10. The Sound and the Fury Wm Faulkner

Man, was this a great, great book. I'm not even sure how to describe it. First of all, it's damned difficult. My beloved Moby-Dick is also a difficult book: it's long, it's about a lot of things, and the things its about are heavy. But The Sound and the Fury is difficult in a different way. The story is told in such a bizarre fashion that you almost have to read it twice. And there's almost no way I could have read the story in isolation, outside of the class I took; without that I would have needed a guide of some kind. The first section is told by...well, maybe I shouldn't tell you...the joy in this book is puzzling out of the narrative. I'm sure you think this is a cop-out, but I could write a review ten times as long as the book and still not do it's majesty justice.

9. As I Lay Dying Wm Faulkner

The craziest, saddest story you ever heard about a family's journey to bury their mother in her home town; it's told in small vignettes, each from a different family member, including the dead mother.

8. Go Down, Moses by Wm Faulkner

Five stories, one of them the famous longer story "The Bear," arranged out of order. The five stories tell the long tale of the McCaslin family. It's Faulkner, so you know what you are going to get before you start: partial narrative, a very limited point of view, lots of history mixed up with family secrets, race, racism, the Old South and the New South, and sex.