Board 8 > Must read 'classic' literature?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hey what are some good stand alone books to read?

• War and Peace
• Crime and Punishment
• Atlus Shrugged
• A Tale of Two Cities

Those popped to my head, but please, recommend me some great books that are always mentioned on Jeopardy!

why is classic in quotation marks

The Puppy Who Lost His Way

Atlus Shrugged? Is that any relation to Homer's Etrian Odyssey?

I like Dorian Gray

The Book Thief

is there a specific time period you're interested in or are you just looking for like a list of books from the western canon or something?

I immediately thought of War and Peace and Crime and Punishment before I clicked on the topic lol, but anything by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky should be on your list. The Brothers Karamazov in particular is one of the greatest books ever written. Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilych are good ones to round out Tolstoy with. Some other suggestions I might make:

• Huckleberry Finn, especially if you're American
• The Sound and the Fury, if you don't mind something kind of challenging to read
• Pale Fire (as long as 1962 is classic enough)
• Shakespeare of course, especially Hamlet and his sonnets
• The Count of Monte Cristo

Mr Crispy posted...

Atlus Shrugged? Is that any relation to Homer's Etrian Odyssey?

I liked Nintendo Sixty-Four by George Orwell

paperwarior posted...

I liked Nintendo Sixty-Four by George Orwell

I personally prefer Animal Crossing.

Everybody poops

Frankenstein
Dracula
Pride and Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catcher in the Rye
The Alchemist
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
The Call of The Wild
Carmilla
The Turn of the Screw

This site is a pretty great reference:
https://thegreatestbooks.org/

Jane Eyre
Invisible Man
Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Madame Bovary
The Great Gatsby
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Catch-22
The Sun Also Rises
A Doll's House
Moby Dick
Flannery O'Connor's short stories
Animal Farm
Shakespeare
Frankenstein
East of Eden
Candide
Slaughterhouse Five
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Count of Monte Cristo
Les Mis
Paradise Lost
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Giovanni's Room
Waiting for Godot
Lord of the Flies
The Metamorphosis
Blood Meridian
The Bluest Eye
Stoner
Portnoy's Complaint
Don Quixote

Snake5555555555 posted...

Frankenstein
Dracula
Pride and Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catcher in the Rye
The Alchemist
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
The Call of The Wild
Carmilla
The Turn of the Screw

There's one title in your list that may trigger a board 8 native and I'm not naming them. :)

was thinking somewhere between 1500-1960ish

'classic' is in quotes because i felt like it plum deal with it

thank you for the recommendations everyone!

Have you read classics before? There are some good suggestions here but also some that should be avoided unless you want to kill any desire you have to continue reading classics

Snake5555555555 posted...

Frankenstein
Dracula
Pride and Prejudice
To Kill a Mockingbird
Catcher in the Rye
The Alchemist
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
The Call of The Wild
Carmilla
The Turn of the Screw

Guy has taste.

I'd also recommend Melmoth the Wanderer for horror fans, although it's a bit of a slog/challenge.

Brave New World is also excellent if you can fight through the first 40 pages or so.

And Then There Were None

fortybelowsummer posted...

Have you read classics before? There are some good suggestions here but also some that should be avoided unless you want to kill any desire you have to continue reading classics

nope

honestly i started with Beyond Good and Evil so I think I should be good

though thats philosophy and not exactly literature and im not entirely sure what i really read

The Old Man & the Sea is legitimately one of my favorite books.
Of Mice & Men

An Outcast in Another World (Is "Insanity" a Racial Trait?)

The Stranger
The Last Man

https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top

My two favorites from high school were Frankenstein and Huck Finn.

Of Mice and Men
Count of Monte Cristo
The Fox and the Hound
Fahrenheit 451
Paradise Lost

A Clockwork Orange
1984
Animal Farm
The Idiot

Raka_Putra posted...

And Then There Were None

This. Definitely this. You can read it in one sitting and it's both thrilling and mind-blowing.

The first Winnie the Pooh book has just entered the public domain, if you want to read where it all began.

Lot of good suggestions that have already been mentioned, so no need to post them again.

But I will add The Three Musketeers.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte [Bront if you wanna be picky], 1847: lots of drama, passion, and cruelty, and not a lot of characters to like. However, much like a train wreck, you can't look away. Contemporary readers and critics found it compelling if troubling, yet it's much more appreciated today.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, 1920: high society drama and interpersonal scandal in the late 19th century, this takes you to a world that no longer exists, shattered by WWI. The constant struggle between pleasure and morality, old and new, tugs at you throughout the book.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850: one of the first mass-produced books in the US, it inspired the film Easy A [2010]. For fans of A Christmas Carol who didn't care for the supernatural elements.

Pro tip: if they bring up a book you've never heard of in a film, and it's clearly an attempt to legitimize the film by name-dropping the book... drop the film instead and go read the book. e.g., it goes without saying that Wuthering Heights [like many works] is far superior to Twilight, and supposedly it's Bella Swan's 'favorite book'. Pffff.