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/lit/ - Literature

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3524714 No.3524714 [Reply] [Original]

I am requesting a simplified, essential list of literary works in your opinion.

A list that includes all spectrums of literature.

A list of five that are in your opinion essential.

I have just discovered my love of reading and I believe this is a good way to get some creative opinions on essential literary works.

>> No.3524728

Plato's Republic
Don Quixote
Henry V
The Wasteland
1984 or The Hungry Caterpillar

>> No.3524749

The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss'
The History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky (all 20 volumes, bitch)

>> No.3524753

I can't do 'every spectrum of literature', sorry, I don't know shit about scripture or philosophy and I'm really weak on classical stuff too. Also I'm pretty sure there are more than five spectrums of literature, so... yeah. Here goes nothing anyway.

Shakespeare - Hamlet
Carroll - Alice in Wonderland
Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Melville - Moby Dick
Sebald - Austerlitz

>> No.3524755

Hamlet
Crime and Punishment
Invisible Man
The Odyssey
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

It's very difficult to narrow it down to only five, But if I was to teach a curriculum of the books I believed were the most essential, that'd probably be it. But there are so much more out there.

>> No.3524828

Shakespeare complete works.
Don Quixote.
Dubliners or Borges.
Master and Servant.
The God delusion.

>> No.3524872

Don Quixote
The Grapes of Wrath
Nineteen-Eighty-Four
Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

>> No.3524879

>>3524828
>>3524872
Just started Grossman's translation of Quixote today.

I like it so far. It's much easier to read than I expected, and it's actually pretty funny.

Anything else I should know about?

>> No.3524885

>>3524828
>The God Delusion
>literature
guaranteed replies

>> No.3524890

The Book of Ecclesiastes
Shakespeare - Hamlet
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Dante - The Comedy
Joyce - Ulysses

>> No.3524959

Beowulf
Milton: Paradise Lost
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Eliot: The Waste Land
Musil: The Man Without Qualities vol. 1

>> No.3524985

Why is everyone posting only boring books?

>> No.3524988

>>3524828
>militant atheist
>2013

>> No.3524981

You people really have a hardon for Don Quixote.
Is it that good?

>> No.3524991

>>3524981
It's generally accepted as being the first novel in the modern sense

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/dec/13/classics.miguelcervantes

>> No.3525000

>>3524828
>the god delusion

>> No.3525013

>>3524985
They're not. Most of these lists are really good. I'll explain my personal picks as to why I think they're "essential".

>Plato's Republic
Basis of western politics, learning, culture
>Don Quixote
First modern novel. Experimented with forms, narrative voice and themes of reliability.
>Henry V
Exemplifies Nationalism, propaganda and rhetoric.
>The Wasteland
Exemplifies Modernism
>1984
Exemplifies Totalitarianism and effects of mass media

>> No.3525026
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3525026

>> No.3525032

Homer's The Odyssey
Dante's Divine Comedy
Shakespeare's Macbeth
Cervantes' Don Quixote
Milton's Paradise Lost

For a good grounding of most fiction those works will help a lot.

>> No.3525041

>>3525013
Seems biased for politics

>> No.3525055

Jesus christ are these lists bad.

How about:
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Aeneid
Metamorphoses
The Bible
Dantes Inferno
Paradise Lost

Begin with those.

>> No.3525061

>>3525055
Also: Everything Shakespeare

>> No.3525065

>>3525041
Not really. They deal with existential problems and "big truths". But in our economics-driven beaurocracies that we live in, we are taught to engage with all of the big questions in political terms.

>> No.3525070

>>3525055
most of those have already been listed brah