Books are incredibly powerful things. They have the power to change who you are and how you think. They even have the power to change the world. History is written in books and by books.

Anyway, I think it would be cool to collectively compile a list of the greatest books ever written. This is to be Quoteland's list. What we think everyone should read once in their life. (Also this would be a really easy way for me to decide what to read at any time.)

Starting with a few off the top of my head:

-Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
-1984 by George Orwell
-The Odyssey by Homer
-A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
-The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This list is changeable; books can be removed only after sound and generally accepted reasons are given.
(Move this to whatever forum it best fits, or just ignore it if this is pointless...)

"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." -Aeschylus

Cool topic.
I don't know how these compare to yours since I haven't read any of those (yet - my friend promised to lend me his copy of 1984), but I suggest:

-Dracula by Bram Stoker
-The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkein
-The Robe by Lloyd C Douglas

- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

According to the authors website: "The Black Swan was the #1 highest selling nonfiction book published in 2007 on Amazon (for all of 2007) & 17 weeks on the NYT Bestseller list, 43 weeks on the NYT extended list, & 9 months on the Business Week list, plus London Sunday Times, etc."

-----------------------------
"In all of our hearts lies a longing for a Sacred Romance. It will not go away in spite of our efforts over the years to anesthetize or ignore its song, or attach it to a single person or endeavor." Brent Curtis

[This message was edited by eagleandchild on 07-22-08 at 09:51 AM.]

Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Dawn by Octavia Butler

"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul."
-William Ernest Henley, from "Invictus"

How about we have categories for what we think are great books? How do you compare Tolstoy to Tolkien?

I'm not sure if 'The Odyssey' should count as a book, a tale maybe? It was after all written in the style of a poem. Even Homer might have been a fabricated character.

I think what would be interesting is sharing one's own experience of reading those great books.

I loved Enid Blyton when I was young. I think I would love those stories even now. They brought me into a faraway land of pixies and adventure and helped in no small part to cultivate my grammar.
I had a peculiar vocab when I was younger and an overactive imagination that continues on to this day. I have no doubt her books have influenced my growing up process and even my character now.

Of course knowing the little about Literature that I do now, I realise her books do have some sort of set attitudes and subtle discrimination within. But their magic remains in my heart still.

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind."
- Thomas Babington Macaulay

Well, as much as I love them (and I am a huge LOTR nerd), I would define Tolkien's books as just "good" books. The same with something like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I think, as a general, but very-and I stress the word "very"-flexible, rule that epic fantasy, comedic works, and children's books would generally be excluded.

What I mean by great books is books that you think are essential to any well-developed mind. Books that have had some kind of effect on history and will stand the test of time (though, again, I mean this to be highly flexible).

quote:

---

I'm not sure if 'The Odyssey' should count as a book, a tale maybe? It was after all written in the style of a poem. Even Homer might have been a fabricated character.

---

Don't be so technical, silly. Epic poems and the like apply.

"And in a moment of almost unbearable vision,
Doubled over with the hunger of lions"

I'd like to make a few submissions to this list.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

"He bore cynically with the shameful details of his secret riots in which he exulted to defile with patience whatever image had attracted his eyes."

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

"He was some farmer. As I listened I had been so torn between humiliation and fascination that to lessen my sense of shame I had kept my attention riveted upon his intense face. That way I did not have to look at Mr. Norton."

The Garden Party - Katherine Mansfield

"Sometimes when those beams of light show in the sky they are very awful. They remind you that up there sits Jehovah, the jealous God, the Almighty, Whose eye is upon you, ever watchful, never weary. You remember that at his coming the whole earth will shake into one ruined graveyard; the cold, bright angels will you this way and that, and there will be no time to explain what could be explained so simply...but to-night it seemed to Linda there was something infinitely joyful and loving in those silver beams."

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

"It is not licit to impose confines on divine omnipotence, and if God so willed, unicorns could also exist. But console yourself, they exist in these books, which, if they do not speak of real existence, speak of possible existence."

"So must we then read books without faith, which is a theological virtue?"

"There are two other theological virtues as well. The hope that the possible is. And charity, toward those who believed in good faith that the possible was."

"But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it?"

But Beautiful - Geoff Dyer

"I used to ask Nellie similar things. She knew him better than anybody, so well that whatever I asked her, no matter how weird Monk was acting, she'd say,
--Oh, that's just Thelonious."