Give me your essential 4

Slaughter House 5
The Stranger
Animal Farm
Lord of the Flies

So both?

Hölderlin - Hyperion
Alemàn - Guzman de Alfarache
Manzoni - The Betrothed
Chuang Tzu

My top 4 is a secret. That's just my style.

Closet?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Human Action
The Book of the Five Rings
Good Omens

Infinite Jest
Ulysses
Gravity's Rainbow
Taipei

I have a hardcover of Ovids Metamorph I have no excuse not reading it I guess I'm just daunted definitely on the top of my reading list

Invisible Man
Slaughterhouse Five
1984
Things Fall Apart

>Hölderlin
Really?

Complete Plato
Complete Shakespeare
Ulysses
Anna Karenina but In Search of Lost Time might take its place

lol

Did u really read all those books bro

yes. Some twice, three times. I'm currently reading ISoLT though, as I implied.

Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, Dubliners, and The Sun Also Rises

>Beckett's Complete Drama
>Shakespeare's Complete Works
>Ernesto Sabato's Abaddón el exterminador
>The Epic of Gilgamesh

Douglass is great, I wrote two essays on him for uni

What's this supposed to mean

That you read all that and still visit Veeky Forums makes me feel, in order of what ide like to believe,

A) Ur lying
B) u skimmed through them
C) being a scholar hardly changes things
D) Veeky Forums is actually an amazing place to spend ur time

>100 Years of Solitude
>The Bible
>Brother Karamazov
>Blood Meridian

He belongs up there with the greatest of all time. That he is so ignored in the American canon make me feel very suspicious

Metamorphoses doesn't seem like it'll be difficult. Older stuff rarely is difficult aside from certain cultural allusions that are archaic, but the language is usually not too hard to sift through. I usually just procrastinate reading stuff i know i'll like, and read things that i just want to read for reference or cultural relevance. i end up being unhappy with reading and have to force myself, only to go through the cycle of realizing that i need to read the stuff i like.

for example, i sat down with GR, fell immediately in love and just as quickly stopped reading because it felt like one of those books i will regret not being able to read for the first time. it's strange. i've decided i'm going to die soon or go blind, so i said fuck it and am just going to read all the treasures i've collected and if i have any time left, i'll spend it jerking off and shooting up pure smack.

The Iliad, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace

Gospel of John
Don Quixote
Brothers Karamazov
Ficciones
Solaris

Suspicious that the nation that bends over backwards to accommodate blacks and make them feel important despite their penchant for violence and dysfunction is secretly repressing their cultural perspective?

I advise you off yourself, you virtue signaling cuck. Douglass is required reading in many places.

I know what you mean about procrastinating on things you know you'll like. Like I know diving in I won't come out so I'm waiting to have time to deliver to it I dunno just one of the essential to read

Woaaaaaaaaaaah
Easy there
He's obviously not suppressed but when you think of "americas greatest authors" Douglass isn't even close to being mentioned. That's all I meant. So why don't you buy a tampon and bleed somewhere else

>Suspicious that the nation that bends over backwards to accommodate blacks

WHAT

The Odyssey
King Lear
Ulysses
Don Quixote

>post unironically uses cuck
Into the trash

I average 5 hours a day reading, and it's been like that for 2 years now. I am a full time student (finance and English) at a not-so-outstanding but inexpensive state university and so I have a lot of free time. To get to where I was today, near the beginning, I sort of faked it till I made it for the first couple serious forays into literature. I would read something I could easily digest like Steinbeck or Heller, and then tough it out through a Greek tragedian. Eventually I started to comprehend and re-read and voila-- 58 books read this year including plays and philosophical pieces.

Veeky Forums is not a great place to spend time but it did help kickstart a love for literature. I spend probably an hour on it a day, rarely ever posting, opening it up on my phone occasionally or on a desktop if I'm reading at the library or at home.

...

to be honest I feel a bit bad not putting in the bible but anyways.

>middleway through moby dick (reading group), thoroughly enjoying it
>currently re-reading the divine comedy
>have to re-read the iliad sometime soon
>have to re-read ulysses sometime soon.

probably after finishing re-reading the divine comedy I will read some book from my list, will re-read portrait of the artist, will read another book, and finally will re-read Ulysses. honestly excited to re-read it, I wanted to 2 days after finishing it...

>the complete works

I'm getting the impression that these works aren't as daunting as they seem?

For example, I've wanted to digest Shakespeare's work forever. I usually get thru the first act of the tempest and then waiver off

What's the key to consistency
I want that key

Dream list would be

Complete works of
Homer
Ovid
Shakespeare
Dante
Goethe

Man that would be awesome

this sounds kinda dumb but the more shakespeare you read, the easier (and better) it gets IMO. I had to read a couple of his plays in high school and didn't like them much, but a few years later re-read hamlet and read king lear and they blew me away. now have read a lot more and the bard is one of my favorites. if you don't like what you're reading I'd suggest switching up the play

I agree with you. I have read midsummer, macbeth, richard iii. But that's over a long period of time you know. The idea of reading his complete works/

I guess I'm wondering how long it took you all
To run through the complete works of author x

How long did it take u to read through Shakespeare's complete works?

Complete Malazan
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Complete Shakespeare
Complete Fiction of Lovecraft

I luv u
>Brothers K
>Bible
>Collected Eliot
>Redwall

Great, now I don't feel so bad about listing mine.

Shakespeare
Rabelais
Cervantes
Melville

I've read half of Shakespeare's work several times over and I'm fairly confident the rest are just as good if not better. If I had to pick and choose the others, I'd say Tiers Livre, Don Quixote, and Moby Dick.

...

For Shakespeare I had spurts of 5 plays in 5 days and then I would take a break. All in all a couple months. Plato was longer because I got burnt out after (I think Timeaus).

Idk my secret, but my first 20 years of my life were wasted on video games and partying so that's motivation for me to catch up. I no longer play video games, and even now most movies are EH. I meditate and exercise.

Laurus
Pensees
Confessions
Snow Country

I'm honestly surprised by the depth of learning and range of wit Rabelais shows in his works. I went in thinking it was all going to be giants drinking and pissing and farting, like people think Moby Dick is just about whaling or that Don Quixote is just about a crazy dude running into windmills. These books are so much more than that. They're about life, about humanity, about the nobility of the human soul and the heights it can achieve.

hmm hope I fit in despite not being a pretentious cunt

>Treasure Island
>A Christmas Carol
>Red Harvest
>A Coffin for Dimitrios (maybe)

the other 3 are rock solid but the 4th is iffy, might have to really think about it

oh shit people are putting the Bible, I was just thinking novels. I'm changing my 4th to the Bible

>hmm hope I fit in despite not being a pretentious cunt

You're too dumb to see that your complex over not being seen as pretentious has now shifted over into a form of pretense as well.

gud 1 dum cunt

Journey to the End of the Night
Portrait of the Artist
To the Lighthouse
Nausea

>gud 1 dum cunt

Hey NO BULLYING IN MY THREAD
GOT?!

I am the OP now.

Ur a faggot

wow rude

I bet you didn't read ulysshit. Most pretentious fags who post on this board about it, didn't read it.

in fact, I have read it, my friend. believe it or not.

and it is the greatest book I have ever read, specially Penelope. the feeling of finishing the book, the mind of Molly, the lewdness...I finished it with a boner. only book that made me laugh out loud too, several times.

but hey, whatever you say, as "no one in this board read anything", and if "I can't enjoy it, noone can"

I am I have only gone through the "complete works" of homer, which was like 10 days for iliad and 5~ for the odissey, but I didn't read them one after the other, I took a "break". For joyce, I still have to read chamber music and finnegans wake. but to get through dubliners, portrait and ulysses was like 10 days for the first two, and about a month for the latter

>I want that key
the key to really digest and get out of the books as much as you can, I can only suggest you that you read it first time cover to cover, and after a while, re-read them, taking notes if possible. you get a lot more from the second time you are reading a book, seriously, I can tell you that re-reading the divine comedy right now.

Holderlin is a pretty good poet

fuck, meant to reply to as well

>Iliad
>Odysee
>Aeneid
>Metamorphoses

I know this sounds pseud af but I just love ancient poetry, will read the Iliad for the 3rd time soon

>Chuang Tzu
You can't be serious

Petersburg
Gravity's Rainbow
The Brothers Karamazov
At Swim-Two-Birds

based

>reading good books makes you a pretentious cunt
what the actual fuck

Ever read the tragedians

More than serious. The best the east has to offer honestly.

>implying it's not Mozi

see apparently some people can't stand the fact that there are some in this board that actually read good books

1984 is no longer relevant since fascism basically died with World War II and postmodernism.
Brave New World is much more "essential". Though I guess for ordinary conversations 1984 is much more reference-able

It's not

that movie packs a punch with its ending and i don't really care for that faux-indie YA fiction-esque cancer girl shit usually.

Okay, but in my opinion, you're wrong.

In my opinion, go fuck yourself

>angry coz can't into Mozi
Okay pal.

That wasn't me btw

>I can only suggest you that you read it first time cover to cover

I really should do this. I have been reading Ulysses trying not to let anything go under my nose, trying to pick up on all puns, references, allusions and I'm still just 5 pages in when they leave the tower for a bath. (And holy fuck this guy really did it) but dam I'm never gonna finish like this. So I see how getting the skeleton down first and then coming back to it would be a better way of finishing it. Have u reread Ulysses?

Where to start with Holderin?

Homer and Ovid?
Essential 2

Dam that's essential

- Mishima / Confessions of a Mask
- Homer / Odissey
- Sophocles / Antigone
- H. Thompson / Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

kek

>hates memes
>posts a meme
aah the duality of man

>duality of man

No, douglass is not that good. He wouldn't be known if he wasn't a black slave. His story is remarkable and he was definitely smart but to say he was one of the best ever would be a huge overstatement

And yes ive read his slave narrative. It's well written but not amazing

Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Moby Dick
Don Quixote

"My core" would be
the intelligent investor
figure drawing by Michael Hampton
the complete fiction hp.lovecraft
beyond good and evil

But I'm just your average lit poster not the lit poster many people pretend to be

Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Dubliners
Moby Dick
Don Quixote

I'm not gonna write out why I think your totally fucking wrong, but you are.

Just gonna leave this here:
monadnock.net/douglass/self-made-men.html

Security Analysis is better

>The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

>The man who is right is a majority. We, who have God and conscience on our side, have a majority against the universe.

Freddy just wiped out the entire American cannon imho

He just rehashed Sartre desu

10/10 bait

Douglass 1818-1895
Crooked eyed 1905-1980

And that u knew the cuck attempted to talk muh freedom suggests u might be half srs and fully retarded

Start with the greeks

Not even kidding

A lot of people would disagree, but mind would be:
>Gravity's Rainbow
>The Sot-Weed Factor
>Women and Men
>Light in August
Those are the 4 that hit me the hardest and changed the way I read the most.