ITT: Personal 10/10s.
It's OK if it's a popular classic or a book only you seem to know about (and it can be a single book or multiple), I just want to hear what Veeky Forums's personal 10/10s are - the books that seem perfect to you. You don't have to, but if you want, please tell me why it's also your personal 10/10.
Great start OP, go on, finish it and tell your first.
Here's a few of mine:
Les Miserables: I wanted to read it because I enjoyed the musical and now it's difficult for me to return to the musical because it re-arranges and removes so many wonderful moments from the book (although I'll give credit it couldn't be easy adapting a 1400 page novel into a 2 hour musical). The book is a perfect tragedy that goes out of its way to warm your heart in the best possible way (i.e. Cosette being told to go play with her new expensive doll; Marius receiving the letter from Eponine on the barricade; Marius reconnecting with his grandfather; Marius realising how much of a hero Jean Valjean is after talking to Thenardier; etc) and leaves you feeling so much sorrow for a character you've come to love. It's a long book but I think that works to its benefit - it took me 4 months to finish it and those 4 months I came to fall in love with everybody in the book. The ending left me in tears.
Don Quixote: it's funny, mischievous, playful and endearing. Despite all the misadventures and troubles that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza get themselves into, you kind of want them to continue going on and on into more misunderstandings and when, in part two, they come across the manipulative duke and duchess, you see a little of yourself in them and wish for the misadventures to stop because you know these two characters are getting screwed with. I love Cervantes' cheeky sense of humour - his criticism of a false sequel to book one of Don Quixote throughout his book two were very funny and I loved the playfulness of his treating it like accurate "histories." I fell in love with the characters - shout out goes to the student who studied the first book and pretended to be a knight who wanted to defeat Don Quixote - and that ending hits like a fucking sucker punch. Sancho's final words to The DON about becoming shepherds and having more adventures if the DON gets better fucking broke me.
I didn't post mine in the first post because I felt that if my OP post was too long then people might not read it. Some of my favourites are here though I also think Watership Down is near perfect. It's an enjoyable adventure with rabbits trying to find and defend a safe home that covers thematic ground with faith (the stories of the black rabbit and El-Ahrairah), art (poetry and storytelling is key for rabbits), philosophy, politics (why Watership Down should be a haven for rabbits in contrast to Efrafa being an exploitative colony), social and gender norms (female rabbits are seen as the bearers of children as well as the ones responsible for doing the burrowing too), environmental concerns (plenty of contrasts between the natural and the man-made: the rabbits leave their original warren because of the worry of building developments - the details given of how their original home was destroyed and smoked out is genuinely shocking; the rabbits encountering the cars on the road; etc). The movie is pretty good and it encouraged me to read the book but I didn't think the book would tread such a versatile ground. It's such a wonderful well-developed and well-researched book (Richard Adams specifically studied rabbits behaviours for the book - the rabbit hierarchies and actions are partially based in reality). It's definitely a book I would read to my children.
i really love wuthering heights by emily bronte and i wish people on Veeky Forums talked about it more. maybe people read it in school and maybe they already love it or hate it based on that experience but i finished reading it this winter and loved every moment.
it's probably one of the greatest explorations of psychological power play, and heres my ignant ass beforehand thinking it was a fucking romance novel
INVISIBLE
CITIES
Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day." There isn't a single misplaced word, and it is staggeringly good.
You know when people talk about books that changed their lifes? Althought not the only one, the one who did it mostely for me was ST. I re-read it like 3 or 4 times, and it just keeps strong. The fact the book is about not only Rico's journey to become a soldier but also has one or two reflections on society keep making it better.
But more than this, I feel like that ST is more a tale of personal responsabilite and fighting for stuff that you love. To don't give up when things are a bit harsh and to never let down those around you simply because you want something or dosen't want to do it.
I see a lot of military personnal saying good stuff about the book, showing that Heinlein realy hit the nail when it comes to reproduce the mentality of a soldier in training slowly turning into a real soldier.
Not only that, I will be honest and say many of my political beliefes come from this book. It realy has a impact on me, and it is one of the books that make me want to try the military someday (but not in the army. I would like to go to the navy).
But what pisses me off is when someone comes and say this is a far-right book. I remember that I was a reader of a left-wing magazine and they published a article reproducing the same kinda of garbage that libtars speak about the book. I legitely made a open letter on how wrong they were, I even postes it on my old blog.
Also, it realy triggers me when I see this book on charts about right-wing literature and it says its fascist. For gods sake, ST ain't fascist, godammit. I even doubt it could be considered right-wing. If is right-wing because of the military stuff, then are the bolcheviks right-wing? (Dont even dare Chosmky...)
But yeah, this is one of, if not the favorite I have.
>see wall of text
>alright this is gonna be good
>see pic
Never could really understand who would have the patience to write so poorly to create pasta like this.
Kafka's Amerika
This was pretty funny but I don't think it's anywhere close to a 10/10. I'm sure Norm has a 10/10 in him somewhere though, and I hope he does write it.
Rio de Janeiro is the most famous; São Paulo the most full of itself; Recife is very humble and simple, but it is obviously the best.
(I am not from Recife.)
nothing wrong with fascism dude. Stop being so deathly afraid of agreeing with fascism.
confusing but good post
I feel the same way about Austens work. Used to believe they were romance novels but most of them are horror stories.
It ain't a pasta. I am 100% serious. You two aren't the first people to come around and say this, I am already used to plebs.
What is this book about anyway?
SP > all
I ain't deathly afraid. I don't agree. Fascism is totalitarianism. It kills freedom while saying it empowers people. I am yet to see a form of fascism that don't turn into totalitarianism.
Wuthering Heights is where it's at, no question about it.
I read Absolom, Absolom recently and it's amazing how many points of similarity there are between the two:
> Brooding, ruthless, driven patriarch, tormented by an unattainable dream (Heathcliffe / Thomas Sutpen)
> Two families, one very vigorous and strong, one more contemplative and weak (Earnshaw - Linton / Sutpen - Coldfield)
> Narrators partly or wholly removed from the story, recounting events long afterward (Quentin, Rosa / Lockwood, Nelly)
> Grotesque "Gothic" trappings (Coldfield locking himself up in his attic; Lockwood's dream with girl at the window, etc)
> Central character amassing a fortune in vague unspecified ways
etc
But good though Faulkner is, I find Wuthering Heights far superior.
The closest things I've read to a 10/10 is The Count of Monte Cristo. There were a couple of things that bothered me like the slow passages describing the old paralysed man and his facial expressions in great detail (reminiscent of Madame Bovary), and the clumsy timekeeping, but for a novel of 1200 pages this was insignificant - overall the plot, characters and prose were spectacular and I doubt I'll ever read something like it.
The Odyssey: I first read this some years ago in my native language , icelandic. Since I first read it, I have read it a couple of times again in icelandic, and in english and german too, and it's just always as good. I'm also probably rather biased toward the aesthetic of the prose in my native language since it was translated into icelandic in the 17th century by one of the, if not the best, ancient greek and icelandic linguistic scholar, giving the text a very beautiful, harsh, old-norse-inspired effect.
The story is fantastic, I mean it's really the archetypal hero story, an odyssey tour de force if you will (sorry, I had to). Everytime you find a small detail that just shows how fucking awesome Odysseus is. His guiles, the extremely elaborate adjectives for everything, the vivid depictions of the golden age of greeks and their gods, and the utter destruction of his wife's suitors. It's probably the one true masterpiece of human creation.
Some people say that the Iliad is the better "half" of Homer's creations but I feel like Odyssey contains the true message. While the Illiad is enlightening on the nature of human brutality, greed and madness; I think the Odyssey better depicts the human abilities that serve you better in life. Ingenuity, vigor, strength and strategy are all virtues that are depicted in countless ways in the Odyssey, and result in a far better result for the hero than in the Iliad. That the majority seems to prefer and know about Iliad (or more accurately Achilles) is perhaps a telling tale of how might is more valuated than intellect.
I can only try to imagine how utterly amazing it is to read it in fluent ancient greek.
>nothing wrong with fascism dude. Stop being so deathly afraid of agreeing with fascism.
t. fascist
I just finished it 3 days ago and I wholeheartedly agree, it's a great book. I also expected a romance novel but was pleasantly surprised.
The Most Dangerous Game
2666
I really wish Bolaño had more time and could've finished it but what we did end up getting was still superb.
>Some people say that the Iliad is the better "half" of Homer's creations
who says dat?
crime and punishment....
Life and Fate.
I
The Illiad
Heart of Darkness
My Antonia
Titus Groan
Charlotte's Web
Not really an objective list, just my favorite books
The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
Spot on. As every french engineering student, I have to pass a literature/philosophy test at the end of my preparatory classes. Each year, 3 books are chosen as the basis of our year's long analysis.
Well this year The Odyssey is one of them, and what you just wrote is exactly what we are taught here.
So yeah, just to say you're right.
Infinite Jest by Dave
Wealth of Nations
>tfw Achilles starts lamenting his fate when Odysseus meets him in the underworld
I need to read Faulkner sometime
I hope if Norm retires from comedy that he writes more books. He's so well read and intuitive that I think he could match Pynchon or McCarthy.
Don't worry dude, I read your post and it makes me want to read Starship Troopers even more.
How long did it take you to finish? I really want to read it but draught excluders are intimidating to me
To be honest i always preferred The Iliad because of its exploration of tragedy, honour, strategy and the double-crossing between the gods. Plus the pacing is near perfect and it reads like a Hong Kong era John Woo film. Ifucking love it my dude
Nice choice dude. I tried reading C&P when I was younger and didnt get far but i'm glad I read it fully now because it really is fucking great.
Pnin
Peace
why do you like Pnin user?
Growth of the Soil is my favorite book. It used to be Walden or A San County Almanac.
This book really feeds an the outdoorsman/homesteader aesthetic better than any book I've read (which as you might guess is kinda my thing)
I expected so much more out of this book than what I got.
My personal 10/10s are
A Confederacy of Dunces
Infinite Jest
The Martian Chronicles
My man
What isn’t it about really
Crime and Punishment & The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte - Karl Marx
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner
Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon
Mason & Dixon - Pynchon
For me, it's Ficciones.
Apart from obvious ones like Ulysses, Hamlet, and L'Étranger, the two best 10/10s for me are Wuthering Heights and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Wuthering Heights because I find Heathcliff an intriguing character, and especially after Catherine dies and Heathcliff becomes the villain the book is absolutely amazing! Completely makes up for the somewhat boring first half, which is essentially just necessary setup for the second.
The Count of Monte Cristo because it's complete escapism. I love the culture of France it portrays, and it is possible the best revenge tale of all time, seconded only by Hamlet. It also has the deep philosophical aspect which I feel is severely overlooked on this site, which is a shame. Also, I hate the meme that Dumas' prose is shit, because it really isn't, and managed to make a 1200 page book completely engaging that whole way through.
Oops fucked up the spoilers sorry
Some of my favourites:
>Redwall
>Watership Down
>The Old Man and the Sea
>Dr. Bloodmoney by PKD
>On the Road
>The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings
>Nineteen Eighty-Four
>Hells Angels by HST
>The Gospel of John
>House of Leaves
>Siddhartha
>The Road by C. McCarthy
>I Am Legend
>Misery by S. King
>The Painted Bird
I generally don't read what I don't end up liking.
are you taking the exam this year or next year ?
Which section are you enrolled in ? Fellow French student here
A hero of our time
Something just majorly struck a chord during the time in my life when I read it and I've adored it ever since
I have only one 10/10
This books spoke to me like no other. I read it when I was 17 or something and all these characters 10 years later are still in my head like they were real, like I knew them personally.
I'm a bit afraid of rereading it, because it wont be as good as I remember the second time.
I'm happy to see another person consider The Stranger a 10/10 because the way Veeky Forums talks about it you would think it was a worthless read, but it really resonated with me. I felt moments were dryly funny like when Meursault is saying he could've seen his mother more often but that would waste his whole Sunday and he wasn't committed enough to that.
I'm planning on reading this sometime this year, really looking forward to it.
I always considered Lolita a solid 10/10 because of the beautiful prose (love that first paragraph about Lo-Lee-Ta being the tap against the teeth) and the intelligent empathy displayed for an otherwise abominable character like Humbert Humbert. My appreciation went even further when I started to consider that Humbert Humbert wasn't telling us the truth in its entirety and it made me doubt a lot of what he was telling me as the reader - things that happen so conveniently for him, his fucking name and other details definitely come under scrutiny on the second reading.
I was wondering, if I love Lolita so much, where should I go next with Vladamir Nabokov's books?
Not him but
>Be me
>Wouldn't mind a fascist dictatorship
Maybe just a far right nationalist uprising rather than, fascism because to some degree I think the that concept of men having inherit rights is justified, but yeah if we could get a Mussolini 2.0 to mow down all the cartel members and stop people from poisoning themselves with what they sell that would be fine.
Clerical fascism is tolerable too.
Not him but
>if we could get a Mussolini 2.0 to mow down all the cartel members and stop people from poisoning themselves with what they sell that would be fine.
Kinda sounds like
>Communism has never been done
Like suppressing the opposition when they are really the baddies is ok, but when the suppressing force are the baddies... Red Fascism etc.
>Clerical Fascism
This makes Jesus migrate to Sweden, put on corpsepaint and start playing D&D while wanking it to wooden statues of bobs and vegage. Or you just really like Boko Haram.
Your pic related faction is made up of 'choke me daddy'-men lead by a retarded computer.
It describes a fascist utopia as a response to the contemporary threat of Asiatic Communist hordes (i.e. bugs) of the Korean War (and that's a good thing.)
Mason & Dixon.
I've read a bit of Pynchon - Bleeding Edge, V, 49, tried GR but gave up after a while - and I liked it, but until I read M&D I haven't really fallen in love with Pynchon. The prose in M&D is singular, exceptionally rich, beautiful, with no unnecessary words despite its verbosity and it's just plain fun to read, too. It's a lovely, comfy book and I actually can't recall ever having more fun reading anything, I know I'm gonna be occasionally rereading it for years and loving every minute.
Well then why doesn't it say so on the blurb? I would have bought it a long time ago. Book marketing is a dead art.
I definitely need to read it sometime, I've enjoyed what I've read of Pynchon so far but he usually takes me a while to get through. How long did Mason & Dixon take you to read?
I'm finishing it right now, about a hundred pages to go, started it around a month ago. Took my sweet time.
That's not bad time, user, I was kinda expecting it might take longer. Definitely want to read it sometime, often hear people say M&D is Pynchon's best. How challenging is it to read in comparison to his other works?
The Master and Margarita. It's hilarious, has inspiring messages about art (manuscripts don't burn), has an interesting form with the novel-in-a-novel, unforgettable characters, and is a brilliant satire to boot. I wish I knew Russian so I could experience it properly. I also adored seeing the Soviet Union through a lens other than
>MUH RED MENACE USA NUMBER ONE
or
>MUH USSR DID NOTHING WRONG
The Trial is also as close to a 10/10 for me as an unfinished book can get.
> The Trial is also as close to a 10/10 for me as an unfinished book can get.
I feel this way too but I feel a little guilty reading Kafka because he never wanted anybody to read it. It almost feels voyeuristic like reading something one of your friends wrote but never wanted to share it
The Old Man and the Sea, The Road, The Hobbit, House of Leaves, Nineteen Eighty-Four all rank on mine as well. Great list.
Suttree, Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy are 10/10s for me but I suppose I'm biased because I think Cormac McCarthy is the greatest living American author. I'm also quite glad the YeCarthy tortillaposting has died down too because that shit was way too frequent and idiotic.
MY
NIGGA
I need to read The Count of Monte Cristo sometime. Never had an interest in reading it before I saw how people talked about it on Veeky Forums. Man, this place does have its influence over me
Ada
I think it is his best.
>I'm not the original poster
Apart from being witty and hilarious ("comedy of error" kind of hilarious) it just hits too close to home for every Russian speaker who lives abroad. I do not think that there is any book (excluding the bar episode in "The Night in Lisbon) which comes close in terms of depicting the condition of Russian immigrants.
Ada is most similar in theme to Lolita. I liked Pnin more than Ada, though both are great. I think Pale Fire is sort of a different animal; great in its own right, but a departure in style. I'd recommend Pnin -> Ada -> Pale Fire
I've still never read anything earlier than Pnin, or any of this Russian -> English self-translations.
Pretty boring choices.
Unironically IJ, it's a masterpiece, not that anyone here has read it.
Lolita.
The book of disquiet.
Ulysses.
My personal favorite of all time is Lolita, probably my only 10/10
I liked this book, but not that much. I feel like Norm could have done better.
They'll be the same. The book hold up.
Iliad, Odyssey, Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Hamlet, War & Peace, Moby Dick
The Wind in the Willows, bar none.
Please elaborate on a confederacy of dunces.
I find it to be bland and annoying.
You know russian?
Ficciones by Borges blew my mind and I'll forever chase that high
T O P T I E R
Agree 100%
Moby Dick
Thanks guys, will check those out
What can I say, man? Those books hit me hard and I get why they resonated with the readers before me
>Pnin
Serious question, is it worth reading? My mother has read nabokov in the past and we had discussions about his pedophilian tendencies
Tristram Shandy is probably the best and funniest book written in the English language.
Miles Davis' autobiography 'Miles' is a solid 10 for me. Even if you don't like jazz he offers a lot of fascinating stories varying from travels to Europe, pawning off other people's things and his trumpet for drug money, experiences with performing live, his family especially his grandfather who was a freed slave who owned land but was chased off it, dropping out of Guilliard because he felt it was outdated, etc.
He was a fascinating yet confrontational personality so if you want cool rants on America, rock music, free jazz, women, his contemporaries in music, etc then this book is for you. He also offers some insight into how he recorded music, improvisation, art, painting and religion. Miles Davis felt like he was in the room with this book, I love it.
Perfection
Plato’s Laws. Basically socialism is the highest form of civilization. It’s what we are constantly striving to achieve through legislation
Or I take that back, Laws was more of a managed free market.
A more detailed version of what Plato intended The Republic to be, Im sure
Also Battles in the Desert
>criticizes OP for boring choices
>oh btw I love Ulysses and Infinite Jest
Not sure that I'd call it a flawless 10/10, but no book has spoken to me quite like Steppenwolf by Hesse
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse changed at least one year of my outlook on life, when I finished the book I felt peace and harmony
I am not into buddhism or religion but this book is wonderfull and it would be a shame to try to say what its message about life is when you should just go ahead and read it and find out for yourself, its not long at all.
This is the only book I have ever given as a gift for its content and not just as a cheap gift like most books that are gifted. It will give you a good outlook on life, at least for a little while.
Should I read this in English or in Spanish?
you and I, we could be friends
I read this when I was in middle school and it floored me then, though that was simply on how engaging the story was to even a 13yo. It wasn't till college that I realized all the other intricacies Adams had woven into it.
On that note I also feel as though Plague Dogs gets a 10/10 for me. While not as complex a tale as Watership Down, as a treatise on the nature of freedom it is amazing to me.
and despite him getting some shit here Vonnegut's Mother Night is another personal favorite and I still think the best he ever wrote. His tongue in cheek narrative is basically replaced by an earnest tragedy. I felt devastation from every awful thing the main character went thru and loved it.