Comments on: One of those deserted island kind of things

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:48:20 +0000

Reading War and Peace at the moment so I’d have to take it with me. Also it’s heavy enough to use for an all-body workout when I’m really bored!

By: Chris E

Chris E — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:05:06 +0000

“The Tartar Steppe”, Dino Buzatti

By: Roy Howard

Roy Howard — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:41:35 +0000

I’d take Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. If I had two I think I’d take A Prayer for Owen Meany.

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:11:48 +0000

Vonnegut – Timequake

By: Kampen

Kampen — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:40:43 +0000

It’s just about a three way tie between Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion, (a little suprised Ondaatje hasn’t been mentioned) and Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Overall though Anna Karenina wins out. I choose these books because I find myself opening them time and time again both as supplements to other non-literary works as well as to simply revel in their own greatness.

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:55:10 +0000

Brave New World

By: roger flyer

roger flyer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:47:58 +0000

Les Mis is a powerful story

By: roger flyer

roger flyer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:47:26 +0000

Yeah. Gotta love Dostoevsky, but the language g a p is big.

By: roger flyer

roger flyer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:45:53 +0000

Yeah…I get the hatred. He shamed me into thinking I was l an idiot and a louse because I didn’t know the difference between a wrench and a pliers. But he was insane (and depressed…)

By: JohnTheBastard

JohnTheBastard — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:10:42 +0000

Don Quixote? Really? I am perfectly willing to admit the importance of the book for creating satire as a genre of literature, etc. but wasn't able to pull any enjoyment from that book at all. To some extent, this is due to the context of being a modern reader. All of the events in the book have become such common tropes, there was no chance for me to be surprised by anything. "Oh, look, he's going to go fight some windmills," and then I slog through 40 laborious pages to get to the punch line I already know is coming. I got about a quarter of the way through and gave up. I did love Les Miserables, though. Not the greatest book I've ever read, IMHO, but in my top 10. Its probably the only phone-book dimensioned novel I've attempted and found enjoyable. The worst ever: Bleak House. I had to read it for 12th grade AP Lit, which mostly I did, but stopped reading one chapter before the end in protest. I loved Crime and Punishment once I had finished reading it, at least in terms of the story, characters, themes, etc., but found it (and Russian Lit in general) excruciating to actually read. The pedantic word play drives me to fits. (Example: early in Notes from the Underground there is a paragraph composed of the same sentence over and over, each time with one tiny difference to subtly change the meaning. Repeat 8 or 10 times. Clever, but annoying as hell to read.)

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:05:40 +0000

I was talking with Halden last night and I admitted to him that though my first reaction to the claim that Moby Dick was the greatest novel ever written was umbrage due to the fact that that is silly claim for any book 99% of the time, my second reaction was a realization that I was a kid when I read Moby Dick the first time and I really need to revisit it. Even if I end up loving the hell out of it, I will still express my doubts about giving it the title of the greatest novel ever written as that implies a universal standard which does not exist.

By: Austin

Austin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:37:24 +0000

Well Andrew, I completely agree about U2, but as for Moby Dick, I’ll grant sometimes there is some chic involved with elitist “literature.” But Melville wrote this as a serial novel and for me, I had these memories of hating it with a passion when I was young, and then when I was about 24 or so, after a good friend died at 22 (and so I was thinking about death a bit), it finally hit me that it was pure genius. I remember relishing every single tangent about whale migrations, how to tie a sheep’s bend, or how to cut up and melt down oil (which is almost like a pure metaphor for how humans love to exploit one another), and then falling back into a story that really should be considered sci-fi (a whale and a man?). Anyway, all this and my desert island book is Stendhal!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:25:15 +0000

The high school rejection of Moby Dick is one of the very things that allows the book to become fuck the world chic. The claim that Moby Dick is the greatest novel ever written is a popular stance to take because one can claim literary superiority and maturity through a rejection of the childish frustration of the unread masses who were forced to read Melville’s beast and resent it. I think of it as the literary version of the re-popularization of the mullet.

As for War and Peace, it is the easiest thing in the world for me to say that it isn’t worth it because I wholeheartedly believe it (it is also my opinion that U2 sucks and if this helps you decide that any opinion I hold is utterly invalid then I am glad to have helped). Quite frankly, I am still bitter at that tome for having wasted my time. War and Peace is well written and I really wanted to love it but I neither loved nor hated any character to any degree of importance. It was somewhat interesting but at 1500 pages it became such a chore that finishing it was only a masturbatory act that allowed me to pat myself on the back and claim literary superiority for having finished it. Ultimately I guess you could say that I appreciated his skill but could not muster enough appreciation for the content and characterization to feel like it belonged to the class of literature called “great”.

I completely agree with you on the idiocy of claiming any novel to be “the greatest novel of all time” but I must thank you for the shout out for my personal favorite of Don Quixote. As for perfectly written, I would recommend giving Les Miserables a chance; the copy I have is the same length as my copy of War and Peace (though W&P has a smaller font) and it is amazingly better and more complete than W&P.

By: Austin

Austin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:56:31 +0000

It’s absurd to say that Moby is a saga of “fuck the world chic.” Who feels unique by “slogging” through it? Most people read this in high school, and when they’re done, they say ‘thank God, I’m never gonna have to read that again!”

And how the hell can you say War and Peace isn’t worth it? It is the most perfectly written book there is (besides Anna Karenina), although it’s not the greatest story (and probably isn’t the “greatest novel of all time” – although it’s pretty stupid to categorize one novel as the greatest). But every single sentence is perfect, the rhythm and pace is perfect, and the world that is created by the author is completely believable. I’m not sure what other criteria you can give to a great novel. Clearly, Don Quixote and Jude the Obscure rival Tolstoy, but I don’t think either (although maybe Don Quixote) match him.

By: d barber

d barber — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:41:34 +0000

Underworld, DeLillo. It’s long, and it would help me remember all the things that I’ve lost by living on the island. And in many ways the book is about already losing/having lost them. Plus, I see myself in the protagonist.