What book would you consider the "lowest common denominator" or "mode average" for a great book?
I don't mean the best book, or the book that would win a vote of the best book, but the book that the most people would say "that is a great book" regardless of if it's in their personal top 10?
A crowd pleaser with as few haters as possible.

fight club. someone will say moby-dick but it has scads of haters on goodreads.

>>24550231 (OP)
>A crowd pleaser with as few haters as possible.
Hard to say, I've seen dedicated haters for everyone from Homer, through Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Melville, James, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Kafka, Mann to McCarthy. I myself am a Blake And Tolstoy hater.
I think Proust gets the least amount of heat. Haven't seen any anti-Milton posts either, except for people like Pound (or was it Eliot?) complaining that his English is too latinate.

>>24550231 (OP)
Oh the places you'll go

Kafka The Metamorphosis? It’s short and never seen any hate on it

>>24550231 (OP)
I've never read it, but maybe The Alchemist? It seems like the book of average Joes. Men and women equally like it, it appears to be non-controversial, it seems to appeal to the self help crowd so it must have some normie pearls of wisdom, you see more people call it life changing than anything else. Seems pretty thin. A light read. Not too intimidating.

>>24550416
OP said “great books”. Is he looking for classics or just any book?

>>24550466
Op is looking for music recommendations.

>>24550231 (OP)

>>24550466
OP didnt ask for classics, he asked for "lowest common denominator." That pretty much rules out any book written above a fifth grade reading level, and almost all classics.

>>24550492
Well either Green Eggs and Ham or The Bible.

>>24550492
>What book would you consider the "lowest common denominator" or "mode average" for a great book?
Do people really think The Alchemist is great? If so, then that

>>24550404
that's a gpod answer, though i have seen ome person hate on it.

>>24550231 (OP)
Gulliver's Travels probably. Followed by the 1001 Nights

>>24550231 (OP)
How about Hamlet? It still fills theaters 400 years later.

>>24550249
Milton and Blake hater here, nice to meet you.

>>24550613
I dont consider richard dawkins a human though

>>24550231 (OP)
The Hobbit

>>24550231 (OP)
Robinson Crusoe
1001 Nights
KJV Bible
Gulliver's Travels

It is one of these books. Any of these books could be read by a 10 yr old.

The Death of Socrates by Plato.

>>24550249
>>24550840
I understand hating Milton and Tolstoy, but Blake is pure kino

>>24550231 (OP)
The Stranger. It's a fine novel and some of the scenes really stay with you, but there's a reason why it's "baby's first real novel".

>>24550231 (OP)
Animal farm. You can read it in an afternoon
>>24552355
Good suggestion

Pride and Prejudice has very few good faith haters who hate it for what we might call sound literary reasons rather than knee jerk misogyny
>inb4 hurr durr misogyny is a sound literary reason

>>24550231 (OP)

Yes
YES

>>24552763
How do you read Pride and Prejudice as misogynistic?

>>24553528
Mr Bennet is very dismissive of Mrs Bennet being worried for her daughters’ future. Lizzie Bennet is very nlog

>>24553622
>Mr Bennet is very dismissive of Mrs Bennet being worried for her daughters’ future.
Depicting is condoning?
>Lizzie Bennet is very nlog
Very what?

>>24550231 (OP)
Crime and Punishment? I could imagine a normie reading it and getting totally filtered by the more complex psychological and religious elements, and still managing to enjoy it as a thriller.

"Dude, I read Crime and Punishment, it's like the Death Note of novels, you've got to check it out."
this may or may not have been my reaction when I first read it lel

>>24550404
Antisemitism

Of Mice and Men

>>24553973
wimmen hate dosto

>>24550231 (OP)
Do people have to have actually read it or does it count if they just recognize the name? If the former I'm guessing The Hobbit or The Little Prince. If it's the latter, probably something by Dostoyevsky. The Bible and anything that's typically on school reading lists will have too many haters, and anything that's long or difficult won't have enough readers.

>>24550840
Kek

Blake is mostly dreadful and it’s time we talked about it. Every defence of him resorts to special pleading that no you can’t judge him by the same standards as any other poet because he’s a special case.
I like some of his shorter lyrics, but he has a lower hit rate than any ‘major’ English poet

>>24550613
dude couldn't get a book you have to analyze in high school

>>24553973
yeah some parts are def death note pilled

>>24555513
t. Urizen

>>24550231 (OP)
war themed books like iliad idk