20-12-2002 12:21									#1
	Top ten works of literature ever? Increase Your PM Length

What are the top ten works of fiction ever written?
Without going into too much thought on it, I'll rattle off my own list to hopefully stir some discussion.

Tolstoy - War and Peace
Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Melville - Moby ****
Dickens - David Copperfield
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Gugol - Dead Souls
Kafka - Metamorphosis
Twain - Huckleberry Finn

Well, I'm sure I left off an obvious choice or two, so let's hear Apolyton's picks.

	20-12-2002 12:30									#2
	Re: Top ten works of literature ever? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Communist Manifesto

	20-12-2002 12:39									#3
	Re: Re: Top ten works of literature ever? Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Tassadar5000 Communist Manifesto

well that definitely fits monkspider's criteria as being a work of fiction.....

	20-12-2002 12:40									#4
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Sme personal faves
Crime & Punishment
Brave New World (excluding second to last chapter - ewwww)
Scarlet Letter
the Tempest
The Club Dumas
Lord Of the Flies
whatever… tons o' good stuff out there

weird moment of the day - I'm listening to some philharmonic performance of silent night, supposedly, but it's got this theme from Scheherezade running all through it!

	20-12-2002 12:41									#5
	Put an end to popups!

Ok this is a combined effort from three of us. Myself, my husband and our friiend so here goes............in no particular order.

1. War and Peace
2. Shogun
3. McBeth
4. Charlotte's Web
5. The Bible
6. Grimm's Fairy Tales
7. The Wizzard of Oz
8. Myst of Avalon
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. To Kill A Mockingbird

As you can see we've been having a bit of the holiday cheer alreaaaaaaADDDDDYYYYYYY!!

	20-12-2002 12:47									#6
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I also feel that fairy tales should get a mention as well. My personal favorites are "Bluebeard" and "Sleeping Beauty". I'm currently in the process of writing a not so short story playing with the basic plot of Sleeping Beauty and… twisting it a bit.

	20-12-2002 12:59									#7
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1. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
2. Brief history of time - Stephen Hawkwind
3. Kama Sutra -Whoever wrote it
4. 7 veljestä (7 brothers) - Aleksis Kivi
5. Every book about checkoslovakian mole cartoon character - Zdenek Miler
6. Contact - Carl Sagan
7. Operation Finlandia (a book about the swedes attacking Finland in the summer 1974) - Arto Paasilinna
8. All remaining books (about 20) written by Arto Paasilinna
9. World Atlas - various writers
10. HHGTTG and all it's sequels - Douglas Adams

[edit] - oh my, how did I forget D. Adams...

well, now it is fixed

Last edited by aaglo on 20-12-2002 at 13:48

	20-12-2002 13:07									#8
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Fiction, eh? I suppose my list would seem somewhat unorthodox. I can't stand a lot of the "classics."

George Orwell - "Burmese Days"
Kurt Vonnegut - "Slaughterhouse 5"
Joseph Heller - "Catch 22"
Frank Herbert - "Dune"
Isaac Asimov - "Foundation"
Vernor Vinge - "A Deepness in the Sky"
Douglas Adams - "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Ursula K. Le Guin - "The Dispossessed"
George R. R. Martin - "A Game of Thrones" (actually, every member of the the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series is excellent, but I'm singling out the first book)
James Clavell - "Shogun"

	20-12-2002 13:09									#9
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quote: Brief history of time - Stephen Hawkwind

I didn't know Hawking made all that up.

	20-12-2002 13:10									#10
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Mostly Harmless was, in my opinion, more meaningful of a novel.

	20-12-2002 13:12									#11
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I haven't gotten that far in the series yet. I've only read to book 4 (or maybe 3).

	20-12-2002 13:38									#12
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I can only go by the ones that I have read. These are some of my favorites:

Gravity's Rainbow: Thomas Pynchon
Breakfast of Champions: Kurt Vonnegut,
Post Office: Charles Bukowski,
Skinny Legs and All: Tom Robbins,
Animal Farm: George Orwell,
Catch-22: Joseph Heller,
Lolita: Nabokov,
MacBeth: Shakespeare,
The Trial: Kafka,
The Sailor who Fell From Grace with the Sea: Yukio Mishima.

Does anyone else here enjoy reading T. C. Boyle?

I also like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. I must have read The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, six or seven times each.

Currently I just started reading "The Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving.

Last edited by MosesPresley on 20-12-2002 at 13:43

	20-12-2002 13:46									#13
	Increase Your PM Length

Ah, Brave New World, that is a great pick boyo. That reminds me of a book that should have been in my top ten, Zamyatin's "We".
Interesting picks, everyone.

	20-12-2002 13:51									#14
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In no order

Céline- journey to the end of the night
Heller-catch 22
Huxley-brave new world
Vonnegut-Slaughterhouse 5
Orwell-1984
Solzjenitsin-In the first circle
Graves- I Claudius
Mailer-the naked and the dead
Adams-hitchiker
Eco- The name of the rose

and many others,.....

	20-12-2002 13:57									#15
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quote: Originally posted by MosesPresley I can only go by the ones that I have read. These are some of my favorites: Gravity's Rainbow: Thomas Pynchon

Didn't understand a flippin' word of it( needed a dictionairy, even to read it in dutch, closed it after about 10 pages :

quote: The Trial: Kafka,

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh
This one put me of reading for 6 months,( picked it up again by reading Wilt(Sharpe) ), I did finish it though.

	20-12-2002 14:07									#16
	Re: Re: Re: Top ten works of literature ever? Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

quote: Originally posted by Shi Huangdi well that definitely fits monkspider's criteria as being a work of fiction.....

Hmm....Just goes to show one should read the post before posting

	20-12-2002 14:38									#17
	Inflate your Upload Space

Just a few 's to already mentioned books (ones that I've read):

Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
Isaac Asimov: Foundation series
Aleksis Kivi: Seitsemän Veljestä (one of the best works of fiction ever written by a Finn)

Plus, perhaps, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I'll have to read the whole series (have only read the first book) to make any sort of a judgement, though.

	20-12-2002 14:42									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Ramo I haven't gotten that far in the series yet. I've only read to book 4 (or maybe 3).

Stop now. It only goes downhill from there.

	20-12-2002 14:43									#19
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quote: Originally posted by monolith94 The Club Dumas

Excellent choice for a good book, though from Perez-Reverte I preferred The Flanders Panel. I'm slogging through The Seville Communion right now, but it's interminable.

From Twain, rather than Huck Finn I'll take Life on the Mississippi, one of the two great American novels (the other being Moby D1ck.

I'd definitely include the Collected Works of H.G. Wells, especially since he poses the immortal "three books" question at the end of Time Machine. Also "Winnie the Pooh," IMHO the greatest work of children's literature for adults ever written.

And I have a special fondness for Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novellas and short stories (having read about 60 of the 70-or-so), though I don't think I'd them on the heavy hitter list.

	20-12-2002 14:48									#20
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Very tough to choose, and bound to change from day to day.

I agree that Catch-22 has to be on that list, and I like a lot of Russian fiction, Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Lermentov, Tolstoy. I would also recommend Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov who was born in Russia but wrote Lolita in English, and almost anything from Joseph Conrad, who writes so well it's hard to believe that English was his 3rd language. One could easily fill the list with these authors alone, and I haven't even gotten to the Brits or Americans yet.

I am surprised to find Hitchhikers Guide mentioned, and shocked to see it mentioned more than once. It was amusing, but to me about as memorable as an average comic book.

	20-12-2002 14:54									#21
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Ok here I go (in no particular order and excluding some literature in Swedish only):

* Joseph Heller: Catch 22
* Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
* Irvine Welsh: Trainspottning
* Fjodor Dostorjevskij: Crime and Punishment
* Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf
* Luke Rhinehart: The Dice Man
* Albert Camus: Tje Myth of Sisyphus
* George Orwell: 1984
* Jaroslav Hasek: The Good Soldier Svejk
* Karel Capek: War of the Newts

Hard not to be inspired by others here. Also, obviously there's to many books I haven't read. I tried not to be pretentious but it's not easy when we're talking about the top ten.

	20-12-2002 14:55									#22
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quote: Originally posted by Kepler Also "Winnie the Pooh," IMHO the greatest work of children's literature for adults ever written.

it is IMHO too.

	20-12-2002 15:17									#23
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Limiting myself to one book per person (and in no particular order):

1. Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
2. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
3. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
4. The Dispossessed - Ursula LeGuin (hard to pick just one of hers)
5. 1984 - George Orwell
6. Nostromo - Joseph Conrad
7. Possession - A. S. Byatt
8. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
9. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
10. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis

EDIT: I'm tempted to throw in 'Of Mice and Men' or 'The Grapes of Wrath' now I've thought a bit more, but am not sure that any of the above deserve to be booted out to make room.

	20-12-2002 15:42									#24
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Homer - Odyssee
Thomas Morus - Utopia
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Shakespeare - Mac Beth
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
George Orwell - 1984
J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings

That's only 8, I know. But these arfe all that sprung to my mind first and so be it.

	20-12-2002 15:59									#25
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Going only by books that I have read:

Genesis - Bible
Ivan Denisovich - Solzhenitsen
Crime & Punishment - Dostoyevski
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness - Conrad
Things Fall Apart - Achebe
Foundation series - Asimov
To Sail beyond the Sunset - Heinlein
Rowan - Anne McCaffrey
Hammer of God - Clarke

	20-12-2002 16:23									#26
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Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Everything else on my list has already been mentioned (I just don't want to have to decide between so many good books ).

	20-12-2002 16:46									#27
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quote: Originally posted by Aeson Les Miserables - Victor Hugo Everything else on my list has already been mentioned (I just don't want to have to decide between so many good books ).

That was another one that I was considering sticking in my list - if I could find someone else to chop out. I just couldn't be bothered to edit my post a second time...

	20-12-2002 18:00									#28
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Frustrated Poet, I beg to disagree. Mostly harmless is the most ideologically transcendent and significant of all the series. It holds a surrealisticly simplistic quality about it, and deals excellently with relationships between simple folks just mucking about in the world. Highly reccomended by moi. Although my two favorite moments are the mountain sequence, where he learns to fly, and gets the olive oil, and where he flies by a jet-liner with his girlfriend there.
Two books which deserve mentioning:
Martian Chronicles - FÜCKING AMAZING BOOK! Altered my perception of chronological narrative forever!
Real Life Of Sebastian Knight - The overlooked Nabokov book, overlooked in favor of Lolita. This book expresses so many profound thoughts and ideas, in a structure so complex yet elegant! My favorite quote from it: "Imagination is the muscle of the soul".

	20-12-2002 19:27									#29
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Oh, and by the way, anyone who picks a Dickens novel ( monkspider ) will be summarily executed for being a depressing b*st*rd.

	20-12-2002 19:43									#30
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I don't see why 1984 is such a popular choice. I didn't think it was that well written, and the concept - while interesting - was not as developed as it could have been.

I think Lord of the Flies is an excellent choice as a great book but not sure about top 10 of all time simply due to the fact that it's not very long. Still very, very good though. One of my all time favourites.