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Please list works you think should be included in a "must see during your lifetime" project. Spam associated with the works is allowed (Perhaps it's not defined as spam them, hm...)

A start from me:

Literature:
The bible, the koran and the rigveda.
Homer: The Illiad & The Odyssey
Aeschylus: Agamemnon
Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
Euripides: Media
Virgil: The Aenied
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Arabian Nights (NOT the European version, find a translation of an Arabic version)
Dante: Divina commedia
Chaucer: Canterbury tales
Sidney: The countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
Marlowe: Tamburlaine
Shakespeare: King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, The tempest, Richard III
Milton: Paradise lost
Goethe: Faust
Keats: Ode to a Grecian urn
Shelley: Ode to the western wind
Bronte: Wuthering heights
Wilde: Salome
Zola: Nana
Dostoyevsky: Notes from the underground
Gorky: The trilogy about his life. (The English titles should translate to something like "My childhood", "My universities" and "Out in the world")
Solochov: Quiet Don
Baudelaire: Les fleurs du mal (Should translate to "The evil flowers")
Eliot: The waste land
Joyce: Ulysses (If you can't stand it, try Portrait of the artist as a young man.)
Borges: The library of Babel
Mishima: The sea of fertility tetralogy (Spring snow, Runaway horses, The temple of dawn, The decay of the angel)
Eco: Faucault's pendulum

Architecture:
The great pyramids & the valley of kings
The Chinese wall
The city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan
Parthenon at Acropolis in Athens (most of the statues are at British Museum though, called "the Elgin marbles)
Colosseum & Sixtine chapel in Rome
The temple mosque in Jerusalem
The city of Petra in Jordania
Th castle/mosque in Alhambra in Spain
Taj Mahal
The Mediveal castles in Central Europe and UK
The Mediveal towns in Morocco and Syria
Notre Dame & Chatelet les Halles in Paris
The Kremlin & Vassilev cathedral in Moscow
The Winter palace in St Petersburg
La sagra familia in Barcelona
The Macintosh house in Scotland
The city of Prague, in Czech Republic
The city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sydney Opera house

More suggestions? Rejections? Please also post paintings, sculptures, music, film and other works of art.

nice thread CE!

umm..literature-wise you're pretty good...but I have to say, for architecture, the sistine chapel is not that impressive...(although I've never seen it in real life, I know what it looks like) and if we're going to have a fresco section as well then The School of Athens and The Last Supper need to go in too

and you forgot Saint Peters! The basilica is a must see, and add the Palazzo Senatorio to the Rome section as well...ummm... that's all I can think of now, but I'll post later on

Barabodor - Indonesia, it is a buddhist shrine or temple.
It is amazing.
Damascus as a city is beautiful with all the old stuff mixed in with the new.
There is Mohenjadaro in Pakistan:

http://www.harappa.com/har/moen0.html

Just some pictures of the place and other stuff.

The Sitting Buddha in Bangkok or Cambodia, don't remember which one.
All for now.

Literature
Moby **** - It is not about whales!
e e cummings - any
Cerabus the Aardvark
The Art of War - a cliche, but worth a read

Places/Architecture
Stonehenge
Newgrange
Maiden Castle
The Uffington White Horse
Skara Brae
Any number of crudader castles in Turkey and the Mid East
Empire State Building
A genuine Japanise Meditation garden (Kyoto)
The palace of Catherine the Great (Moscow?)
The city of Venice (before it sinks)
Inca/Aztec ruins
Ancor Whatt (spelling?)

Barabodor - Indonesia, it is a buddhist shrine or temple.

i been there 6 yrs ago.
tried reaching for the statue's ring finger but didn't manage.
the whole temple was magnificent.

at that time we were told that the steps leading up towards the highest pagonda were sliding oredi.
so we could oni take pictures 1 level below the pagonda.

but it was still a worth it trip.

Literature:

Plato & Aristotle - the Republic, Dialogues, Ethics (boring stuff, but important nonetheless)

Beowulf (though be sure to get a good translation)

Spenser - Faerie Queen - to get acquainted with the original Forgotten Realms setting

Gibbon - Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire - forget the history, just read it for his writing style.

Dostoyevsky - Crime & Punishment, Brothers Karamazov.

Tolstoy - War & Peace - well worth the effort

Grey - Elegy written in a Country Churchyard - resonates with something inside each of us.

Wordsworth & Coleridge - The Lyrical Ballads

Tolkien - Lord of the Rings (lest we forget!)

Plato & Aristotle - the Republic, Dialogues, Ethics (boring stuff, but important nonetheless)

I wouldn't call Plato boring...but I sure as hell wouldn't call his books 'literature' either...

Gibbon - Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire - forget the history, just read it for his writing style.

likewise.

I feel i have to ask a small question to the board. Is a Book/Movie/Whatever reqiured reading if it is popular enough, or must it also have other qualities? The starwars triology is a good example, noone can seriously argue that it is great movies, still it is extremly popular. Should one be obliged to see them then?

one should not be obliged to do anything at all relating to art or literature, but if one is going to read books and see films, I'm pretty sure that seeing and reading good ones will be better than seeing or reading popular ones. Well who's to say something isn't good, if it's popular, you say?

the literature-fan (for want of a better term*) is more expert than the movie fan. This is just a coincedence: People who like literature like it a great deal and are more inclined to spend effort and time and money on it, so they know what is good and what is bad. So people either like good literature or don't like literature at all.
The same is not true for movies; by another coincedence, the type of person who likes movies is almost everyone, and whether one likes movies or not is not related at all (even coincedentally) to how expert one is. So everyone likes movies, some good. some bad, while bad literature unfortuately doesn't get liked by anyone...

*excuse cliches

Great suggestions, everyone

@Frogus: I included the Sistine (is it without the "x" in English?) Chapel mostly because of the art rather than the architecture, I should have put it under art instead since it's really Michelangelo's and Raphael's paintings I think is a must see. I've been to Rome, but at the time I was a rebellious teenager and refused to do anything touristy, so I haven't seen it (very stupid of me, but I'll go back to Rome sooner or later.)

posted by EMINEM
Plato & Aristotle - the Republic, Dialogues, Ethics (boring stuff, but important nonetheless)

Hey, you are getting ahead, I was planning to include those and other non-fiction works in a parallell thread about "life time projects - science/non-fiction". Like Frog, I don't find Plato and Aristotele boring, at least not Plato.

posted by Dottie

I feel i have to ask a small question to the board. Is a Book/Movie/Whatever reqiured reading if it is popular enough, or must it also have other qualities?

This is a topic worthy of an own thread - I have no definite answer. I agree with Umberto Eco that what is great art and great science can only be decided over time. Time adds a metaperspective where you can see the broader meaning of a work and the influence it had in it's genre and in society in general. Popularity is IMO not equal to quality - but how do we define quality and who is to set the criteria? Personally, I'm traditional inasmuch as I think works that have induced new principles and represents change in a genre are important for everyone to read/see/hear/ Also, I would include works that have had influenced other artists a lot, and that many later works refer to. Sometimes, popularity coincides with above parameters, as in the case with Shakespeare, Tchaikowsky or Michelangelo. However, popularity can be brief - a work can be immensly popular without leaving a trace in history, and the opposite can also happen, just think of artists like Goya.

When popularity don't coincide with other qualities, I think one must consider what to get out the work. Learning about a culture and the mindset of people in general should be done much better by understanding works that are popular. However, then it's perhaps not the art per se we are after. If we are interested in experiencing art in itself, then I think other qualities than mere popularity are more important. A lot of people watch crappy Hollywoos movies made out of a "13-a-dozen" mold, and soaps, especially "docu-soaps" are highly popular. Should we be obliged to watch them because of this? No, not as art IMO. If I was a sociologist however, then I'd watch it for a deeper understanding of people in our soceity, because media influence people a lot more than they often realise.

Interesting list mentiond above.

I will just type some in adition to this list above:

Shakespeare- The Merchant of Venice; Romeo and Juliet.
Plato- "Apologia de Sócrates", "Banquete"(Sorry for the Portuguese
Maquiavelli- "The Prince"
Kafka- Metamorphosis;
Nietzche- "Assim falou Zaratustra"(Sorry for the portuguese again).
Defoe- Robinson Crusoé.
Camões- Lusiadas
Shelley- Frankenstein
Sófocles- Antígona.
Alvares de Azevedo- Uma Noite na Teverna.
D!ckens(this automatic censor is a little dumb)- A Christmas Carol
Hobbes- Leviathan(More sociology than art I know)
Russeau- "Do Contrato Social"(Still more sociology than art; Forgive my portuguese)
Neruda- Confieso que he vivido; Para nacer he nacido.
Sartre- * I cannot point a piece *
Bronte- O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes(This I also don't know in English, especially because the tranlaction is not literal)
Cervantes- Don Quixote


Of course I don't have read all these books metioned in the literature lists, some I type for criteria of importance, and mentions; . But they are waiting for me.

@Delacroix: Good additions I have actually included some of the works on you list on my non-fiction list.

Machiavelli's The prince is a must read IMO, as is Rousseau's The social contract ( I think this is the English title). By Nietzsche I would chose Ecce Homo or Human all too human instead of Thus spoke Zarathustra, since Zarathustra is so symbolic and difficult to interpret without being well read in Nietzsche's theorietical works.

Places/Architecture

The very few places Tammy would like to visit...

Sistine Chapel
Winter Palace
Forbidden City
Irkutsk (sp?)- Just curious to see how people can live in those climates.
The Valley Of Kings
And that big rock thats in the middle of Oz...

Malraux: The Voices of Silence

Braudel: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th - 18th Centuries

Jaynes: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Koestler: The Sleepwalkers

Herodotus: Histories

Schama: Rembrandt's Eyes

Apuleius: The Golden Ass

Jung: Psychology and Alchemy

Barnstone: The Other Bible

Great suggestions Fable, I only know half of them

Some art, hopefully Frogus and VooDoo will add more:

Of course I agree with Frog on The last supper and The school of Athens When I was in art school long ago, I wrote an essay about Raphael, with special focus on the School of Athens.

- The statues from Parthenon, Acropolis
- Botticelli: La primavera
- Michelangelo: David
- Rembrandt: The night watch
- Picasso: The girls of Avignon
- Marcel Duchamp: The birde stripped bare by her bachelors, etc

Music:

- Gregorian church song
- Bach's Brandenburg concertos
- Mozart's Requiem
- Beethoven (can't suggest a work, I still hate him because I used to play a lot of his works)
- Chopin's Nocturnes (I have overcome my hate for Chopin )
- Mussorgsky's Boris Gudonov
- Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto
- Sibelius' Finnlandia
- Tchaikowsky's Manfred symphony
- Puccini's La Traviata
- Shostakovitch' 10th symphony
- Tibetan traditional singing (sounds like contemporary Western classical music - imagine a crossing between Lygety and Schnittke!)

I'd forgotten about this thread... Anyway, I just found a list (by InteliQuest) of the '100 Best Books'

NOVELS, EPIC POEMS & LEGENDS:
(1). The Iliad by Homer
(2). The Odyssey by Homer
(3). The Aeneid by Virgil
(4). Beowulf by Unknown
(5). The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
(6). The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo
(7). Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
(8). Don Quixote by Cervantes
(9). Paradise Lost by John Milton
(10). The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
(11). Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
(12). Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
(13). Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
(14). Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
(15). Candide by Voltaire
(16). The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(17). The Tragedy of Faust by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
(18). The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott
(19). Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
(20). Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
(21). Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
(22). The Red and the Black by Stendahl
(23). The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
(24). The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
(25). Carmen by Prosper Merimee
(26). Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
(27). Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
(28). Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
(29). David Copperfield by Charles ****ens
(30). A Tale of Two Cities by Charles ****ens
(31). Great Expectations by Charles ****ens
(32). The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
(33). Camille by Alexandre Dumas Fils
(34). Moby **** by Herman Melville
(35). Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
(36). Idyls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson
(37). Silas Marner by George Eliot
(38). Middlemarch by George Eliot
(39). Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
(40). Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
(41). Crime and Punishment by Fedor Dostoyevsky
(42). The Brothers Karamazov by Fedor Dostoyevsky
(43). Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
(44). Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
(45). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
(46). The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
(47). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
(48). A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
(49). Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(50). War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
(51). The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
(52). Tess of the D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy
(53). The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
(54). The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
(55). Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
(56). The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
(57). The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
(58). Dracula by Bram Stoker
(59).The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
(60). The Call of the Wild by Jack London
(61). Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
(62). An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
(63). The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(64). A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
(65). For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
(66). The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
(67). The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
(68). Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
(69). The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
(70). To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION:
(71). The Republic by Plato
(72). The Prince by Machiavelli
(73). The Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
(74). The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
(75). The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
(76). Das Kapital by Karl Marx
(77). The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler

PLAYS:
(78). Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
(79). Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
(80). The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
(81). Hamlet by William Shakespeare
(82). Othello by William Shakespeare
(83). Macbeth by William Shakespeare
(84).The Tempest by William Shakespeare
(85). Tartuffe by Moliere
(86). Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
(87). A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
(88). The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
(89). Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
(90). The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
(91). Our Town by Thornton Wilder
(92). Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

PHILOSOPHY:
(93). The Nicomachaen Ethics by Aristotle
(94). Meditations by Rene Descartes
(95). Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
(96). The World as Will and Idea by Arthur Schopenhauer
(97). Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(98). Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson
(99). Walden by Henry David Thoreau
(100). How We Think by John Dewey

It is made clear as well that the books are only in chronological order, not order of 'greatness'... anyway I have not read them all (23 ) but what do people think? I will get a list from The Guardian (british newspaper) which is more interesting and surprising (though possibly not as true) later on....

Hmm i think that the fiction list is focusing too much on anglo- american fiction. (not to say too much on america and europe with a bit of russia. No china or other far east country. no south america. no africa. no middle east)

And just picking out two - Dracula and Frankenstein - while good books dont belong on this list.

And nothing by Zola? come on!

Okay, here's the Guardian's list - more multicultural, but I have read very few of the books on this one, so I can't really say:


Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, (b. 1930), Things Fall Apart
Hans Christian Andersen, Denmark, (1805-1875), Fairy Tales and Stories
Jane Austen, England, (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice
Honore de Balzac, France, (1799-1850), Old Goriot
Samuel Beckett, Ireland, (1906-1989), Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, (1313-1375), Decameron
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, (1899-1986), Collected Fictions
Emily Bronte, England, (1818-1848), Wuthering Heights
Albert Camus, France, (1913-1960), The Stranger
Paul Celan, Romania/France, (1920-1970), Poems.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine, France, (1894-1961), Journey to the End of the Night
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, (1547-1616), Don Quixote
Geoffrey Chaucer, England, (1340-1400), Canterbury Tales
Joseph Conrad, England,(1857-1924), Nostromo
Dante Alighieri, Italy, (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy
Charles ****ens, England, (1812-1870), Great Expectations
Denis Diderot, France, (1713-1784), Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
Alfred Doblin, Germany, (1878-1957), Berlin Alexanderplatz
Fyodor M Dostoyevsky, Russia, (1821-1881), Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Possessed; The Brothers Karamazov
George Eliot, England, (1819-1880), Middlemarch
Ralph Ellison, United States, (1914-1994), Invisible Man
Euripides, Greece, (c 480-406 BC), Medea
William Faulkner, United States, (1897-1962), Absalom, Absalom; The Sound and the Fury
Gustave Flaubert, France, (1821-1880), Madame Bovary; A Sentimental Education
Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain, (1898-1936), Gypsy Ballads
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Colombia, (b. 1928), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera
Gilgamesh, Mesopotamia (c 1800 BC).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, (1749-1832), Faust
Nikolai Gogol, Russia, (1809-1852), Dead Souls
Gunter Grass, Germany, (b.1927), The Tin Drum
Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Brazil, (1880-1967), The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
Knut Hamsun, Norway, (1859-1952), Hunger.
Ernest Hemingway, United States, (1899-1961), The Old Man and the Sea
Homer, Greece, (c 700 BC), The Iliad and The Odyssey
Henrik Ibsen, Norway (1828-1906), A Doll's House
The Book of Job, Israel. (600-400 BC).
James Joyce, Ireland, (1882-1941), Ulysses
Franz Kafka, Bohemia, (1883-1924), The Complete Stories; The Trial; The Castle Bohemia
Kalidasa, India, (c. 400), The Recognition of Sakuntala
Yasunari Kawabata, Japan, (1899-1972), The Sound of the Mountain
Nikos Kazantzakis, Greece, (1883-1957), Zorba the Greek
DH Lawrence, England, (1885-1930), Sons and Lovers
Halldor K Laxness, Iceland, (1902-1998), Independent People
Giacomo Leopardi, Italy, (1798-1837), Complete Poems
Doris Lessing, England, (b.1919), The Golden Notebook
Astrid Lindgren, Sweden, (1907-2002), Pippi Longstocking
Lu Xun, China, (1881-1936), Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
Mahabharata, India, (c 500 BC). Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt, (b. 1911), Children of Gebelawi
Thomas Mann, Germany, (1875-1955), Buddenbrook; The Magic Mountain
Herman Melville, United States, (1819-1891), Moby ****
Michel de Montaigne, France, (1533-1592), Essays. Elsa Morante, Italy, (1918-1985), History
Toni Morrison, United States, (b. 1931), Beloved
Shikibu Murasaki, Japan, (N/A), The Tale of Genji Genji
Robert Musil, Austria, (1880-1942), The Man Without Qualities
Vladimir Nabokov, Russia/United States, (1899-1977), Lolita
Njaals Saga, Iceland, (c 1300).
George Orwell, England, (1903-1950), 1984
Ovid, Italy, (c 43 BC), Metamorphoses
Fernando Pessoa, Portugal, (1888-1935), The Book of Disquiet
Edgar Allan Poe, United States, (1809-1849), The Complete Tales
Marcel Proust, France, (1871-1922), Remembrance of Things Past
Francois Rabelais, France, (1495-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel
Juan Rulfo, Mexico, (1918-1986), Pedro Paramo
Jalal ad-din Rumi, Iran, (1207-1273), Mathnawi
Salman Rushdie, India/Britain, (b. 1947), Midnight's Children
Sheikh Musharrif ud-din Sadi, Iran, (c 1200-1292), The Orchard
Tayeb Salih, Sudan, (b. 1929), Season of Migration to the North
Jose Saramago, Portugal, (b. 1922), Blindness
William Shakespeare, England, (1564-1616), Hamlet; King Lear; Othello
Sophocles, Greece, (496-406 BC), Oedipus the King
Stendhal, France, (1783-1842), The Red and the Black
Laurence Sterne, Ireland, (1713-1768), The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
Italo Svevo, Italy, (1861-1928), Confessions of Zeno
Jonathan Swift, Ireland, (1667-1745), Gulliver's Travels
Leo Tolstoy, Russia, (1828-1910), War and Peace; Anna Karenina; The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Anton P Chekhov, Russia, (1860-1904), Selected Stories
Thousand and One Nights, India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt, (700-1500).
Mark Twain, United States, (1835-1910), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Valmiki, India, (c 300 BC), Ramayana
Virgil, Italy, (70-19 BC), The Aeneid
Walt Whitman, United States, (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass
Virginia Woolf, England, (1882-1941), Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse
Marguerite Yourcenar, France, (1903-1987), Memoirs of Hadrian

The Guardian list is a list of writer's favourites, isn't it? (IIRC) Hence the greater variety, I suspect.

Originally posted by Tom
Hmm i think that the fiction list is focusing too much on anglo- american fiction. (not to say too much on america and europe with a bit of russia. No china or other far east country. no south america. no africa. no middle east)

And just picking out two - Dracula and Frankenstein - while good books dont belong on this list.

And nothing by Zola? come on!

I agree with Tom here, 3 works by Hemingway, 4 by Twain, 2 by Scott who IMO doesn't belong at all, and nothing by great non-Euro/US authors like Borges or Mishima?

IMO the Guardian list is far better, although it contains some works I haven't read. I however still miss Paz and Mishima.