"The Female Quixote" piqued my interest too, but my library doesn't have it. D:

President Camacho wrote:Yikes, I've only read 15 and most came before 1900's. I guess I'm going to live a very long time if I have to read some of that garbage before dying. Faulkner? That dude sucks!

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you serious? I hope you mean the band because William Faulkner is a beast. I mean.... to each their own. :]

Ok, maybe I haven't given him a fair shake but The Sound and the Fury made me Furious and the only sound to be heard was the book as it nestled itself comfortably in the trash. That book was unreadable! It was soooooo hoooooorrrrible.

President Camacho wrote:Ok, maybe I haven't given him a fair shake but The Sound and the Fury made me Furious and the only sound to be heard was the book as it nestled itself comfortably in the trash. That book was unreadable! It was soooooo hoooooorrrrible.

:laugh2:

I love it! You're reading obscure, hypothetical intellectual discourse between two philosophical giants, and you find Faulkner to be unreadable. I find that to be absolutely hilarious! Well done, Camacho, you've given me a good laugh for the day.

That being said, I've been avoiding reading The Sound and the Fury for a very long time now, much to the chagrin of my father and brother, who hold the book as the best work of fiction ever written. From how people have described his writing and my own attempts to read some of his other works (a horrible short story about a bear comes to mind, as well as my pitiful attempt to read As I Lay Dying) suggests to me that his writing/subject matter may not be to my liking. From the way some people talk, I almost feel like he's a man's writer, and that I would feel alienated and unable to understand the characters because I'm not into manliness, nature, or survivalism, and although I love the fact that the title is taken from Shakespeare, I fear I won't enjoy The Sound and the Fury as much as I should. Although, if I can make it through Don Quixote, I can probably make it through Faulkner. Maybe not anytime soon, but I wouldn't rule it out completely. It is on my "to read before I die" list, along with Les Miserables, everything ever written by Vonnegut that I have not already read, The Once and Future King, and Remembrance of Things Past, among others. Yeah. I've got my work cut out for me.

There are just too many books and too little time. Thus my distaste for silly lists that tell me what I "must" read. I'll determine that for myself, thank you, with a little help from my friends and my Amazon.com recommendations.

If you like being utterly confused, having long conversations with retards, or torturing yourself... that book is awesome. If you don't then do yourself a favor and cross it off your list.

President Camacho wrote:If you like being utterly confused, having long conversations with retards, or torturing yourself... that book is awesome. If you don't then do yourself a favor and cross it off your list.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I just find the varying spectrum of your taste (or distaste) amusing. For all I know, I'll hate it, which is one of the reasons I haven't really felt all that compelled to read it. Maybe I'll chalk that one up to "not enough time, too much other stuff" and call it a day. Who knows? I know I certainly wouldn't be able to read the "Dialogue in Hell" -- that's way to heady for me!

Here are the ones that I have read:

14.Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
78.Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
241.Contact – Carl Sagan
258.Neuromancer – William Gibson
301.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
320.Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
375.Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
389.2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
390.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
413.The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
433.The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
444.Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
448.Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
451.Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
456.To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
484.On the Road – Jack Kerouac
494.The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
508.Lord of the Flies – William Golding
511.The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
520.Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
527.Foundation – Isaac Asimov
539.I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
547.Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
564.Animal Farm – George Orwell
586.Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
599.The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
608.Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
610.The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
649.Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
652.The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
655.The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
660.The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
667.All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
707.We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
747.Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
767.The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
780.Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781.The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
804.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
829.The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
867.Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
889.Walden – Henry David Thoreau
897.The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne

I see no reason why anyone (even when keeping in mind it's meant in a good-natured jocular maner) must read 3 Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett books. I've read three of each, and have enjoyed them, but once you've read one you can consider yourself done. A lesser known work by Hammett, however, that is mentioned on the list, The Glass Key, is certainly worth a look at being that one chosen one. There are too many author infatuations on the list. I guess that's what inevitably happens when you set about to create such a huge list.

EDIT: And the pick for one of the two Isaac Asimov selections, I, Robot, is a curious choice.

President Camacho wrote:Yikes, I've only read 15 and most came before 1900's. I guess I'm going to live a very long time if I have to read some of that garbage before dying. Faulkner? That dude sucks!

Oh, no, no, no Mr. P.C., that can't be right. Did you try starting with Light in August, where he plays it straight, narratively, and then trying one of the more experimental books?

President Camacho wrote:If you like being utterly confused, having long conversations with retards, or torturing yourself... that book is awesome. If you don't then do yourself a favor and cross it off your list.

I'm confused.... and not by "The Sound and the Fury," but instead as to what you thought was too confusing about it. I thought the stream of consciousness (especially with the "retard" you so kindly mention) was interesting. I like changing things up a bit. But I see this wasn't your type of book due to your subtle hints. :]

Maybe one day I'll try Light in August. I seem to develop a prejudice against an author if I read one of their books that is highly acclaimed and turns out to be not to my liking. That's why I originally stuck with non-fiction books. Fiction books, although they can teach valuable lessons and help a person gain insight into themselves and others, are supposed to be entertainment. If a fiction book does not keep my attention it is a failure!

I'll probably never read another Herman Melville book. I'm going to see how Les Miserables is and if it's anything like Toilers of the Sea I'm probably never going to read Hugo again.

I understand the position I'm putting myself in. The Old Man and the Sea is my favorite book but after reading A Farewell to Arms... I'm disinclined to pick up another Hemingway book. Now if I had read A Farewell to Arms before I read The Old Man and the Sea... I may have not discovered my favorite book.