# Masterpieces?



## FinnMacCool (Apr 13, 2006)

I love reading masterpieces. While its true that masterpieces are only masterpieces because of a persons opinion, please share some books that you consider near and flawless fiction.

1984 and Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell are masterpieces to me as well as The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell.


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## Dephere (Apr 13, 2006)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I loved this book and urge you all to go out and get it!!!


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## Rayner (Apr 13, 2006)

I saw you read 1984, so I'll give you the obligatory recomondation on Animal Farm. Now these are just my opinion, but Voltair's Candide is an hilarious satire, Bless Me Ultima is moving and intresting book full of symbolisim and mystery, not to mention emotional (especially the end :cry:.) , and Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was awsome.


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## blank_page (Apr 20, 2006)

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien really spoke to me. I'd recommend it.


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## Pawn (Apr 20, 2006)

Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.

Count Lev Tolstoy's 'Anna Karrenina'.

Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'.

Whilst it's a play, I'd also consider Harold Pinter's 'The Homecoming' a masterpiece of literature.


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## wowzer77 (Apr 28, 2006)

Anything by Richard Adams.  He has a way of making all his books seem like incredible epics of flawless literature.  Watership Down, Shardik, The Plague Dogs..just to name a few.


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## hirshmon (Apr 29, 2006)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller are the two greatest books on the face of the Earth.
And the two books that you absolutely have to read, because of their moral and thematic value are The Scarlet Letter (even though it's boring and tedious) and The Great Gatsby.


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## Froggy (Apr 29, 2006)

> The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell.


I love those books.   But then, things that students read in school are often masterpieces (though most of them really don't care at the time.)  Like "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "the Catcher in the Rye" by J. D. Salinger.

I suppose Romeo & Juliet could be considered a classic.  But I hated it. 

--Froggy


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## Miscreant (May 8, 2006)

War and Peace


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## eMb (May 22, 2006)

Dante's Inferno


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## perseph1ne (May 22, 2006)

I've read several short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that were very good. Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf made me actually like the story. People have mentioned Catcher in the Rye, To kill a Mockingbird, and Catch-22 all of which I like quite a bit. The Sun also Rises was the only Hemingway novel I could stand. Pride and Prejudice is still a favorite of mine. And there's an excellent book that I always recommend, but people seldom read because it falls under sci-fi though it has so many things to say on many subjects. It's called Ender's Game and it's by Orson Scott Card.

perseph1ne
"There is no substitute for good manners -- except fast reflexs"


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## lingeringsilence (May 28, 2006)

I absolutely loved Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, I strongly encourage you to go out and get it.


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## K-P (May 28, 2006)

I kinda thought _The War of the Lance_ was a masterpiece.


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## Bob Loblaw (May 28, 2006)

I would consider _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ by Douglas Adams is a masterpiece in modern satire and comedy. I also thought Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison was a masterpiece (she's a great story teller). I would also call _Don Quixote_ by Cervantes a masterpiece too (many do), but honestly I've only read about half of it (it's a very thick book).


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## journyman161 (May 28, 2006)

I've no idea why Science Fiction hardly ever gets rated, but I would vote for Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers and Ringworld Throne as masterpieces. Awesome science, great storytelling, rivetting plotlines & fully-felshed characters - as well as creating an entire world with awe-inspiring dimensions. (surface area of several billion Earths, thousand mile high mountains & an arch that curls up to meet the sun)

Larry Niven regularly creates such places (The Integral Trees) (Legacy of Heorot) & Ringworld inspired Masters' Theses & a debate across the world among physicists who worked out things like the structural properties of scrith.

When fiction is this good, I don't think the genre matters and in scope and execution Ringworld beggars 2001: A Space Oddysey.


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## journyman161 (May 29, 2006)

Oh and before I forget... Another SciFi classic from Larry Niven in collaboration with Jerry Pournelle - A masterpiece of first contact with the realest aliens - The Mote in God's Eye followed by the Moat Around Murcheson's Eye - never read a better story of a civilisation that is totally non-human, or a sadder fate for a race or of a more consistent non-Earth world.

Another classic that would come close to being a masterpiece would the The Crucible of Time by John Brunner - a stunning story about aliens and not involving humans


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