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What's your favorite book? Why?
- Thread starter fedrorpet
- Start date
Blackhawk11
one on one
I can't really think of my 'favorite' book, but I can think of one that I enjoyed reading.
Watership Down by Adams
It's a book about a group of rabbits who leave their home and the rest of their herd (or whatever herds of rabbits are called) when one foresees a disaster occuring to it. They embark on a quest to find a new, safer home. The amount of leadership shown by several of the rabbits and the way that they and others view life left quite an impression on me when I read it in 7th grade.
It wasn't easy to read back when I was 13, but I haven't since read through it, so I'm not sure exactly what reading level it's actually at.
Watership Down by Adams
It's a book about a group of rabbits who leave their home and the rest of their herd (or whatever herds of rabbits are called) when one foresees a disaster occuring to it. They embark on a quest to find a new, safer home. The amount of leadership shown by several of the rabbits and the way that they and others view life left quite an impression on me when I read it in 7th grade.
It wasn't easy to read back when I was 13, but I haven't since read through it, so I'm not sure exactly what reading level it's actually at.
I like Dostoevsky's novels, but most of all The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
The characters in these stories always surprise you in a way that makes complete sense. They're just really the most honest characters in anything I've ever read.
I'm trying to think of a way to explain what I mean more clearly than that, but I really cant.. I really cant recommend reading his books strongly enough. Though I guess I probably wouldnt suggest it if you are in highschool or something. They are mostly about Christians who struggle with their faith I guess, so if you arent at all interested in that then dont read them (also note I'm not a christian and never have been, so that much at least is not a prerequisite).
Also The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is a magnificent book featuring the most beautifully ironic moment in any work of fiction ever created in my opinion. It's about an English butler but it is really amazing..
Have a nice day.
The characters in these stories always surprise you in a way that makes complete sense. They're just really the most honest characters in anything I've ever read.
I'm trying to think of a way to explain what I mean more clearly than that, but I really cant.. I really cant recommend reading his books strongly enough. Though I guess I probably wouldnt suggest it if you are in highschool or something. They are mostly about Christians who struggle with their faith I guess, so if you arent at all interested in that then dont read them (also note I'm not a christian and never have been, so that much at least is not a prerequisite).
Also The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is a magnificent book featuring the most beautifully ironic moment in any work of fiction ever created in my opinion. It's about an English butler but it is really amazing..
Have a nice day.
king lear fucking owns. it straight-up is the greatest play in history
anyway my favourite books are:
dante's divine comedy
chaucer's canterbury tales
malory's le morte d'arthur
shakespeare, especially coriolanus, 1 henry iv, and othello
milton's paradise lost
melville's moby-dick
joyce's ulysses
nabokov's pale fire
anyway my favourite books are:
dante's divine comedy
chaucer's canterbury tales
malory's le morte d'arthur
shakespeare, especially coriolanus, 1 henry iv, and othello
milton's paradise lost
melville's moby-dick
joyce's ulysses
nabokov's pale fire
My favourite novel is Iain M. Banks' "The Player of Games". Banks' scifi almost always have a twist ending that changes the context of the rest of the novel. They're intelligent, interesting and exciting throughout.
However, the best novel I've ever read is "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. It epitomises everything that a novel can do that no other media can. It is an exciting and exceptionally well-written book.
It is a book about an essay written by a blind man, editted by a drug addict, about a video documentary that may or may not exist about a family who bought a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Most of the story is told through unreliable and increasingly bizarre footnotes by the drug addict, while the footnotes within the essay get increasingly crazy as the essay goes on. The creepy parallels between the two parallel stories, as well as the increasingly esoteric manner of the writing, combine perfectly to give an amazing reading experience, unlike anything else. Furthermore, if you get the edition with the Whalestoe Letters afterword, it gives the same impact as Banks' endings, where all of a sudden various scenes in the book change context significantly.
However, the best novel I've ever read is "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski. It epitomises everything that a novel can do that no other media can. It is an exciting and exceptionally well-written book.
It is a book about an essay written by a blind man, editted by a drug addict, about a video documentary that may or may not exist about a family who bought a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Most of the story is told through unreliable and increasingly bizarre footnotes by the drug addict, while the footnotes within the essay get increasingly crazy as the essay goes on. The creepy parallels between the two parallel stories, as well as the increasingly esoteric manner of the writing, combine perfectly to give an amazing reading experience, unlike anything else. Furthermore, if you get the edition with the Whalestoe Letters afterword, it gives the same impact as Banks' endings, where all of a sudden various scenes in the book change context significantly.
I agree that King Lear is Shakespeare's best work by far, but I would highly recommend anything by Tom Stoppard. He is the best playwright I have ever read, and he uses Shakespeare references amazingly. Some of the other texts you listed here I found were not really "good" in the sense of enjoyable, they were just significant. Joyce's Ulysses, for instance, was actually just a chore to read and at the end you didn't feel enlightened or anything, you just felt tired. Tolstoy's War and Peace was the same. Paradise Lost wasn't as good as Dante's Divine Comedy, IMO.
sexy, and with fantastic taste in classics. are you single
les miserables, victor hugo
east of eden, john steinbeck (of mice and men sucks and it's too easy to read past to enjoy properly)
the dark tower (series) , stephen king
the picture of dorian gray, oscar wilde
the turn of the screw, henry james
the third policeman, flann o'brien
kafka on the shore, haruki murakami
im just glancing at my most well-worn books, there are many many more. i love all of these because of their engaging plotlines, unique writing style, and plot twists. i love plot twists.
re: indigo
paradise lost is great, but you're right; dante shits all over milton. samuel johnson said "none ever wished it longer than it is," which is fair comment, but you can't deny its absolutely perfect structural beauty - i think it's best appreciated from afar, as a complex and beautifully-wrought object, because there is no way that thing is going to elicit any kind of emotional response in a human being. of all those books, is it is the one i re-read least
i'd really, really recommend giving ulysses another go. which edition did you read? i would never have enjoyed or understood it if my copy didn't have fantastic endnotes. also, the second reading is much, much better than the first. at least go back and read the best parts, like the dialogue on shakespeare, before you decide it's not for you. in all honesty, it's probably the best thing i've ever read - as complex as dante and as humanly moving as shakespeare.
i find tolstoy pretty boring too, to be honest. something about the russian novel just doesn't agree with me (this is my fault and i someday hope to correct it)
paradise lost is great, but you're right; dante shits all over milton. samuel johnson said "none ever wished it longer than it is," which is fair comment, but you can't deny its absolutely perfect structural beauty - i think it's best appreciated from afar, as a complex and beautifully-wrought object, because there is no way that thing is going to elicit any kind of emotional response in a human being. of all those books, is it is the one i re-read least
i'd really, really recommend giving ulysses another go. which edition did you read? i would never have enjoyed or understood it if my copy didn't have fantastic endnotes. also, the second reading is much, much better than the first. at least go back and read the best parts, like the dialogue on shakespeare, before you decide it's not for you. in all honesty, it's probably the best thing i've ever read - as complex as dante and as humanly moving as shakespeare.
i find tolstoy pretty boring too, to be honest. something about the russian novel just doesn't agree with me (this is my fault and i someday hope to correct it)
re: moot
no, but you know my heart belongs to you anyway
also turn of the screw is so good oh my god
no, but you know my heart belongs to you anyway
also turn of the screw is so good oh my god
Harry Potter by J.K Rowling and Cirque Du Freak by Darren Shan.
I can't remember the edition, but I don't remember there being much in the way of endnotes. Either way, the concept was great (allegory is awesome), but Joyce is a highly overrated writer, I feel. He faffs about a lot and makes his text outrageously wordy as though he thinks it's necessary to secure a 'serious writer' reputation. He makes the same mistake a lot of student writers do, which is to assume that the fact that you made a reference automatically makes it good writing, without actually doing anything with the reference or context.
You mean War and Peace specifically, or russian novels in general?
I really wish I read more so I could contribute here. I read a lot when I was younger, but have been moving more and more to other media... I didn't realize how much I enjoyed reading until I came upon some short stories in a game I'm playing (Lost Odyssey).
As a kid though, I absolutely adored the Redwall series - Mossflower, The Long Patrol, and Redwall particularly. Also a huge fan of Harry Potter, although the first two books are a bit of a chore I think. Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix turned out to be my favourites. Need to re-read Deathly Hallows another time before I have an opinion on that.
In my last two years of high school, I read Lord of the Flies and Life of Pi which I also enjoyed quite a bit.
As a kid though, I absolutely adored the Redwall series - Mossflower, The Long Patrol, and Redwall particularly. Also a huge fan of Harry Potter, although the first two books are a bit of a chore I think. Prisoner of Azkaban and Order of the Phoenix turned out to be my favourites. Need to re-read Deathly Hallows another time before I have an opinion on that.
In my last two years of high school, I read Lord of the Flies and Life of Pi which I also enjoyed quite a bit.
Also read this back when I was in 7th grade and again in high school (grade 9 I think it was) for class. Loved it both times. The tv show wasn't as good though and the movie was absolutely frightening. I remember seeing parts of it long before I read it.
The five novels that I would say are my favourites at the moment:
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner
Moby-Dick by Melville
The Lords of the Rings by Tolkien
And what I just finished reading: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I have to agree with Harold Bloom that McCarthy is the worthy heir to Faulkner and Melville. The prose is absolutely stunning, and Judge Holden, McCarthy's Iago-Ahabian negative theologian, is one of the greatest achievements in 20th century literature. The almost complete absence of a plot can make it a bit tough to get through, but McCarthy's prose sucks you into his nightmarish world and leaves you reeling.
This falls slightly out of the thread's purview, but my favourite English-language poets are the Romantics, Hart Crane, W.B. Yeats, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Alan Ginsberg (if you've never read "Howl", go do so now, or better yet, listen to it). I also recommend this guy's poetry readings.
Also I am glad to see fellow bardolators.
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner
Moby-Dick by Melville
The Lords of the Rings by Tolkien
And what I just finished reading: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I have to agree with Harold Bloom that McCarthy is the worthy heir to Faulkner and Melville. The prose is absolutely stunning, and Judge Holden, McCarthy's Iago-Ahabian negative theologian, is one of the greatest achievements in 20th century literature. The almost complete absence of a plot can make it a bit tough to get through, but McCarthy's prose sucks you into his nightmarish world and leaves you reeling.
This falls slightly out of the thread's purview, but my favourite English-language poets are the Romantics, Hart Crane, W.B. Yeats, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Alan Ginsberg (if you've never read "Howl", go do so now, or better yet, listen to it). I also recommend this guy's poetry readings.
Also I am glad to see fellow bardolators.
The Brothers Karamazov is truly a fantastic novel. To the one guy who just finished Crime and Punishment, you must read this next. The only warning I have is that the religious discussion at the beginning can be tedious, but the payoff is well worth it. It's a really huge fucking book but I would find myself perched in a comfy chair at a coffee shop with a cup of coffee next to me and not move for hours at a time while I was reading it. Truly a genius work of art.
I'd also like to give another shoutout to Vladimir Nabokov, especially Lolita and Pale Fire. Of everyone I've read, Nabokov has probably had the biggest impact on my style of writing. Lolita made me feel like I needed a shower after a reading session (also difficult to do in public) while Pale Fire's intricate and self-referential back and forth between the fake epic poem and the end notes is just a masterwork.
I'd also like to give another shoutout to Vladimir Nabokov, especially Lolita and Pale Fire. Of everyone I've read, Nabokov has probably had the biggest impact on my style of writing. Lolita made me feel like I needed a shower after a reading session (also difficult to do in public) while Pale Fire's intricate and self-referential back and forth between the fake epic poem and the end notes is just a masterwork.
This, and the dark tower books by Stephen King are amazing too.
I would like to ask the same question, as I have read that book twice now (once on my own, once for school) and both times I had to stop reading at points and take a break because I didn't want to continue reading.
Also, Evan and whoever else has read that book, is it really that great? My English Teacher told me The Idiot was the only one worth reading other than Crime and Punishment. I guess I'll slap it on my list for books, though, if it really is that great. Thanks for the recommendation.
The Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground are both amazing, both better than Crime and Punishment imo. And the only other I have read is the Gambler, which I wouldnt say was amazing, but I would just a little bit like to punch anyone who said it wasnt worth reading.
Notes from Underground is also really short which is nice.
Have a nice day.
Notes from Underground is also really short which is nice.
Have a nice day.
moby-dick is massively, massively flawed, i freely admit. my friend, who has read all of melville, absolutely hates it. he says melville is better in shorter works (this is true, billy budd and bartleby the scrivener are both excellent - if you have read and disliked moby-dick, give those two a go, they're only about sixty pages each and they might turn you around to his talents).
i guess there's a lot of stuff i could do without - all of the completely infuriating "philosophical" discussions, and some of the scientific stuff (like ishmael classifying whales as fish, in the face of Actual Science, because hey, he feels like they're fish and what would those dumb old biologists know). but the things about whaling are usually pretty fascinating, at least.
there are two scenes that move it from being a pretty funny, clever, but ultimately unspectacular romantic novel, to being something approaching the old masters: firstly, the scene before the chase, when the st elmo's fire appears on the masthead and ahab's spear, and ahab stands in this half-night twilight electrical storm giving his polemic against god - that is like something out of shakespeare. secondly, ahab's final speech:
"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
i mean
that rules
can't read that without getting a shiver down my spine
and then there a million great little things about the book, like stubb and flask and starbuck, and the scene with queequeg and ishmael in bed together.
what i like about it most is how its flaws, um, this is going to sound stupid. its flaws improve it. every boring ten page tangent on rib-bone carving is part of a great and singular theme, which the whole novel rolls towards with every word.
moby-dick, the novel, is a deep and dangerous ocean, and lurking somewhere at the heart of it is moby-dick, the whale: this terrifying, malevolent presence that pervades the whole book. in reading it, you become drawn into this gigantic and varied world (those first hundred pages are maybe the best thing melville has written). it engages you, entertains you, swallows you up, and all the while it promises one thing: the white whale. you feel it coming, soon and terrible, you feel the novel building to it as you read, until you expect it, until every page you think this is the page you're going to see moby-dick.
and then, of course, it spends five hundred pages giving you nothing. teasing you with a mention, now and again, with the spout on the horizon in the middle of the night, with the ships who first say they haven't seen him, and then that they've had word of him, and finally that he's close, that he nearly wrecked them. dragging you through those god-awful digressions about whale bone structure and paring techniques and whether a sperm whale would prefer plato or spinoza, and so on, until you're nearly tearing your hair out with this burning need to find and kill the white whale.
to read it is to become ahab, to follow his mad fool quest to the end of the book, to grow more and more frustrated, more obsessed, just as he does, as you get closer and closer to moby-dick. and then it leaves you like it leaves him: wrecked, ruined, lost and purposeless and unsatisfied. we see the whale, but it is nothing like we are expecting, it is awful beyond what we could have imagined. we get to the end after days and days of preparation, of anticipation, and discover that what we thought we wanted, we were not ready for at all. moby-dick is the world's cruellest thriller.
haha glen i think coriolanus is probably a personal taste thing. for me, it's the best-constructed of all shakespeare's plays except maybe the tempest. but yeah, it's certainly the least relatable of the tragedies; i don't know if i'd expect anyone to like coriolanus himself.
what i do love about it is that it is able to tie its five narrative threads together so tightly, and in one character, rather than with subplots like king lear. it's intense, like othello, but it has a lot more going on in terms of plot. othello is emotionally intense, coriolanus is narratively intense, i guess. some of shakespeare's later plays are absolute messes: hamlet, cymbeline, pericles, etc. coriolanus shows the master at the absolute top of his form, and if coriolanus the character isn't as interesting as the prince of denmark, then i give shakespeare the benefit of the doubt; he was focusing on other things.
the imagery, while not the most beautiful, is certainly the most deft and controlled of all the plays i've read. it was t.s. eliot's favourite shakespeare, and he wrote a pretty rad poem on it, iirc
and hey evan i remember recommending pale fire to you, along with a whole lot of other trash - awesome that you have the good taste to take the best from my 2007 retardedness
i guess there's a lot of stuff i could do without - all of the completely infuriating "philosophical" discussions, and some of the scientific stuff (like ishmael classifying whales as fish, in the face of Actual Science, because hey, he feels like they're fish and what would those dumb old biologists know). but the things about whaling are usually pretty fascinating, at least.
there are two scenes that move it from being a pretty funny, clever, but ultimately unspectacular romantic novel, to being something approaching the old masters: firstly, the scene before the chase, when the st elmo's fire appears on the masthead and ahab's spear, and ahab stands in this half-night twilight electrical storm giving his polemic against god - that is like something out of shakespeare. secondly, ahab's final speech:
"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
i mean
that rules
can't read that without getting a shiver down my spine
and then there a million great little things about the book, like stubb and flask and starbuck, and the scene with queequeg and ishmael in bed together.
what i like about it most is how its flaws, um, this is going to sound stupid. its flaws improve it. every boring ten page tangent on rib-bone carving is part of a great and singular theme, which the whole novel rolls towards with every word.
moby-dick, the novel, is a deep and dangerous ocean, and lurking somewhere at the heart of it is moby-dick, the whale: this terrifying, malevolent presence that pervades the whole book. in reading it, you become drawn into this gigantic and varied world (those first hundred pages are maybe the best thing melville has written). it engages you, entertains you, swallows you up, and all the while it promises one thing: the white whale. you feel it coming, soon and terrible, you feel the novel building to it as you read, until you expect it, until every page you think this is the page you're going to see moby-dick.
and then, of course, it spends five hundred pages giving you nothing. teasing you with a mention, now and again, with the spout on the horizon in the middle of the night, with the ships who first say they haven't seen him, and then that they've had word of him, and finally that he's close, that he nearly wrecked them. dragging you through those god-awful digressions about whale bone structure and paring techniques and whether a sperm whale would prefer plato or spinoza, and so on, until you're nearly tearing your hair out with this burning need to find and kill the white whale.
to read it is to become ahab, to follow his mad fool quest to the end of the book, to grow more and more frustrated, more obsessed, just as he does, as you get closer and closer to moby-dick. and then it leaves you like it leaves him: wrecked, ruined, lost and purposeless and unsatisfied. we see the whale, but it is nothing like we are expecting, it is awful beyond what we could have imagined. we get to the end after days and days of preparation, of anticipation, and discover that what we thought we wanted, we were not ready for at all. moby-dick is the world's cruellest thriller.
haha glen i think coriolanus is probably a personal taste thing. for me, it's the best-constructed of all shakespeare's plays except maybe the tempest. but yeah, it's certainly the least relatable of the tragedies; i don't know if i'd expect anyone to like coriolanus himself.
what i do love about it is that it is able to tie its five narrative threads together so tightly, and in one character, rather than with subplots like king lear. it's intense, like othello, but it has a lot more going on in terms of plot. othello is emotionally intense, coriolanus is narratively intense, i guess. some of shakespeare's later plays are absolute messes: hamlet, cymbeline, pericles, etc. coriolanus shows the master at the absolute top of his form, and if coriolanus the character isn't as interesting as the prince of denmark, then i give shakespeare the benefit of the doubt; he was focusing on other things.
the imagery, while not the most beautiful, is certainly the most deft and controlled of all the plays i've read. it was t.s. eliot's favourite shakespeare, and he wrote a pretty rad poem on it, iirc
and hey evan i remember recommending pale fire to you, along with a whole lot of other trash - awesome that you have the good taste to take the best from my 2007 retardedness