(Somebody's) List of Best novels of all time

[Borges]

List posted here for perusal and good natured vitriol.

[ClearCase_guy]

Ulysses at Number 3? Let's examine the thought process:

"I've never read it. I tried, but it sucked real bad. My professor said it was really important. She didn't actually read it either -- she said it sucked real bad too. But, since it's so important, I guess I should vote for it..."

[Borges]

Influence has to come in somewhere. For the record I read and enjoyed Ulysses. No plans for Finegann's Wake though. Life's too short.

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

100.Gone with the Wind - Mitchell

Well, this picture paints a thousand words...

[gate2wire]

List must be from a teacher or literature major out to impress. Only books on the list are books one was forced to read in school.

My top 5-
Lonesome Dove
Lonesome Dove
Lonesome Dove
Shogun
and
Lonesome Dove

[Borges]

He's an English Professor who consulted with others.

[gate2wire]

Figures.

I tried to read Moby Dick when in my late 20's.
Couldn't get more than a couple chapters.

Not on the list but tried A Tale of Two Cities as an adult also. Same result.

Guess I'm just not that 'sophisticated'.

[mware]

I read 21 of the books on the list.

[mware]

FRESHMAN YEAR

HOMER: Iliad, Odyssey
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound
SOPHOCLES: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Philoctetes
THUCYDIDES: Peloponnesian War
EURIPIDES: Hippolytus, Bacchae
HERODOTUS: Histories
ARISTOPHANES: Clouds
PLATO: Meno, Gorgias, Republic, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium, Parmenides, Theatetus, Sophist, Timaeus, Phaedrus
ARISTOTLE: Poetics, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, On Generation and Corruption, Politics, Parts of Animals, Generation of Animals
EUCLID: Elements
LUCRETIUS: On the Nature of Things
PLUTARCH: Lycurgus, Solon
NICOMACHUS: Arithmetic
LAVOISIER: Elements of Chemistry
HARVEY: Motion of the Heart and Blood
Essays by: Archimedes, Fahrenheit, Avogadro, Dalton, Cannizzaro, Virchow, Mariotte, Driesch, Gay-Lussac, Spemann, Stears, J.J. Thompson, Mendeleyev, Berthollet, J.L. Proust
top

SOPHOMORE YEAR

THE BIBLE
ARISTOTLE: De Anima, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Categories
APOLLONIUS: Conics
VIRGIL: Aeneid
PLUTARCH: "Caesar" and "Cato the Younger"
EPICTETUS: Discourses, Manual
TACITUS: Annals
PTOLEMY: Almagest
PLOTINUS: The Enneads
AUGUSTINE: Confessions
ST. ANSELM: Proslogium
AQUINAS: Summa Theologica, Summa Contra Gentiles
DANTE: Divine Comedy
CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales
DES PREZ: Mass
MACHIAVELLI: The Prince, Discourses
COPERNICUS: On the Revolutions of the Spheres
LUTHER: The Freedom of a Christian
RABELAIS: Gargantua and Pantagruel
PALESTRINA: Missa Papae Marcelli
MONTAIGNE: Essays
VIETE: "Introduction to the Analytical Art"
BACON: Novum Organum
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, The Tempest, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Coriolanus, Sonnets
POEMS BY: Marvell, Donne, and other 16th- and 17th-century poets
DESCARTES: Geometry, Discourse on Method
PASCAL: Generation of Conic Sections
BACH: St. Matthew Passion, Inventions
HAYDN: Quartets
MOZART: Operas
BEETHOVEN: Sonatas
SCHUBERT: Songs
STRAVINSKY: Symphony of Psalms
top

JUNIOR YEAR

CERVANTES: Don Quixote
GALILEO: Two New Sciences
DESCARTES: Meditations, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
MILTON: Paradise Lost
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: Maximes
LA FONTAINE: Fables
PASCAL: Pensees
HUYGENS: Treatise on Light, On the Movement of Bodies by Impact
ELIOT: Middlemarch
SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise
LOCKE: Second Treatise of Government
RACINE: Phaedre
NEWTON: Principia Mathematica
KEPLER: Epitome IV
LEIBNIZ: Monadology, Discourse on Metaphysics, Essay On Dynamics, Philosophical Essays, Principles of Nature and Grace
SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels
HUME: Treatise of Human Nature
ROUSSEAU: Social Contract, The Origin of Inequality
MOLIERE: The Misanthrope
ADAM SMITH: Wealth of Nations
KANT: Critique of Pure Reason, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
MOZART: Don Giovanni
JANE AUSTEN: Pride and Prejudice
DEDEKIND: "Essay on the Theory of Numbers"

top

SENIOR YEAR

Declaration of Independence
The Constitution of the United States
Supreme Court opinions
HAMILTON, JAY, AND MADISON: The Federalist Papers
DARWIN: Origin of Species
HEGEL: Phenomenology of Mind, "Logic" (from the Encyclopedia)
LOBACHEVSKY: Theory of Parallels
TOCQUEVILLE: Democracy in America
LINCOLN: Selected Speeches
KIERKEGAARD: Philosophical Fragments, Fear and Trembling
MARX: Capital, Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology
DOSTOEVSKI: Brothers Karamazov
TOLSTOY: War and Peace
MELVILLE: Benito Cereno
TWAIN: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
O'CONNOR: Selected Stories
FREUD: General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
WASHINGTON, BOOKER T.: Selected Writings
DUBOIS: The Souls of Black Folk
HEIDEGGER: What is Philosophy?
HEISENBERG: The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory
MILLIKAN: The Electron
CONRAD: Heart of Darkness
Essays by: Faraday, J.J. Thomson, Mendel, Minkowski, Rutherford, Davisson, Schrodinger, Bohr, Maxwell, de Broigle, Dreisch, Orsted, Ampere, Boveri, Sutton, Morgan, Beadle & Tatum, Sussman, Watson & Crick, Jacob & Monod, Hardy

[Borges]

ATOTC is one of Dickens' worst but Moby Dick is hilarious. Especially the beginning.

[mware]

St John's reading list.

[Borges]

High school or college? :-)

[Cyclopean Squid]

4. In Search of Lost Time - Proust

Wretched, miserable, execrable, abysmal book. To be fair I only read Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove, but it was by far the dumbest thing I have ever read. Pretentious, plodding, pointless. How many pages can you read about a church steeple? To get through this book, you'll have to conquer 12. In a row. How little can happen in the 1000 pages of the 2 volumes (of 7 total) that I read? How about having tea with Madame Swann, and then going to the beach. That's it. Maybe there's something I'm not getting. Maybe I'll try it again some day. Much of the prose is beautiful, but the plot is so uncompelling that it hardly matters.

[gate2wire]

That's pretty good. How many did you actually like?

Had to read Les Miserables in FRENCH when in high school. Talk about boring.

[GSWarrior]

# 9 Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.

I remember being caught up in this book. And then, near the end, Mann switches to the French language for several pages for no apparent reason.

I don't speak French and I was a little annoyed.

[Borges]

It's been called the literary equivalent of Einstein's physics.

[mware]

St. John's of Annapolis, Great Reading Series.

[A Citizen Reporter]

LOL, I had the same experience. Only my prof said that the way he read it was drinking many Gin and tonics on the beach! Great, eh?

[RabidBartender]

Good: Only 1 Hemingway
Bad: No Atlas Shrugged, which I just finished a few weeks back and is easily in my top 5.