>Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, and Waverley have 97k, 10k, and 6k ratings; writings inspired several operas)
>Anthony Trollope (Barsetshire Chronicles; Barchester Towers has 17k ratings and The Warden has 18k)
>Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons, 97k ratings)
>August Strindberg (Swedish misogynistic playwright; only Miss Julie has over 10k ratings)
>Maxim Gorky (Soviet author; only Mother has over 10k ratings)

>>24557402 (OP)
Looks like John Thorn, MLB historian

>>24557402 (OP)
Plenty of Italian, Hispanic, and Slavic authors.

>>24557402 (OP)
should I give up 4chan /Lit for good reads? how's the psueds? AFAB's? less incels? I've never been

>>24557402 (OP)
Turgenev and Gorky are both pretty good, checks out

>>24557486
Interestingly I first really got to know Gorky from perusing Douban, the Chinese version of Goodreads and IMDB all rolled into one

Seems alright but I'd have to give it a read

It was also not only originally in Russian, but also Soviet AND non-dissident (a la Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak)

>>24557402 (OP)
Writers “considered good” change over time. Scott especially has fallen off entirely. Old “best of” lists from the 40s to about 80s will have Ivanhoe on it, but not other parts of the series really. Then he disappears.
Turgenev is still on lists, Gorky is not. This is just the way the wheel works. Most things are lost in the sands of time.

>>24557518
A lot of "great classic literature" has incredibly low rankings on Goodreads

I also notice much literature often part of school curricula like R&J and Gatsby tend to get worse reviews

Some non-review-bombed literature, for contrast:
>Pride and Prejudice - 4.29
>Les Mis - 4.21
>1984 - 4.20
>War and Peace - 4.17
>100 Years of Solitude - 4.12
>Hamlet - 4.02
>Dead Souls - 3.98
>Iliad - 3.92
>Wuthering Heights - 3.90
>Frankenstein - 3.89
>20000 Leagues - 3.88
>Treasure Island - 3.85
>Huck Finn - 3.83
>Catcher in the Rye - 3.80

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is 3.68; Moll Flanders by the same author is 3.51

The poems Rape of Lucrece by Shakespeare and Rape of the Lock by Pope are 3.56 and 3.54 respectively, probably since they've got "rape" in their titles

Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and House of 7 Gables are 3.44 and 3.45 respectively (Waverley by Scott is 3.44 too)

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is 3.43 (Nigger of the Narcissus is 3.66 despite having nigger in its title)

The Civil War novel Red Badge of Courage is well-reviewed... poorly, at 108k and 3.30

(Mein Kampf is 3.17 for reference)

The famous Spanish picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes is 3.09 and has only 3k ratings

Pamela by Samuel Richardson (often considered the first novel, though Tale of Genji from the 1000s is another contender) is only 2.76

>>24557402 (OP)
>>24557486
>>24557502
>>24557518
Gorky seems more influential than good. Mother is by far his most popular work and even he admitted it isn't very good.

>>24557695
I agree with him, “Mother” was not good. As usual, popularity is the inverse of quality. His best works are all short stories; my favorite is “Creatures that once were men”

>>24557572
I’ve heard the claim that the Tale of Genji is the oldest novel and I have to take issue with that. It depends entirely on how you define it.
Ancient Greece had novels from the 1st century, five of them survive, along with fragments of a dozen more and parts of at least twenty romance novels.

Ancient Egyptians had several long “Tale of...” narratives that were at the very least novellas, and some of those are older than the first millennium BC.

>>24557572
You can check the tags, assigned literature will sometimes have School or something similar, and be flooded with low ratings, like Scarlet Letter.
Or glance at a few top reviews:
>I read this for class...
Opinion dismissed!

>>24557402 (OP)
>Swedish misogynistic playwright
Go away.

>>24557707
Hence what I said about school required reading.