I always see lists recommending these books but I've never seen a list explaining why they are being recommended

that's cause it's a fake list

Fuck off, I’m reading.

Well that's fair.

bump

Thanks for the bump pal

The state of Veeky Forums
I'd like to know this too desu too bad the people here seem to be hit or miss.
>reading
who are you trying to fool

Why are people in this thread being such dicks? Anyway, here's some really quick thoughts on a couple of these:

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler
A good introduction to literary postmodernism/metafiction. You will feel like Calvino is playing with you, in a benevolent way. A lot of "real" literature can be heavy or dense, but Calvino is sparkly and uplifting. Also it's an immersive reading experience.

The Master and Margarita
This satirizes life in Russia under communist rule. People were forced to deny obvious realities, so for many life felt pretty surreal/absurd. The fantastic atmosphere fun and a good fit for what Bulgakov is trying to do. It's also a pretty funny read.

Well which ones have you read user? And which ones do you like the best? We can recommend you a few from that.

I get the question tho, personally image lists are annoying to digest and I wish that shit was just posted as text so I can fucking copy and paste, and compare to my own reading list in Excel. Ain't no one got time for that. Idgaf about 99% of book covers honestly.

Btw, my favorite book in the top 20 is Stoner, if you haven't gotten to that one yet.

for my fellow short-attention-span readers

You fail to understand the board that you are on. Veeky Forums is quite similar to /v/ in respects to it's user-base's relationship with it's content. A bunch of people pretending to have played old games and parroting opinions just because they heard other people there talk about them. Just like Veeky Forums and books.

Nothing's "deserving" of the list, it was voted on and these are the books that people have in common the most. The board has a pretty diverse taste in literature, but these are the ones that are independently agreed on. You're reading into it too much.

I've read almost every single one of those books and I still have done nothing with my life, have no greater knowledge than the average person, am not any better off, didn't gain any interesting perspective, nothing. So what did I do besides waste my time?

your move Veeky Forums

Though I should mention since is a cooked list you could go to litcord and ask them why they picked what they did. You'll probably get greeted with shitposting and mockery because that place is trash, but there's a chance you could get a straightforward answer. I know the last two books are on there as "signatures" by the two that cooked the list, winston and sheep.

boring people are boring. reading is, for the most part, a passive activity. if you want to improve your life, go do something productive.

FAKE LIST. GAS ALL FAKE LIST POSTERS REEEEE
>pic related is real list

non fiction books aren't supposed to teach you anything. If you want to get knowledge go read a car manual.

But I find it hard to believe you didn't get any "interesting perspective"... it kind of sounds like you are merely absorbing the plot points instead of trying to identify with the characters.

Regardless, you can't deny that you gained cultural knowledge?

>gravitys rainbow

>first 100 pages fucking mad
>page 550 does this book ever end?
>get used to the fuckery and accept it
>GR is fucking awesome 10/10 would read again

I've actually just started reading Cosmicomics and I'm loving the writing style so far, that is, assuming the translation is a good one. The Baron in The Trees is also on its way.

I want actually looking for recommendations as such, just good discussion. If someone mentions a book I've read I can engage with them, if it's a book I'm unfamiliar with, then I learn something about it.

I don't care what the board is supposedly like, simply remove yourself from the thread if it doesn't interest you.

Damn phone, I wasn't*

Maybe read the Western Canon. I don't mean the books in Bloom's lists, but his essays.

It was active discussion on this board that I wanted.

The Book of the New Sun has a well-deserved place on the list. It's probably fair to call it the "Ulysses" of science fiction.

The story is part of the "dying earth" subgenre of SF set in the far future at a time when the sun is dying. The novel's strengths are: Gene Wolfe's prose, the complex and multi-layered plot, the bizarre and powerful imagery. It's not written in a linear fashion and this, combined with the prose and the strange things being described, give the text a dreamlike and surreal quality.

If you have a background in the classics and literary fiction you'll derive a greater satisfaction due to Wolfe's allusions and references to the Greeks, the Bible and early Christian authors, and the greats like Borges, Chesterton and others. A lot of science fiction and fantasy falls into the trap of recycling tropes, whereas Wolfe with the BotNS uses the freedom SF authors enjoy to transcend genre and write something completely unique.

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more mind-enriching and indeed life-affirming novel than BotNS, for that reason it's one of my favorite novels and has earned plenty of praise on Veeky Forums.

Let's do another one while I'm at it.

Crime & Punishment is worthy due to being one of the finest examinations of the psychology of a dysfunctional/tortured mind.

It's not a novel one reads for plot. Instead the joy is reading about Raskolnikov trying to justify his actions and deal with the consequences. My own highlight of C&P was the interplay between Raskolnikov and the detective Porfiry, you can almost see the noose being pulled tighter after every conversation. Porfiry was probably the first "Columbo" style detective with his friendly manner and finally the killer "just one more thing" moment.

Indeed the fact C&P remains a page turner despite the reader knowing how it's eventually going to end attests to the skill with which it was written.

Also fake. I put in votes for books that, on the spreadsheet, received several votes, which didn't even show up here.

this is why democracy is flawed

that chart is the result of a popularity poll. there's your answer. there's also Wikipedia which can give you a brief rundown of each books significance.

I hate this board so fucking much. Do you like Ulysses or not? All the goddamn memeing in this place makes it impossible to figure out what your actual opinion is on anything. Is the "meme trilogy" just sarcastic? Do you actually like the book but shit on it for jokes? Obviously not everyone here has the same opinion but there seems to be a universal concensus that flip flops constantly.

This guy gets it, thanks for these posts man, I'm at work right now but I'm looking forward to reading these when I get off

Calm down user.

The "meme trilogy" is polarising. Some anons will get a lot out of them and to them it's worth the investment, others will not see why they bother. Because of the length of these books and the time investment, they're fun books to "meme" other anons into reading, regardless of whether they'll enjoy them or not.

OP wants to know why Veeky Forums likes them, not why wikipedia editors think they're liked. Why talk about anything on Veeky Forums if we can just go somewhere else and read some academic's opinion?

Why not read them and form your own opinion? Keep in mind, the meaning of a "top" book is incredibly vague here.
The problem most people have with a book like Ulysses is that they expect to have their mind blown, which, if someone already sets out something expecting this much, is impossible. Some people are disappointed that it didnt turn their life around, others who expect nothing might enjoy the book for its own merits, discover something they personally find enjoyable, or were curious enough to read secondary material which cleared up the cloud of obscurity a bit to reveal some of the depth the novel has to offer -- and even then, some might go "huh, just because its deep doesnt mean its good", and others see the depth in the wordplay, the allusions and the sincere language and just find it beautiful. The way you approach a classic largely defines your experience with it, but the reason that it stays a classic is that most people, the longer they engage themselves with it, tend to find it a rewarding experience.

>Finnegan's Wake
>Zettel's Traum
>Women and Men

lol

>Finnegan's Wake
>Finnegan's
>gan's
>n's
>'
>

roll?

Reading is a supplement, not life's main dish, user. If you didn't get anything new from it, it's 100% your fault.

I swear this is the one pretentious twat that works his way round Veeky Forums acting like he’s a superior being. I bet you smoke Marlboro, wear hornrim fake glasses, and clothes from the charity shop, telling everyone that the communist manifesto isn’t flawed, but everyone gives Marx the credit when it was really Engles who contributed to most of the ideology. In reality you’ve never read the manifesto, and you hate smoking, and you get home to take off your charity shop clothes and put on your Zara pyjamas and get in bed to watch garbage on TV.

>John William's Stoner:
I'm fairly sure that this is my favorite novel I've read. It follows the the life of William Stoner, born to an extremely poor farming family in Missouri. As an adolescent, he is given the opportunity to attend a college 40 miles away, studying agriculture. There he discovers, for the first time, literature. He falls in love with English, eventually becomes a professor. After that it simply follows his life.
It's an incredibly quiet, soft-spoken novel, but it's truly one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. William Stoner is so deeply misunderstood, from his job as a professor to his failed marriage. In all aspects of his life you want so deeply for him to experience joy and meaning. Spoiler: he pretty much never does.
Read this book. It's fucking incredible.
Also fuck all ya'll, this could've been a tight-ass thread, fuck this fucking website.

My god you're such a fucking loser. Get off this board if you don't want to discuss literature. what a faggot.

>reader
>short attention span
you might want to work on that bud

lovely point about C&P not being a book to read for the plot. Thanks for the input

What kind of brainlet reads a book for the plot?

What books from those charts are uplifting? I'm tired of reading depressing shit.

The epilogue of C&P is pretty uplifting.

At least that one isn't an embarrassment.

Just got an email saying Stoner had shipped while I was at work, must say after this description I'm looking forward to it even more.
Is it a long read? I've read too many short story collections recently and I need something I can lose myself in.

Ulysses has also just shipped so I may read that before I tackle these.
Recently I moved to the US so I set aside some money to rebuild my library and among the books I purchased was a good few of Gene Wolfe's books, and also Jack Vance's Dying Earth collection. I really enjoyed what I've read of The Knight and The Dying Earth so I'm almost certain The Book of The New Sun will be a firm favourite.
Is the sequel also worth reading?

Can't say that for the rest of it however.

Man I am sorry for my poor sentence structure, I drank two beers and I'm pretty tired.

Are you retarded? It's literally right there under the title of the chart.

Stop posting this fake ass shit list

Jesus suffering fuck, stop talking about the lists.
The point of this thread is to discuss books often name checked on Veeky Forums in a little more depth than the arbitrary number they've been assigned.

Then pick a book and fucking talk about it. Not meta nonsense you fucking retard. Fuck off back to r/books

Read the OP you fucking dolt.

>ya'll
>tight ass
>>>worldstarhiphop

>hurr durr let's have a thread about every book Veeky Forums likes all at once
No, fuck off retard or at least lurk moar

Obviously it wouldn't be about every book, so far only 3 books have actually been touched upon.
Carry on being fucking retarded though, it's to be expected.

Big roll

God damnnit looks boring

...

> plural votes

Something tells me your shit got picked up.

yall sleepin on this

I keep typing out a whole paragraph about my feelings on a book, and then just delete it all for fear of scrutiny.

Fuck it, I'll do a few

>The Savage Detectives
A very interesting book from a formal and structural standpoint. The second part is specially well told. The reader follows the two protagonists through a retelling of second hand accounts. We try to piece together multiple unconnected anecdotes and (mis)adventures, each of them told by a different narrator with a distinct voice and idiolect of Spanish. The characters appear as shadows, spectres, they are almost anti-protagonists, for we can never look at them directly. It is not as chaotic a plot as 2666 but it is still definetly a "river novel" that deals with the relationship between art, poetry and life under the sun of Sonora. If you liked Hopscotch you should give this one a try.

>To the Lighthouse
Masterfully written, this book is fairly challenging (at least for a non-native speaker like myself), as it often changes points of view mid-sentence. The stream of consciousness seamlessly mixes memories, desires and the current experiences of various characters; and does so in an incredibly poetic style that never feels forced or out of place. This book is worth it alone for two scenes: the more experimental one where a family sits for dinner with friends, and the points of view and expectations of eachother are shown all at once to you; and the more traditional one about the passing of the seasons in an abandoned house, where Woolf describes nature and the passing of time.

>Hamsun
Same reasons I just gave for Woolf, but in a pioneering, less experimental style. His earlier work (Hunger, Mysteries) are more proto-modernist character studies, trying to unravel the "inner workings of the soul", while his other works (Pan, Victoria, Growth of the Soil) are told in a lyrical way, dealing with nature and love. Hamsun almost always wrote from the point of view of fairly unadapted or anti-social young males, often artists, which I guess appeals to the demographics of this site.

>Ficciones
One of the finest collections of short stories by an enormous writer, arguably the best of the XXth century. You will find plays with the infinite, stories laden with philosophical questions, and meta-textual interplay before post-modernism was even a thing. Some will resonate more with you than others, but you will for sure not forget many of the stories that you will read in this collection.

>Is the sequel also worth reading?

The Book of the New Sun has a coda, the Urth of the New Sun, and then there is the Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun. All of it together is called the "Solar Cycle". It's all worth reading, although the Long and Short Sun books are pretty different in style to the New Sun.

Having said all that, many people I've spoken to about the books ended re-reading the Book of the New Sun before moving on. I've personally found the second read much more pleasurable than the first, as lots of things start making sense.

Good post.

Borges is one of my favourite authors, I read his "Labyrinths" collection quite young and it made a huge impact on me.

You've made me want to check out Woolf's "To The Lighthouse" for myself.

Hunger is one of my all time favourites, it's just so bleak and depressing but compelling too.
In every scene you feel that twisting, gnawing hunger and hope that he can overcome it, but he never really does. Even his successes are short lived, and I groaned out loud at times at his terrible choices.
This book definitely deserves a re-read every so often.

Unless I am mistaken, I see no Kierkegaard in that. Therefore, that picture is wrong and irrelevant.

Crime and Punishment has a great story with some great dialogue, Lolita has some of the best prose of the 20th century, The Stranger has some great philosophical insight, The Trial is a great story which can introduce new lines of thought in the reader, Catch-22 is funny as fuck, Dorian Gray is a good story with great prose and clever dialogue.

it is boring

that's why i started reading more in the first place.

rolin

shuffle

Rollin' for a big ol' reading list.

it's not paticularly long, or dense for that matter, but you can absolutely get lost in it

roll

okay so pretty much a newfagg i saw that everywhere on /lit people talk about Ulysses, read Portrait before as a preparation. The day came where I picked it up. After the few pages I just appreciated how real it feels, just like watching someone's life through a window, not as in novel "real", it felt special. Now I'm on page 550 and it's amazing, i love it. I've never read anything that fit me so much, so inventive. I feel like I understand it, even though sometimes I read a paragraph like ten times. But it's great definitely read it.

>read Portrait before as a preparation.
Did you read Dubliners too? If not you are missing out, many minor characters of Ulysses are taken from the stories there. Also an amazing read on its own merits, btw.

roll

I'm making a chart for the Veeky Forums wiki On books about writting. What do you think so far?

Nice list, just picked up elements of style

Do you get writting superpowers trough the book or just at the end?

Honestly let's talk about this. Why ARE those books on the list? Harold Blumenthal's oft criticized "Western Canon" list is basically constructed basedon Ivy League peak 20th century notions of the historical literary roots of Western Civ, and for the most part, people grumble but agree with him when it comes to the older stuff. When it comes to the newer stuff, that's when you begin to see Blumenthal's "good old boy" bias start to shine. But, the list makes sense. Just because he didn't include a few modern authors he's biased against doesn't throw the basic methodology of the list out of question. Everything on the list deserves to be on the list and it's immediatley apparent why it was put there. With OP's list, I'm not sure if that's the case. Why DID we put those books there?

I've heard the Steven King one is good

Updated
I read a review about it online
"This isn't the worst book on writing that I've read, but it's not even close to the best (which is John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction.") The problems start with the title, "A Memoir of The Craft." The memoir section will be of interest only to King fans and of no interest to anyone else. There is far too much content devoted to Tabby (Mrs. King) and to pointless details that have no bearing on anything, e.g. "we were traveling to a WNBA game between Cleveland and..."[who cares!!]and are quite typical of King's blow-hard style here and elsewhere. The writing suggestions are okay but not new and not particularly insightful. King cites an editor who called an early story of his "too puffy." That's a bulls-eye review of this book as well: too much puff, not enough stuff. (He also mentions TWICE that he ended his relationship with Viking because of stupid argument about money. The same point repeated in IDENTICAL language. I'm looking at you Mr. or Ms. Editor!"

So idk how good it really is

I'm trying to add books that focus on one subject and have more tangible effects because of that rather than a general one

Like, a book that's about how to do pen drawings than "how to draw well" book

That's fair enough, haven't read it myself so I'm not a primary source.

no but i plan to, i find it incredible, how each book's different ... i mean i found portrait very artistic in like art for sake of art, rather bleak and sad and all.

i find ulysses so god damn lively, so full of all.
and i heard dubliners is exceptional, can be very depressing.
finnegan's wakeis just ... funy and inventive right?
i think joyce isn't a meme user

My goodness, I suddenly feel HIGHLY illiterate lol. I've only read 8 of these 100 books and two of them I read in Ancient/Modern Greek. I can't cast judgement on 92 of these books because I both haven't read them or anything about them and how they influence, idk literature or people in general. So I'll speak on the behalf of 8% of these. And I plan on lurking a lot more before I comment on anything beyond my small scope of knowledge. (Hopefully this doesn't sound pretentious) The ones that I did read seem to speak about certain themes that are important in both today and the society that they were apart of, some others seem like typically entry level books, I hear East of Eden (which I didn't read) is a good intro book to Steinbeck, things like Lord of the Rings, Dune, and Neuromancer are also widely talked about as intro or essential books to their individual genres due to them influencing writers or innovating on the way they write their genres. Things like Animal Farm and 1984 have their place politically. I understand the general concept one why these are up in a top 100 for Veeky Forums. And of course the obvious bias of there not being an YA or there being a ton of books made before the 21st century. But all of these books are up here with no explanation on why they're individually important. They are all influential and important I'm sure, but why are they so.

I'm not saying Veeky Forums should compile a description for each. But it would be nice to know why I'm reading what I've been told to read. But needless to say I want to read to figure it out for myself. But there isn't much discussion on this board for every book, just a select few philosphical-esque/meme-trilogy book discussions.
Are there any books you would personally recommend that's on the list? And if you don't mind keeping the discussion open and related to the thread why would your recommend them?

>And of course the obvious bias of there not being an YA
Am I misunderstanding or are you actually suggesting that not having YA trash on the list is due to bias?

No you didnt, stop lying on an anonymous mongolian basket-weaving consortium.

You are misunderstanding. I gave YA as an example, maybe that was my mistake because that was on the tip of my tongue. But there is a lack of things like horror, sci-fi (maybe this less than the other two), and fantasy. I'm assuming it's because we usually have less to learn from these books. And "intellectual" make for better discussions. But I feel like more diversity would be nice, as opposed to having them being a majority of literary fiction philosophical-type text. I think genre fiction is cool and would like it to not be represented by like 5%. NOT saying that we should change the list to match my wants and whims. I really don't mind it, in fact lately I've been trying to go away from the GIANT amount of /sffg/ books I've read. I already bought a bunch that are more Veeky Forums approved and I'm loving it.

Also I think The Book Thief is considered YA and I think of it as a good book, very entertaining. But I read it like 5 years ago so I could be wrong.

Sorry if I write more than necessary, I don't even think I know anyone who reads books besides some trashy poetry books so this is my outlet for any opinions on books and I just started using Veeky Forums so I'm just jumping at every opportunity to write a MASSIVE wall of text about this stuff.