The Five Best Pieces of Literature You've Ever Read

[SteVo+ 3,702]

I made this "pieces of literature" instead of strictly novels so I could include #2 on my list.

 

1) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

2) Hamlet, William Shakespeare

3) The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

4) The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

5) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

 

Let's see those lists, fellas.

Edited May 18, 2013 by SteVo

[Vin+ 3,121]

We talking "best" or "favorite"?

[Sarge+ 3,436]

1. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, written some time between 1385 and 1400.

2. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, 1844

3. Hamlet, William Shakespeare, 1603

4. Song of Myself, Walt Whitman, 1855

5. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe, probably about 1590

 

and if this stretched into a top 10...

 

6. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville, 1851

7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1885

8. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

9. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, unknown author, probably around the same time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales

[SteVo+ 3,702]

We talking "best" or "favorite"?

 

Either one is fine, I suppose.

[rzb+ 367]

Just bought a Kindle this week so the timing couldn't be any better. +1 Stevo.

 

I don't read that often (but I'm hoping the Kindle changes that) so my list won't match up to anyone's probably but hey, that's okay. Here we go...

 

1. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

2. Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis

3. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell[/b] by Tucker Max

4. Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream by HG Bissinger

5. Crank[/b] by Ellen Hopkins

 

I hated anything I HAD to read for school by the way.

[RANGA+ 1,210]

In no real order:

 

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

1984, George Orwell

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy

[BwareDWare94 723]

1. The Harry Potter series (I'm going with favorite here. Some might mock this but I think that HP is the best straight up good vs evil story of our generation)

2. In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien

3. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

4. July, July and The Things They Carried By Tim O'Brien (can't choose between the two)

5. Snow by Orhan Pamuk

 

I figured I'd change this up to look away from classics. Each of these books could easily be considered classics in a hundred years, however. As you can see, I love historical fiction. The enlightenment one catches about Vietnam from the O'Brien Novels, WWII and the way Japanese Americans were treated on the west coast in the Guterson novel, and the overall view of Islamic culture and religion in the Pamuk novel is absolutely fascinating to me.

Edited May 19, 2013 by BwareDWare94

[Guest Phailadelphia]

In no particular order:

 

Gatsby

Catch-22

Slaughterhouse-Five

Ulysses

Brave New World

Edited May 19, 2013 by Phailadelphia

[Duck Fallas 209]

In no order:

 

Frankenstein, Or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

 

The Scarlet Letter. by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

The Kite Runner. by Khaled Hosseini

 

1984 by George Orwell

 

Great Expectations. by Charles Dickens

 

Midnight's Children. by Salman Rushdie

 

( I know I put six books instead of five, but I couldn't leave Midnight's Children off my list.)

[BradyFan81 404]

These are my favorite ones. all of them I read in high school.

 

1. Catcher in the Rye

2. Lord of the Flies

3. The Great Gatsby

4. The Sun Also Rises

5. Adventures of Huck Finn

[Guest Phailadelphia]

It's curious that most of the books in the thread so far are ones we all read in high school. Are we reading kickass books in high school or do we not read after graduating?

[Duck Fallas 209]

It's curious that most of the books in the thread so far are ones we all read in high school. Are we reading kickass books in high school or do we not read after graduating?

Honestly, I NEVER read in high school...yet somehow I majored in English in college and ended up teaching. I didn't start reading heavily until I began teaching. However, I didn't teach any of the books on my list. I wrote a huge paper on Frankenstein for a British Lit class in college, the others I read on my own time since college. I try and read a novel every couple of weeks. I used to knock out a novel in a few days.

[BwareDWare94 723]

It's curious that most of the books in the thread so far are ones we all read in high school. Are we reading kickass books in high school or do we not read after graduating?

 

I love to read, but I have trouble reading with my two jobs because they take up most of my day. I try to read at least a chapter a day, though, so sometimes books take my several months. I'm usually reading more than one at once. I read a lot during the harvest season because I sit in lines with grain and bean trucks for sometimes several hours at a time.

[OSUViking 505]

No particular order:

 

The Great Gatsby - It's amazing how many people don't understand the message behind this book? Seriously, you guys know how many times I've heard, "Oh! Gatsby was a really good romance!" "Did you even read it?" "I mostly Sparknoted it, but somewhat."

Catcher in the Rye - This one is probably my favorite book. It might be because I can relate to Holden, or because the book is just flat out interesting. I begrudgingly took on the task of reading it for a project and didn't open it until the day before the project was due. I don't think I put the book down until I finished it - I absolutely loved it. Its style is partly the inspiration for my style of writing.

Les Miserables - I just flat out loved this book.

Huckleberry Finn - Same as above. I liked how Twain poked at society's values and the idea that society is always "right".

To Kill a Mockingbird - Another book I absolutely loved, if not for the strong message in its text then for its captivating plot.

[Zack_of_Steel+ 3,014]

I find Fahrenheit 451 and Ray Bradbury both to be extremely overrated. I loathed Fahrenheit 451.

 

Off of the top of my head (I didn't read all of these in high school, surprisingly):

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey

Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

Hamlet, William Shakespeare

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

Edited May 20, 2013 by Zack_of_Steel

[SteVo+ 3,702]

Catch 22, Kurt Vonnegut

 

You mean Joseph Heller?

[Zack_of_Steel+ 3,014]

You mean Joseph Heller?

 

No, lol, but I did fuck up. I looked at my shelf and Catch-22 and Cat's Cradle were next to eachother. I meant Cat's Cradle.

[SteVo+ 3,702]

I keep looking back at my list, and I'm thinking Fahrenheit 451, 1984, or Brave New World could all go in the #5 spot. I haven't read the latter two in awhile.

[Favre4Ever+ 4,476]

As great as this "Books I read in HS that were Awesome" thread is -- I will change it up a little. Not that I disagree, because there were some good books that were read in HS -- but, that gets boring when everyone is just naming the same classics over and over.

 

I've posted this one on here before, but worth doing so again.

 

 

You kind of need to watch the movie to get some of the concepts and connections, but it is truly an intriguing read. A book that makes your mind wander and ponder some of the biggest questions life has to offer got my attention and it should yours as well.

 

Reggie White and Tony Dungy also both have amazing auto biographies.

 

[Milla4Prez63 678]

I honestly haven't read anything that wasn't a comic since my freshman year of high school, but there was always one book I loved. A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith, it is a great story about generations of a family prospering in Florida while it was still native and untamed. We read it in a class in middle school and I actually read ahead against my teacher's wishes because I loved it so much.

 

As for comics, the best piece of comic literature I've read is Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb. The original Watchmen by Alan Moore was good too, but I read it after seeing the movie and it kinda ruined the experience for me.