Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities are wonderful and I need to read them again.
1984 is short enough no adult has an excuse to not read it.
I keep the Art of War with commentaries in my shop on CD and have listened to them repeatedly.
I own Democracy in America and The Prince but haven't ever managed to get into them.
I've never had much interest in Ulysses, Moby Dick or Origin of Species though I've considered giving Adam Smith a try.
He also mentioned War and Peace which I've never attempted. That's actually rather strange since Anna Karenina is perhaps the greatest work of fiction I've ever read. I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth grade. The whole thing. Yeah, I was that kid.
How true! I love the book for its message, and I did enjoy the flow, but only because I put myself in the time the book was actually written and read it that way. When I read it now, I have to take it in the way I take in an older movie that I really like, but since times have changed, the movie can't stand on its own anymore. It is that way with Rand's style.
I admit that what I find hilarious about Rand's prose is the contest they have where people have to write something really silly in her style...OMG! It is difficult to read her work the same way after that.
That said, she was a visionary in what she portrayed in her book.
“That’s actually rather strange since Anna Karenina is perhaps the greatest work of fiction I’ve ever read. I read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth grade. The whole thing. Yeah, I was that kid.”
LOL! I’m sure you were adorable!
I think once I slog through war & peace I’ll try Anna K. I saw a lot of good things about it when the movie came out. Across the board it was, this is the greatest novel ever, movie ....eh.
I read Madam Bovary once, underwhelmed by that. I guess he might have called it “real housewife of France” or somesuch.