[handrous]

People take issue with them, but picking something off Adler's or Harvard's (five-foot-shelf) or Bloom's Great Books lists will almost never lead you wrong.

But, here we go anyway (and yeah, some of these are just off those lists):

1) Shakespeare's big four tragedies are, in fact, out-fucking-standing. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth. IMO Hamlet reads the best of those. Any would be fine to watch, as well, and may be better that way. The language, especially, is easier to understand when performed, because you have body language, tone, and other context to work with.

2) Gilgamesh. I like Mitchell's edition.

3) The Odyssey. Iliad's a bit of a bore, but with a few incredible scenes that really stick with you. The Odyssey, though, is great. Screw the haters, even the "Telemachy" portion is good.

4) Revolutionary Road by Yates, for a certain kind of struggle with identity & purpose that I suspect will resonate and provide a useful mirror for lots of folks on here.

5) Woolf's To the Lighthouse is probably my favorite book, so I'll throw that on here.

6) The 20th century gave us tons of essayists (some of whom also wrote novels and such) who are great reads. Orwell, C.S. Lewis, and Forster all come to mind.

7) Maugham wrote a lot of novels, and most of them are well worth a read.

8) Farmer's Riverworld series are probably my favorite very dumb books.

[CalChris]

Yes, The Odyssey is great (even if Telemachus is an entitled twit). The Iliad is great if very straightforward. The Aeneid is great, well the first half is, but like Romeo and Juliet after Mercutio dies, The Aeneid flags after Dido does the thing that she does.

[asmos7]

I've never read Shakespeare but so I'm curious to hear what you think makes it outstanding? I've tried reading a bit before but I was weighed down by words and phrases that we no longer use and found myself losing the meaning.

[veganjay]

> I was weighed down by words and phrases that we no longer use and found myself losing the meaning.

I have the same problem. I found a used physical copy of "No Fear Shakespeare - Macbeth" to be very helpful. On the left page is the original text, on the right page is are notes and a translation. I was able to get through the book and understand it.

You can access online here: https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/

> what you think makes it outstanding?

I'm not the original commenter, so speaking for myself only. I would say the prose is very poetic and has a certain magical quality to it.

[handrous]

The language takes some getting used to. Watching a performance is easier than reading it, since (again) you have the context of the actor's physical performance, delivery, the setting of the scene, et c., to inform your understanding. Another thing is that often his plays rely on some historical understanding for full effect. For example, most people reading the beginning of Hamlet might not fully grasp what's going on, while someone with a good understanding of feudal politics (or anyone who's played much Crusader Kings) will be going "oh shit, this is really bad". This is where something like Asimov's guide to Shakespeare, or any number of free online lectures about the plays, can be helpful.

As for what's great:

1) Masterful plotting, leaving just enough up to the audience to figure out (and, more often than not, leveraging that for ironic purposes).

2) Outstanding characterization.

3) A hard-to-pin-down quality that makes relating episodes, characters, and exchanges in his plays to real life the most natural thing in the world. There's a reason we've ended up with so many of his characters and phrases as parts of the English language itself.

[carabiner]

For non-Americans, this is basically the US high school required reading list.

[handrous]

I think we read abridgments of certain episodes from The Odyssey a couple different years, but never the whole thing. AFAIK Shakesepeare's Big Four are rarely all covered in high school. Maybe one of them will be. Romeo and Juliet is much more popular, for whatever reason—I think it's considered easier, and maybe curriculum designers think kids will relate better to a story of young love. IIRC the only one of the Big Four we read in my high school was Macbeth, and I took all the extra English classes possible, starting in 7th grade.

I don't think Gilgamesh was covered at all. Yates, Maugham, Farmer, or Forster are certainly not commonly assigned in US high schools. Woolf, maybe, and if so, yeah, it'll probably be To the Lighthouse. Orwell, yes, but mainly for Animal Farm and maybe 1984, not his essays. I guess there might be some schools that assign C.S. Lewis, but I doubt it's common.