Hagen95 said:

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Unless you really, really, really like whaling, I don't recommend reading Melville's Moby Dick.

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Disagree. Monby Dick started my love of nautical books, both non-fiction and Aubrey-Maturin

The sperm whale will stand no nonsense.


Moby dick was a tough one for me.

My favorite novel of all time is A Confederacy of Dunces. I have read it every ten years since college. Such a tragedy the author died before it was published and we lost out on what should have been many more classics.

The book will make you laugh out loud on almost every page and I have never seen a more colorful group of characters in a novel. The author really nails New Orleans in the early 60s.

Haven't seen Stoner mentioned, which is widely held as a favorite classic. It was a darling last year with most of the book influencers (not sure why it became popular with them) and often lauded as people's favorite books ever up there with Lonesome Dove. I read it last year and enjoyed it as a lazy read on the beach type thing. Far from favorite books ever ever. Yes, the prose are outstanding and the story is told clearly by an expert, but the story itself is about as basic as you can get. Maybe that is why it is so heralded, he wrote a story about nothing that you don't mind reading.

As someone above said, I try to squeeze in a classic every so often. Count of Monte Cristo is next for me. Son read Crime and Punishment recently and made me add to my tbr list. Otherwise I've read most of the others sometime in my longer than should be life.

The Marksman said:

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I will forever stand by the truth that Charles Dickens is the greatest author of all time. Anything written by him is a must-read.

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Inclusive of The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit? Because I've heard a lot of bad things about that particular 'novel'

I tried to read Crime and Punishment several years ago, but the literal translation between Russian and English was rough. Wound up watching an old black and white movie adaptation and it turned out to be a pretty great story. If you can fight through the translation awkwardness, it's worth it.

TXAG 05 said:

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Zombie Jon Snow said:

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Wolfpac 08 said:

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Catcher in the Rye is the book that got me into reading. Curious what your beef is with it.

I bought it randomly at a Hastings 20 years ago and read the whole thing in about 4 hours. I haven't read it since, but I loved it at the time.

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Meh. Holden Caufield was a slacker and whiny and pretentious and nothing much really happened in the book.

First and foremost was there any life lesson learned or wisdom gained? I did not empathize for him which is I think the point of it. He just annoyed me.

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I'm with you, don't understand the praise for Catcher in the Rye, it's just not very good. When I finished it, I said to myself, "that was it?!?" Don't know what was so controversial about it either.

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I think when readers recognize Holden is suffering a mental breakdown over the course of the novel because his younger brother died and he has absolutely no one in the world he can talk to/go to about it, he becomes a bit more sympathetic. Every adult he knows in the world fails him in some way

Haven't seen Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man mentioned here. Read it in high school and it had a profound impact on me then. Jumped at the chance to teach it when I began teaching AP English. Might be a little self-indulgent in a couple places, but Ellison's style is gorgeous and its last line kills me every time.