Duke- Bartleby the Scrivener? I thought that story was boring! I agree that it was concise and slightly interesting…Slightly.
Milne also wrote a mystery novel titled The Red House Mystery that was, unfortunately, very weak. Raymond Chandler reviewed it in much, much less than glowing terms. Basically he said that Milne should literarily reside with “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger too.”
I have a copy and I think it can be safely said that crime fiction was not Milne’s genre.
Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. This is, IMO, his best work. It’s not really even a novel. It’s just a story of what happened when he said “F it!”, rented a trailer, and took off around the US with his dog Charley. He travels from the east coast to the west coast and back again, picking up hitchikers, having tea with migrant workers, getting drunk with friends.
I love it because it’s exactly what I want to do. Just take time off and go scooting across the country.
Kipling’sThe Complete Stalky and Company.
I read it when I was about 7 & it became the manual for my misspent youth.
I’m currently doing deep excavation on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The more I dig into it, the more I’m astonished it’s regarded as one of the “forgotten and obscure” plays. It’s truly remarkable.
And I don’t know if Isaac Asimov qualifies as a classic author, but I’ve always thought The Gods Themselves was one of his overlooked gems.
White Jacket by Herman Melville.
Great book!
The protagonist, like Ishmael is alienated from the crew. This is symbolically represented by his white jacket.
Yeah, Tattva ! Mark me down as another fan of the book and movie versions of *Persuasion * I don’t know if you rented the video or not, but the picture on the video box shows two really attractive people who weren’t in the film at all getting all hot and heavy. Cracked me up.
I haven’t read City of Illusions . I’m a LeGuin fan, so I’ll have to pick it up. My little-known favorite by her is Always Coming Home.
My favorite Dickens is The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It kills me that he never finished it, though. You’re left in such suspense!
“The Clergyman’s Daughter” by George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell. Taught me a few things about homeless people and that expensive resteraunts are not what they seem.
I would prefer not to.
Farmer Giles of Ham by JRR Tolkien
I wouldn’t think **Cannery Row ** can be considered a lesser known work by Steinbeck, I’ve always thought it was one of his better known books. If you are a Steinbeck fan and you have never read Steinbeck’s Log from the Sea of Cortez you may want to pick up a copy.
In 1940 Steinbeck and his biologist friend Ed Ricketts (the real life “Doc” of Cannery Row) made an expedition into the Sea of Cortez to collect marine specimens. The introduction is about his good friend Ricketts and will make you appreciate even more the character in Cannery Row .
Actually, it’s a little more compolicated than that.
The second Musketeers novel is Twenty Years After.
The third book is The Vicomte of Bragelonne; or Ten Years Later. It is usually cut into three volumes:
1. The Vicomte of Bragelonne
2. Louise de Valliere
3. The Man in the Iron Mask
I read them all a couple of years ago.
Burmese Days by George Orwell
Full of observations about class structure, fatalism, romance, and the struggle to do the right thing. Plus very informative about life in former British colonies, life on the Indian subcontinent. Burma is on the Indian subcontinent, isn’t it?
The Princess Casamassima.
An early Henry James’ novel that reads more like something by George Eliot or Dickens in his later years. I just love the little Cockney hero, Hyacinth Robinson.
And one more vote for Persuasion; I admit, this book lingered near the lower end of my Austen list for years, `til I saw the wonderful movie version and gave it a second chance.
Burundi, the box for my videotape of Persuasion does have Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, the actual stars of the movie, kissing on the cover–but where that kiss occurs in the movie on a busy street in downtown Bath, here the couple is magically cut-and-pasted into a more romantic setting with a rose-covered trellis overhead and what appears to be the Royal Crescent in the distant background.
The Maine Woods by Henry Thoreau.
I love Walden, but I think that The Maine Woods is much more mature and down-to-earth. Not as starry-eyed dreamery.
Did you know that this has been filmed? It’s on of the three segments of the 1968 film Spirits of the Dead (Tre passi nel delirio), and the version of Don’t Bet the Devil s entitled “Toby Dammit”, starring Terence Stamp:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0063715#comment
Poe wrote a lot of good, underapreciated stuff – see The Science Fction of Edgar Allen Poe or The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allen Poe. Mark Twain wrote a lot of underappreciated stuff, too.
I have to suggest John Steinbeck’s book of King Arthur stories, the title of whichI cannot recall. Yes, that John Steinbeck. Damned good book, too.
I’m gleefully working through a book of victorian fairy tales. “The Magic Fish-Bone” by Charles Dickens was quite a surprise, and very funny.
And I’ll second “Smith of Wootton Major.” Lovely, lovely story.