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What is your favorite work of literature?

Mychemicalkilljoy

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To be honest, I have a passion for literature and poetry. I have this secret stash of all my favorite poems, plus my own that I've written. Out of all the poems, I love The Road not Taken by Robert Frost:


TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This poem appeals to me and many others in so many ways. At least for me, I like this poem because I need to learn how to be who I really am--and not anon behind a screen. This is written so beautifully and I must say, Robert Frost is truly one of my favorites.
 

BadOctopus

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I love reading. Books are my drug of choice.

I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte when I was in junior high, and that was what started my love affair with the classics. I like Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien, and of course Jane Austen. I love the works of Charles Dickens. His wit, wordplay, and use of satire just astound me. No one writes quite like Dickens.

I'm very fond of Shakespeare, but I'd rather watch his plays, rather than read them. Same goes for Oscar Wilde.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is another favorite. And the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. And I've been addicted to the Sherlock Holmes stories since I was fourteen. And how can I not mention To Kill a Mockingbird?

And when I'm down, nothing cheers me up like P.G. Wodehouse. Though Douglas Adams comes close.

I could go on... and on. I haven't even gotten to poetry yet. But I'll let someone else have a turn.
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

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I love reading. Books are my drug of choice.

I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte when I was in junior high, and that was what started my love affair with the classics. I like Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien, and of course Jane Austen. I love the works of Charles Dickens. His wit, wordplay, and use of satire just astound me. No one writes quite like Dickens.

I'm very fond of Shakespeare, but I'd rather watch his plays, rather than read them. Same goes for Oscar Wilde.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is another favorite. And the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. And I've been addicted to the Sherlock Holmes stories since I was fourteen. And how can I not mention To Kill a Mockingbird?

And when I'm down, nothing cheers me up like P.G. Wodehouse. Though Douglas Adams comes close.

I could go on... and on. I haven't even gotten to poetry yet. But I'll let someone else have a turn.

Go on to poetry. Finally, someone is as passionate as I am! I need to read Charles Dickens and Jane Eyre and Símon Bolívar (he wrote books too...I think).
 

BadOctopus

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Go on to poetry. Finally, someone is as passionate as I am! I need to read Charles Dickens and Jane Eyre and Símon Bolívar (he wrote books too...I think).
Okay, you twisted my arm. ;)

My favorite poets are Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Why do all those Romantic and Victorian poets have three names?) I also really like Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe, due partly to the influence of a beloved teacher of mine.

One of my friends recently dared me to read T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, but I've been stalling on that. It's just so... daunting.
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

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Okay, you twisted my arm. ;)

My favorite poets are Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (Why do all those Romantic and Victorian poets have three names?) I also really like Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe, due partly to the influence of a beloved teacher of mine.

IKR! Mine are Robert Frost, Shakespeare, And Maya Angelou so far... I literally have no time to do anything besides the five hours of homework. Since TC has made it so I have to lengthen this post to post it I'm just posting TRNT again:

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

One of my friends recently dared me to read T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, but I've been stalling on that. It's just so... daunting.

Oooooooh read it!!!
 

grey_beard

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I love reading. Books are my drug of choice.

I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte when I was in junior high, and that was what started my love affair with the classics. I like Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, E.M. Forster, J.R.R. Tolkien, and of course Jane Austen. I love the works of Charles Dickens. His wit, wordplay, and use of satire just astound me. No one writes quite like Dickens.

I'm very fond of Shakespeare, but I'd rather watch his plays, rather than read them. Same goes for Oscar Wilde.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is another favorite. And the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester. And I've been addicted to the Sherlock Holmes stories since I was fourteen. And how can I not mention To Kill a Mockingbird?

And when I'm down, nothing cheers me up like P.G. Wodehouse. Though Douglas Adams comes close.

I could go on... and on. I haven't even gotten to poetry yet. But I'll let someone else have a turn.

If you like Dumas, try The Three Musketeers or The Man In The Iron Mask.

Speaking of French authors, with a grateful hat tip to [MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION] - Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. (About 3000 pages total...)

Dickens I have to be in the mood for.

I have only dabbled in Kipling, have not read Hardy or Forster, and can't remember if I've read Austen.

I've read Wuthering Heights, of course; and Shakespeare. Only one of two of Wilde - The Portrait of Dorian Grey.

Wodehouse is the single greatest wordsmith in the history of the English language: not profound, but every word hits its mark.
G.K. Chesterton is good for fantastical fiction; if you like mysteries, try his Father Brown series or The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond. I simply adore Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night should be required reading), and Josephine Tey is similar, but not as learned.

Edgar Allen Poe once enthralled me, but I have since found him too dark.

Two other older authors--no, three.

Tristram Shandy -- Laurence Sterne
Daniel Defoe -- not only Gulliver's Travels, but Moll Flanders and A Journal of The Plague Years

Correction: past my bedtime, Swift wrote Gulliver's travels.
Hat tip to [MENTION=23115]BadOctopus[/MENTION].

Boswell's Life of Johnson: incredible erudition.

Evelyn Waugh is an incredible satirist of the British upper-crust, but not in a farcial way like Wodehouse.

The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone (biographical novel of Michelangelo) had me riveted for hours.

For children's books, try (of course!)
The Chronicles of Narnia -- C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Pyrdain -- Lloyd Alexander
The Wind in The Willows (Hi [MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION]!) -- Kenneth Grahame
The Phantom Tollbooth -- Norton Juster
Artemis Fowl -- Eoin Colfer
 
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BadOctopus

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Oooooooh read it!!!
But but but! I have such a long list of to-read books already. Plus I'm just not sure I even understand Modernist poetry. It's so weird. I feel like I'd need a stack of reference books just to look up all of its allusions to other works.

Have you read it?
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

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But but but! I have such a long list of to-read books already. Plus I'm just not sure I even understand Modernist poetry. It's so weird. I feel like I'd need a stack of reference books just to look up all of its allusions to other works.

Have you read it?
Not yet I have so much to do I have no time I am training for track and I can't read it nowwe
 

BadOctopus

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[MENTION=20856]grey_beard[/MENTION] wanted me to mention James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small. A must read for any animal lover.

And you're welcome, Grey! I'm glad you weren't offended by the correction. Speaking of Swift, have you ever read A Modest Proposal? Talk about some dark comedy.

I read The Three Musketeers, but I didn't like it nearly as much as Monte Cristo. Maybe it was the translation.

Tristram Shandy is on my reading list, as is Dorothy L. Sayers.

Have you any interest in the Hornblower series?
 

grey_beard

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Hi [MENTION=23115]BadOctopus[/MENTION] -- I'm scared of reading any more than the first of the Hornblower series, as I'm afraid your avatar will eat them.
I read A Modest Proposal back in High School.

Not much for poetry -- some of Shakespeare's Sonnets, and have abortively attempted Paradise Lost a couple of times, but always had other things distract me.

My favorite part of The Three Musketeers was the chapter entitled All Cats Are Grey At Night...
 

BadOctopus

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Hi [MENTION=23115]BadOctopus[/MENTION] -- I'm scared of reading any more than the first of the Hornblower series, as I'm afraid your avatar will eat them.
Oh, ha jolly ha. ;)

Seriously, they're really good. Horatio is a fascinating character. He's very complex and realistically flawed. Incidentally, many people type him as an INTJ -- myself included.

I remember shortly after getting hooked on the series, I got a hilariously awkward marriage proposal from a guy in a bookshop, when I asked where they kept the nautical fiction. Apparently that's not something a lot of girls ask.
 

GarrotTheThief

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Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Lord of the Rings


stuff like that...some fantasy novels that I mostly listen to on audible now because I have to read a lot for other things like the Malazan series...
 

Passacaglia

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To be honest, I have a passion for literature and poetry. I have this secret stash of all my favorite poems, plus my own that I've written. Out of all the poems, I love The Road not Taken by Robert Frost:
Frost is a favorite of mine, and I really relate to The Road Not Taken on both a metaphorical and a very literal level. I'm a hiker, and getting lost is half the fun! :D

One of my friends recently dared me to read T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, but I've been stalling on that. It's just so... daunting.
I read The Wasteland during my first college career, and I liked the part where he alludes to a phenomenon in which travelers in extreme environments can hallucinate fellow travelers who aren't there. (Probably has to do with oxygen deprivation.) But the professor of course talked about more than just Elliot's poetry, so I ended up kinda hating the guy and not remembering much of anything else.
 

Passacaglia

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I remember shortly after getting hooked on the series, I got a hilariously awkward marriage proposal from a guy in a bookshop, when I asked where they kept the nautical fiction. Apparently that's not something a lot of girls ask.
I hope you demanded a ring for each of your tentacles. ;)
 

Passacaglia

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stuff like that...some fantasy novels that I mostly listen to on audible now because I have to read a lot for other things like the Malazan series...
Ooh, I recently added Malazan to my reading list. I've mentioned this to you in one of your threads, but I'll say it again here:

I am a huge fantasy/sci-fi reader. The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia, The First Law, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Dune*, A Song of Ice and Fire, Iain M. Banks, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games...I can't get enough!

*When are we going to get a really good Dune movie?

I wonder if genre preference maps at all onto typology...
 

GarrotTheThief

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Ooh, I recently added Malazan to my reading list. I've mentioned this to you in one of your threads, but I'll say it again here:

I am a huge fantasy/sci-fi reader. The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia, The First Law, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Dune*, A Song of Ice and Fire, Iain M. Banks, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games...I can't get enough!

*When are we going to get a really good Dune movie?


You and I are very much a like. I like your avatar by the way. Is it a Roman soldier?

I'm going to get into Gaiman soon, and eventually some other things.

I really do enjoy Malazan, especially in Audible form as the voice acting is excellent and I can listen while working out. Currently I spend more time reading instructional books on writing, math, and business so I don't like to read for pleasure so much as listen if that makes sense.

I wonder if genre preference maps at all onto typology...


You and I are very much a like. I like your avatar by the way. Is it a Roman soldier?

I'm going to get into Gaiman soon, and eventually some other things.

I really do enjoy Malazan, especially in Audible form as the voice acting is excellent and I can listen while working out. Currently I spend more time reading instructional books on writing, math, and business so I don't like to read for pleasure so much as listen if that makes sense.
 

Mychemicalkilljoy

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You and I are very much a like. I like your avatar by the way. Is it a Roman soldier?

I'm going to get into Gaiman soon, and eventually some other things.

I really do enjoy Malazan, especially in Audible form as the voice acting is excellent and I can listen while working out. Currently I spend more time reading instructional books on writing, math, and business so I don't like to read for pleasure so much as listen if that makes sense.

I need to catch up ugh
 

Passacaglia

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You and I are very much a like. I like your avatar by the way. Is it a Roman soldier?
Thanks! But no, he's just a generic ye olde dude being messed with by some sort of magic. Tony DiTerlizzi painted the piece for Magic: the Gathering, I believe.

I think I chose it to remind myself that I know less than I think I do.

And yeah, I totally get the appeal of audio books. Someday I plan to reread, er...listen to all 14 Wheel of Time books, from start to finish!
 

citizen cane

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I wouldn't be able to narrow it down to one, but Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Huxley's Island, and Nesbo's Harry Hole series all are pretty damn good.
 
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