What novels should everybody read? (1 Viewer)

[Ilov80s]

Not unless you want to be able to argue with people about how horrible Ayn Rand is.

I don't. I'd rather have drinks and talk about how good Hemingway was. That cliche is more my speed. 

 

[Don Quixote]

I haven't read many pre-20th century novels so I took the plunge on Anna Karenina.  I'm 450 pages into a 800+ page marathon but am making steady progress. 

Tolstoy is surprisingly readable once you get used to the Russian patronyms and the frequent tangents. The Anna/Vronsky/Karenin plotline is more interesting to me than the Levin/Kitty one.  I like that there are lots of short chapters so I  can reach a logical stopping point every time I pick up the book.

Agree on Tolstoy being very readable. I preferred War and Peace to Karenina.

 

[Eephus]

Agree on Tolstoy being very readable. I preferred War and Peace to Karenina.

War and Peace has over 200,000 more words than Anna Karenina's 340,000.

 

[El Floppo]

Not unless you want to be able to argue with people about how horrible Ayn Rand is.

I don't. I'd rather have drinks and talk about how good Hemingway was. That cliche is more my speed. 

There's more to it than that. Funny how now both sides are using the books as some kind of cultural ammunition. They're decent pulpy beach page-turners. You don't have to agree with the Objectivism to enjoy them.

 

[Ilov80s]

There's more to it than that. Funny how now both sides are using the books as some kind of cultural ammunition. They're decent pulpy beach page-turners. You don't have to agree with the Objectivism to enjoy them.

I am just going by my personal experience. A few years ago I worked with 2 Tea Party/Libertarians who were always bringing the book up and saying we could borrow their copies, insisting everyone had to read it, etc. 

 

[Eephus]

There's more to it than that. Funny how now both sides are using the books as some kind of cultural ammunition. They're decent pulpy beach page-turners. You don't have to agree with the Objectivism to enjoy them.

Life's too short.

There's gotta be a better novel with an architect as the hero.

 

[El Floppo]

Life's too short.

There's gotta be a better novel with an architect as the hero.

Better than Dan Brown, imo. Is life too short for that? You're bored on a beach or vacation and just want some book to flip though...not anything profound (I'm speaking to myself here...I keep taking the absolute wrong books on vacations and end up reading whatever drivel my wife brought).

I feel like theres a backlash to Rand because of the tea party appropriation... and to me that's unwarranted. And I am in no way saying she's in a must read category that KP asked about...but for as I described, it's good stuff.

 

[-fish-]

Better than Dan Brown, imo. Is life too short for that? You're bored on a beach or vacation and just want some book to flip though...not anything profound (I'm speaking to myself here...I keep taking the absolute wrong books on vacations and end up reading whatever drivel my wife brought).

I feel like theres a backlash to Rand because of the tea party appropriation... and to me that's unwarranted. And I am in no way saying she's in a must read category that KP asked about...but for as I described, it's good stuff.

I’ve hated Rand since before there was a Tea Party.  Literature is like music, though.  Some people think Ayn Rand is good, some people enjoy listening to Nickelback.  

Personally, I can’t stand anything about her writing.  I hate her style, her word choice, her unnatural dialog, and her politics.  Her characters are 2 dimensional, her plots are simplistic, and her ideas are immature.  That’s why freshman in college like her.  She’s simple to understand (since she bludgeons the reader with her points) so it’s easy to write essays about her books.  

 

 

[-fish-]

I don’t think Rourk even wore a scarf. And who spells Rourke like that?

 

[El Floppo]

I’ve hated Rand since before there was a Tea Party.  Literature is like music, though.  Some people think Ayn Rand is good, some people enjoy listening to Nickelback.  

Personally, I can’t stand anything about her writing.  I hate her style, her word choice, her unnatural dialog, and her politics.  Her characters are 2 dimensional, her plots are simplistic, and her ideas are immature.  That’s why freshman in college like her.  She’s simple to understand (since she bludgeons the reader with her points) so it’s easy to write essays about her books.  

 

College freshmen...was thinking closer to HS fresman. But don't disagree with anything you've written there....Nabokov or Faulkner she ain't. Pulpy fun until the bludgeoning wears you out 

 

[El Floppo]

I don’t think Rourke even wore a scarf.

He was a ####e architect, tbh.

 

[-fish-]

He was a ####e architect, tbh.

I’ve read a few essays blaming Rand for the rise of starchitect a-holes over the last 40 years.

Pulp trash beach reading?  I’ll go with Tim Dorsey or something stupid and fun.  I’ve read plenty of Literature.  If there’s sand and a beach, I want a book, not a novel.
 

 

[Vanilla Guerrilla]

I keep taking the absolute wrong books on vacations and end up reading whatever drivel my wife brought).

I finished reading Crime and Punishment on a Caribbean cruise in 1998.  Nothin' like some light vacation reading.

 

[need2know]

Pillars of the earth