Great works of literature | Vital Football

Great works of literature

PhilK66

PhilK66

Vital 1st Team Regular
Bear with me here. Got into a heated but friendly discussion with a fellow Gills fan about the ten best literary works ever published. His choices were:

The Bible
Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
War and Peace, Tolstoy
Don Quixote, Cervantes
Jane Eyre, Bronte
Hamlet, Shakespeare
1984, Orwell
Oliver Twist, Dickens
Les Miserables, Hugo
Iliad, Homer

Bollox to that I told him. Oliver Twist isn't even Dicken's best book and Jane Eyre is chicklit. And anyway, how can you compile a list of the ten best published works and not include:

"Never Look Back", Haydn Parry
and
"Home of the Shouting Men", Bradley and Triggs?

I rest my case.
 
Highbrow stuff.

Trashy James Patterson crime novels or comic travelogues for me - Charlie Connelly's "Attention All Shipping" being my favourite.

Couldn't get past 100 pages of either Oliver Twist (should have a Mental Health Warning) or Lord of the Rings (WTF does all this mean?).
 
GillsBluenose said:
Highbrow stuff.

Trashy James Patterson crime novels or comic travelogues for me - Charlie Connelly's "Attention All Shipping" being my favourite.

Couldn't get past 100 pages of either Oliver Twist (should have a Mental Health Warning) or Lord of the Rings (WTF does all this mean?).
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I gave up on Moby Dick. Robinson Crusoe is horrendously racist. Obviously, it wasn't considered so during it's day. Oh, and it was dull
 
I've read "Les Miserables". It's not very good. Hugo was on a "paid per word" type contract so there's endless padding. The stage show is much better than the film, but average at best (and one of my stepdaughters played Madame Thénardier in a production of it).

I've tried to read both "Don Quixote" and "Moby Dick" (I know the latter wasn't mentioned) and given up on both as being uninteresting. I'd rate Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and Bram Stoker's "Dracula" above both of those.

It's an interesting contemplation though.

Edit :- I'd also include "Gulliver's Travels" (Johnathan Swift) as a more than decent read.
 
Was never a fan of 1984 - I thought Welles did a fantastic job of setting a dystopian scene in the first part but the subsequent storyline was naff.

Brave New World a better alternative.

Camus - L’etranger
Primo Levi - periodic table; if this is a man
Milan Kundera - anything
Kafka - the trial, metamorphosis
Jonasson - the hundred year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared
Vialli - the Italian Job (best football book I’ve read though possibly quite dated by now)
 
I'm currently reading "Why we kneel, How we rise" by Michael Holding (yes the former cricketer). Its quite heavy and uncomfortable reading but I think its invaluable for what it covers. For anyone who isn't familiar, he effectively interviews various sports people from Usain Bolt to former England women's Head Coach Hope Powell and talks about their encounters with racism in their lives and how differently they've been treated. Its a very enlightening read, but like I said, does make you squirm somewhat at times (and probably rightfully so).
 
Not pretending these are "great" works of literature but I'm on the third of the 3 (so far) 'Secret Barrister' books. Judging (no pun intended) by the woeful ignorance of our legal system evidenced by large swathes of the public, and, sadly, by some on here in past threads, I'd make it borderline compulsory reading.

The best, imo, is "Fake Law: The truth about justice in an age of lies" which does a demolition job on our politicians (left and right) and our disgraceful media (mostly but not exclusively right wing).

Anyone else read any of them?

Shout out for Ben Goldacre books that debunk Big Pharma and 'alternative medicine' quacks in equal measure. Interesting observations too on the power Placebo.
 
Gills 58 said:
Not pretending these are "great" works of literature but I'm on the third of the 3 (so far) 'Secret Barrister' books. Judging (no pun intended) by the woeful ignorance of our legal system evidenced by large swathes of the public, and, sadly, by some on here in past threads, I'd make it borderline compulsory reading.

The best, imo, is "Fake Law: The truth about justice in an age of lies" which does a demolition job on our politicians (left and right) and our disgraceful media (mostly but not exclusively right wing).

Anyone else read any of them?

Shout out for Ben Goldacre books that debunk Big Pharma and 'alternative medicine' quacks in equal measure. Interesting observations too on the power Placebo.
Click to expand...

Have you read No Ordinary Day by Matt Johnson & John Murray ? It`s a compelling read and a disturbing analysis of a true political scandal.
 
'To Kill A Mockingbird' deserves to be in there as it's by far the best book by a female author.
God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens was the book that had the greatest effect on me.

Sadly 'literary' books are rarely popular books as well. People put them on a shelf but often confess to never reading them.
 
Anything by CS Forester, particularly the Hornblower series. Moby Dick sounds more like an STD, presumably written by Boxcar Willy.
 
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