# Which books would you describe as "brilliant"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164 "2006-01-09T16:02:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/41 "2006-01-10T23:11:16Z")
_Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72_ by Hunter S. Thompson _The War Of The Worlds_ by H.G. Welles _Bride Of The Rat God_ by Barabra Hambly ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/42 "2006-01-10T23:33:06Z")
**Game of Thrones** by George R.R. Martin. I heard I had to read the series, so I started off, thinking it’d just be regular fantasy stuff, but I was blown away by the political nature of the book and the in depth work into the houses and the entire world. I rushed out, got the next two books, read them quickly, and then picked up AFFC and just finished. The rest of my reading list is in shambles (which is next?). I started on a new book, and then discoved, WAIT, he wrote short stories in this world? So I put everything down and just finished “The Hedge Knight”. It’s like a drug… where’s the next book? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/43 "2006-01-10T23:41:02Z")
_The Razor’s Edge_ by Somerset Maugham. ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/44 "2006-01-10T23:58:36Z")
I agree with **Ulysses** and **Crying of Lot 49**. ‘Brilliant’ is the perfect word for Evelyn Waugh’s **Decline and Fall**. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/45 "2006-01-10T23:59:13Z")
Personal favorites that I consider brilliant: [The Dollmaker](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380009471/qid=1136936865/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-9774120-9440827?s=books&v=glance&n=283155) by Harriette Arnow. [Paradise Falls](http://www.clevelandartsprize.org/lit_1966.htm) by Don Robertson. The book is tragically out of print, but the link goes to a website with info about the author and a few paragraphs from the book. Robertson also wrote a Civil War trilogy that will knock your socks off. I’ve only read 14 of the books mentioned so far, so I’m also bookmarking and making a list. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/46 "2006-01-11T00:04:03Z")
> [@Carnac the Magnificent!](#): > > …sheer brilliance in insight or composition? Insight: [ul] [li]M.-D. Chenu, _Towards Understanding Saint Thomas_[/li][li]Alasdair McIntyre, _Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry_[/li][/ul] Composition: I’ll second the nominations of Nabokov and Joyce, and add [ul] [li]Laurence Sterne, _Tristram Shandy_[/li][li]John Barth, _Lost in the Funhouse_[/li][li]Penelope Fitzgerald, _The Beginning of Spring_[/li][/ul] Honorable mention for insight **and** composition: Edward Tufte, _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/47 "2006-01-11T00:05:13Z")
I forgot to mention my actual favourite book! **The Recognitions** by William Gaddis. Astounding book (there are about fifty pages in the second third of the book which are hard to slog through - and the whole book ain’t easy) - I particularly love Gaddis’ ear for dialogue. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/48 "2006-01-11T01:03:20Z")
> [@E. Thorp](#): > > Honorable mention for insight **and** composition: Edward Tufte, _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ As well as Tufte’s similar _Envisioning Information_ . ---
**Author:** ![Stinkum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Stinkum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stinkum)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/49 "2006-01-11T06:19:20Z")
_Ulysses_ and _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ by James Joyce. _The Grapes of Wrath_ by John Steinbeck _The Painted Bird_ by Jerzy Kozinski _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ by John Irving _Steel Beach_ by John Varley If I wasn’t so tired, I’d probably add to the list. ---
**Author:** ![Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/50 "2006-01-11T14:37:36Z")
Concpicuously absent from these lists are **dozens** of “Western classics” that today’s high schools and universities assign to undergrads. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/51 "2010-09-27T05:42:54Z")
> [@DaphneBlack](#): > > I forgot to mention my actual favourite book! > > **The Recognitions** by William Gaddis. Astounding book (there are about fifty pages in the second third of the book which are hard to slog through - and the whole book ain’t easy) - I particularly love Gaddis’ ear for dialogue. One of my favorites of all novels easily – but I know many people who just couldn’t deal with his ability with language and several of the antique languuages and modern romance and germanic and slavic languages he was never shy about intersparsing. I knew some very learned folks of both genders who spent no small amount of time compiling and completing a lexicon for Gaddis in “The Recogns” – my opinion of these bright, personal friends of mine has plummetted over the past decade or so, though. Seems like a painful way to “force” oneself through a novel that is, to me, a very bright pleasure regardless of how much one understand prima facie. Now, _JR_ I wish I could, though, i.e., “get to.” It reminds of sitting on a sidewalk slkightly drunken and listening to some trripping people dealing in various, demented, illogical conversations, sort of out-there (and how!) talks. It’s the more well-regarded of Gaddis’s novels, I think, but I can’t quite get it, somehow. I’ll toss in Georges Perec, "Life : A User’s Guide [La vie : mode d’emploi], and finish up with some of Italo Calvino’s best-beloved, by me “The Baron in the Trees,” for example. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/52 "2010-09-27T06:24:01Z")
So many. I love threads like this because I remind my self of the terrific experience of discovering these works, and sometimes I go back and re-visit them. On the Beach – Neville Shute In Cold Blood – Truman Capote Native Son – Richard Wright A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole A Bright Shining Lie – Neil Sheehan The Best and the Brightest – David Halberstam Downbelow Station – CJ Cherryh Rendezvous With Rama – Arthur. C. Clarke Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain I Claudius – Robert Graves Ringworld – Larry Niven The Forever War – Joe Haldeman American Tabloid – James Ellroy The Guns of August – Barbara Tuchman The Price of Power – Seymour Hersch 1984 – George Orwell Brave New World – Aldous Huxley Gateway – Frederick Pohl Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmann – Richard Feynmann 84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff Generation Kill – Evan Wright ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/53 "2010-09-27T06:46:26Z")
[The Tin Drum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tin_Drum) by Günter Grass is probably the most well-written book I’ve ever read. I would also place John Kennedy Toole’s [Confederacy of Dunces](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces) and Larry McMurty’s [Lonesome Dove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonesome_Dove) very comfortably high on that list. Naming those three works is somehow so deeply personal to me that I have this vague hope that merely sharing my love of them will somehow spark a intrigued and flirtatious private message. Heh. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/54 "2010-09-27T06:49:22Z")
_The Zombie Thread Survival Guide_, by Max Brooks ---
**Author:** ![Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/face_intentionally_left_blank/32/288_2.png) [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Face_Intentionally_Left_Blank)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/55 "2010-09-27T07:17:41Z")
> [@Stinkum](#): > > _Ulysses_ and _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ by James Joyce. > _The Grapes of Wrath_ by John Steinbeck > _The Painted Bird_ by Jerzy Kozinski > _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ by John Irving > _Steel Beach_ by John Varley > > If I wasn’t so tired, I’d probably add to the list. I was unable to read _The Grapes of Wrath_ with a fresh viewpoint, as it is such a part of our culture that I recognized bits of it from other reading and movies on the first reading. Still, I’m a sucker for Steinbeck’s prose, so there’s that. I’m fond of _Cannery Row_. Again, the prose, and I liked the story of poor people doing the best they can, trying to help others, and trying to do right, despite their own weaknesses & frailties (and it’s so much less bleak then _Wrath_). It’s like the opposite of many more recent stories I’ve read. I started reading _Under The Dome_ by Stephen King yesterday, and like too many books I’ve read, it looks like the selfish, obtuse, self-important and unjustly self-confident guy is going to drive the plot and cause more trouble than will be necessary as the story unfolds. Contrast that to _Cannery Row_ and how it’s characters mean well, even if their faults and incompetence sometimes prevents them from effectively acting on it. Maybe I just need to vary my reading material a bit more than I have been. I liked\* Owen Meany\*. I should check out some more Irving. ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/56 "2010-09-27T08:09:34Z")
A few more: Robert Musil, “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” [“The Man Without Qualities” – a very long novel with unusual publication history and editorial scholarship and commentary. I learned a lot of my popular German by going slowly through this long novel with dictionary and notebook, neither of which process has anything to recommend the terrific scope and detail of this narrative on its own, though. One of the few 20th Century novels which might be held in comparison immediately and fruitfully to Prousts’s “Recherche/,” which has a much great universality in terms of its appreciation by those who purport to claim some kind of French culture by reading this long novel with the more important marginalia and obscuralia by the literary critics and the author themselves, respectively. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/57 "2010-09-27T08:24:50Z")
Huckleberry Finn Moby Dick Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Siddhartha ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/58 "2010-09-27T08:37:31Z")
Conrad, all. Eliot, “Middlemarch” James, Henry: point and shoot. Dumas, Verne, are, I think the two of the oldest of the young great, impoverished chroniclers who wrote huge swaths around their obsessions. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/59 "2010-09-27T10:21:20Z")
I recently reread John Fowles’ [The Collector](http://calitreview.com/113) which has more WOW factor than any other book I have read. It makes use of an amazing plot device. It is the story of how Frederick abducts Miranda and holds her prisoner in an isolated cottage. First time around I read the first half of the book and really enjoyed it, then Miranda dies and Frederick discovers her journal. And lo and behold Fowles begins to tell the same story again from her point of view. And rather than being anticlimactic, it gets better. It’s a quick read but wonderfully thought provoking. The linked review reveals what I have spoilered. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2010, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164/60 "2010-09-27T15:51:52Z")
An idiosyncratic pick, but Watership Down by Richard Adams. Brilliant in concept, marvelous in execution. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-books-would-you-describe-as-brilliant/339164.md?page=4)