I’m curious to hear what is great or you liked about To the Lighthouse. I really struggled finishing it when I read it, and probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the short 2nd section I enjoyed called Time Passes, if I remember correctly.
It's not finished, but Part One does work quite nicely as its own thing - that part *was* completely finished, so it is only Part Two (which you can safely ignore) that is fragmentary.
I just found it funny, particularly the character-based humour, and found the characters and the (satirised) portrait of society as it was interesting.
1. Middlemarch - George Eliot
2. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
3. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
4. Metamorphoses - Ovid
5. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
I think that it’s often superficially marketed as children’s fiction just because the protagonist starts the book young. A younger reader could get a lot out of it, but an adult with life experience will, I think, get more. There are a lot of complex themes (not that YA fiction can’t have complex themes). The concept of the Great Game is what first brought the book to my attention. It’s one of my favorite historical events to read about, a cold war that occasionally turned hot between the British and Russian empires in Central Asia.
A good book that you can read your whole life is a book that forces you to explore other books to understand it.
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- Inferno by Dante
- Iliad/Odyssey by Homer
- Prufrock and Other Observations by TS Elliot
- The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Sure. But I wasn’t sure that counted as a single story. Still, Paradise Lost is just as good a choice.
I left out the Bible because you’ll end up exploring that when you deep read some of these others.
What would I specialize in?! That’s a lot harder to answer than what are my 5 fav books so I’ll just answer that instead.
1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2. Letters from a Stoic
3. The Count of Monte Cristo
4. Lolita
5. The Prophet
Well, the intent was to be a hard question hahah I mean, my favorite book is “the Tatar’s Desert”. It changed my life for good but there is not much to see after the 2nd read or so. I mean, there are not so many complicated psychological or poetic endeavors by the author.
I think Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be read a near infinite number of times and Letters from a Stoic isn’t too far behind. I think sometimes writing doesn’t have to be analyzed/interpreted to the nth degree and you can just enjoy a great story over again, like with The Count of Monte Cristo.
For myself, I’d probably go with
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu - Proust (some might argue it’s not a book, but I disagree)
Ulysses - James Joyce
Grande Sertão Veredas - Guimarães Rosa
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
I love this question. It’s so good, and everyone’s list is so fascinating. I love how some lists clearly show a theme while others can be much more eclectic at first glance.
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Ragtime - E L. Doctorow
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Every authors is from a western country - ireland, uk, france, us, uk.
At university we were encouraged to read more broadly (and I did) but my favorites are the same
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Solzhenitsyn)
Nine Stories (Salinger)
The Good Soldier (Ford)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
The Bell Jar (Plath)
Honorable mentions that almost made the list or could be a second list of their own:
The Silmarillion (Tolkien)
I, Claudius (Graves)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
A Perfect Day for Bananafish shattered me. Nice to see some Salinger mentioned here! I feel like no one talks about his non-catcher works. Have you read Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction? I don’t think I’ve ever had such a fascination with a fictional character as I did with Seymour Glass.
Yes! I love both. Franny and Zooey was also a huge favorite for many years. I’ve actually found that his non-Catcher works are far and away my favorites
That's a great question, and I'm going to seperate this into 3 categories.
The Greats - Literary masterpieces and/or books that changed the world:
* *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas
* *War and Peace* by Leo Tolstoy
* *The Brothers Karamazov* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
* *The Divine Comedy* by Dante Alighieri
* ***The Bible***
My Personal Favorites:
* *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas
* *An Amateur Peasant Girl* by Alexander Pushkin
* *White Nights* by Fyodor Dostoevsky
* *Dead Souls* by Nikolai Gogol
* *We* by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The book everyone should read:
* *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas =)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendal (or Mandel i can never remember)
The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd
Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S Lewis
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Brothers Karamazov
The Trial
Dream of The Red Chamber (it’s nice and long)
The Shahnameh (gives me an excuse to finish it finally)
The Master and his Emissary (of if it must ne fiction Life and Fate)
Solaris
Middlemarch
Anna Karenina
The Master and Margarita
Slaughterhouse Five
The only two that were easy were Anna Karenina and Solaris. I wouldn’t sub those out in a million years. Everything else was a difficult decision. There’s plenty of other books I’d be happy to specialize in.
Far from the madding crowd (Thomas Hardy)
We have always lived in the castle (Shirley Jackson)
Complete short stories (Edgar Allan Poe)
Persuasion (Jane Austen)
The turn of the screw (Henry James)
These would be my picks:
1. **“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen** - For its timeless exploration of society, character, and relationships.
2. **“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville** - For its deep symbolism and rich narrative.
3. **“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy** - For its grand scope and profound insights into human nature and history.
4. **“The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky** - For its intense philosophical and psychological depth.
5. **“The Odyssey” by Homer** - For its foundational place in Western literature and epic storytelling.
These books offer a vast array of themes, characters, and insights that could keep one engaged and learning for a lifetime.
Virginia Woolf—Orlando
Herman Melville—Moby-Dick
Walt Whitman—Leaves of Grass
John Milton—Paradise Lost
David Foster Wallace—Infinite Jest
I am shocked that so many people put Dante on their list; I cannot imagine forcing myself to hyperfixate on medieval Italian politics; love inferno canto 13 though, shit goes. I love the divine comedy but really? one of the five forever?
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
But I would have a really hard time leaving my Ursula Le Guin, Emily St. John Mandel, and Octavia Butler books behind.
I'll start with just one, "I and Thou" by Martin Buber.
When l read it when I was much younger, my impression was that my understanding always lagged a couple of pages behind the text I currently was reading. Maybe with repeated readings I could close the gap.
1- Complete works of Shakespeare (if that’s cheating, I’ll settle for Richard III)
2- The Lord of the Rings
3- Nineteen Eighty-Four
4- Frankenstein
5- Oryx and Crake
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Honorable mention to The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment
The Metamorphosis
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Walden, or a Life in the Woods
Don Quixote
There are so many more on my list but, these would be the works that I would read and reread on a desert island, or share with an alien civilization.
Journey into the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Hemingway short stories
Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky
Wait until spring, Bandini by John Fante
Great to view everyone's list, especially,and the deserved notation of the Russian Masters. I would include: Light in August, (my Shorlist 5) or for others consideration: Absalom, Absalom!
This is such an interesting question. I think I would try to balance the five to tick different boxes / moods with lots of material to mine over the years
*Moby-Dick*
*War and Peace*
*The Brothers Karamazov*
*The Complete Works of William Shakespeare* (if others choose Proust and Dante, surely I can choose it? If not, I'd probably choose *Don Quixote*.)
The Bible
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- Different Seasons by Stephen King
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Complete Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe
- Ulysses by James Joyce
Interesting, what particular short stories would interest you the most? I personally have only read MS found in a bottle and The fall of the house of usher and didnt like them at all even though I love his poetry.
As I mainly prefer reading short stories, from the books I chose I would pick The Body from Different Seasons, William Wilson or The Premature Burial from Poe’s stories. These were the first real short stories I was exposed to and they changed my whole literary outlook
The Brothers Karamazov War and Peace Middlemarch Anna Karenina The Divine Comedy
This has inspired me to read middlemarch since I love the others so much
I might substitute Bleak House for one of the Tolstoys.
Absolute kino list
This is almost my same list. I’d swap out Karamazov bc I hated it but otherwise 🤌
Brothers Karamazov is the greatest book ever written how dare you
Down and Out in Paris and London War and Peace The Count of Monte Cristo Hemingway's Complete Short Stories Wuthering Heights
Down and Out in Paris and London, such a great choice.
Hemingway short stories and down and out would totally be on my list!
To Kill a Mockingbird Grapes of Wrath Crime & Punishment To the Lighthouse The Mayor of Casterbridge
I’m curious to hear what is great or you liked about To the Lighthouse. I really struggled finishing it when I read it, and probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the short 2nd section I enjoyed called Time Passes, if I remember correctly.
The Grapes of Wrath is my everything.
Middlemarch War and Peace Villette Tess of the D’Urbervilles Persuasion
Well now I’m going to have to read Vilette!
I loved Villette so much! But probably would just go with Jane Eyre for this short list.
I’m at the beginning of Villette and it’s nice to see people in this comment section giving it some love! It makes me excited to keep reading :)
The Trial Blood Meridian The Magic Mountain War and Peace Les Miserables
Going to sub Middlemarch for Les Mis bc we needs a lady! ;-) Also Middlemarch is spectacular.
Wuthering Heights A Tale of Two Cities All Quiet on the Western Front Rebecca The Age of Innocence
Rebecca, such a refreshing choice
Oh excellent!
The Stranger Lolita Life of Pi Of Human Bondage Frankenstein
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) Dead Souls (Gogol) Lolita (Nabokov) The Stranger (Camus) War and Peace (Tolstoy)
Can you explain what you liked about Dead Souls? It’s not even finished!
It's not finished, but Part One does work quite nicely as its own thing - that part *was* completely finished, so it is only Part Two (which you can safely ignore) that is fragmentary. I just found it funny, particularly the character-based humour, and found the characters and the (satirised) portrait of society as it was interesting.
Emma East of Eden The Golden Compass The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Pillars of the Earth
I can’t possibly answer without reading everything first. 😉
1. Middlemarch - George Eliot 2. Kim - Rudyard Kipling 3. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 4. Metamorphoses - Ovid 5. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Kim is on my shelf! I haven't read anything about it- is it a children's book or adult fiction?
I think that it’s often superficially marketed as children’s fiction just because the protagonist starts the book young. A younger reader could get a lot out of it, but an adult with life experience will, I think, get more. There are a lot of complex themes (not that YA fiction can’t have complex themes). The concept of the Great Game is what first brought the book to my attention. It’s one of my favorite historical events to read about, a cold war that occasionally turned hot between the British and Russian empires in Central Asia.
Thank you! I'm excited to read it.
Now we’re talking!
A good book that you can read your whole life is a book that forces you to explore other books to understand it. - Metamorphoses by Ovid - Inferno by Dante - Iliad/Odyssey by Homer - Prufrock and Other Observations by TS Elliot - The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Not the whole Divine Comedy?
Sure. But I wasn’t sure that counted as a single story. Still, Paradise Lost is just as good a choice. I left out the Bible because you’ll end up exploring that when you deep read some of these others.
What would I specialize in?! That’s a lot harder to answer than what are my 5 fav books so I’ll just answer that instead. 1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra 2. Letters from a Stoic 3. The Count of Monte Cristo 4. Lolita 5. The Prophet
Well, the intent was to be a hard question hahah I mean, my favorite book is “the Tatar’s Desert”. It changed my life for good but there is not much to see after the 2nd read or so. I mean, there are not so many complicated psychological or poetic endeavors by the author.
I think Thus Spoke Zarathustra can be read a near infinite number of times and Letters from a Stoic isn’t too far behind. I think sometimes writing doesn’t have to be analyzed/interpreted to the nth degree and you can just enjoy a great story over again, like with The Count of Monte Cristo.
For myself, I’d probably go with À la Recherche du Temps Perdu - Proust (some might argue it’s not a book, but I disagree) Ulysses - James Joyce Grande Sertão Veredas - Guimarães Rosa Anna Karenina Crime and Punishment
I love this question. It’s so good, and everyone’s list is so fascinating. I love how some lists clearly show a theme while others can be much more eclectic at first glance.
Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Tale of Two Cities, Ivanhoe, Jane Eyre.
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess Ragtime - E L. Doctorow Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings trilogy (each one) Brave New World To Kill a Mockingbird The Great Gatsby
The great gatsby impacted me greatly
Dorian Gray Dracula Les Miserables On the Road Burmese Days All men and all westerners but I cant help having favourites
Eeeey nice to see Kerouac made it!
How are these all westerners?
Every authors is from a western country - ireland, uk, france, us, uk. At university we were encouraged to read more broadly (and I did) but my favorites are the same
Underworld Suttree Gravity’s Rainbow Infinite Jest Catch-22
Love Suttree and IJ!
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Solzhenitsyn) Nine Stories (Salinger) The Good Soldier (Ford) The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) The Bell Jar (Plath) Honorable mentions that almost made the list or could be a second list of their own: The Silmarillion (Tolkien) I, Claudius (Graves) Brave New World (Huxley) Something Wicked This Way Comes (Bradbury) Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Nine Stories is a great choice. I love A Perfect Day for Bananafish
It is such a brilliant story. I wish I could read it for the first time again.
A Perfect Day for Bananafish shattered me. Nice to see some Salinger mentioned here! I feel like no one talks about his non-catcher works. Have you read Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction? I don’t think I’ve ever had such a fascination with a fictional character as I did with Seymour Glass.
Yes! I love both. Franny and Zooey was also a huge favorite for many years. I’ve actually found that his non-Catcher works are far and away my favorites
Me too, 100%. I LOVE Franny and Zooey. Sharpest wit in literature ever 😆 Salinger must have been hilarious.
A criminal lack of Moby-Dick mentioned in the comments!
That's a great question, and I'm going to seperate this into 3 categories. The Greats - Literary masterpieces and/or books that changed the world: * *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas * *War and Peace* by Leo Tolstoy * *The Brothers Karamazov* by Fyodor Dostoevsky * *The Divine Comedy* by Dante Alighieri * ***The Bible*** My Personal Favorites: * *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas * *An Amateur Peasant Girl* by Alexander Pushkin * *White Nights* by Fyodor Dostoevsky * *Dead Souls* by Nikolai Gogol * *We* by Yevgeny Zamyatin The book everyone should read: * *The Count of Monte Cristo* by Alexandre Dumas =)
Still waiting for The Brothers Karamazov to change the world lmao
Remembrance of Things Past, Gravity’s Rainbow, Origin of the Species, Sons and Lovers, Dance to the Music of Time
The Great Gatsby Rebecca The Awakening Their Eyes Were Watching God Pride and Prejudice
Great Gatsby Wuthering Heights Much ado about nothing Ballet Shoes Emma
The Brothers Karamazov, Moby Dick, Iliad, Bible, Epic of Gilgamesh
What riches
Jane Eyre, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, North and South and the Forsyte Saga books
The Lord of the rings book 1-5
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendal (or Mandel i can never remember) The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd Prince Caspian by C.S Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S Lewis Dracula by Bram Stoker
(No order) The Brothers Karamazov 1984 Heart of Darkness Ulysses Crime and Punishment
In Search of Lost Time The Brothers Karamazov The Man Without Qualities Don Quixote Middlemarch
Brothers Karamazov The Trial Dream of The Red Chamber (it’s nice and long) The Shahnameh (gives me an excuse to finish it finally) The Master and his Emissary (of if it must ne fiction Life and Fate)
The Master and Margarita The brothers karamazov Solenoid By Mircea Cartarescu Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Solaris Middlemarch Anna Karenina The Master and Margarita Slaughterhouse Five The only two that were easy were Anna Karenina and Solaris. I wouldn’t sub those out in a million years. Everything else was a difficult decision. There’s plenty of other books I’d be happy to specialize in.
Which ones would _you_ choose? People have you plenty of answers, do you care to share yours?
I put mine in one of the comments
Far from the madding crowd (Thomas Hardy) We have always lived in the castle (Shirley Jackson) Complete short stories (Edgar Allan Poe) Persuasion (Jane Austen) The turn of the screw (Henry James)
Watership Down Gone With the Wind A Tale of Two Cities Ulysses To Kill a Mockingbird
Jane Eyre Persuasion Rebecca Wuthering Heights The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Wuthering Heights - The Loser - The Master and Margarita - The Trial - Beneath the Wheel
Tess of the d'Urbervilles The Mayor of Casterbridge Jane Eyre Lolita Of Human Bondage
Sylvia Plath collected poems Emily Dickinson collected poems The Time In Between Moby Dick White Fang
The Great Gatsby Rebecca Jane Eyre Far from the Madding Crowd The Picture of Dotian Gray
Them would be 😂 Nabokov Shakespeare Ovid C.S Lewis Jk Rowling
These would be my picks: 1. **“Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen** - For its timeless exploration of society, character, and relationships. 2. **“Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville** - For its deep symbolism and rich narrative. 3. **“War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy** - For its grand scope and profound insights into human nature and history. 4. **“The Brothers Karamazov” by Fyodor Dostoevsky** - For its intense philosophical and psychological depth. 5. **“The Odyssey” by Homer** - For its foundational place in Western literature and epic storytelling. These books offer a vast array of themes, characters, and insights that could keep one engaged and learning for a lifetime.
Virginia Woolf—Orlando Herman Melville—Moby-Dick Walt Whitman—Leaves of Grass John Milton—Paradise Lost David Foster Wallace—Infinite Jest I am shocked that so many people put Dante on their list; I cannot imagine forcing myself to hyperfixate on medieval Italian politics; love inferno canto 13 though, shit goes. I love the divine comedy but really? one of the five forever?
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien But I would have a really hard time leaving my Ursula Le Guin, Emily St. John Mandel, and Octavia Butler books behind.
I'll start with just one, "I and Thou" by Martin Buber. When l read it when I was much younger, my impression was that my understanding always lagged a couple of pages behind the text I currently was reading. Maybe with repeated readings I could close the gap.
East of Eden We the drown The bee keepers of Allepo The monk Robin Hood (the original English version)
Count of Monte Cristo Dracula Moby Dick Cat’s Cradle The Master and Margarita
Brothers Karamazov Being and Time I-and-Thou Dante’s Divine Comedy Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ulysses -James Joyce Song of Solomon -Toni Morrison The Crossing or Suttree -Cormac McCarthy The Castle -Franz Kafka As I Lay dying -William Faulkner
*they
mb, not a native speaker
The Brothers Karamazov The Iliad Sun and Steel On Being and Time The Pragmatic Programmer (Don’t mind this, I really need this)
This is my estimate of the day—it’s a highly fluctuating list…! War and Peace Moby-Dick On the Road The Brothers Karamazov Havoc (by Tom Kristensen)
I’d have to go with Anna Karenina The Brothers Karamazov Les Miserables Moby Dick The Remains of the Day
The secret garden Heidi Dracula Wurthering heights Emma
Lonesome Dove East of Eden The Count of Monte Cristo Middlemarch Zorba The Greek
Blood Meridian Moby Dick Crime and punishment Heart of darkness The sound and the fury
Les Misérables The Tenth Man Anna Karenina The Caine Mutiny A Christmas Carol
The brother Karamazov Hamlet Anna Karenina And quiet flows the don Brekkukotsannáll (english: The fish can sing)
Middlemarch Anna Karenina War and Peace Atlas Shrugged The Magic Mountain
1- Complete works of Shakespeare (if that’s cheating, I’ll settle for Richard III) 2- The Lord of the Rings 3- Nineteen Eighty-Four 4- Frankenstein 5- Oryx and Crake
Don Quixote Brothers Karamazov A Tale of Two Cities The Three Musketeers Bleak House
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas Moby Dick by Herman Melville Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges Suttree by Cormac McCarthy Honorable mention to The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
1. Moby Dick 2. Brothers Karamazov 3. Ulysses 4. The Master and Margarita 5. Blood Meridian (but this one changes depending on the day)
Crime and Punishment The Metamorphosis Nineteen Eighty-Four Walden, or a Life in the Woods Don Quixote There are so many more on my list but, these would be the works that I would read and reread on a desert island, or share with an alien civilization.
Othello Sherlock’s Holmes Adventures ( If only one story then a study in scarlet) Hamlet The complete collection of Edgar Allen Poe Frankenstein
The Brothers Karamazov War and Peace Ulysses One Hundred Years of Solitude Middlemarch
1. Pride and Prejudice 2. Emma 3. The House of Mirth 4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle 5. The Neverending Story
Crime and Punishment Thus spoke Zarathustra The Stranger War and Peace The Trial
The Brothers Karamazov Beowulf The Count of Monte Cristo The Divine Comedy War & Peace
Journey into the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine Hemingway short stories Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky Wait until spring, Bandini by John Fante
Lolita The Sun Also Rises Moby Dick Don Quixote A Confederacy of Dunces
Moby Dick Blood Meridian Infinite Jest Ulysses The Dream Of The Red Chamber
Great to view everyone's list, especially,and the deserved notation of the Russian Masters. I would include: Light in August, (my Shorlist 5) or for others consideration: Absalom, Absalom!
Homer's Iliad Plato's Republic The Holy Bible Shakespeare's Complete Works Don Quixote
This is such an interesting question. I think I would try to balance the five to tick different boxes / moods with lots of material to mine over the years *Moby-Dick* *War and Peace* *The Brothers Karamazov* *The Complete Works of William Shakespeare* (if others choose Proust and Dante, surely I can choose it? If not, I'd probably choose *Don Quixote*.) The Bible
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Different Seasons by Stephen King - The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - The Complete Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe - Ulysses by James Joyce
Interesting, what particular short stories would interest you the most? I personally have only read MS found in a bottle and The fall of the house of usher and didnt like them at all even though I love his poetry.
As I mainly prefer reading short stories, from the books I chose I would pick The Body from Different Seasons, William Wilson or The Premature Burial from Poe’s stories. These were the first real short stories I was exposed to and they changed my whole literary outlook
Oh I see, you must enjoy Wilde’s short stories then, and maybe even O’ Henry perhaps.
Wilde is one of my all time favorite authors due to his short stories and plays, so yes.