1:Tolstoy "War and Peace"
2:Shakespeare "Hamlet"
3:Melville "Mody Dick"
4:Emily Bronte "Wuthering Heights"
5:Orwell "Animal Farm"
6:Dickens "Bleak House"
7:Hugo "Les Miserables"
8:Hugo "Hunchback of Notre Dame"
9:Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby"
10:Joyce "Ulysses"
I’ve read all but Ulysses (which is on my ‘bucket’ reading list). I’m a bit of a book worm though...
Just like Elaine on “Seinfeld” - I felt the same way about the movie “The English Patient.”
Everyone felt obliged to say how beautiful, romantic, engaging it was. I felt is was boring, saccharine shlock.
I thought “Ulysses” would be number one. It has the reputation of the most unread read novel in history. Perhaps people could not get through the work and gave up.
I read “War and Peace” last year. For me, it was a fast read. It helped a lot I have some knowledge of the Napoleonic Era and Russian culture.
“Wuthering Heights” is many things but boring it is not. I think most people read it based on the classic movie and are shocked at how violent and brutal the novel is.
Reading Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is hardly daunting, its an easy read. Anyone of Joyce’s tomes should be at the top of the list because you’d have to be a masochist to want to wade through them, even though they are of significant literary importance.
On the most loved and lasting impressions category I find all works by Hemmingway to be my favorites. In the cheap novel category, anything by Dean Koonz. Holds my attention, creeps me out, reinforces my fear of man, and allows me to ignore my wife when I choose to.
"Moby Dick" was a struggle, I'll grant you that.
I just can't get into Shakespeare at all.
Not on the list but "Infinite Jest" was a book I found very difficult to get into. In fact, I don't think I ever made it past the first 100 pages and I've attempted it more than once. The footnotes alone are longer than most other novels and I'm told they are vitally important in understanding the novel.
On a list of unread novels by American authors, I’d include “Gravity’s Rainbow”, I tried but just couldn’t get all the way through it.
I have read Hamlet, and Animal Farm.
I think I also read The Great Gatsby, but my aging memory is protecting me from remembering it.
Hamlet isn’t meant to be read - it is meant to be acted. Reading it silently is, indeed, boring, but the story is good. Don’t waste your time trying to psychoanalyze Hamlet though.
Animal Farm was sort of “anti-Communism for kids.” American kids might benefit from reading it, but it is kinda depressing.
2) Hamlet, might have had a little bit in High School.
3) Moby Dick, Read that in High School
7) Les Meserables, Saw the Play.
8) Hunchback, Saw the Disney version
9) Saw the movie
I’m half way to being an impressive Brit. LOL
I think that’s like Libertarians who claim they’ve read all of Ayn Rand’s novels.
Brothers Karamozov, Frankenstein, and Don Quixote better than the entire list, except Moby Dick.
Ulysses not that great.
>>3:Melville “Mody Dick”<<
Never heard of it:)
No Dostoevsky?
Dull? Where does that leave Clarissa and Middlemarch?
Now Ulysses is actually quite entertaining, if you have the background to understand it. Few do.
Good ones I read: The Grapes of Wrath; The Sound and the Fury; Of Mice and Men; Atlas Shrugged*; MacBeth; Hamlet; Julius Ceasar; Romeo and Juliet; The Sun Also Rises; The Old Man and the Sea.
We had to read Moby Dick in high school. Instead of War and Peace, we read Anna Karenina. I wonder what they’re reading now?
If anyone who isn't a college professor tells me that they read "Ulysses" I automatically assume they are not being truthful. There is an infinitesimal chance that I am misjudging them, but I'm okay with that risk level.
None of these books are “dull”. Either you enjoy reading or you don’t.