Classic Lit - Favorites

[Darkshine]

Oi, I very much disliked Catcher In The Rye. The other ones you mentioned are great though.

As well as the Ray Bradberry books. Really good.

SlaughterHouse V (5) is one of my favorites, though I dont really think its a classic.
The Metamorphasis
The Alchemist

[Olo_Eopia]

i just finished "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" both were awesome books.

Don't know if this is a classic but " Shadow of the wind" by a spanish authur but i can't remember his name.

[Darkshine]

I loved The Martian Chronicles. Fahrenheit 451 I didnt like it when I first read it. But that's because I was very young and stupid and didnt really think about it (plus I was used to reading just sci-fi and spiderman books  ). Now when I think about it I realize just how great it is

[Olo_Eopia]

i've got one spider-man book and i think its "Revenge of the Sinister Six" or somethingk like that and the authur was Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[DougofTheAbaci]

Anyone here ever read Brave New World by Huxley? It's really good... Along the lines of 1984 in that it's also a Distopia. It messes with your head big time..

[MengerSponge]

Yeah, I don't know how I forgot Brave New World; it's right there on my shelf.  Like 1984 with tons of drugs and sex.

[Rheinhard]

Yeah, I don't know how I forgot Brave New World; it's right there on my shelf.  Like 1984 with tons of drugs and sex.

Well, I don't know if I'd put it like that.  Both novels are futuristic dystopias, yes, but at their core they are very different.  1984 is ultimately a pessimistic novel; the hero (and by extension the human spirit as a whole) is broken at the end by the forces of totalitarian oppression.  Ultimately the message of 1984 can be summarized in its classic line, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

Brave New World, on the other hand, paints a future of humanity that has lost all true art and expression in an orgy of mindless self-gratification.  But the main character, at the end, rejects that world and will go to join the lone outcasts that are trying to preserve real truth and beauty.  So although the future portrayed in BNW is bleak in some ways, I think its message is ultimately hopeful.

Now, on to my suggestions for classics (at least some which haven't yet been named in this thread):

• Candide by Voltaire.  One should be familiar with this work, if for no other reason than to understand the meaning of the derisive adjective "Panglossian".
• Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  The Faust story dates back to the middle ages, and is the archetype of all the "selling your soul to the devil" type stories.  The learned Doctor Faust sells his soul for ultimate knowledge.  In the usual tellings of the tale, Faust is ultimately damned.  In the mediaeval mind, this reinforced the caution against intellectual pride - that man could not know the mind of God, and shouldn't try.  (This kind of idea is, I think, very much echoed in fantasy science fiction like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (come to think of it, that should be on my list too!), and anime like Full Metal Alchemist -- a very Faustian story if ever there was one!)  But Goethe's conception of Faust is different, and I was deeply moved by it when I read excerpts of it in high school, and went on to read more of it on my own.  Goethe's Faust wants to experience the richness of life at its fullest, and bargains with the Devil that if ever he becomes too comfortable, and asks that his perfect life remain unchanged, in that moment the Devil can take him.  Goethe felt the essence of life was eternal striving and motion, and that evil lay in stagnation.  I found this view of good and evil much more compelling in my youth than the bland pleasantries and mindless faith usually offered in Church.
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley -- a classic work, the ideas of which are not really well represented in any of the movie versions, which hugely oversimplify it.  So you know the full title of this novel?  It's "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus".  As with Faust, it deals with the limits of what "man was meant to know", but also what the nature of Man is.  In the novel, the monster, although huge and hideously ugly, is nevertheless quite intelligent and articulate.  The monster finds itself hated and hunted by human society, and questions its maker as to why it is hated so and why it was made.  It's really quite moving.

Whoo!  Ended up writing more than I intended!  Well, goes to show that I think this is a really cool and unusual thread, and deserving of some thought!  More like this!

[bask]

but from there I'm a little stuck on what to read next...I know there are alot of good books from that same time peroid but I just don't know where to start. After reading Crime and Punishment, I kinda want to find something light hearted.
been considering The Three Musketters and the Man in the Iron Mask

So I guess, I'd just to like to ask what any classics people might have as favorites from any time peroid as long as it's old enough to be considered 'classic'.

LOL! Thanks for giving me a chuckle on Dumas as light hearted!

Dickens! I didn't see any Dickens in there. Granted he has moments of bleak, but some how he can be whismical about it. He also came from a time of revolutions and ground-breaking ideas. The world was being reborn in goverment, philosophy, industry, art, etc. So for Dicken's I would say, Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations are my 2 favorites

Since you are looking at the classics, may I also suggest http://www.gutenberg.org/ ? It's a website that gives you eBooks to download for free. Basicaly books that fall out of copyright. I usualy take the text and reformate it with text edit, or if I am super ambitious, I'll format with Pages and create hyperlinks for the chapters. You can put them on your Palm as well.

How about contempuary classics? One I read you may not of even heard of is a book called A Seperate Piece. <i>On The Road</i> for something van guard. One Flew Over the Coo Coo's Nest. Gorden Parks The Learning Tree or a Native Son by Richard Wright.

Pre-Beatnik Walt Whitman on Leaves of Grass if you like poetry, or Don Juan for an epic poem.

If you want more suggestions, I have OOODLES!

[DougofTheAbaci]

Join the outcasts? He commits suicide! He decides to die rather than live in the world humans have created for themselves.

And the message of 1984 is not that you get the boot in the face by the government. It was a commentary on the state of the world and how it was going, how the state was going to get control over people and what would happen. But this one person fought back in his own personal revolution which in the end he gave up on and eventually actually embraced the very thing he had come to hate while shunning the one person who had made him happy.

That's not, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." If anything, it's "Fear the future we make for ourselves for we will come to embrace our worst nightmares."

[Rheinhard]

Join the outcasts? He commits suicide! He decides to die rather than live in the world humans have created for themselves.

That's only if you consider John the Savage to be the main character.  He isn't.  John provides the external commentary on the closed society in the book, which allows for a greater epiphany by the actual main character, Bernard Marx. After Marx's experiences and involvement with the savage, and at the urging of Mustapha Mond, he chooses to leave the comfort of the society he has known for the more risky secret colony of intellectuals who still belive there are higher things in life than pleasure.

To quote an analysis which says it rather better than I could at this hour...

Bernard suffers throughout the book, being caught between both worlds. Although he has been conditioned to accept his servitude, he is constantly longing for freedom. He sees this freedom in the Savage, and envies him for possessing the inner happiness— genuine happiness— which Bernard’s society outlaws. Huxley uses Bernard to exemplify this struggle between freedom and slavery. Huxley argues that a genuine, free life requires suffering and pain. Men without anguish are men without souls.

As to 1984, your observation is a bit facile.  Winston Smith "embraced the very thing he had come to hate while shunning the one person who had made him happy", precisely because his will as an individual had been successfully broken by the state.  As such, at the end of the book, he was no longer truly a fully functioning human being.  It was the production of such non-human humans that the Big Brother state desired. If Winston is the stand-in for humanity as a whole, then indeed the state has the power to truly break the human spirit for all time.  That is, of course, a future to be feared, because it is (metaphorically), "a boot stamping on a human face - forever".

[Olo_Eopia]

i jusr relizied that no ones put Dracula by Bram Stroker, how could we forget that master pice?

[DougofTheAbaci]

i jusr relizied that no ones put Dracula by Bram Stroker, how could we forget that master pice?

I haven't actually had a chance to read it yet, though, it is something I do want to read. Has anyone said Great Expectations? That was great I thought...

[Olo_Eopia]

i don't think so, but whats it about

[Darkshine]

What about the Art Of War?

[DougofTheAbaci]

i don't think so, but whats it about

It's about this character Pip and how he grows up to marry a girl and all this... There's loads to it, some I've forgotten... But it's a great novel. There was almost rioting in London whenever it was delivered since everyone wanted a copy (it was down in instalments).