Ok so everyone has a list of the "greatest books ever" and can't wait to share with the rest of the world....WELL heres your chance. Go ahead an let us all know the best books youve ever read...and hey if you have names of publishers to go with it so we can go and track them down that would be great. So i'll go ahead and go first.

BEST BOOKS/SERIES EVER (drumroll)
1. 9 book series by Winston Churchill detailing the events of the first and second world war. AN incredible source of primary material. (yummy)
2. History of Warfare by John Keegan. An interesting overview of the different styles of warfare and how they apply to modern conflict. (yummmmy)
3. Complete collection of Shakespeare. Yeah I know im a little demented by placing this third.
4. History of the English Speaking People by Winston Churchill. Yeah yeah he gets top billing once again but this series is a very well rounded compilation of European/English history.
5. Illiad by Homer. Achilles, need I say more?
6. Aenid by whats his face...Forget the name but really enjoy good Roman propaganda when I read it.
7. Beowulf by the poet who was hung in chains until he completed it.

Ok Ok....I can hear the yawns already so I will make my list a little more modern.

8. Wheel of Time by robert jordan. YOU cant lose with a good fantasy opera.
9. John Falkenberg's Legion by Jerry Pournelle. If you havent read this one then you are missing out on when space opera was good.
10. Paksenarrion Dorthansdottir by Elizabeth Moon. The only good book that she has ever written and recomend it to all that havent checked it out yet.
11. The starfire series by David Weber and Steve White. GREAT space opera before Weber became all sappy and stupid with Honor Harrington.

OK OK...Im sure I lost about half of you to the yawns so i'll stop there...Feel free to post since i'd love to hear your suggestions.

[ 06-11-2002, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: Miinxx ]

Sorry, but my favrite of all time is The Sword Of Truth series By Terry Goodkind.

I dont believe there *is* a best seris; its all a matter of taste.

[ 06-17-2002, 04:39 AM: Message edited by: Calaethis Dragonsbane ]

Eh? May I ask what you mean by that? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Will come back to put in my own list later....

Um yeah... isn't that exactly what Minxx asked for? A list of YOUR personal favourites? Of course there's not *a* best list, of course it depends on taste... doesn't mean it's useless to make a list of your personal recommendations. In fact it's very useful - who knows, you might find a great new author or book. [img]smile.gif[/img]

For further clarification I was talkin about your favorite books so I could browse around and see if I should get some. I put out my "favorite" books and was hoping that all who responded would post theirs as well.

In regards to the author of beowulf:

I believe he was a 11th century christian monk composing this poem based on the oral viking tradition at the time and since monasteries were the prime targets of viking due to their concentration of wealth, I was just picturing the priest being tied up and forced to write this as the vikings stood over him to give "encouragement" ;) . Just a vivid imagination going to work there.

Miinxx, I'm totally with you on "History of Warfare", Shakespeare, and Beowulf. But The Odyssey is at LEAST twice the book the Illiad is IMO.

And I'll add any and all of Lord Dunsany's fantasy. Time and the Gods, the Pegana books, The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Charwoman's Shadow, The Sword of Welleran, The Book of Wonder... All great books that have been reprinted recently enough that you can find them. The rest of his stuff is HARD to find at a reasonable price and aren't carried by many libraries in the U.S. But they're all worth a read if you can get your hands on them. His ghost stories, mysteries, children's books, and what not are also better than average, but his Fantasy puts everything else in the genre to shame.

I also usually include, "A Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens. First book they made us read in high school that I actually enjoyed.

Actually, to my knowledge, Beowulf is an anonymous poem, like most OE poems.
It's true that there are some Christian influences in it but there is nothing known about the author, so we cannot tell for sure.
Still, I agree that it's a splendid work, I loved reading it. In fact, I have a recommendation for those who like Beowulf: get an audioversion! I have three of them:
- a selection of excerpts from Beowulf and a number of other OE poems read in Old English (absolutely fantastic to hear!)
- Seamus Heaney's acclaimed translation read by the author himself
- the translation by Michael Alexander

Now, as for my list, I'm afraid I really can't single out any books, so I'll just make a list of authors and put my favourite books by them between () [img]smile.gif[/img]
They're in no specific order BTW

1. Will Shakespeare (King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet)
2. Kit Marlowe
3. Iain (M.) Banks (Consider Phlebas, Walking On Glass, Complicity, The Bridge, The Wasp Factory, The Player Of Games)
4. A.S. Byatt (Possession, Angels & Insects, Babel Tower, The Game)
5. Thomas Pynchon (The Crying Of Lot 49)
6. Anthony Burgess (Earthly Powers, A Clockwork Orange, Shakespeare)
7. Emily Brontë
8. J.R.R. Tolkien
9. Ian McEwan (The Comfort of Strangers, Enduring Love)
10. Will Self (Great Apes, My Idea Of Fun)
11. J.W. von Goethe (Die Leiden des jungen Werther, Faust)
12. S. Vestdijk - De Kellner en de Levenden
13. John Milton - Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, Lycidas
14. Oscar Wilde
15. W.B. Yeats
16. George Herbert
17. John Donne
18. Ben Jonson
19. John Keats
20. William Blake
21. Geoffrey Chaucer (The General Prologue, The Booke of the Duchess, The Parliament of Fowles)
22. Wulf and Eadwacer, the Seafarer, The Wanderer, Beowulf (anonymous OE poems)
23. Sylvia Plath
24. Seamus Heaney
25. Geoffrey Hill
26. P.B. Shelley
27. Tom Stoppard
28. Samuel Beckett
29. Harold Pinter
30. David Hare

[ 06-14-2002, 11:18 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

LOL, Melusine, why am I not surprised to see Die Leiden des jungen Werther and Sylvia Plath? No Rousseau?
I said I wouldn't make one, but since it is personal and not best, I shall say:
1.The Collected Works of William Shakespeare
2.The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
3.A La Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust
4.The Collected Poetry and Plays of T.S. Eliot
5.Faust by Johannes Goethe
6.The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
7.The Iliad and The Odessey of Homer
8.The Collected Plays of Moliere
9.Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
10.Starship Troopers and The Glory Roadby Robert Heinlein

[ 06-15-2002, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Attalus ]

Asterix anyone ? :D

I don't know why that doesn't surprise you.
They're not really representative of my taste. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I don't know, I suppose it's because they are so...Romantic.(Capital R, capital R). Glad that you don't like Rousseau. I've always wanted to say something really nasty to him. Do you like Faust better than Werther? Sorry about mistaking your taste. People are always assuming that I like classical music, for some reason, though I can take it or leave it alone, and it annoys me for some reason. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have all of them (up until 1990 anyway) and I'm not even European!!!

Great books!!

Hmmmm... well, I do like the romantic period, but it's not my favourite. Actually, when it comes to poetry, I do enjoy Shelley, Keats, Coleridge etc. but my real preference lies either farther back in time (Donne, Herbert, Jonson, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton) or later on the timescale (Eliot, Yeats, Geoffrey Hill, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker etc). Gothic-romantic has its merits too :D
About Werther - I read some parts with a little amused half-sardonic smile, and others parts I let get to me, try to go with the flow of pathos and drama. Very enjoyable and it's a good read to get a taste of the Zeitgeist of the period. But of course I consider Faust the superior work. Wrote an essay comparing it to Marlowe's Faustus once, wish I could pick up where I left off with that some time. [img]smile.gif[/img]
Oh, and talking favourite historic/literary periods, there is something about the Victorian/fin de siècle era that just REALLY fascinates me... I can never get enough of reading about it. Wilde, Yeats, Aubrey Beardsley, William Morris, the decadence, the brilliance, the politics, the characters... whoooo! Much preferred to Romanticism [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have a lovely copy of Wilde's Salome with the Aubrey Beardsley engravings, done all in shades of yellow and, yes, mauve.
Do you like Burne-Jones' paintings? I love them. (Sigh) Have never found any of the Kelmscott Press editions of anything at prices that I like. My university (Tulane) had an exhibition where the Chaucer was part of it, and I fell in love with it.
I have to say that Keats and Byron are my favorite poets after Elliot and Wallace Stevens. I still cannot read "And So We'll Go No More A-Roving" without getting goosebumps.
Which part of Faust did you like better, I or II? I am a weirdo, I liked I better, though all the critics say Book II is the superior work.

Nah, actually I liked 'I' as well - critics schmitics [img]tongue.gif[/img] :D
It's faster-paced, wittier.
LOL, I love to read literary criticism but they're just as often completely off the mark (IMHO of course ;) ) as they're spot on. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I admire Beardsley's work so much! I really ADORE his style! How wonderful that you have that copy of Salome, there's some of his best work in there (the Peacock dress!) I've a great edition of Pope's The Rape Of The Lock with illustrations by him - so beautiful!
I'd really recommend the biography by Matthew Sturgis - lots of illustrations and extremely fascinating! I'm also a big fan of Morris, have several big books with plates of his artwork. [img]smile.gif[/img] I'm a bit of a calligrapher myself, so that makes him all the more interesting. I can stare at the intricacies of a Kelmscott printed frontispiece forever :D
Yes, I like Burne-Jones too, incidentally he's a key figure in Beardsley's decision as a young man to continue drawing [img]smile.gif[/img] ... One of my other favourites has got to be John William Waterhouse: La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ophelia, Miranda, The Lady Of Shalott... Here's a great site of his work: http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/

I'm trying to start a small collection of books on this period - apart from the aforementioned Morris and Beardsley books I'm collecting books on the Pre-Raphaelites and original works of the writers from that period. I also love reading about Oscar Wilde, have collected about 6 biographies on him, and his letters. The best biography without a doubt is Richard Ellman's - great read! Also have a big book with the correspondences between Yeats and Maud Gonne, the new biography of Yeats that came out some years ago, and Richard Ellman's biography on him. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Edit: oh, on the topic of exhibitions... I've been to the British Library twice to look at the Lindisfarne Gospels, have you heard of them? I think they're even more beautiful and more accomplished than the better-known Books of Kells.
http://www.durham.anglican.org/refer...sfarne/#Images
http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/lindis.html
I may sound like an idiot but I spent about an hour bent over the glass case it was in, nose pressed to the glass, tears in my eyes.... LOL

[ 06-20-2002, 05:22 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

Yes, I know of the Lindisfarne Gospels. For my money, the so-called "Carpet Page," with its intricate, almost-alive pattern, is superior to even the celebrated "Chi-Rho Page" of the Book of Kells. I wonder how long that it took those long-dead monks to plot out all of those intricacies? Calligraphy is a great wonder to me, though I know little of the subtleties of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. t I do own a Ming-era scholar's inkpot, which is made of something that I thought was jade but turns out not to be. I like to imagine the man who comissioned it laying out his brushes, screen, and paper, just so, and what sort of things he created.

Yes, I prefer the Lindisfarne carpet pages to almost all other calligraphic works of that time, too. Actually being able to see it for real is indescribable! [img]smile.gif[/img]
Since I fell ill and temporarily quit my study, I'm secretly starting to think more and more of making a professional career out of calligraphy (yes, it *is* possible ;) , though supplemented by working as a teacher of English maybe to make ends meet [img]smile.gif[/img] ).

I know that you can make a living doing calligraphy. I've met people who do. Mostly boring things, like writing people's names on diplomas, etc., but also fun things like book illustrations and fancy invitations. A woman I knew that did this got a job working for a greeting card company and is quite well-fixed, now. I suspect that if you went into English teaching, the school's enrollment would double.
I don't know if you would consider Holman Hunt one of the Pre-Raphaelites. I don't. His "Awakening Conscience" always makes me laugh, derisively.

See what happens when I leave for a couple weeks? I actually get a post that people like. Oh well guess these things happen ;) .

Well thanks all for your suggestions although I think this post actually hijacked by the calligraphy lovers of the world! I will definitely take a look at your suggestions and see what I can come up with to broaden my reading experience. You know, theres something about a book that a tv can never match.

In regards to beowulf I thought they had actually narrowed it down to a christian monk due to the way in which it was written and how christian themes pop in and out of the poem by "accident". I could be mistaken of course so I guess I'm going to have to research that a little more. If you have any references you can provide please let me know.

Canis Eire:
Yeah, John Keegan has a way of bringing to life on paper something that most of us hopefully will never experience. Although I have some problems with how he approaches some of his topics, he has a command of the written language that provides neophytes to military history the ability to easily pick up on his themes. I would love to find someone with the same ability to delve into asian military history who is of the same culture so we can see how the thought pattern changes. Its hard for any author to toss out biases that are based on life/cultural experiences.

[ 07-11-2002, 07:04 PM: Message edited by: Miinxx ]