Great Books that are must-read ?

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Did you really think so? I put off reading it for a long time because I feared it would be a boring slog, but ended up pleasantly surprised not just with the amount of humour in it (Ishmael was wicked funny in his own dry way, I thought) but also with the beauty of the prose. I think some of the most gorgeous phrases ever shaped in the English language are in that book. It also struck me as having surprisingly contemporary insight in places. Now it's one of my favourites.

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Last edited by Nonsense on 25 Feb 2019, 12:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It started off well and, as you say, quite humourously - the passage someone quoted above from the opening paragraph or two has always stuck in my mind. I also liked a few of the digressive chapters ("Loose fish" in particular I thought was amusing and pithy) - but I couldn't stomach eight hundred pages of it, though I did manage somehow. I still can't remember how the story went - or if there even was one.

But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally and universally applicable.

What was America in 1492 but a loose-fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.

What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?

I guess it's a perspective thing then, because I always see more of a good thing as just that--more to enjoy. 800 pages of gorgeous prose is like a language banquet to me.

Fiction
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Leguin
The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury
Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
Père Goriot - Honoré de Balzac
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Anthem - Ayn Rand
Candide - Voltaire
1084 - George Orwell
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeline L'Engle
The Giver - Lois Lowry

Non Fiction
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Caitlyn Doughty
The Center Cannot Hold - Elyn Saks
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
Hallucinations - Oliver Sacks
Every Word is a Bird we Teach to Sing - Daniel Tammet
Uniquely Human - Barry Prizant
Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche
The Woman Who Smashed Codes - Jason Fagone

There are so many more but I have to go be in a study. I hope you all enjoy these as much as I have!

It's a gorgeous book of very natural writing; remembered for a reason.

If it's good enough for Captain Picard, it's good enough for me.

Patrick Stewart is the only actor who can move me. When he quotes Shakespeare or - in this case - Melville, I always end up with physical goosebumps. An amazing actor. It's such a shame he's dirtying himself with the new Star Trek series (it'll never compare to TNG).

I'm willing to give him a chance...he IS Patrick Stewart, after all. (I am also afraid it will be a good actor in a bad series scenario too)

"Hygiene and the assassin"

"The graduate"

"A Confederacy of dunces"

NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
The Stand by Stephen King
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
First Blood by David Morrell (Rambo)
The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert (Non-fiction)
Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor (Non-fiction)
Misery by Stephen King
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Just a short list of some of my favorite books in no particular order.