>>767 I'm a ML so keep that in mind

>>768 Lolita, MLs love lolis.

My personal favorite is 11. Lots of good stuff on that list. You can go ahead and skip 54 I think.

None, its not like you're ever going to read all that shit

>>771 Lots of normies enjoy fiction.

>Women are not only keener buyers of fiction – surveys show they account for 80% of sales in the UK, US and Canadian fiction markets – far more women than men are literary festivalgoers, library members, audio book readers, literary bloggers, and members of literary societies and evening classes. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/why-women-love-literature-read-fiction-helen-taylor

>>767 Find a better list tbh. This is what you get when you base a list like this on polling. You get a bunch of "hidden gems" that aren't hidden at all. And you get fucking Harry Potter at #54 book of all time. >>768 Unironically go read Animal Farm. It's very short. And if you haven't read like half that list in high school go look up some high school reading list and remedy yourself.

>>774 I did high school in Turkey. How do I know if a reading list is better if I haven't read the books?

>>773 MUST.... CONSOOM.... MUH LITERATURE.....

>>776 What's better, consooming sports or literature?

>>767 Not enough Vonnegut

lolita's unironically fun, made me fell a lot of things

Fuck that list it's mostly all fiction, ain't nobody got time fo dat. Fiction is just a written dressed up movie, read poetry if you want pretty words. It's just petitbourg indulgence to read muh sophisticated literature and it only makes you sound pretentious when namedropping books you've read off a list.

>>780 >Fiction is pretentious, but poetry isn't what a faggot

>>767 Read Brothers K

>>781 I said if he wanted to waste his time and read well written english at least poetry would give him more of that. Half those books are high school tier with little knowledge value. Lord of the flies, Harry Potter, Tolkien, Gatsby, walden, camus, wtf brainlet tier stuff.

>>767 >Harry Potter series OUT OUT OUT OUT OUT!!

>>780 Unironically kill yourself you fucking illiterate mongoloid

>Infinite Jest A meme but unironically great book that really captures american suburban culture and the american mind in general. I still rec >The Stranger I've never been a big Camus fan. read "The Fall" by him instead. It's a lot more interesting. >Blood Meridian Actually as great as everyone says. MLs probably wouldn't like it though; it's a book all about unpassable isolation, desolation of mankind. >Lolita really fun. my gf's favorite book >Gravity's Rainbow Probably not the place to start with Pynchon. Read Crying of Lot 49 or V. first. You also probably have to have a heavy interest in 20th century American culture (and its corresponding logic) to really dig it. He's great though. >Don Quixote If you have any interest in culture whatsoever you have to read it. It's long as fuck but well worth it. >The Trial My favorite book. Kafka is the leftist fiction writer. Nobody else captured the modern world and the modern psyche like Kafka. Highly rec reading Walter Benjamin's and Adorno's respective readings of Kafka as well. >Journey to the end of the night Celine is a fascist, and was so antisemetic even the Nazis told him to chill (true story). He's also credited with inventing the modern french prose style. I didn't enjoy it very much though, too cynical and misanthropic even for me. >Ficciones Borges is the most bourgeois writer out there and self-admittedly so. His works are such a joy to read though. Maybe read Calvino instead if you want a truly left-leaning fabulist author. Borges, though, is a genius. His works completely swallow pre-modern fiction and explore their legacies in always captivating, charming ways. >2666 Bolano is /ourguy/. Read him. Read everything by him. >Dorian Gray I don't fully understand the Wilde hype. but you can read this book in a single afternoon. It's fine. >Sound & The Fury Do not start with this for Faulker. >Invisible Cities Like I said earlier, Calvino is a stunning author, in same sort of movement as Borges and Marquez. Novel is about Marco Polo describing Kublai Khan's cities to him. It's a great, short read. A seductive book.

>100 Years of Solitude Marquez is fun, but I never loved him as much as other people do. Talk about proletarian lit though. An ML would probably enjoy. >Mason & Dixon Again, advanced Pynchon. Harold Bloom called it one of the best books ever written. Written entirely in prose-poetry, pretty perfectly mimicking late 1700s American English. Mason & Dixon go hyucking across colonial america, running into Scooby Doo while still making cold war and entirely obscure revolutionary war references. I love it. >Notes from the Underground The first book about Alienation? The first existentialist literature? Probably. >Divine Comedy So much fun. Extremely readable. If you've ever wanted to get into epic poetry, this is a smooth way in. >White Noise Man I love Delilo, but he's real-deal postmodernist lit. It's a book essentially about telephones, airwaves, grocery stores, the liberal university. ML would probably consider it self-indulgent bourgeois lit. Delilo though, on his part, is probably the best literary critic of late capitalist society. Maybe Mao II would be a better start, though. >Stoner oh I love stoner. Williams has an indomitable, simple, concise prose style that can just break your heart. he was the real successor of the flaubertian novel. >Dubliners Joyce is our guy. Accessible in a way that Ulysses isn't. MLs go apeshit for Joyce. >Book of the Disquiet Pessoa was also a fascist. This book is long, prose-poetry fragments about life. As the name suggests, it's pretty doomer. >In Search of Lost Time Would an ML like this? Maybe, maybe not. It's fundamentally about the disenchantment of bourgeois society, and a fundamental alienation of the self from one's own memory and past. But it's also about bourgeois pleasures; its ending core thesis is that only through art can the modern soul find solace, fulfillment. >As I Lay Dying Now this is the Faulker you gotta read. I won't say anything more. >Metamorphosis Kafka is my favorite writer but I never liked this one. But you can also read it in an afternoon easy. Read "The Trial" or "The Castle" instead. >Grapes of Wrath Literally the American proletarian writer. >Temple of the Golden Pavillion I've read a lot of Mishima but not this one. He had his own specific brand of fascism that culminated in him miserably failing to coup Japan and restore the emperor. Despite this he's a great writer who has a lot of insight into gender dynamics. For leftists his work also examines the conflict between reactionary ideology (ideas like honor and glory) and their contradiction under modern capitalist life. I really like his work. >Philip K Dick dude's fun as fuck. he was a conservative but all of his books examine capitalism pretty critically. it gives his work this really particular quality nobody else has >American Psycho, Harry Potter, Fear & Loathing, On The Road, Fight Club, skip em.

>>787 >>786 An addendum: It all depends what you're looking for. Are you just looking for a good read? If so mostly all of the books are just canonical literature, and you can't particularly go wrong. Are you looking for literature that valorizes some basic concepts of Marxism-Leninism? If so, you might be disappointed. There's been a long standing critique of so-called socialist realism in literature, I think it was Lukacs who first pointed out its shortcomings. The fact of the matter is that novels, as a form, are suited (and born out of) capitalist individualism. They're meditations of and on the individual as a unit. There are few books about or praising movements, or coming together productively. They're far more about the lack of connection between people, even if they are left-leaning, or critique class politics.

>>767 89. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It's essentially the first book of American drop out culture. A near mid 19th century story of a man's experiment in simplified living, who moved out to a pond, and constructs a cabin so as to see if he could live more in tune with his beliefs. It's difficult to pigeonhole it, the first chapter on "economy" is a critique of america, capitalism, civilization , etc. The book emphasizes the self reliance and autonomy of the individual, while making clear that it is a fools errand, and is unnatural to avoid our social nature. The question is how can one live more simply, how to cut away the excess chaff, to find what is essential, and to build a life around that essence. Walden is celebrated by anarchists, and ecology minded folks as well, non vulgar marxists should be able to dig it, its part of the lefty canon. The book is a general praise of the depths of nature, of the sublime in the everyday, in the immediate natural world we inhabit, and which likewise inhabits us. It advocates getting closer to it, to minimizing what is unnecessary, so we can not only have free reign over ourselves, but the freedom to construct a more authentic life. There are definite criticisms, mostly superficial, but if you are a 'marxist'(as I am) there are theoretical disagreements over certain ideas, issues with labor, its relevance, the class composition of the ideas and how they represent the emerging class struggles. Regardless, it remains an inspiration, it's one of my favorite books and has changed my life in more ways than any other book I've read, because it actually moved me to live differently, which seems to be the story of most people who love Walden too.

>>786 >>787 Good taste. I still haven't read quite a few of those though, looking forward to trying. Here are some of mine that weren't covered. >"If on a Winter's Night a Traveler..." For Calvino fans, an extremely cool little meta-book. >Decameron Boccaccio's magnum opus of 100 stories. The meta-narrative is of bourgeois youngsters escaping to the countryside during the Plague (!!!). The kids tell each other stories for 10 days, 10 stories each day. The stories poke fun at every level of society, exposing the vices and virtues of all: the peasants, city workers, bourgeoisie, clergy, nobility, no one is spared. It is absolutely hilarious, irreverent, vulgar and insightful, and even arguably proto-feminist. Highly recommend! >Parallel Lives Plutarch's collection of biographies of famous heroes of antiquity. Part fiction, part history, full entertainment. Not only are the characters and events larger than life, but the author himself often takes the liberty of passing judgement on them, adding humor and context to the insane happenings and tying them all together. As Emerson called it, "The Bible for Heroes" PS why is this thread bumplocked? Just because there's some trash in the OP's pic? Or does this belong in /edu/?

1984 is a fun read, I enjoyed it. Read that if you want.

>>767 Well I haven't read most of them but I can give you my notes on the ones I have read. >Brothers Karamazov >Moby Dick These are two of my favorite books of all time >Don Quixote Pretty good. >Hamlet Not my favorite work by Shakespeare but all his works are good. I prefer the tempest. >Siddhartha I've read this several times and it's pretty good. Definitely worth reading and very short. You can probably get through it in one sitting. >The Odyssey This one is great. I've read the original and some modernized versions and I wouldn't say you NEED to read the original. It's kinda long winded and nearly half of it is just them taking breaks to get hammered. >War and Peace >The Divine Comedy More superb works. Definitely read these. >The Hobbit and the Silmarillion I mean, they are fun. The Hobbit was one of my favorite books as a kid. I don't see why they are on this list though. You can skip them if you want, but if you're looking for entertainment they are worthwhile. >Harry Potter >The Holy Bible Lmao why are these on here? They are culturally influential I guess and I've read them both and got something out of it... the Harry Potter series 4 times through. They are both rather bad from a literary standpoint though. >Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas C'mon. Seriously? I mean, it's good, but there are so many things by Thomson that are better. This should be replaced with The Great Shark Hunt. >Faust Another must-read. >Huck Finn >Lord of the Flies They are alright. Would recommend but hardly essential. >VALIS Ugh, I mean it's good... really good actually. Just if you like it you should also read some Octavia Butler and Ursula K Leguin. >Thus Spoke Zarathustra Yeah it's good... not as good as Beyond Good and Evil or the Genealogy of Morals but I guess it is sort of fiction unlike those two so I can see why they included it. >Walden I like this book. If you like it then you should also read some Edward Abbey. Start with Desert Solitaire or The Monkey Wrench Gang. >Hitchhikers Guide Fucking nerd. I feel the same way about this as I do about Tolkien. >The Iliad See my notes on the Odyssey.

>>793 Oh apparently I missed a few... >100 Years of Solitude If you don't know Spanish you can skip it tbh. If you can read it in the original it is top tier. There's a lot of other books in this style I could recommend. <Like Water for Chocolate <The Temple of My Familiar <Kafka on the Shore >Metamorphosis I agree with >>787 on this. Kafka is probably my favorite author and I would recommend literally everything he wrote, even the ones I haven't read because I know they are gonna be good.

Oh and also... >A Clockwork Orange Love it.

>>771 >You will never read 100 books! What? I read over 100 books in one year when I was 11. If you read every day a book a week is pretty manageable if they are 200-500 pages. So 52 a year, you should be able to finish this list in 3-4 years even if you take some breaks. Some of the ones on this list are pretty long, but the idea that you can't read all of them is ridiculous.

>>767 It's funny that /lit/s 2014 list doesn't include Marx but latest ones do.

Could someone please explain why Hamlet is such an important play for the English speaking world?

>>804 Because it's one of the best examples of English prose that doesn't sound fucking retarded? Personally I prefer Lord Byron to Shakespeare but in general english is a pretty ugly language imo. Everyone memorizes the monologue from the end of hamlet at some point right? I certainly did as a kid along with the first however many digets of pi. Fucking nerd...

>>767 >no ayn rand books this image has to be old as fuck, right?

>>767 Where the fuck is socialist literature, OP? Are you even ML or did you read all of them? Anyway, in that list, I recommend Faust. And skip everything from post-modern authors

>>852 >post-modern authors You mean like anyone after the 1800s or what?

>>848 I've never actually read it in English, maybe I will give it a go...

>>859 Postmoderns are those rebellious retards after 1950s

>>869 t. Hasn't read Deleuze

>>787 >The first book about Alienation? IMO Notes is not so much a book about alienation as about the involuntary integration from which the narrator tries to desperately escape through deliberately irrational but futile acting out. It's before its time by 150 years. >Man I love Delilo, but he's real-deal postmodernist lit He's actually an anti-postmodernist. A lot of his works are Baudrillard's attack on postmodern society in literary form.

>>875 >A lot of his works are Baudrillard's attack on postmodern society in literary form. I agree, but this doesn't exclude him from post-modern lit. Sure he's not playing with the novel as a form, but all of his works are hyper-meta, partiularly Mao II, explicitly asking itself what the novel, as a medium, and each of his books in particular, can do in the postmodern age. Can they reconcile history? Can they still save the individual? Are they capable of constructing world narratives? >>852 Most ""Socialist Literature"" is bad. Literature by socialists, however, is good.

>>904 > Most ""Socialist Literature"" is bad. > Literature by socialists, however, is good. At least read Тихий Дон.

>>905 I didn't say all socialist lit was bad, just a lot of it. >And Quiet Flows the Don My Russophile friend always badgers me to read this but, man, I don't really wanna read a four volume novel. I tend to tap out after one thousand pages

>>906 Please, read it. It's not only a Russian novel, but a socialistic novel. It shows how the revolution actually was, from the viewpoint of non-proletarian class. Also Как закалялась сталь, this is not a masterpiece, but it shows the revolution from the viewpoint of proletarian class. Both of them will give you a quite completed picture of the revolution

>>869 We're talking about literature here... so you're telling us not to read who? Allen Ginsberg?

>>767 >>768 >I'm a ML 2,3,9,10,13,28,31,34,35,36,40,45,49,50,56,68,71,79,84,85,91,92,94,100 are mandatory reading

>>905 >>906 >>907 any thoughts on chernyshevsky's "what is there to be done"? also, is "mama" a good entrypoint to gorky?

>>767 Blood Meridian, Dune, Solaris, Valis, Roadside Picnic, Illuminatus

even though I never finished it I can easily say V by Thomas Pynchon is such a great book from the ingenuity of Thomas Pynchon’s writing style. If you’re curious to know what innovative slang looks like, read V.

>>767 skip everything. read "kingkiller chronicles".

>>767 >two Camus >no Balzac or Zola For leftists I would recommend reading those authors instead. They made realist novels about the working class and French capitalism in the 19th century.

>>1941 Hell, not even Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, or Candide by Voltaire. No Asian literature. This list is burger centered.

So uhh, am I the only one who thinks that Merso's execution is lowkey justified in Cameus "The Stranger"?

>>767 You can skip Orwell, Tolkien, Rowling, Lord of the Flies, and the Bible.

READ DUNE! Seriously how has nobody recommended that one of the list, that's not only just a great piece unto itself but also a political commentary that was meant for the weird relationship between the US and OPEC back in the 1960s and 70s that's only gotten more relevant as time goes on.

>>2063 Dune’s by far the most boring book I’ve ever read. and I read philosophy.

>>2064 >Dune >Boring Of all the things to call dune, from dense vocabulary, to vague and enigmatic metaphors that are easily missed, and the general theme that it's easy to feel like the focus is lost; boring is the last thing I'd generally call Dune. I mean maybe the first eighth of the first book that's really a prolouge but other than that it's fine. You sure you didn't read one of the new ones by Frank's son?

What do you guys think of The Master and the Margarita?

>Paradise Lost My favorite work of literature. Even though most of the book is boring, It is entirely worth reading just for chapters 1,2 and 4 (if I remember correctly). Basically the ones from Satans POV. At one point during chapter 4 I literally broke down crying from how sublime it was.

>>786 Invisible cities is an absolute superb book, the kind of book I sometimes just pick up and just read segments of.

I recently made this, I wanted to share. I know it only contains a minmial amount of Marxist texts but I copied the exact list from the appendix from How To Read A Book

>>1901 Why should I lose my time reading these useless books when I could be reading actually interesting shit like theory or history? One of the few work of fiction I have ever read were 1984 and The Stranger, they left such a bad taste in my mouth that I haven't read any fiction since the last decade.

>>767 >>768 >>2770

>>2770 >>2771 Well, maybe I exagerated a little, I actually read another fiction book, How the Steel was Tempered. I didn't like reading it, I understand why the author wrote it or the ideas he was trying to convey, but reading fiction is boring as fuck even when it's a Socialist realist work. So yeah, if you don't read often don't bother reading useless fiction books and read theory instead or you are going to discourage yourself from ever reading again.

>>2772 the vast majority of aforementioned books are theory told in a way that's more palatable than philosophy books. Read plato/cicero/camus then read nicomachean ethics and see how much drier aristotle is.

>>2767 this list is so shit. Most of people there are irrelevant and had irrelevant philosophical thought. The Greeks and Romans were irrelevant besides Plato, Homer and Aristotle. Irrelevant understand as in "knowing their thought will provide no value to you", but they had big and positive contribution to society (Euclid, Archimides, Herodotus, Hippocrates). If you are not a philosophy student or joined some philosophy courses (mostly beginner courses or history of philosophy. Since they start with greek materialism) then nobody ever will talk with you about Epicurus thought (believe me) and it's outdated thought, so it's only good if you want to understand the history of philosophy and materialistic thought. (Greek materialism is primitive understanding of the world. It has no relation to modern understanding of materialism or marxist understanding of materialism. It is pretty useless) Every philosopher in Middle Ages was irrelevant idiot that copied Aristotle. They literally copied Aristotle and changed his thought into some amalgamation of christian philosophical thought (which is dogshit btw) — look at Augustine for example or Aquinas. also: >the old testament >the new testament made me chuckle. There are people studying those fictional books their whole life. It seems like a waste of time (and is a waste of time). It's just a timesink and you have two choices: 1. Try to understand the testaments literally 2. Try to understand it figuratively If you try to understand it literally then it's some nonsense bullshit that primitive people wrote about the world and how reactionary patriarchal society should work. Also it's obviously explicitly anti-marxist. It has no meaning or value. If you want to understand history or psychology of reactionary value — you would have more value (or something) if you've just read Mein Kampf or writings of Mussolini. If you try to understand it figuratively, then which version is the right one? There are thousands of interpretations. There are people wasting their whole life trying to make sense of it. Instead of wasting life yourself, you could spend all this time reading marxist literature which or any other philosophical literature. Also if you think that will help you better reach the masses then you are wrong. None of the revolutionary leaders cited the Bible, which was more popular in their time (it keeps getting less popular with every year) — and they succeeded in providing their message. tl;dr => drop bible, drop greeks (besides Aristotle and Plato), drop romans (if you really want to: then Cicero, Aurelius, Plutarch and Horace seem to be more relevant than all the others. People quote them, you can semi-talk about them etc. — at least in Europe which has Latin/Roman roots), drop all middle age writers (christians). They are all irrelevant, provide no useful insight and middle ages is just regurgitated Aristotle which was fit in christian worldview (big cringe, very boring).

>>2774 Also depends on how you interpret 'revolutionary leader'. By that I mean a leader of a socialist revolution, a successful one at that. So I am not concerned with burger-centric worldview and people like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. Wrote that just in case somebody would want to go with the "haha gotcha".

>>767 Read 2666. Read the Savage Detectives. Read everything Bolaño wrote.

>>786 >Do not start with this for Faulker. I did and I loved it. English is not even my first language. I used a reading guide though.

>>2749 I'm reading it right now. I think it has an entertaining style, feels very magical realist. You have kind of fantastic elements mixed in with an everyday setting in Moscow. But I was very skeptical of the book going in because it is so highly praised in its historical context (as a satire by a persecuted literary genius or whatever), and that this seems to typify which soviet writers are elevated. It is almost always somebody who was decrying Stalinism or something. It seemed in the early scene with Pontius Pilate that Bulgakov was trying to suggest that the jew coming to meet Pilate was a stand in for the USSR, because Pilate yells at him why he would let a murderer go and not allow this delusional holy man to go around preaching peace. Even if he is a competent writer, I imagine by the end of it I will still feel like this book was simply exalted for political reasons.

>>767 Bruh are those even books? Looks like something children and liberals read. I only read theory, history, political-economy, science or philosophy books

>>2849 it makes me extremely sad some people actually act like this though

Pynchon is very fun to read

>>767 My personal favorite is 77

>>2930 It’s not a book about ideology per se, however it’s an incredible book. It’s a story about childhood’s end, fear, anger, nostalgia, with some midlife crisis stuff thrown in. It’s great

>>786 >lolita >my gf's favorite book

>>2951 lol She just thinks Nabakov was the century's finest prose stylist.