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I think that Gandalf was able to change his personality-he thinks about how he had less worries when he came to convince Bilbo to go on the Quest of Erebor, and of course, when he came to Middle-Earth he was like a blank sheet, he had to re-learn the ways of the world, what Men, Elves and...

Personally, I think that 'The Master and Margarita' just about edges out '100 Years of Solitude as my favourite 'magic realism' novel. 'The Master and Margarita' is an utterly brilliant, page-turning, funny and moving book-it is brilliance epitomised. '100 Years of Solitude' is great too-though...

On the whole 'ripping of the Nordic saga' issue-Tolkien did borrow some of the names from 'The Hobbit' (esp. the Dwarves) from the Edda's and some have also pointed out that there are similarities between his ring saga and Wagner's Ring of Nibelung, to which Tolkien glibly replied "both rings...

Joseph Conrad, Jane Austen and D.H Lawrence. Austen is just plain dry, in my opinion. And SillyWabbit-how can you hate Tolkien! :eek: ;)

Who here likes magic realism? If so, which novels do you like best? Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnights Children' and 'The Satanic Verses'? Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita'? Günter Grass's 'The Tin Drum'? Gabriel García Márquez's '100 Years of Solitude' and 'Love In The Time Of Cholera'? It...

I, Claudius:Robert Graves War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy Les Miserbales: Victor Hugo (Despite the fact that Hugo is annoyingly verbose.) A Tale of Two Cities: Charles Dickens Ivanhoe: Sir Walter Scott

I generally like the poets from the romantic period. John Keats is my favourite, though Byron is good too, as well as European romantics, such as the great Goethe and of course Pushkin. Those two are probably two of the most influential poets ever. Walt Whitman is also brilliant, as is Edgar...

Not really no. Complicated messages do not have to be conveyed in a complicated form. Just because the message is complicated does not mean you have to articulate it in a complicated manner. Just because a message is complicated does not mean people will not understand it. Making a message...

Yes. Over the last six years, I have been bombarded with a plethora of African-American novels. In fact that is all we have studied. As well as Shakespeare. Oh and 'Of Mice and Men' too, and I think we did 'Dracula' wayyyyy back. I see nothing wrong with including easy to read books in...

I have not read Beloved, but I have read The Song of Solomon which was very simple to read. I can only make judgements based on my ignorance-though perhaps here I made a mistake. I mentioned Marquez because he had several interesting and complicated points to make, but in my opinion he...

To reiterate, James Joyce writes the way James Joyce writes. To ask whether that "serves a purpose" is a spurious question, and you imply that he has a choice to write differently, like Dan Brown for instance. I disagree. As somebody points out in this topic James Joyce does not always...

1984 George Orwell The Trial; The Castle Franz Kafka The Lord of The Flies William Golding Tale of Mystery and The Imagination Edgar Allan Poe

I just like posting the same topic at different forums-you get a lot of opinions.

A strange analogy, but analogies are naturally strange. Heck, Socrates was able to defeat his opponents in debates using every-day analogies and paradigms. Using such an analogy though, would render everything superfluous-are tigers superfluous, are sharks superfluous? I am talking about...

The list is naturally English-centred since it is based on a poll by English readers. Americans are more likely to include Rand, Chopin and others since they are American authors. Though that being said, some authors such as Edgar Allan Poe were more popular in other countries then their own...

Arthur Schopenhauer is the biggest, most famous and erudite manic depressant I know of :)

Do difficult to read authors serve a purpose or are they superfluous and not needed and do they simply pander to the demands of the intelligentsia? Shouldn't literature be able to be accessible to everyone rather then a select few? Authors such as James Joyce and Thomas Mann are notoriously...

I know these lists are a tad old (ish), but it would be nice to see how many listed books people on this forum have read, and how they compare to my tallies. This list was complied by the readers and writers of the Observer newspaper, and it is listed in order of publication. This one is kind...