What Is Your Favourite Work of Litertaure?

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

A hobby of mine is reading old, books, really old books.

Here is a really great site

archive.org...

You can do an advanced search by date.
The older the better. You'd be surprised what is in them.

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

Joyce's Ulysses changed my life as did "Save the Cat"...

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: CyberMoses1001

Mary Chestnut's diary.

It is a look at the civil war from a confederate side of a woman.
I found it very interesting, enlightening, and a lot of her words of wisdom still apply today.

I'm currently reading, among other things, Sarah Morgan: A Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman.

originally posted by: Liquesence

originally posted by: JAGStorm
a reply to: CyberMoses1001

Mary Chestnut's diary.

It is a look at the civil war from a confederate side of a woman.
I found it very interesting, enlightening, and a lot of her words of wisdom still apply today.

I'm currently reading, among other things, Sarah Morgan: A Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman.

Oh, I'm going to get this one too. Mary Chestnut was an more mature woman's view, this is a young woman's view. It will be interesting to read the difference.

a reply to: NightFlight

Allow me to guess, you are a libertarian who finds Rand's philosophical principles attractive and Ron Paul's observation on Government to be enlightening?
I am not fan, I never read her book, but I am aware of her philosophical principles and believes, and I see her as nothing more than a puppet of the military and criminal justice system, a pro capitalist book produced during the cold war, and communist paranoia, and as part of the building of Wall Street and the current capitalist system, a piece of propaganda, that we should worship capitalism and big business as a minor dimension of the complete subjugation and worshipping of the military, as part of the greater stabilising of the military industrial complex, a book which, although she would deny it, is deeply connected to fascism, Ayan Rand, Aryan, corporate fascism.
Ayn Rand and the Rand Corporation, would have one believe that men, and women, who would throw their grandmother under a bus for five pound, are the best guides to guide our specimen and planet for thousands of years, and more so than that, she believed these should be unregulated by government. I Don't like the current system myself, I am not a Marxist, although I do not just dismiss Marx as a philosopher and economic theorist like the right wing, I believe in free market economics, just a different understanding of it than we current have, I don't believe capital, or free market economics should create wealth, I believe capitalism should destroy centralised wealth and create equality, end poverty, illiteracy and liberate democratic systems which can then properly regulate society outside the control of the military etc, as an economic system of a civilisation is supposed to do, alongside that, Ayn Rand completely misunderstands the system, the free market and the State and Military are one, they are an alliance of political legal and economic and military bodies which nee done another, one without the other cannot exist, and when this happens, people realise they are being screwed by the most organised mob on the planet, and form a different capitalist system. That is my opinion of Rand, and Atlas Shrugged, the Communist Manifesto of the Military Industrial Complex.

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

What Is Your Favourite Work of Litertaure?

The book that pretty much changed my life: Ken Wilber's "The Spectrum of Consciousness."

My favorite book? Probably Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio."

Other notables include:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ask the Dusk
East of Eden
The Age of Reason
Stephen King's Dark Tower series
The Little Prince
Invitation to a Beheading
A Happy Death

originally posted by: Metallicus
All of those you list are fine, but for me “The Hobbit” and J. R. R. Tolkien are my favorite ever. I can still remember how amazed and enthralled I was by his works and Middle-earth.

I never read the Ring series, but I did read "The Hobbit" in seventh grade and absolutely loved it, how vivid it was—and how dark.

a reply to: JAGStorm

Sounds intriguing, I will be sure to purchase a copy, thank you for the recommendation.

a reply to: JAGStorm

What's the oldest you have read, I suppose mine is Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Alongside the Torah.

a reply to: olaru12

The Greatest Novel ever, I have it in front of me. It's a book you read throughout your lifetime and finish with your last dying breath.

a reply to: Liquesence

Ah Wilde's Dorian Gray, similar to Joyce's Portrait of The Artist, if you understand literature properly.

I don't know ... I've read a lot of it since my degree is in literature. I tend to like Melville's prose style. I enjoyed the works of Verne, Orwell, and Wells. Some of my favorites were more the American short story writers though: Ambrose Bierce, O. Henry, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, etc.

originally posted by: CyberMoses1001
a reply to: JAGStorm

What's the oldest you have read, I suppose mine is Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Divine Comedy, Alongside the Torah.

Probably Iliad, but I consider those ancient. Maybe others long forgotten.

When I say old now, I mean a couple hundred years or so.

Here is an example of what I find super interesting. Old cookbooks and such.

archive.org...
1830's cookbook. Page 40 Indian Cake.

Some of these old books are real treasures. A cookbook might have recipes, medical advice, cleaning solutions and little words of wisdom. Each one is unique.

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sin and repentance are the central themes of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The Mariner commits a terrible sin when he kills the albatross, one of God's beloved creatures. He spends the rest of his life trying to atone for his sin through his suffering and humility.

Poetry Foundation

a reply to: ketsuko

An Anglo American literature fan? Is your Degree in English and American literature? Joyce and Tolstoy are the greatest of all time, both natural novelist, as is obvious in the natural style of their work, as most literature is bricks for the criminal justice system and military, I recommend Ulysses by Joyce, and Redemption by Tolstoy, also Beowulf, Seamus Heaney's translation.

a reply to: Sublimecraft

Is that he who made the dictionary?
Do you read that quote literally of symbolically? The albatross and god.

originally posted by: Metallicus
All of those you list are fine, but for me “The Hobbit” and J. R. R. Tolkien are my favorite ever. I can still remember how amazed and enthralled I was by his works and Middle-earth.

Im with you JRR is a grate author. I rember buying a first edition for my brother of the Silmarilain edited by JRRs son. I wish they would make a movie of it.

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

My degree says English, but it was up to us which we specialized in to a degree. I took some Brit lit, but I went much heavier on American. For one thing, the professors teaching the American lit were much better and more enjoyable. I read a lot of the Sci-Fi through a British Sci-Fi class though.

One thing I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt is that I do not like Conrad.

I do have a love/hate relationship with Dickens. It depends on the novel. I hate Great Expectations with a passion, but I love Oliver Twist. A Tale of Two Cities falls somewhere in the middle.

a reply to: CyberMoses1001

www.amazon.com...=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aBFsDb8R1K4RF" target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">Bad Wisdom, by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning

a reply to: ketsuko

Through literature, I feel, exists from the beginning of civilisation, up until Joyce, after that, the Military. epic poetry such as Beowulf, Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante's Divine Comedy etc I recommend.