h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This was a somewhat snooty reply I received from someone when I mentioned my favourite book of all time (Catch-22). I refrained from the obvious retort 'well, you're probably a lot older than I am'.

Nevertheless, I always feel like I've been playing catch-up as far as reading the classics is concerned. People just expect me to have read books like The Naked Ape, Brave New World (I've read the yin version, Island ), er, anything by Shakespeare (enough, enough! they get the idea). I'm currently struggling with the Grapes of Wrath - after about a month, I've stormed on to page 23.

So, please post your Top 5 Books You Should Have Read By Now...

1. Catch 22
2. 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins (assuming non-fiction is allowed...)
3. Anything by Dickens
4. Anything by Jane Austen
5. Anything by a Bronte sister

Shakespeare should probably be seen. But besides a Macbeth movie made by Playboy(strangely without any naked women in it) and Shakespeare In Love I haven't seen any.

I've never read Tolkien, except The Hobbit as a comic book.

I've never really read anything by the classics in sci-fi. Asimov and Clarke and such people.

I never read Medea, hardly opened the book. But still managed to get good grades and get almost all the questions about it right.

The small print

We're only allowed five?

Unsurprisingly, my list is the same as Danny's.

Well, thats a bit hard on yourself, and I don't reallt approve of the 'You should have read...' school, because reading is about pleasure, and it's personal. I might think everyone should have read Crime and Punishment, but i know a lot of people that simply *wouldn't* enjoy it.
But if you insist
Moby Dick, By Herman melville
Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut
Passage To india, by E. M. Forster
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

Yes, a Top Five. As in High Fidelity - that's one I've actually got round to reading. And yeah, non-fiction certainly counts.

I was assuming 'should' means 'should because I'd probably enjoy it'

I found 'Moby Dick' one of the most boring books I've ever struggled through but ''The Phantom Tollbooth' and 'Slaughterhouse 5' are both well worth reading, in my humble opinion

Why struggle through a book you're not enjoying?
IU'm biased about Moby dick. My disertation on the Great White Whale and Ahab helped me get a decent grade on my degree. I also happen to think it's an exceptionally forward looking piece of work, in terms of concept and construction.
Then again, I'd never again, out of choice, pick up a book by Dickens, the Bronte's or Austen...

Oh well, if we are doing a High Fidelity Five then I can change and edit as I go then, that's ok.

The Master and Margarita, by Bulgakov.

The French Leuitenant's Woman, by John Fowles.

War and Peace, by Tolstoy (well, I liked it. You can skip the war bits.)

Definitely not Crime and Punishment, cos I hated it. We are allowed to be subjective, aren't we?

Something by Jane Austen, as the man said. Nothing by Dickens. See above.

Right that's four. Emily Dickenson makes five. Or John Dunne. Or Thomas Hardy (poetry, not the novels. Not the novels. No, really, not the novels).

To be honest, though, t6hat's just a list of the 'top five 'literary' books I have been forced to read which didn't suck in my personal opinion'.

Still, close enough.

Good question, Blues Shark I suppose I struggled on in the hope that it would improve..? And I just don't like admitting defeat I'll have to take your word for it about concept and construction though

Solnushka - I think subjectivity is compulsory I too enjoyed 'War and Peace'... but thought 'Crime and Punishment' was much better.

Still, how boring would this conversation be if we all agreed. Eh, Madent...

This is a list of the five books that I *should* have read, but haven't (yet) got around to it, yes? OK:

1. The Tao of physics by Capra (I have read one chapter...)
2. All the Carlos Castenada books (I started one, but...)
3. Modern C++ design by Alexandrescu
4. Piers Anthony's Cluster series
5. Mallory's Morte d'Arthur

OK, so two of my books are series, but we're all friends here, right?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"should because I'd probably enjoy it"

No, I intended the 'should' to mean because you feel you ought to have read it, i.e. because your friends have, or there are quotes in there or characters you should know of (like when I didn't know who he was on about when Springsteen recorded an album titled 'The Ghost of Tom Joad', I do a little bit now - or the original use of the phrase 'Catch-22') - the books you're 'required' to read in order to 'become a more rounded ,culturally aware person'.

Of course, if Grapes of Wrath doesn't get more interesting soon, I'll drop it. But at least I'll have tried.

Okay, my top five recommendations....

1. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
2. Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
3. Focault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)
4. An Instance of the Fingerpost (Ian Pears)
5. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Moore)

(...no, number 5 isn't porn.....)

Five I want to read...

1. The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
2. The rest of the Rebus Novels (Rankin)
3. Something happened (Joseph Heller)
4. Something by Sartre or Camus (other than the Plauge)
5. Something by a giant of German literature.


Otto.

One definition of a Classic that I read somewhere was "a book that everyone is meant to have read but no one ever has."

My list:

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ken Keseys - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf

The last would be through sheer intrigue to see what drove the man although apparently it is incredibly dull ... sounds like the kind of thing I'd need to be marooned with before I got around to reading it!

Jane Austen and the Bronte's as well as the Thakerays and Joyces don't hold an enormous fascination for me I have to say - some of their works do but they're not top on my lists of books I want to read. Shakespeare I have to say is the same. Sure I'd like to see the plays and know what the jist of the story is but I find reading scripts incredibly hard work ... I wouldn't read a film script however good the film was ...

One thing I will say is anyone who feels any pangs of regret about not having read War and Peace - don't bother ... I've never found a book quite so unapologetically mind numbing in my life ...

Les Miserables on the other hand - ... the only book I've ever d when finishing ...

... and another thing ...

In Candide, Voltaire writes a quote by a guy who has read all the greats ... "I read only for myself and like only that which suits my taste" ... pertinent I felt ... no point battling through an unenjoyable book ... I have to say I found Captain Caress me's Tangerine coma inducing - I know everyone says that the first 90 pages are dull and the rest of the book is brilliant but you've still got to read the first 90 pages ... where's the fun in that

Good question Jack

There is a huge list of books I feel I should have read because they are classics. It is something to do with feeling that I am not properly educated until I have got through them all.

Every once in a while I get around to reading one and sometimes am quite disappointed when they turn out not to be wonderful. It seems that not all 'worthy' books are that entertaining, or enjoyable.

I have just read Catcher in the Rye after hearing about it for years as the Great American Novel. It was ok. I didn't find it very engaging and didn't really care what happened. Still, that is another one I can cross off the list...

I've read Dicken's, something by each Bronte and Shakespear.

*Muses*

War and Peace - this was stolen from me in Poland after only 15 pages.

Winston Churchill by Roy Jenkins

A Brief History of Time

The Kenneth Williams Diaries - I know I wrote the article and never read these

The Complete Sherlock Holmes - I've never really taken my Grangfather's copy off the book shelf much let alone sat down and started to read.

I'd avoid Mein Kampf if I was you. It is deadly boring. Much more interesting for an insight into the nazi machine would be Goebbel's Diaries, imo.(And i've read both...)

I'd stick with Grapes of Wrath as well. One of the great novels of the twentieth century.

Kelli, you've hit the nail on the head - these are the books you either have to have read or find a Bluffer's Guide. And I read Catcher In The Rye recently too. So John Lennon was killed by someone who was obsessed with a crummy (!) work of literature

DD: War and Peace stolen after 15 pages - I suspect you didn't quite get the jist of that one, then!

Unsurprisingly, Madent, people seem to be disagreeing about this question