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How many of these "great American novels" have you read?
tfk_fanboy
Posts: 2,821 ✭✭✭✭✭ Graduate
in Off Topic
The Last of the Mohicans
The Scarlet Letter
Moby D!ck
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Great Gatsby
Absalom, Absalom!
The Grapes of Wrath
The Catcher in the Rye
Invisible Man
To Kill a Mockingbird
Gravity's Rainbow
Blood Meridian
Beloved
How many of these "great American novels" have you read? 80 votes
All 14
0%
13
0%
12
2%
2 votes
11
1%
1 vote
10
5%
4 votes
9
8%
7 votes
8
11%
9 votes
7
10%
8 votes
6
20%
16 votes
5 or less
41%
33 votes
Comments
I was surprised at some I thought would be on the list that were not and also how many I have not read. Four I own but have not read yet though I have increased my reading/audiobook listening a lot this year so I will get to them
Glad (but surprised) to see Blood Meridian on there. Great book. Great author.
I think Freedom by Jonathan Franzen should be added to this list as someone who has read only three of the above, clearly I know what I’m talking about.
Blood Meridian is a favorite. My number was 5, would be 10 if you included cliff notes.
Read 10 of them, all in high school and college, the 4 I haven't read, I've never heard of. I don't think I've read a novel since college, it's all biographies now and not a lot of them. I tend to read articles that take less than 20 minutes.
And I read a lot.
Gravity's Rainbow, LOL! when it was first published, i read the first 50 or so pages and thought to myself ****??? so I went back and started over from the beginning, only to have the same reaction some fifty pages or so into it. Believe it or not, I went back a third time and got to the ~50 page mark again, said well, I still don't get what I'm reading, but i'll just keep on. I read it all the way through that third attempt. Over the years, I've read it all the way through three times. obviously, a very rewarding novel, IMO. the disgusting English Candy drill and the Rocket limericks are priceless. oh, did I mention there's a dominatrix and a fantastic orgy scene in there as well?
@tfk_fanboy I actually consider myself to be quite a bit of a bookworm too. I'll get right on to the ones that I haven't gotten to as of yet. There are just so many others that didn't even make your list? Volumes, and volumes have been written as to which ones belong on the list of the greats, and which ones do not. PS - I absolutely love to read.
I should have lead with it is not my list in that I did not create it. I am listening to The Great Gatsby today, have not read since HS, and while it was playing I looked it up on Wikipedia, clicked link about great American novels, and I pulled it from there. I was surprised there was no Hemingway, for example.
And a lot of the books on the post you linked would not qualify as the great American novel :-)
I am going through Ulysses right now too. One chapter a day, as then I go here and read supplemental info for a better understanding:
http://www.ulyssesguide.com/
Six, but the last three I don't know at all. I've read at least chunks of the rest, but labored details bog me down. John Steinbeck is one of my all time favorites.
Not sure how you have a list of American classics that long without Hemingway. But I enjoyed the exercise.
I R Dumb
I've read 12 on that list. I recommend everyone read the classics, including Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Homer etc. Once I finish the three books I'm currently reading I'm going to set out on a multi-year project to re-read the classics and pickup the one's I missed.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Birkshire Hathaway annual reports
Absalom, Absalom! is the toughest book I've ever read, but also the most brilliant. Faulkner was in another league.