.bookdepository.com/Moby-Dick-or-Whale-Herman-Melville/9780520045484 But it just seems inherently wrong to read one of the greatest english language novels of all time with accompanying pictures... Part of me feels like the pictures would dilute the effect of the prose or at least supplant a good deal of their effect. The description says it has like 100 pages of illustrations. Thoughts anyone?
>>7937787
I can't describe it personally, it was really dull but never a boring read and at no point did I feel like I was forcing myself to go along.
>>7939114
>he hasnt read the bible
bet you didnt read the greeks either, eh faggot?
>>7937876
>The Count of Monte Cristo
dropped
That book was absolute shit. I don't understand how it is possible to fuck up such an interesting concept with this shit story-telling
>>7938168
If you guys don't read books in other languages you might as well; this is exactly what's it's like
>>7939638
The hunk on Cetology of rather dry, but I'll be damned the first 80 or so pages before they set off is fun.
>>7939112
Very slow and philosophical, but also quite comfortable, like sitting in an armchair listening to your favorite professor talk.
Any /lit/fag will get the feels. It's the kind of shit that sticks with you.
None. There are so many books that attaching great value to one you particularly enjoyed is pandering to your own ego.
>>7939117
In pure honesty when I read this my freshman year in high school I think it helped me understand life a little more. It taught me that fucking around and doing stupid shit was fine so long as you were making an attempt to find yourself and what you did was worth it in your eyes.
Looking back this may not be the best literature out there, but I will argue to fucking high hell that this book does instill a sense of quality that one should hold themselves to that they feel comfortable with. Kerouac did have that way to make you want to travel a bit more and accept different forms of living.
>>7939709
You're the kind of people that enjoy pissing in people's coffee.
If people want to give a bit of themselves back to others through literature then fuck it let it feed their ego a bit. It allows us as humans to gain a greater understanding of life because essentially that is what literature is Dipshit. A look into a story through the authors eyes.
You're boiling everything down into circle jerking when in reality people are trying to connect experience that they feel fulfilled them and continue to show them what these pieces of literature mean to them every time they pick it up and read it.
>>7938449
Not quite sure what you mean there buddy.
Going to have elaborate there for me to understand.
>>7938119
Check libgen, friend
>>7939709
>>therefore making lists of great books is worthless.
American education decided the same, now we have to spend the first year or two of college learning shit we should've learned in high school.
Some books are better than others.
>>7938287
Isn't it a hundred years of solitude
>>7939761
>>7939670
This is almost exactly what I thought, but the first 200 or so we're gold for me. Even the cetology chapter had an enjoyable dry wit to it. The worst was the one about the rope, and also one of the shitty boring stories that another ship told the pequod's crew.
>>7939787
>TFW the rope made my autism feel warm inside.
>>7939794
The rope was shit but there was another chapter called the monkey-rope which I really liked, it ended with some crazy philosophical musing about how were all connected and shit
>>7939596
I want to know this too.
>>7939596
Can't go wrong with wordsworth. I got it on the book depository for less than 10 euro. It has a full list of references too, at the back as opposed to the bottom of the page
>>7939596
You actually asked for the best edition sorry, I'm no expert but that one looks pretty nice. Black and white illustrations are classy enough I reckon
>>7939596
No. You want to get the Norton Critical Edition (second edition 2001):
http://www.bookdepository.com/Moby-Dick-Herman-Melville-Hershel-Parker-Harrison-Hayford/9780393972832
>>7939889
Yeah but the covers look like arse
