WoP's Recommended Reading List

FluteOfTheNewWorld · Post by **FluteOfTheNewWorld** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:23 pm

I'm making a list of great books I need to read.. just wanted input from you guys because I know there are some great books out there that can be added...

Currently Reading: Animal Farm

Next:
1984
Fanney and Zoey
Slaughterhouse 5

I've also read a lot of other common books but if you guys could add to it anything you think I'd enjoy let me know!

mkosbie · Post by **mkosbie** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:02 pm

This list could go on for days. Seriously. If you really want to read great works, I would reccomend branching out from just "great books". You have to realize, the novel has only existed as a literary genre for maybe 200 years (maybe). There was a LOT of great writing going on before that. Works from the non-novel that I would recommend you read include:

The Novelesque (That is, those which have similar length and composition)
- Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales
- Dante Alighieri - The Inferno from The Divine Comedy (The Purgatorio is alright too. The Paradiso is WAY too abstract)
- John Milton - Paradise Lost (Paradise Regained isn't worth it)
- Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels
- Beowulf (Uncredited author)

Other Prose
- John Donne's Sonnets
= "Batter My Heart Three-Personed G-d"
= "The Flea"
= Others
- Lady Mary Wroth's Sonnets
- Alexander Pope - The Rape of the Lock (absurdly funny)
- Michel De Montaigne - "Of Cannibals" (this one is short, and really interesting)

FluteOfTheNewWorld · Post by **FluteOfTheNewWorld** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 9:04 pm

Maybe we could just make this a list for people who are curious... not just one person.

Hostrauser · Post by **Hostrauser** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 10:38 pm

Have you visited my book review site?

My current "bookcase"; you can't go wrong with any of the five or four star books.

BOOKS I'VE READ, 2004 - present:

FIVE STARS (Best Books Ever)
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)

FOUR STARS (Great Books)
The Plague (Albert Camus)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
Autumn of the Patriarch (Gabriel García Márquez)
Island (Aldous Huxley)
Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (Stephen King)
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
Wicked (Gregory Maguire)
Shalimar the Clown (Salman Rushdie)
Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)
Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Absurdistan (Gary Shteyngart)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carré)
Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut)

THREE STARS (Good Books)
Last Chance to See (Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine)
The Moon is Down (John Steinbeck)
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (Steven Sherrill)
Naked (David Sedaris)
The Sex Lives of Cannibals (J. Maarten Troost)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
Children of God (Mary Doria Russell)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
America (The Book) (Jon Stewart)
How to Breathe Underwater (Julie Orringer)
Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (Stephen King)
The Gun Seller (Hugh Laurie)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel García Márquez)
Life With Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
Appointment in Samarra (John O'Hara)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris)
Of Love and Other Demons (Gabriel García Márquez)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
Son of a Witch (Gregory Maguire)
Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)
Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie)
Ragtime (E.L. Doctorow)
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Grant Naylor)
Wizards (various)

TWO STARS (Fair Books)
God-Shaped Hole (Tiffanie DeBartolo)
Freaky Deaky (Elmore Leonard)
Prey (Michael Crichton)
Be Cool (Elmore Leonard)
Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut)
On Liberty (John Stuart Mill)
Napalm and Silly-Putty (George Carlin)
Airframe (Michael Crichton)
Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (Stephen King)
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)
Thread of Grace (Mary Doria Russell)
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (Peter Matthiessen)
Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way (Bruce Campbell)
Cell (Stephen King)
Operation Shylock (Philip Roth)

ONE STAR (Don't Bother)
Seduced by Moonlight (Laurell K. Hamilton)
The Power and The Glory (Graham Greene)
A House for Mr. Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)
Under the Glacier (Halldor Laxness)
American Pastoral (Philip Roth)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)

The Aceman · Post by **The Aceman** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:25 am

I could also post a long long list. Maybe Later. For now though, a recent book I've read that is really good is "Stardust." It's the book the movie was based on. Hostrauser, I'd recommend that you read it as well, would like to see your review on it.

Hostrauser · Post by **Hostrauser** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:32 am

The Aceman wrote:I could also post a long long list. Maybe Later. For now though, a recent book I've read that is really good is "Stardust." It's the book the movie was based on. Hostrauser, I'd recommend that you read it as well, would like to see your review on it.

Who wrote it?

The Aceman · Post by **The Aceman** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:57 pm

Neil Gaiman

Gonzofoto · Post by **Gonzofoto** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 10:56 pm

The Aceman wrote:I could also post a long long list. Maybe Later. For now though, a recent book I've read that is really good is "Stardust." It's the book the movie was based on. Hostrauser, I'd recommend that you read it as well, would like to see your review on it.

I’m happy to read that someone else enjoyed “Stardust”, by Neil Gaiman (writer) and Charles Vess (illustrator). There seems to be a strong trend in Hollywood of adapting fantasy works into films, especially in recent years. If I were to speculate as to the appeal of this genre, I would suggest that this would be due to the strong pull of mythology and escapism and they way in which we are almost hard-wired to receive narratives of moral clarity and self-discovery. After all, in most fantasies, the good and the bad are portrayed in clear-cut manner, and if we throw in fantastic creatures, wise old men and women, epic battles and reluctant heroes who assume the mantle of responsibility as they confront the challenges that await them (read The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell), we have the makings of coming-of-age narratives, but ones in which the dynamics of sex are sublimated so as to render them less threatening. And if you doubt the presence of sexual tension, why the emphasis on swords, wands emitting bolts of "energy", staffs, rings, amulets, caves, armor, towers, enclosed women in distress, etc?

Stardust is a wonderful work which I recall was published in the late 1990s, coming after Gaiman had concluded his outstanding Sandman series for DC comics. The Sandman series served as an omnibus in which all manner of genres (horror, comedy, fantasy, crime fiction, etc) were explored and incorporated into an overall structure which achieved a satisfying whole. Who can forget Morpheus the ruler of Dream, or his sister Death?

Stardust was a much shorter work which captures much that is familiar, as evident in the retelling of the time-worn story of a boy who becomes a man. Tristan, the misfit who doesn’t quite fit in and is trying to win his true love, is probably too earnest for his own good, but if he weren’t, would we find him so appealing? We also have the obligatory aging witches, the rite of succession in a foreign kingdom, mythical creatures (like the unicorn), and a story which takes the form of a journey. What always struck me was how Tristan seems to so readily accept the fantastic nature of the world he enters once he crosses the wall, as if he were ready to accept it. One can't deny that it is more exciting than life in the humdrum village he has left behind, a life of yearnings which he can't satisfy. But then again, what we are dealing with is a story of interior development, and as in dreams, neither he nor we question the fact that everything ultimately has meaning and follows its hidden logic and will be worked out. The film introduced several changes, notably in the persona of the ship captain played by Robert De Niro, but I actually enjoyed these changes and felt that they underscored this quest for the discovery and understanding of one’s true nature.

Other fantasy works I have enjoyed are “The Wizard of Earthsea” trilogy by Ursula K. Leguin, “Mythago Wood” and “Lavondyss” by Robert Holdstock, and “Neverwhere“ by Gaiman, among many others. And one of these days hopefully we can talk about Science-Fiction, my favorite genre by far!

RCC Mallet Boy · Post by **RCC Mallet Boy** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 12:10 am

The Stranger - Albert Camus
A Light In August - William Faulkner
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett (I know it's play, but it's still awesome)

The Aceman · Post by **The Aceman** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:12 am

RCC Mallet Boy wrote:The Stranger - Albert Camus
A Light In August - William Faulkner
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Waiting For Godot - Samuel Beckett (I know it's play, but it's still awesome)

Any relation to Mark Mendoza?

Ex Nihilo · Post by **Ex Nihilo** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 9:36 am

A Clockwork Orange

that's all you need.

World of Pageantry

WoP's Recommended Reading List

WoP's Recommended Reading List

Fantasy novels