Great Books, which are yours?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

So many of my favourites have already been mentioned…you people have impeccable tastes. :slight_smile:

Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy.

Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

Most of W. Somerset Maugham’s material, but especially his short stories.

Everything that Robertson Davies ever wrote.

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire (made up of six novels).

Albert Camus’ The Plague

Jane Austen’s novels

And so on, and so forth…

Some drink at the fountain of knowledge…others just gargle.

42

Books, what a great topic! Of course I love all of The Straight Dope books, the best combination of knowledge and entertainment. Others that I enjoy are: American Tabloid - James Ellroy (really any of his novels are great); Get Shorty and other books by Elmore Leonard; Tourist Season - Carl Hiaisson; The Sun Also Rises; and The Great Gatsby. As you can see I read mostly fiction, escapist stuff.

43

Maybe so, but fiction can inspire people, make them think, change their lives or opinions, etc., also.

Some of mine:
Dawn Song by Sharon Green
The Silver Sun and The Sable Moon by Nancy Springer
Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Place novels
Robert Fulghum
Ovid
I had another specific book in mind when I clicked reply, but I cannot remember what it was. Gotta stop posting at 3 in the morning, I guess.
The God Game by Andrew Greeley

Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.

“We are here! You are saved!” --R. & F.

44

I don’t read Non-Fiction.

-PIGEONMAN-
Returning Soon!

The Legend Of PigeonMan - Watch this space…! Great things are afoot!

45

It shows. :wink:

46

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself! :slight_smile:

No slam intended.

Yours,

Ken

47

:stuck_out_tongue:

48

ok.
Robertson Davies is indeed swell (my guilty bubble-gum reading), as is Oliver Sacks (sorry, non-fiction, cringe).
I really like Umberto Eco’s novels, too.
I just read “Cryptonomicon” by Neil Stephenson, and it was great. Snowcrash was very good, too. It’s the closest I can bear to sci-fi/fantasy lately.
Someone will make razzberry sounds at this, but I do honestly like Joyce’s Ulysses (in addition to abovementioned “Dubliners”). Once you realize what he’s trying to do with the writing style, it’s a hilarious book.
Otherwise I haven’t been able to read much fiction recently.
Ooh, ooh, I also found"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and related works-- intellegently done cold-war era spy stuff.

49

I will give five must reads:

  1. For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
  2. A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)
  3. Something Happened(Heller - enough have said Catch-22 already that I can give it a miss - also, this is in many ways a better book and much more underrated)
  4. The Restaraunt at the End of the Universe (Adams)
  5. The Man Who was Thursday (Chesterton - when an atheist recommends a book with such deep religious themes you should take notice!)
50

Since the OP keeps begging us to talk about non-fiction, I will oblige.

In the department of Great Object Lessons:
Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle
Both magisterial books by 19th century geniuses, working at the height of their respective powers, laboring mightily to bring forth…well, what I can charitably describe as fundamentally flawed views of the world and its potentials. Still, they’re both still in my library, when much of my other college course-work has been culled long since.

But I think the OP meant books that influenced one along their lines of argument, and not the reverse, so let me add:
Paterson, a uniquely (and wonderfully) American epic poem by William Carlos Williams
Roughing It by Mark Twain; I’m one of the contrarians who prefers Twain’s memoirs and other nonfiction to his (excellent though they are) novels
Parliament of Whores, the best single book by P.J. O’Rourke, the writer who taught me (among millions of others) that one can be politically conservative without becoming William Buckley, Jr.
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, simply indispensible reading for anyone who is an American or wants to understand us. It’s interesting (and a bit disconcerting) to think that we’ve changed so little in the past 175 years.
Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman, the closest thing to a perfect “life” that I’ve ever read
The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, the original and still unchallenged masterpiece of bile and cynicism
I can’t quite decide between Paul Johnson’s Modern Times and his The Birth of the Modern, two very different books about very different periods of history unified only by his all-encompassing eye.
And I think I’d have to list all of the Simon Schama books I’ve read as well, not just Citizens and Landscape and Memory, but the gemlike Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations.
Last but not least, Raymomd Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder,” a blueprint for a kind of fiction and a kind of man.

Actually, I’m glad to limit this to non-fiction for the moment; compiling my fiction list would take even longer than this has (most of this evening) and probably be a longer list, too.

This has been a great exercise in moving the mental furniture around to see which sofa or grandfather clock is really central – thanks, Phaedrus, for suggesting it.

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!

51

Yes, salinq, I think I do. It would have to do with the young mother from the trailer park, right?

Sharyn McCrumb is wonderful, and I recommend her to everyone I can, but her Ballad Series are very sad books. Not “downers” at all, she’s too good a writer for that – just sad.

Catrandom

52

Damn, damn, damn. Sorry, all.

Catrandom

53

As for non-fiction, I prefer history, so here are a few recommendations:

John Keegan: A History of Warfare and The Face of Battle. Also The Mask of Command, The Price of Admiralty, Six Armies in Normandy, The Second World War, and The First World War for people who can’t get enough military history.

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel.

Barbara Tuchman: A Distant Mirror, The Proud Tower. I would recommend The Guns of August but I prefer the analysis of the beginnings of the First World War in Keegan and in

Donald Kagan: On the Origins of War.

Paul Johnson: A History of the American People, A History of the Jews, Modern Times.

Robert Hughes: Barcelona, The Fatal Shore.

Hugh Thomas: The Slave Trade, The Spanish Civil War.

David McCullough: The Path Between the Seas.

William Manchester: American Caesar.

Books I liked but that I don’t remember the authors of because I don’t have them: Plagues and Peoples, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, The Promised Land, Peter the Great.

Historical novels I liked: Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain; MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; Gore Vidal, Lincoln; Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius the God; John dos Passos, the U.S.A. trilogy.

For interesting what-if history, try Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History.

54

Thanks for the list, Lawrence. I’ve read and enjoyed) about half of the books you mention (besides the ones I listed myself, Tuchman and Hughes), so I think our tastes are in sync. So now I’ll have to look up the rest of your list…

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!