The previous threads:
http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13869&highlight=rushmore
http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13972
http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14052

To quote the "rules":

Your argument must include exactly four contenders - no lists of ten, or streams of consciousness allowed. Once you have cast your support for a list of four, you are licensed to debate the merits of your choices against others... but only in terms of "what should make the final list of four?"

The topic for today: what four books are most deserving of a place on a "Mount Rushmore" of literature?

Cantebury Tales
War and Peace
Crime and Punishment
To Kill a Mockingbird

Not that I've read more than 1 1/2 of these :)

I'm excluding the Bible because it isn't really literature.

1984
Germinal (from Emile Zola)
The War of the Worlds
La Peste (Albert Camus)

Um...

The old man and the sea (Hemingway)
Oliver Twist (Dickens)
Ulysses (Joyce)
The Silmarillion (Tolkien)

I guess these are my 4. I may need to revise this in a few hours.

The Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
1984 - Orwell
Cat's Cradle - Vonnegut
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess

EDIT: Thank you Primelord. In with my 2nd favorite book ever (A Clockwork Orange), out with Camus

The Stranger - Camus

I read "The Catcher in the Rye" and really forced myself to finish it. Never really got into it.

1984 : excellent choice indeed !
The Stranger : Good choice too !

The Caine Mutiny - Wouk
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
A Clockwork Orange - Burgess
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald

The Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Rings
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

The Great Gatsby
Stranger in a Strange Land
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Originally posted by Alf
I read "The Catcher in the Rye" and really forced myself to finish it. Never really got into it.

I've heard that a lot. I think it's the best book I've ever read, and just today finished reading it for about the 7th or 8th time on my train ride into work.

Maybe it's a matter of identifying or not identifying with Holden Caufield.

Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It would probably change if you asked me again a couple of hours from now, though. Part of the problem (and the fun, too) of these other Mount Rushmore lists is that there are typically thousands of potentially worth candidates to choose from, whereas for the real Mount Rushmore, there were only a little a half dozen plausible choices at most.

Atlas Shrugged
Brave New World
Catch-22
Slaughterhouse Five

Paper Lion
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Wizard of Oz
HP: Book 3

Originally posted by cuervo72
I'm excluding the Bible because it isn't really literature.
I'd beg to differ on that, cuervo. That's the one (the only one, at the moment) I can think of that would be a drop-dead lock.

Can you explain your reasoning on why it "isn't really literature?"

Moby Dick(got to have some Dickens on there)
Cantebury Tales
Animal Farm(I think it has had more impact and more to say than 1984)
To Kill a Mocking Bird

Originally posted by GrantDawg
The Hobbit
The Fellowship of the Rings
The Two Towers
The Return of the King


Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3
Harry Potter 4

Dang! What to do with #5??


Just Kidding... GD, are you crazy!

:)

Originally posted by WSUCougar
I'd beg to differ on that, cuervo. That's the one (the only one, at the moment) I can think of that would be a drop-dead lock.

Can you explain your reasoning on why it "isn't really literature?"

Well if we are really going to do religious and philisophical texts

Old Testament
New Testament
Quran
The Prince

Originally posted by Tigercat
Moby Dick(got to have some Dickens on there)
Too bad you put Melville! :D

Originally posted by KWhit
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3
Harry Potter 4

Dang! What to do with #5??


Just Kidding... GD, are you crazy!

:)

Nope. Just put the four books have read every year for the past 20 years.

The Odyssey - Homer
1984 - Orwell
Catch-22 - Heller
... the last one is extremely tough
Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)

The fourth one had a profound impact on me when I first read it in high school and is still one of my favorite books. Others I was pondering there... Romeo & Juliet, Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Grapes of Wrath, The Prince... but I went with one more personal to me I suppose.

Originally posted by WSUCougar
I'd beg to differ on that, cuervo. That's the one (the only one, at the moment) I can think of that would be a drop-dead lock.

Can you explain your reasoning on why it "isn't really literature?"

Well, I guess it could be considered literature...but I was thinking more in terms of an original creation by a single author, rather than an anthology.

A definition I found:
The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge

Hmm, I suppose the bible would fit under that definition.

Originally posted by Tigercat
Moby Dick(got to have some Dickens on there)

Umm.....Tigercat?


BTW - primelord, thanks for reminding me that I still need to finish The Caine Mutiny. I think I stopped reading it midway about a year ago. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by KWhit
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter 2
Harry Potter 3
Harry Potter 4

Dang! What to do with #5??


I had a co-worker convince me not long ago that I needed to read the books since I enjoyed the first two movies. Well, I went through those books in no time and now I have to wait nearly a year for #6 to come out. I'm afraid that I'm going to be one of those stupid people lining up waiting for the midnight release... :(


And for my own personal list...

The Dead Zone
The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass
Catcher in the Rye
Friday Night Lights

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

I'm sure my list will change soon...

This is an impossible task - how do I limit it to just four? Aaargh!

Animal Farm
East of Eden
The Brothers Karamozov
The Three Musketeers

Ask me in 5 miniutes and you might get a completely different list.

Ulysses
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Bible
Canterbury Tales

Originally posted by cuervo72
BTW - primelord, thanks for reminding me that I still need to finish The Caine Mutiny. I think I stopped reading it midway about a year ago. :rolleyes:

Just don't eat all of the strawberries and you should be ok.

I am not certain if The Caine Mutiny should be on the "Mount Rushmore" of books, but it is certainly a classic and I loved that book so I put it there. :)

I also thought about putting The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men on the list. I really like Steinbeck.

I noticed two people listed The Canterbury Tales and neither one spelled it right. ;) I couldn't get through that book. The rhyming annoymed me to the point that it was all I could concentrate on.

"Through the Looking Glass" Lewis Carroll
"Fight Club" Chuck Palahniuk
"Me Talk Pretty One Day" David Sedaris
"High Fidelity" Nick Hornby

Among English speakers....

The Bible
Of Mice and Men
Hamlet (okay, I know it's not really a book, but since Mt. Rushmore is in South Dakota, nobody is really going to see it and argue anyways)
Lord of the Flies

Dracula - Bram Stoker
Shogun - James Clavell
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Hobbit - Tolken


Doing this list makes me realize how many novels I have not read. :) (When the question was posed about book and literature, I basically thought it meant novels, so...)

And yes, I am limiting my list to books I have actually read. :)

Mount Rushmore of literature:

Playboy
Penthouse
Hustler
High Society

Originally posted by WSUCougar
Too bad you put Melville! :D

D'oh! Either I am a COMPLETE idiot or I merely meant to put Melville there instead. Rather than confirm or deny that I am an idiot, I will let the judges decide instead.

Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Hitchhiker's Guide - Adams
Ender's Game - Card
Animal Farm - Orwell

A Prayer for Owen Meaney-John Irving
Atlas Shrugged-Ayn Rand
Catcher in the Rye-J.D. Salinger
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-Ken Kesey

The Odyssey - Homer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
The Canterburry Tales - Chaucer
Where the Wild Things Are - Sendak

Originally posted by Vince
Where the Wild Things Are - Sendak

:) You, sir, have excellent taste.

Elmer Gantry - Sinclair Lewis
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon

1 Catcher in the Rye is a favorite for sure
2 Of Mice and Men is amazing and makes up for the fact that Steinbeck is famous even though he mostly wrote horribly boring drivel.
3 Animal Farm
4 Shakespeare, his collected works.

Dola, <----edited in Doh!

Originally posted by Vince

Where the Wild Things Are - Sendak

My only childhood memory of this book was that is scared the Hell out of me.

I can't wait to give it to my daughter.

What language? Worldwide?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Chinese Mythology beyond compare. Has shaped a culture and civilization.

The Iliad - I'd rather have the Trojan war than Odysseus drifting about trying to get home.

The Once and Future King - Best version of the Arthurian legend ever.

Beowulf - Classic tale of a forgotten time.


Note that only one of these was written in English. And you could easily substitute the French tale which is also among the most classic Arthurian tales.



-Anxiety

Dola -

I'd have Dante's Divine Comedy as number 5, by the way.


-Anxiety

My wifes list...She works in a bookstore.

Blindness......Jose Saramago(nobel prize winner)

The Stand....Steven King

Will there really be a morning?...Francias Farmer

Boyslife....Robert Mccammon

My list

Fahreneit 451.....Ray Bradbury

Pandoras box....John Nance

Painted house.....John Grisham

Clear and present danger....Tom Clancy

I read crap :(

Originally posted by SplitPersonality1
:) You, sir, have excellent taste.

Thank you, my friend. At the pizza place where I work, one entire wall is painted with a mural of Max and the wild things swinging through the trees. A fantastic means of remembering my childhood.

bbro : you do not have crap taste. Fahreneit 451 could have been in my top 4 but I had to pu some French litterature of course ;)

JEEZ people, this is Mount Rushmore, not a magazine stand! :p

War and Peace
Les Miserables
Don Quixote
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Anthem - Ayn Rand

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

Black Elk Speaks - John G. Neihardt & Nicholas Black Elk

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien

Ok - if you have a topic for the next Mount Rushmore thread, feel free to start anew.

enders game
the hobbit
it
test of the twins(i am not sure of the title but its a dragonlance book where raistlin has to choose between his beloved brother caramon and true power)

Originally posted by Glengoyne
My only childhood memory of this book was that is scared the Hell out of me.

I can't wait to give it to my daughter.

That was the first book that I gave my niece. She loves it almost as much as I loved it when I was little... :)

Originally posted by JeeberD
That was the first book that I gave my niece. She loves it almost as much as I loved it when I was little... :)

Last book you ever read too eh ? :D

Nah, I also read Goodnight Moon. That one rocked... :D