What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Introduce yourself to the community or chat with other users about whatever is on your mind
paulofilmo
Posts: 2586
2428 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 3:40 pm

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by paulofilmo »

The mule stumbles up and on. The ridge of the hill rises like mist, but from
the top I shall see Africa. Now the bed gives under me. The sheets spotted
with yellow holes let me fall through. The good woman with a face like a
white horse at the end of the bed makes a valedictory movement and turns
to go. Who then comes with me? Flowers only, the cowbind and the
moonlight-coloured May. Gathering them loosely in a sheaf I made of them a
garland and gave them—Oh, to whom? We launch out now over the precipice.
Beneath us lie the lights of the herring fleet. The cliffs vanish.
Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. I touch
nothing. I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will
drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They
will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling me over the waves will
shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.

karamazov.
Posts: 114
1727 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:34 pm

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by karamazov. »

paulofilmo wrote:The mule stumbles up and on. The ridge of the hill rises like mist, but from
the top I shall see Africa. Now the bed gives under me. The sheets spotted
with yellow holes let me fall through. The good woman with a face like a
white horse at the end of the bed makes a valedictory movement and turns
to go. Who then comes with me? Flowers only, the cowbind and the
moonlight-coloured May. Gathering them loosely in a sheaf I made of them a
garland and gave them—Oh, to whom? We launch out now over the precipice.
Beneath us lie the lights of the herring fleet. The cliffs vanish.
Rippling small, rippling grey, innumerable waves spread beneath us. I touch
nothing. I see nothing. We may sink and settle on the waves. The sea will
drum in my ears. The white petals will be darkened with sea water. They
will float for a moment and then sink. Rolling me over the waves will
shoulder me under. Everything falls in a tremendous shower, dissolving me.

Woolf. <3

theficionado
Posts: 293
1908 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 4:31 am

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by theficionado »

karamazov. wrote:
theficionado wrote:My list of favorite novels (one per author) probably looks something like this:

Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
If on a winter's night a traveler... Italo Calvino
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
The Counterlife Philip Roth
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates
Going Native Stephen Wright
A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
White Noise Don DeLillo

Figures you'd like DeLillo and Calvino. Good choices. Are you familiar with much Ballard?


My familiarity with Ballard is limited to my knowledge that there's a lot of films based on his books: Crash, Empire of the Sun, High Rise. But I haven't even seen any of them. :/ I absolutely love Calvino — could have replaced the one above with Invisible Cities or Cosmicomics without regret.

theficionado
Posts: 293
1908 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 4:31 am

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by theficionado »

karamazov. wrote:Non-fiction.
-"Das Kapital," "The Marx-Engels Reader" -- Marx, Engels.
-"Right-Wing Women," "Intercourse" -- Andrea Dworkin.
-"History of the Peloponnesian War" -- Thucydides.
-"The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution" -- C.L.R. James.
-"Dialectic of Enlightenment" -- Adorno.
-"Gödel, Escher, Bach" -- Hofstadter.
-"Van Gogh. Il suicidato della società" -- Artaud.
-"Muqaddimah" -- Ibn Khaldun.
-"SCUM Manifesto" -- Solanas.
-"Tao Teh Ching" -- Laotzu.
-"The Souls of Black Folk" -- W.E.B. du Bois


I'm teaching Marx's fetishism of the commodity excerpt and Adorno and Horkheimer's Culture Industry essay in a class in a few weeks. That's always fun and a source of within-class debate.

Have you read any Bourdieu? I listed my favorite novels, but Distinction is my personal bible, and I'm a fan of his in general, particular with respect to his culture industries readings: The Fields of Cultural Production, The Rules of Art, The State Nobility, Photography, etc.

djross
Posts: 1212
5318 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:56 am

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by djross »

.
Last edited by djross on Sat Mar 04, 2017 7:13 am, edited 2 times in total.

karamazov.
Posts: 114
1727 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 11:34 pm

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by karamazov. »

theficionado wrote:Bourdieu?

Yeah, but mostly just excerpts for undergrad. sociology courses, etc. Will def. add or bump up higher in the queue the specific titles you mentioned, cheers. what'chu teach?

btw, you should really check out Ballard when you've the chance! I think the prose you wield is quite akin: clinical, precise, conceptual, maybe slightly whimsical. I've only seen the Cronenberg movie, of the three you listed, but, whether you regard it favorably or not [for me, the latter], I daresay it has -far- more to do with DC than Ballard.

Darren
Posts: 14
4471 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:34 pm

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by Darren »

Couldn't do just ten. List usually changes from month to month.

Anna Karenina- Tolstoy (am I the only one who listed Tolstoy??)
To The Lighthouse- Woolf
The Fire Next Time- Baldwin
A Confederacy of Dunces- Toole
Kafka on the Shore- Murakami
War and Peace- Tolstoy
The Crying of Lot 49- Pynchon
Pale Fire- Nabakov
Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Morals- Kant
Das Kapital- Marx
The Grapes of Wrath- Steinbeck
White Noise- DeLillo
The Human Factor- Greene
The Waves- Woolf
Being and Time- Heidegger
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison- Foucault
Winesburg,Ohio- Anderson(anyone else read this?? Seems very under appreciated )

bowfinger
Posts: 939
2839 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Sat Apr 07, 2007 7:15 pm

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by bowfinger »

Darren wrote:Winesburg,Ohio- Anderson(anyone else read this?? Seems very under appreciated )


One of my fav books!

Also, I'm surprised Paul Auster hasn't come up yet. I consider The New York Trilogy a must read if you are a fan of post-mod era like Pynchon and DeLillo, definitely more accessible than most. Although movie adaptations of his books don't come out too good, I really wish three different directors took a shot at this.

Massey23
Posts: 19
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:35 am

Re: What do you consider to be the top ~10 best books ever written?

Post by Massey23 »

I mostly prefer to read fiction so can only talk about those stories. Not sure about exactly 10 of my favorites in this but here goes, the best of the lot which I have read over the last couple of years:
Doctor Sleep (Stephen King)
The Circle (Dave Eggers)
Thank You For Your Service (David Finkel)
Lila (Marilynne Robinson)
How To Be Both (Ali Smith)
Fourth of July Creek: A Novel (Smith Henderson)
The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins)
Our Souls At Night (Kent Haruf)
Did You Ever Have A Family (Bill Clegg)
All That Man Is (David Szalay)
Hot Milk (Deborah Levy)
This Is Where It Ends (Marieke Nijkamp)

Post Reply