Published April 17, 2007
This thread is for nominations of the YWS Top 100 Classics (the number is subject to change). You may only list books that are 50 years old or older.
Please nominate your favorite books. Since it is unlikely that a book you haven't read can be your favorite, please list ones you have. ^_^
There is a separate thread for books newer than fifty years. Have fun!
And make sure you check out this thread for the list!
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/viewtopic.php?t=15229
Please also be sure to list the full title, author, and if the book is in a series, list it as a series. Thanks!
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140,552 Literary Works • 673,425 Reviews
Tolkien, anything by him. If it has already been said sorry for repeating it.
All Quiet on the Western Front-Erich Maria Remarque
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
That's a great book!
Oh, good books => Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville and The Yellow-Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gibbon. And The Crucible by Arthur Miller if it's decided that plays will be allowed as well.
Plays? I don't think so. We've ruled out fairy tales and epic poems, so I don't think plays would count either. Unless, of course, the play has also been turned into a book, or it is a play adapted from a book.
(I actually had to watch the Grapes of Wrath movie in like eighth grade but I'm trying really hard to forget it so I can read the book properly.)
Oops, I went off-topic! No, really, I'm posting here with a purpose.
Question: May we nominate plays?
"Grapes of Wrath" was pretty good, Cadmium. The ending... well, I suppose you'll see when you get there, but it was rather different.
I'm surprised this isn't already here but....
The unabridged version of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
In my opinion one of the best books...well...ever...
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
^^DUH.
Okay, so I just got into Steinbeck, so I haven't read a lot of his stuff yet, but East of Eden was truly a masterpiece. Once I finish The Red Pony I'll crack open The Grapes of Wrath.
Trident brought up Ayn Rand's Anthem. That's a good one. Most consider Atlas Shrugged to be her masterpiece, but I personally didn't enjoy it; the plot kind of gets suffocated because she's forcing out every last inch of her philosophy. The book of hers that I really liked was We the Living, so I hereby nominate that and The Fountainhead.
Ooh, good idea...I'm certain some of these have been listed already, but seconded nominations could be helpful.
Catch-22- Joseph Heller
The Brothers Karamazov- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
Sherlock Holmes (series)- Sir Arthur Konan Doyle
Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Farenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
Twelfth Night- William Shakespeare
The Canturbury Tales- Geoffrey Chaucer
The Picture of Dorian Grey- Oscar Wilde
Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov
Yeah, I totally understand. Hence the needed moderation and some form of debate required. So we need a combination of both, I suppose.
I completely get where you're coming from. It is the "Young Writers Society" list after all. There's not going to be nearly as many classics as recent books, obviously. (I really doubt anybody here has read "Ulysses". The pure thought of it makes me shudder.)
What we do need is people nominating the books. The more people that do that, the more books that have been read can get on the list.
And Jack, please don't worry about offending me or this concept. I really don't mind the input. I'm glad you said something. Heck, this whole idea came from the fact that many of us were dissatisfied with another book list that was based off of sales and hype. I just really didn't want our list to be that again, if that makes any sense. ^_^
It's not my right to dictate, I don't want to be in control of this. It's just been my ideas. I'd suggest we only used books that have been read.
100 is a big number. If we only say, receive 200 nominations, then we're going to have a 50% acceptance rate, which is quite high. So 100 might be too high but it might be a good idea to wait to see how popular this is.
Yet again, only my ideas
^_^
All right, I really don't have any objections to that. I think I'll put something in the first post about our favorite books are to be nominated.
Should I request that we only list books that we've read? After all, something can really only be our favorite if we've read it.
Do you think we should knock it down from 100?
I don't agree. What you seem to be wanting to do is create a complete book top 100. This has been done before and in a better way by people who have read way more books. Why should we bother? We'll just be copycats of other lists strewn across the net and the media, and it'll serve no real purpose -- why don't we create our own list, the books that matter to the young reader? So what if we haven't read so-called literary classics?
I'd prefer a list born of our own experiences rather than ones we expect to enjoy.
Then we'd have the "YWS Top 100 Favourite Books list" (name change advocate, I am) rather than just trying to work out what the best books in the world are, which other people can probably do better at; or, to use a different spin, nobody can anyway. Let's just do it our way instead.
Well, if none of us has read a book, that doesn't mean it wasn't important in the literary world. Then again, if none of us has read that book, then why should it be on our list? I do see your point. But I still think that a lot of works out there that we haven't read that still deserve to be honored.
I'm not sure if any of us has read War and Peace (Imp? DD? CL? Anyone?), but even it none of us had read it, I still think it should be on the list.
Why nominate something you haven't read??
The Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
*raises hand timidly* The Sea-Wolf and White Fang by Jack London. Some of his best books in my opinion.
True... I guess I'll leave them off for now.
Sorry to be picky (and perhaps a little vengeful
!!) but Beowulf and Paradise Lost are epic poems, aren't they? I didn't think they came under the category.
I'll post some of my own here.
Some that I've read:
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Brave New World - Aduos Huxley
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Native Son - Richard Wright
Candide - Voltaire
Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
Anthem - Ayn Rand
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
A Little Princess
Little Lord Fauntleroy
The Secret Garden - latter three by Frances Hodgeson Burnett.
The Awakening ~Kate Chopin
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
I see your point. I assumed that, though they are technically fairy tales, they were written by one person (ie. usually fairy tales have many different adaptions bu different people) and published as was usual for novels. But oh well. If they don't count, they don't count. XD
If the series was started before the 50-year cut-off, then I'll definitely consider it for the classics list.
These two aren't really books per se, but fairy tales.
The Little House on the Prairie series - Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov, I'm not sure if the last one was written in time for this, but the first few definitely are.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
Homer's Odyssey and Illiad.
I have more:
The Little Mermaid - Hans Christian Anderson
The Snow Queen - Hans Christian Anderson
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
I think there will be a more involved process than just a simple sitewide vote. I haven't completely worked out how it will work, but certainly having a hundred members that have one or two posts voting for a crappy book won't suffice.
Nominations are the first step for now, so I would just go with that.
Again, as I just said in my thread, wont any nominated list be nothing more then a popularity contest and thus inaccurate, in a sense?
Adding some nominations from the last unorganized thread:
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Polish Officer by Alan Furst
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
- The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
- The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Emma by " "
Northanger Abbey by " "
all other books J.A. wrote
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (and all other books, such as the Idiot, by him)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
When I think of more, I shall post!
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte's Web - EB White
Animal Farm - George Orwell
1984 - George Orwell
*slaps head for forgetting*
Tarzan - Edgar Rice Burroughs
Frankenstein - Mary Shelly
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Time Machine - HG Wells
The War of the Worlds - HG Wells
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Jules Verne
The Call of the Wild - Jack London
Oz books (ALL Oz books) by Frank L. Baum
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
Moby Dick, Herman Melville