I'm doing 33 things
There may be a better list out there somewhere but this seemed like a good enough place to start on my literary quest for knowledge. I red parts of a few of the books when I was younger but I am starting over. The Books are as follows:
1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Even if you’re allergic to allegory, Moby Dick is a great adventure story and a compelling description of one man’s obsession.
2. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
The quixotic adventures of the brave knight Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, his humble squire. Its rich characterizations and ironic tone have earned it the designation as the first modern novel.
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Beneath Austen’s acerbic wit and keen character-studies is one of the best romance stories ever written.
4. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
The bawdy tale of Tom Jones, who starts life as an abandoned infant and charms his way through life towards his ultimate fortune and happiness.
5. The Odyssey by Homer
Part ancient history, part fantasy, and nobody’s quite sure exactly where the border between the two lies. The Odyssey is a great adventure story and a broadening experience. It reminds one that human nature never changes but human culture does. While Odysseus is the prototypical hero of our modern age, brave and crafty, ancient Greece as depicted here was a very violent, very foreign and very politically incorrect world.
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
A book that all ages can enjoy, with adventure, social commentary and humor. Twain said, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Huckleberry Finn is the exception to Twain’s own rule.
7. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
With the French Revolution as the backdrop, this is the life story of Jean Valjean, who steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving children and becomes a criminal pursued by detective Javert.
8. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace, set during the Napoleonic wars in Russia, is an epic and passionate human story within the bounds of Tolstoy’s deterministic view of history.
9. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens’s nostalgic and semi-autobiographical novel of childhood and young adulthood in nineteenth-century England, David Copperfield is at times wistful, scathing and hilarious.
10. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Raskolnikov, a poverty-stricken student and self-described genius, theorizes that compassionate ends excuse evil means. This leads to his murder of a St. Petersburg pawnbroker. He is overcome with guilt, and it is Dostoyevsky’s narrative of his tortured psyche that make Crime and Punishment such an exceptional psychological thriller.
