The Classics

SubKamran

SubKamran

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This should be interesting...

What classic literature have you read? I haven't read a lot, I've only started last year to read classics.

Mine:

1984 by George Orwell
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A World Split Apart by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
Various short stories by classic authors

Maybe I'm forgetting some, but that's all so far.
 
How are you defining "classics" exactly? As in, "Written before 19<whatever>" or "Wonderful books that have changed the way millions of people have thought" or what?
 
SubKamran said:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
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Oh dear i remember this book, my god, pip was no friend of mine.

War of the Worlds i particularly liked, i also saw the film a few days ago, i thought it was great, nothing like the book but whatever.
 
el Chi said:
How are you defining "classics" exactly? As in, "Written before 19<whatever>" or "Wonderful books that have changed the way millions of people have thought" or what?
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Same as above.

I've read 1984 though.
 
Yes, that book is some kind of special.

But, for example: A Clockwork Orange isn't as old as 1984 or Dickens, but you can get it as part of Penguin classics, and it's an utterly astounding novel, so where does that place it?
 
way too many books to list

from shakesphere to Machiavelli to Plato to de Medici to dante to Chaucer to the works of people like Matthew luke mark and john


and that's prior to the last century ...I could go on and on if I included 20th century writers
 
I f*cking hate Chaucer. Sure it has literary significance, but that doesn't make it a good book.
I've always meant to read Dante and Machiavelli, though - any good?
 
well dante is a little hard to get into ..kinda like chaucer in the sense that the language is a bit dated ...Machiavelli's the prince reads like a manual

btw here's an online version

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm

I liked chaucer's Canterbury Tales it was quite funny
 
Yeah I figured Machiavelli wasn't a novel as such. As for Dante, whilst it's in similarly dated language to Chaucer, I prefer the concept behind it.
An epic poem conveying a journey through the realms of the dead is a far more interesting idea than short stories - however allegorical they may be - conveyed by uninteresting characters on religious pilgrimage.

Each to his own, though, natch.
 
As el Chi said...how do you define 'classics'? Before 1900? I've read a lot of books. :|

Shakespeare ftw though.
 
Sulkdodds said:
Shakespeare ftw though.
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

ftw.
 
dante's inferno is a little too preachy imho ..it's funny but a little too "repent or else" for my tastes

btw here's a Dante's inferno test:

I'm going to Level 2 of hell which is for the lustful:

"You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate."


take the test:

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv
 
"Is a pimp a good thing to be?" :laugh:

Ahhhh.

Classic literature? The only thing of my own accord has been The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumbass.
 
I'm on 6th level, which is the worst along with the other.
Very High evil level, and its where heritics go.....

:( Hold me.
 
I'm the same as Stern... Lustful, eh? :naughty:
 
level 6? how did you get there? you must be truely evil
 
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!


Oh noes
 
8. Don't ask me how the HELL that works.

Ooh, 'hell'. Ahaha.
 
Guarded by the Minotaur, who snarls in fury, and encircled within the river Phlegethon, filled with boiling blood, is the Seventh Level of Hell. The violent, the assasins, the tyrants, and the war-mongers lament their pitiless mischiefs in the river, while centaurs armed with bows and arrows shoot those who try to escape their punishment. The stench here is overpowering. This level is also home to the wood of the suicides- stunted and gnarled trees with twisting branches and poisoned fruit. At the time of final judgement, their bodies will hang from their branches. In those branches the Harpies, foul birdlike creatures with human faces, make their nests. Beyond the wood is scorching sand where those who committed violence against God and nature are showered with flakes of fire that rain down against their naked bodies. Blasphemers and sodomites writhe in pain, their tongues more loosed to lamentation, and out of their eyes gushes forth their woe. Usurers, who followed neither nature nor art, also share company in the Seventh Level.
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:laugh:
 
Why am I going to hell??? I rarely do anything wrong and I'm going to the worse level!

F**k you God, you'll never take me alive!
 
The Great Gatsby and the Mayor of Castorbridge are two classics. Although I'd have to say that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the most classic. Older than the bible, and a lot of the ideas there are still applicable. Oh and Aesop's Fables
 
Dan said:
Older than the bible, and a lot of the ideas there are still applicable.
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I agree, I just stoned a Muslim.
 
Sulkdodds said:
As el Chi said...how do you define 'classics'? Before 1900? I've read a lot of books. :|

Shakespeare ftw though.
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Argh, if you spoke to someone fluent in literary studies, they'd say, "Oh, what a classic!" If you asked your professor if what you read is "classic" they'd say "Yes."

I don't know. Classic. Probably before 1950.

PS. I'm Muslim ;)
 
el Chi said:
Yeah I figured Machiavelli wasn't a novel as such. As for Dante, whilst it's in similarly dated language to Chaucer, I prefer the concept behind it.
An epic poem conveying a journey through the realms of the dead is a far more interesting idea than short stories - however allegorical they may be - conveyed by uninteresting characters on religious pilgrimage.

Each to his own, though, natch.
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I'm currently translating the part in the Aeneid where Aeneas makes his way through Hades, which incidentally is what inspired Dante and Michaelangelo to name to, thus creating the traditional Christian image of Hell. And by currently translating, I mean I'm right now taking a 15 minute break from a twenty-line sprint about Aeneas' conversation with the dead Dido.

Through latin, I've also read Caesar, Cicero's Catalinian Orations, Catullus (a lot of Roman names started with "C"), Horace (who was an amazing, amazing poet), and a little Ovid.


I've read a bunch in English class, and mostly didn't like it. I love Welle's use of English as opposed to Swift for instance. I just can't dig that terrible sentence structure.

Edit: A classic is that which is time-less, and doesn't require culture or geography to enjoy. Age really shouldn't matter.
 
God, I spent most of Highschool reading stuff like that.
Everything from the Odyssey and The Scarlet Letter to Chaucer and lots of other random stuff.
 
Anybody read Thomas More's Utopia? I'd say thats a classic.

I dont like Dickens
 
Dickens: always using a thousand words where a hundred or even a dozen would do.
 
Llama said:
oo, i get sent to Limbo

me ftw noobs!
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I am in Limbo too.

I would rather be there anyway, I don't want to spend an eternity with pat robertson.
 
I've read 1984; it seems like a given on this site. Apart from that I've read a few Shakespeare plays (Tempest, R&J, Macbeth, maybe others) and Shakespeare furking owneths. I've read Chaucer's Merchant's Tale and ye ken I knowe that booke can piss off to helle. I sped through The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven, since they're only short.

Then there's Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, didn't think much of that...The Woman in White by some guy who was a contemporary of Dickens, forgot his name, but that wasn't much cop either. I've never read any Dickens funnily enough. I doubt I'd like it. I've read a few Japanese classics too (translated of course) - The Tale of Genji and a few others from hundreds of years back. Honestly, aside from their historical significance, these all suck. But there's a few things from this century which the Japanese regard as classics which aren't too bad, stuff by Natsume Soseki (Kokoro, And Then), Dazai (The Setting Sun), and some untranslated stuff by random authors which looks like it would be great if I could get past the first couple of pages. Haven't read any Mishima.

I have ancient copies of the entire of Dante's Divine Comedy, but I was only able to read through Inferno and Purgatorio before running out of steam. Paradiso just got so trippy I couldn't really follow it much any more. Plus he dumps Virgil as a guide, which was disappointing.

Edit: 5th Level of hell, although I got High and Very High for the bottom 3 levels.

The river Styx runs through this level of Hell, and in it are punished the wrathful and the gloomy. The former are forever lashing out at each other in anger, furious and naked, tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth. The latter are gurgling in the black mud, slothful and sullen, withdrawn from the world. Their lamentations bubble to the surface as they try to repeat a doleful hymn, though with unbroken words they cannot say it. Because you lived a cruel, vindictive and hateful life, you meet your fate in the Styx.
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