<p>Les Miserables, Crime and Punishment, How Green Was My Valley, The Forsyte Saga, The Good Earth</p>
<p>Also I don’t know why people are hating on Scarlet Letter. Great book</p>
<p>The Great Gatsby is pretty overrated imo, but that’s just me.</p>
<p>
Finally. I didn’t think it was one of the best books I’d ever read, but it’s not terrible at all, and it’s short enough to get through in one sitting.</p>
<p>Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, I thought it was pretty interesting and it was for a class freshman year.
I also liked Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut for my english class.</p>
<p>I actually never had to read the Scarlet Letter, but I saw the movie. (Easy A, haha)</p>
<p>Books that changed my life forever:</p>
<p>The Bible (when I actually sat down and started to read the Gospel of John for myself, rather than snippets here and there, or relying on a sermon to deliver it for me, and where it took me from there).
Sculpting in Time by the Russian film maker Tarkovsky
Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book (full of commentary by the leading artist in his field, it introduced a lot of philosophy about art and commercialization that I hadn’t thought of before).
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky (epoch making literature, one of those very rare books that doesn’t just change how you view art, or regurgitate a moral philosophy you happen to agree with, but one that changes your soul).
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (ditto. nobody who reads this book, believer or not, will think about God, the Bible, or Christian faith the same way ever again. renowned by devout Christians and ardent atheists alike)
Capitalism and Freedom by Friedman (I’m utterly sick of libertarian economics, and Friedmanomics in particular, being misunderstood, mistranslated, inaccurately described, etc., and this is a good antidote to that)
Basic Economics by Sowell (reading this book made me twice as smart as I was before. I understood more about how the world works after reading this book, than I did from everything I learned in school, I learned more about reason and the use of empirical fact than I did in any science class).
The Economics and Politics of Race by Sowell (you simply do not understand what things like culture and race really mean until you read this book. So much so that I find it almost pointless to discuss racial and cultural matters with anybody who hasn’t read this).
The Road to Serfdom by Hayek (Hayek is another great philosopher who is constantly being misrepresented, and his insights are <em>maybe</em> the most important of the 20th century…if not of all time)
Marxism: Economics and Philosophy by Sowell (Marx’s name is famous and infamous in all of 20th century world politics, and it is in this book that you get to understand what Marx <em>really</em> wrote about, and why 99% of the time his name is invoked or his teachings discussed, it is in error. After reading this book I had a respect for Marx I didn’t have before).
Mike Nelson’s Movie Mega-Cheese and Mind Over Matters by Mike Nelson (collections of funny movie reviews or humorous essays that I read once a year. Nelson is my Einstein of comedy. Nelson at his best is comedy perfected)
The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America by Elder (introduced me to a lot of libertarian concepts, it’s a book I wish I had boxes of so I could just give them away to people)
Fellini on Fellini (by Fellini)
various Kubrick autobiographies</p>
<p>We read Petersburg, by Andrej Bely, in my Russian Lit class and it was incredible. I’d say that for me the ultimate life changing books have been Paradise Lost and *In Search of Lost Time<a href=“which%20I’m%20only%202/3%20of%20the%20way%20through,%20but%20after%202000%20pages%20it’s%20still%20clearly%20one%20of%20the%20ultimate%20works%20of%20art%20produced%20by%20man”>/i</a></p>
<p>The perks of being a wallflower</p>
<p>The Epic of Gilgamesh (SB), as trite as that sounds.</p>
<p>Didn’t Gilgamesh make it a law that he had to have sex with every woman before they got married?</p>
<p>Smart dude</p>
<p>No, he didn’t. He was granted the right by the gods by virtue of his kingship.</p>
<p>In any case, everyone knows his one true love is Enkidu, and Gilgamesh gave up on the right of the first night after meeting him. ;)</p>
<p>Infinite Jest: some people were turned off by the never-ending endnotes and complicated plots but I loved it. All the intricacies made it necessary to really let the fictional world envelop you.</p>
<p>Everything by F. Scott Fitzgerald especially books of his letters. Also his biography by Matthew Bruccoli, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur.</p>
<p>Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand totally shaped many of my political views.</p>
<p>All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque
Inherit the Wind by Lawrence and Lee
A Streetcar Named Desire by Williams
The Concept of Law by Hart
The Paper Chase by Osborn
Frankenstein by Shelley
The Island of Dr. Moreau by Wells
Brave New World by Huxley
The House of God by Shem</p>
<p>People have named the most popular Dostoevsky novels, so I’ll throw out a couple lesser-known novels that are really good: The Idiot and Demons/The Possessed. I would also highly recommend reading Notes From the Underground. Tolstoy’s work is just amazing art, whether it be through War and Peace or his Sevastopol Sketches, etc. Camus’s The Plague, The Stranger, and The Guest are all highly worth reading. Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is vividly enlightening to the extents of depravity people find themselves, and their attempts to maintain some semblance of sanity. Anything by George Orwell is awesome, but I’d like to highlight his first novel, Down and Out in Paris and London: it’s underrated in my opinion. Nietzsche’s work is also eye-opening in ways, but there’s still something to be gained by reading Kierkegaard, etc. I love all of Kafka’s short stories.</p>
<p>I’ve read almost every novel/short story by Dostoevsky/Tolstoy/Turgenev/Camus/Orwell. It was all completely worth it. Once I sit down with a book I enjoy, I’ll read it cover-to-cover. I just have to be in that mood though, I guess.</p>
<p>Anything in the Twilight series.</p>
<p>We have similar taste, Anthroponomist. I went through a huge Russian lit phase and read almost everything by Dostoevsky besides Devils (including his short stories). I wasn’t a huge fan of The Idiot. It was so melodramatic. I was, however, a huge fan of his novella The Gambler. I’d say it’s the most suspenseful/edge of your seat of Dostoevsky’s stories. </p>
<p>Down and Out in Paris and London was one of the first ‘real’ books I ever read and I loved it. The tramping part in England wasn’t nearly as good as the first half in Paris. His descriptions of the restaurant hierarchy were so interesting. I have to read that again sometime. Of course, Orwell’s political stuff is good too. In my opinion, 1984 stomps A Brave New World in every way as far as dystopian novels go. A Brave New World was the most heavy-handed book I’ve ever read and I felt like it was just written by some old conservative guy who was bitter because he was losing touch with society. Plus, not much happens in the plot. </p>
<p>My favorite writer, so I suppose the writer whom I think changes lives the most, has recently been a toss up between Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. To the Lighthouse, by Woolf, is the most expertly written novel I’ve ever read in terms of technique and her themes are pretty important to me, personally. And what’s not to like about novels set on the coast of Scotland? Hemingway, while completely different in pretty much every way, definitely came up with something original with his prose that adds a lot to his message. The one thing I don’t like about him is sometimes I feel like he focuses too much on his ‘iceberg’ theory - the idea that only 1/10 of a character is shown through his dialogue and actions and the rest has to be inferred by the reader. It can make for some difficult reading in dialogue-heavy sections.</p>
<p>I’m a pretty big literature nerd, when it comes down to it. What does everyone think of Joyce?</p>
<p>@PRiNCESSMAHiNA: Definitely interesting! I fixed my sleeping schedule for a night and now back to the same routine. tsk tsk</p>
<p>TomServo: Understanding Capitalism / forgot the author</p>
<p>@IsaacM: The Giver & Brave New World are hands down my favorite books.</p>
<p>I am going to re-read BNW for the 4th time soon!</p>
<p>Yeah To the Lighthosue is fantastic, one of my favorite novels. </p>
<p>Joyce is brilliant too. I read Ulysses once a year; it’s so richly detailed and the characters (particularly Leopold) are some of the finest in all of literature. Also obviously the prose is gorgeous.</p>
<p>Some others that should be mentioned: everything by Jorge Luis Borges, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, and Beckett’s three novels. Obviously there are lots more but these spring to mind.</p>
<p>The Human Stain by Phillip Roth
^Made me think for weeks after.</p>
<p>Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
^The whole series, just a great read. You will catch many references to it in every day life.</p>
<p>Currently reading Catch-22. It’s interesting, but I can’t say it’s life changing.</p>
<p>I’m reading Catch 22 now as well! I’m pretty close to the end; do you like it? I feel like it’s a lot better than I’m giving it credit. For sure, it’s funny, but I haven’t really been reading it too closely and I’m willingly letting all the heavy themes slip past. I wanted to give my brain a rest after reading Theory of Literature by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren. It was sort of life changing, in the sense that I’ve had my eyes opened to the ‘great conversation’ and now I’m really interested in doing something with criticism in the future. And it made me want to read more old poetry, like Milton.</p>
<p>I actually haven’t read Ulysses, just A Portrait. Ulysses is high up on my list but I’m not sure if the library has it in the city I’m living in so I’ll have to wait till I come back to America. :(</p>
<p>@TomWolfe321 - I really, really enjoyed Down and Out in Paris and London. (Though like you say, the London section isn’t half as good as the Paris one).
Orwell is just such a great writer - he chooses all the right words. I remember the description of buildings leaning, as though “frozen in the state of collapse.”</p>
<p>@Mathemagician1 - it’s not one of my favourite novels, but The Human Stain was a really interesting concept.</p>