American Books You've Liked

Cafe Society
1

Someone mentioned in another thread that To Kill a Mockingbird is a Great American Novel. I’ll go along that’s it’s one of them. Here’re a few more I’d add

Housekeeping, by Marilyn Robinson
Anything by Mark Twain
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Their Eyes were Watching G-d
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
The Grapes of Wrath, by Steinbeck
The Tattooed Potato (YA fiction, but great anyway), by Ellen Raskin
Franny & Zooey, by JD Salinger
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
Washington Square, by Henry James
The Bostonians, by Henry James
The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Shoeless Joe, by Phil Alden Robinson
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

What others would you suggest?

2

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

3

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

My Antonia by Willa Cather

4

Nitpick: The Invisible Man is by H.G. Wells. Invisible Man is by Ralph Ellison.

Off the top of my head, I’d add something by John Irving, maybe A Prayer For Owen Meany.

5

Harry Crews: A Feast of Snakes; The Gypsy’s Curse.

2 of my all time faves.

6

Canadian.

7

I’m a fan of Richard Condon, particularly

The Oldest Confession
The Manchurian Candidate
Mile High
The Vertical Smile

———

A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

8

American hardboiled novels I liked:
Serenade by James M Cain

Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Fast One by Paul Cain

9

Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
Collected Stories, Paul Bowles
Factotum, Charles Bukowski.

OP: My hat’s off to you if you made it through Henry James novels.

10

Mark Twain goes without saying…

How about:

Moby-Dick
Gravity’s Rainbow
Pale Fire

11

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

12

American Tabloid by James Ellroy.

13

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy.

14

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Correction Shoeless Joe was by W.P. Kinsella. Robinson directed the mivie

15

Infinite Jest…df wallace

16

Principia Discordia is the only great American book I need.

17

Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin

A Gentleman In Moscow, Amor Towles (this is an excellent book to read at this moment, by the way – the story of a Russian aristocrat who is on permanent house arrest in a fancy hotel in Moscow, and how he makes the best of it, a very gentle, witty, but pointed book).

Willa Cather and Marilyn Robinson already mentioned, two of my very favorite novelists.

Eudora Welty: the Golden Apples, the Robber Bridegroom

Flannery O’Connor: short stories

18

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a better book than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in my opinion.

I’d also argue that The House of the Seven Gables by Hawthorne is better than the much better known The Scarlet Letter.

John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is absolutely amazing.

19

Canadian* is* American

20

How are you defining “American”?