I give you the Doorstop Trilogies /lit/ Whadya think? I'm

there's no moby dicking in magic mountain. switch for dr faustus. or better: kafka's castle

Celebrity garbage. Try actually taking an interest in literature.

>>7324594
Looks pretty good.

>>7324604
Never change /lit/

take out 1q84 that shit doesn't belong

not sure why you didn't put meme trilogy together

don't really see the connection between don quixote, magic mountain, and moby dick

dead souls isn't really that long, replace with doctor zhivago maybe? it's not ideal and doesn't fit super well though...

arbitrarily choosing 3 of the 4 chinese classics seems ill advised

i suggest faust/magic mountain/glass bead game for a german trilogy; or perhaps joseph and his brothers in lieu of magic mountain, or the castle instead of faust

The one I'm most unsure about is IQ84. I haven't read it and I hear it's not on the same level as the rest. If anyone has a better suggestion for contemporary doorstopper let me know.

I've heard buzz on /lit/ recently about Women and Men but I doubt that's on the same level as the rest either. Plus I don't know if that would belong with the Contemporary Cycle with Infinite Jest and 2666 or if it would belong in the same cycle as Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow.

>>7324616
also i think this chart isn't really that interesting of an idea, it's a cute concept that doesn't really sustain itself, and no one likes a forced meme

>>7324602
>>7324616
>dr faustus
>faust
These are two different works. And neither are doorstoppers.

>>7324616
Don Quixote, Moby Dick and Magic Mountain are all on the surface realist with lots of subtext and symbolism. Sort of the Classic Big Novel trilogy as opposed to the experimental phase of Ulysses, Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow.

Dead Souls isn't that long but it's the archetypical Russian novel and I couldn't decide between Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment so I went with Dead Souls.

As for picking 3 of the 4 Chinese classics: Nobody ever talks about Water Margin. Seems like the black sheep of the family.

The Castle is even less of a doorstop than Dead Souls.

>>7324626
what about my post made you think i was unaware of that?

>>7324616
Replace 1Q84 with the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I agree with adding Doctor Zhivago, it is definitely a door stopper.

>>7324627
> Nobody ever talks about Water Margin. Seems like the black sheep of the family.

not really?

also again, the fact that there are so many issues that can be raised about the selections means the concept is forced past a certain point, so just scrap it desu senpai

>>7324619
I've seen Europe Central thrown around but I haven't read it

This chart is incredibly redundant since it's really just a distilled version of the /lit/ charts floating around. You faggots need to stop wasting your time charting books you've never read and just spend your time reading instead.

>>7324629
My issue with Wind-Up Bird is that the only available English translation is abridged.

Doctor Zhivago is long, but is it good? Seems like the Russian Gone With the Wind, ie rank sentimentalism.

>>7324626
dr faustus by mann is a doorstepper

>>7324630
>>7324635

This. This chart is fucking dumb. We already have a meme trilogy 2 thread we don't need to make everything a fucking set of 3. Fuck off.

>>7324630
I'm no expert in Chinese culture but I've seen references to the three in the chart all over the place. Homages to them are in books, movies, games, everywhere. Water Margin I only know about thanks to the wikipedia page on the Four Classics.

>>7324642
I thought the meme trilogy 2 idea was dumb so I did this. Grouping them by period and style rather than arbitrarily picking three books to be the new intellectual dick measuring stick.

>>7324644
>>7324653

So instead you're making charts of stuff you have no real knowledgr of? How many of the books listed in the op/this thread have you even read?

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Obviously this should replace Dead Souls as part of the Russian Doorstoppers.

>>7324636
I read Doctor Zhivago and thought it was pretty good. I don't know what anyone else thinks of it though.

>>7324670
The first row and I'm working on the Bible and Don Quixote.
The point of reading lists is to have a list to read. That's what I'm doing here, and that's why I'm asking for suggestions.
I don't have to have read these books to see their reputation and cultural impact. That's why I want to read them, because I recognize their importance (except for maybe IQ84 as mentioned). That's why I left out Water Margin, from what I've seen it doesn't have nearly the cultural impact of the other three.

Pretty much the only "trilogy" on the chart that actually works is the first one.

>>7324724
>a reading list

It's called the sticky retard literally every book here is in the fucking sticky

wtf is meant with the term 'doorstopper'?

>>7324594
are the Chinese classic novels actually good or just memes ? Is it worth reading a translation, or should I better not bother with it?

>>7324594

That is an awesome cover of Moby Dick.

>>7324756
un pavé

>>7324756

Supposed to be a book of considerable length, girth and gravitas. The Odyssey, the Iliad and the Aenid don't really apply though. Neither does Dead Souls.

>>7324750
Yes, how dare I make my own reading list.

>>7324797
You can do whatever the fuck you want but youre obviously trying to spread this shit on /lit/ and we don't want it. You're like that retard who made the godawful translation chart and tried to spam it everywhere. Fuck off. Stop making charts and go read.

>>7324796
What's the minimum page count for a doorstopper? 600? 700?

>>7324796
ah thanks, makes sense

>>7324672
This this this.
Much better choice than Dead Souls.

Also OP, remove 1Q84 and add My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

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>>7324594
There's already a doorstoppers chart, OP.

That said, yours is a lot more aesthetically pleasing.

>>7324877
That makes a lot of sense.

>>7324887
Yeah I've seen that, but I wanted something boiled down to the essentials and with a little more structure.

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Version 2 y'all

>>7324756
It means it can stop a door.
>>7324805
Enough to be able to stop a door.

>>7324756
The book is so damn good that people flood en masse to their libraries and bookstores to get a copy, thus librarians must barricade the doors to prevent a tidal wave of hysteria and human trampling.

I'm thinking about adding a British section. It would have Middlemarch and either Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend. Not sure about the third. Suggestions?
Vanity Fair? Of Human Bondage?

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>>7325069
This might be helpful, a previous doorstopper chart that wasn't finished.

>>7325098
Dang, didn't even read the thread.

But this is the version that weeded it down to true doorstoppers, vs. the v1 chart.

>>7325069
Middlemarch, The Faerie Queen and Bleak House.

>>7324961
How much does the door weigh?

>>7324594
i would use 2666 as a doorstop, no doubt. fucking hated that book.

>>7324961
So, every hardback ever?

>>7324594

>No Petersburg for Russia

You had one job OP

>>7325117
>try to think of a clever and funny way to call thick books thick without being direct
>doorstop
>literal post modern dipshits arbitrarily try to piss and moan about it
b-but these arent books about doorstops tho hrrdrrrrr

stop being a dumbass, you arent a child

>>7325126
how about you call them what they acutally are to you:

big thick books that i display on my bookshelf but don't read (lol who has time?) to show off my intellectual epeen

>>7325131
>show off my intellectual epeen
>display on my bookshelf
But how would the internet know what he displays in his bookshelf to boast his epeen? This makes no sense anon, NO SENSE.

>>7325149
/lit/ has devolved into an orgy of charting. By Wikipedia-ing plots and authors and movements and putting their likeness on a JPG, /lit/izens have substituted out the actual experience of reading.Aafter proclaiming that Don Quixote, Moby Dick, and the Magic Mountain are all on the surface realistic with lots of subtext and symbolism, the smug /lit/izen reclines in his basement, satisfied that he now has no need to actually read any of those books since he understands them completely and in their entirety. He is further gratified by the fact that he is now recognized as the foremost expert on the topic of literature thanks to his tireless charting.

>tfw 120 pages into Women and Men
>tfw 1080 pages to go

It's kind of like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus but on a poetic level.

>>7325178
After all, actual knowledge and experience with the works at hand are completely unnecessary. I've read neither Dostoevsky nor Tolstoy, and I've never heard of Grossman until today, but that doesn't stop me from understanding that their works form a trilogy which I affectionately term The Russian Sequence. Said sequence has now been enshrined in my JPG, an eternal monument to my mastery over the canon of Russian literature.

>>7324594
>all that verse
>doorstop
kek

>>7324594
the epic poems and moby-dick aren't doorstops

>>7325118
Give me one more Russian epic.

>>7325178
/lit/ has devolved into an orgy of chart criticizing. After all, when you can simply point out the pointlessness of any kind of categorization you seem superior to those attempting to do the categorizing and yet know even less than them.

>>7325206
Er I'm not him but I find it difficult to see how he can know less than OP who admitted to having read only 3 things on his chart. He doesn't exactly sound qualified to do any charting and seems to just be regurgitating /lit/ memes.

>>7325206
How does that even make any sense? OP stop trying to defend your dilettante charting and just pick up a book.

If someone with a demonstrated knowledge of literature came and made a chart we'd be all for it, but you're just random faggot who hasn't even read anything and you feel qualified to make shitty charts. Fuck off already.

>>7325210
>>7325213
Why don't you go into why these groupings are a poor way to immerse oneself in the history of literature. Tell me why reading Don Quixote, Moby Dick, and Magic Mountain wouldn't give you a better understanding of the evolution of the novel.
We could all discuss literature and try to help each other learn. But you'd rather spew bile and feel superior.

>>7325178
/lit/ is rapidly going the way of /mu/. People from that board are even more harmful than /pol/tards and Redditors.

>>7325118
It's not even 400 pages. If you want to include it because of it's difficulty, he might as well add Finnegans Wake for the hell of it.

>>7325263
Petersburg is over 600. What edition are you smoking.

>>7325069

Tom Jones, man.

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>>7325271

Most editions seem to have under 400. I read the German one with 640 pages on the top

>>7325240

>Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid
This is fine. It's a historically recognized and common grouping.

>Bible, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost
Makes no sense, other than that the latter two engage with religion and a portion of the material in the Bible. But the same could be said of countless other texts. The Divine Comedy is more closely related to the Aeneid than the Bible and Paradise Lost if you really think about it.

>Don Quixote, Moby Dick, The Magic Mountain
They're novels and the're kinda long. That's about it. There's no particular reason why these three texts should be grouped together, and they don't really form any sort of sequence.

>Ulysses, The Recognitions, GR
Again, they're long and...???.

>Infinite Jest, 2666, 1Q84
IJ and Ulysses/GR form a trilogy cause of a funny meme on /lit, not of any inherent similarities between the three beyond some vague idea of pushing the boundaries of novel writing. 1Q84 is mass market middlebrow work that isn't particularly inventive or innovative, and explores very similar themes to Murakami's other works. 2666 is grounded in an entirely different tradition as the other two.

Throwing in My Struggle makes even less sense since the book has no real relation to the literary tradition (deliberately so) of either IJ or 2666 (I guess they're both indirectly referencing Nazis? Really reaching).

>Dead Souls, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov
No reason why you can't include Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, A Hero of Our Time, Oblomov, Fathers and Sons, The Idiot, What is to be done?, or any number of other works. Dead Souls doesn't even fit the "long" requirement that was arbitrarily imposed on this list, and in terms of influence there are many other works that are comparable.

Life and Fate makes even less sense since it's not even part of the 19th century Russian novel category, and introducing it raises questions on why you're not including works like Doctor Zhivago or Quiet Flows the Don or a Cancer Ward/In the First Circle among others.

>Romance of the Three Kings, Journey to the West, Dream of the Red Chamber
You randomly exclude Water Margin even though it's just as influential and important in China, where, you know, people actually read these books. Your reason for excluding it when pressed by the other anon boiled down to "ROTK is more influential cause, uh, Dynasty Warriors?" Not to mention there's also the Plum in the Golden Vase to consider.

>Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, In search of Lost Time
Where's Balzac? Flaubert? Stendhal? Why is the 20th century modernist Proust grouped with two authors working in the 19th century French Romantic tradition?

The vapidity of this chart is due precisely to the fact that you haven't read the vast majority of these works, something that is readily apparent. Your justifications and groupings are beyond superficial, boiling down essentially to "here are some long books that happen to be novels, and were written in the same language."

>>7325416
There are two versions of Petersburg. The first version has 600 some pages and the second has around 400 pages. Most English editions are the 300-400 page version and the only 600 page English edition I can think of is the Penguin Classics translated by David McDuff.

>>7325468
Like, this is all super vague because your chart MAKES ZERO SENSE to begin with. You might as well call it "long classics," in which case here's a Goodreads list that does the same fucking thing - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3153.Big_Fat_Books_Worth_the_Effort - without imposing some contrived and tenuous connections.

Reading these books as a "sequence" yields at best no advantages in terms of additional insight provided, and at worse completely separates them from their actual positions in the literary canon. It's much better to read Dubliners - Portrait - Ulysses than this Ulysses - GR - Recognitions bullshit, just like it's much more important to read the Aeneid and the Summa Theologica if you want to understand the Comedy instead of Paradise Lost.

The point is, if you haven't even read these books, why in the world do you think you're in a position of authority to group them into these silly little "sequences"? Try doing this with people who actually read, whether in academia or outside of it, and you'll be laughed out of the room. Only on /lit/ is this kind of drivel tolerated.

>>7325468
You raise some vague idea of "reputation and cultural impact." and you have Ulysses on the same category as the Recognitions, and Life and Fate with Karamazov/War and Peace. In what universe does that make sense?

Just admit this was a poorly thought out exercise and be done with it, stop trying to defend something that is fundamentally indefensible.

>>7324887

This is a surprisingly good list, despite some absolute trash like Atlas Shrugged and Gone with the Wind

>>7325488
You diss on my list and offer as a counterpoint one that includes Time Traveller's Wife, Ayn Rand, and multiple works of Stephen Fucking King?

Bible, Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost, the three books that have most shaped the public conception of Christian theology, have nothing in common and do not work as a sequence? Okay. And yeah Aenied has a big influence on Divine Comedy, that's why it comes first.

The point is that these cycles of the big experiments in literature show its development. The Greek and Roman epics, then the development of Christian myth, then the development of the novel with Don Quixote being the first truly modern novel. Then the experimental cycle. Ulysses, Recognitions, and Gravity's Rainbow were all big, bold experiments. Finally some contemporary big, bold experiments. I knew IQ84 was middlebrow, it was my very first comment.

It's a sort of timeline of how these things have developed. My Struggle might not fit perfectly, since it's not a novel, but it's a big exciting experiment in literature today. I mean six fucking volumes about this dude's life diving into the most minute details and he makes it interesting and entertaining? That's some bold shit and I want to read it, more than the occasional excerpt upon which I'm basing this opinion. Which is why it's on the list. Bite me.

The regional ones are just what they appear to be, after thoughts since I didn't want to clutter up the main sequence with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

Like all the charts and lists you see it's not some fucking definitive guide. It's an overview. If you read all these books, as I intend to, then you'll certainly have a better appreciation of literature's breadth and development then you did before.

And your main contention is that I haven't read the lot yet. So I guess you've read all the books you listed as counterpoint? You must not have, or you would know that Fathers and Sons (a book I have read) is less than 300 pages.

But, mainly, the exercise of making charts is a bit of fun. Something you wouldn't know about you pedantic twat.

Also, Summa Theologica was written AFTER the Divine Comedy you fucking fraud.

>>7325596
They can make really small bibles now.

>>7325531
>suprisingly good list
>Da Vinci Code
>GRRM
>Stieg Larson
>Anne Rice
>Heinlein
Are you high?

>>7325606
Well they also make small doors.

first 3 aren't doorstoppers nor is milton nor gogol.

the dream of red chambers edition there is an abridgement. a pretty good one, but would probably trigger retarded autists on this board.

the obsession with big, 'hard' books is pretty juvenile and doesn't give you any cred. but i guess users on this board have nothing else going for them.

>>7325596
The Goodreads list is about as worthwhile as yours, since the only real connection between the works listed is their length.

You are completely contradicting yourself all over the place. First you say it's about "reputation and impact," and then you list random (relatively) obscure works. And if you really wanted to construct a list based on influential books that shape public conception, there is no reason to arbitrarily limit it to "doorstoppers." Fathers and Sons is just about as lengthy as any of the epic poems here, none of which can be considered doorstoppers, nor can Dead Souls. You substitute out Dead Souls (which was still somewhat logical when placed next to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy) for Life and Fate (which as pointed out makes no sense) just because Dead Souls isn't lengthy enough, which means that any claims to real literary connection, or influence, or any such connection is completely disingenuous. You just want to plop down long books, in which case we already have multiple charts on /lit/ and a Goodreads list and many many other listicles out there doing the same thing. You're not offering up any intellectual insight or, really, anything else worthwhile.

>The regional ones are just what they appear to be,

Well they appear to be vapid nonsense.

>Something you wouldn't know about you pedantic twat.
Did I hurt your feelings by calling you out for being an ignoramus? Sorry.

>Also, Summa Theologica was written AFTER the Divine Comedy you fucking fraud.

Might want to read Wikipedia more closely bud, it's where you get all your information from so you might as well not mess up the details. There's a reason the Comedy is often called the Summa in Verse.

Basically >>7325628 sums it up well: you just have an obsession with "big hard books" but are trying to disguise it with flimsy claims of connections and insight; claims that, unfortunately for you, don't hold up to any scrutiny.

>>7325596
>Also, Summa Theologica was written AFTER the Divine Comedy you fucking fraud.

GET A LOAD OF THIS IDIOT GUYS AYYYY LMAOOOO

>>7325610
but none of those are on there?

>>7324887
When I was reading Les Mis unabridged, I'd bring it to work and leave it on my desk. People would look at the gray brick of a book that it is and were like "are you actually reading that entire thing?" Shit it took forever to get through, especially when you get to fucking Cossette's story. Marius's is mostly tolerable but meh.

>>7324594
that edition of 1Q84 is beautiful, where to cop

>>7324619
1Q84 is good but flabbier and less significant than The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Make that substitution IMO.

>>7325658
>>7325662
> Originally published: 1485
Oh man, way to screw up Google Books.
I have to admit, it didn't seem right.

Ya know the funny thing is that I am in fact not obsessed by big books, in fact I put this together because I'm looking to make up for the lacunae in my reading from avoiding them up till now. But, instead of having a nice thread about big books I turned it into two idiots yammering back and forth by responding to you.

Well, live and learn. At least I learned about Life and Fate.

>>7324619
switch with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, which is probably the finest novel of the past thirty years. 1q84 is terrible

ITT: watch butthurt OP get BTFO after 1000+ hours in paint

time would be better spent reading these books than trying to defend your arrangement of them OP. let this thread die and move on m8.

>>7325929
I don't find it terrible, I just don't find it as good as WUBC while being similar boos.

>>7325929
Wind-Up is hardly a doorstopper though.

>>7324594

The Aeneid and Odyssey aren't really door stoppers.

>>7325984
Lel pretty much this.

>>7324644
Water Margin is fast paced, humorous ad far more readable than the other classics. It was marketed for the public, after all. Despite it's length, it's very addictive.

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>>7325416

What a bitch book.

A real men's book must have at least 1500 pages.

>>7324594
What's the translation for War and Peace I should read?

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>>7324594
>In Search of Lost Time
>merely a doorstop

its more like a train buffer stop

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>>7324594
>The Aeneid
>being anywhere near the Iliad and the Odyssey

Virgil wrote a shitty Homeric fanfiction so everyone in Augustan Rome could pat each other on the back about it. Aeneas's epithet should've been "The Hedgehog."

>>7330153
Glad someone else hates the Aeneid as much as I do.