<p>I agree with the suggestions re: Of Mice of Men. The Pearl is also good, as is everything Steinbeck ever wrote, but I think with Mice and Men you get more bang for your buck. Also check out Anthem by Ayn Rand or A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Candide you can probably read in an hour and a half or less, and it's funny.</p>
<p>I LOVED TSAR, amciw.</p>
<p>Ooh, also Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Pygmalion (George Bernard Shaw), In Cold Blood (Truman Capote), or Ishmael (Daniel Quinn).</p>
<p>Southeasttitan....Excuse me? Hemingway was brilliant. I don't know what you've heard but his writing was amazing.</p>
<p>Uhhh, Bible/Koran/other religious texts non-standing?</p>
<p>Thank you, swang! At least SOMEONE appreciates good literature.</p>
<p>Flowers for Algernon is short</p>
<p>Slaughterhouse-Five</p>
<p>Actually, scratch that. Pretty much everything Kurt Vonnegut has written is brilliant.</p>
<p>@ the person that mentioned War and Peace and Anna Karenina for quick reading... That is truly hilarious.</p>
<p>And never read Moby Dick. Period.</p>
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<p>Could you elaborate? I can't really find many reasons what that was a good book, or why his writing was amazing in general.</p>
<p>^He was so incredibly concise, and most authors just write convoluted nonsense.</p>
<p>Word, IV, and his characters are realistic (mostly for his time, but I can easily identify with Jake and Brett).</p>
<p>There's more to it but I'm really tired and can't think very well at the moment.</p>
<p>The brevity is true...although it was a bit too concise at points. I'm not so sure about the lack of convoluted nonsense; I remember a couple sections in TSAR that were a bit iffy in that regard.</p>
<p>Maybe I just hate boring books about life. To me, TSAR was so pointless, so plotless, and greatly lacking in the story-telling aspect. It seemed like Hemingway was just using it as a soapbox to whine about his drinking problem and depressed life (through the surrogate of the main character), rather than telling a story that was compelling. I noticed this in My Antonia, too; the first 50 pages of both novels are essentially the same in function, with a different subject matter. And obviously, I hated My Antonia as well.</p>
<p>I pretty much despise Hemingway. But to each his own. It's just that he's so...awful.</p>
<p>And um, Pro28, Oedipus Rex is still not the most famous piece of literature...by far. At all. Ever heard of Romeo & Juliet, Ulysses, Moby Dick, The Odyssey, Beowulf? Harry Potter? Um, do you live on planet earth?</p>
<p>Oh, and I was randomly Googling this, and check out this HIGH-LARIOUS list of The Modern Library's 100 best novels. Not so much "The Board's List" but the "Reader's List:" of the top 10 books, four are by Ayn Rand and three are by L. Ron Hubbard. EEEK. That leaves room for The Lord of the Rings, 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird. LOL.</p>
<p>^Eh, reader-made lists.. eeewww. Lol.</p>
<p>I've heard that one should read Moby Dick when they turn 40...because apparently it makes sense then.</p>
<p>TSAR...let's see, there's the intricate storyline between Brett and Jake and his unfortunate loss of genitalia. :P
As for Hemingway going on about his drunken stupors and etc, the literature of the lost generation was mainly despondent and hopeless because of WWI, you can't really ask for much more than tragedy, unless you'd like to read Gertrude Stein...in which case she doesn't actually make coherent sense most of the time.</p>
<p>Read other Hemingway. Like A Farewell to Arms or his short story, "Hills Like White Elephants." I don't much like his Nick Adams stories much......</p>
<p>In other news, The Fountainhead is definitely my favorite book. Not the most famous piece of literature though.</p>
<p>LOL, The Fountainhead is my least favorite book! I hate Ayn Rand with such a fiery passion that just thinking about her makes me want to punch something.</p>
<p>To each her own, I guess.</p>
<p>is it because of her ideas or her writing? i personally dont agree with her objectivist ideas or whatever, but i love her books</p>
<p>Both. I strongly dislike objectivism and I think that her writing is subpar and shallow.</p>
<p>thats interesting. what makes you say that? (btw, im not trying to be coy or disapproving, its just i never met anyone before who thought that...)</p>