Well dammit Kat! Umm, half of the things she said, plus:
A Clockwork Orange-Burgess
Equus-Shaffer
Farenheit 451-Bradbury
Everything by Yukio Mishima
Everything by Camus
Lots of Heinlein
Of Mice and Men-Steinbeck
Brace New World-Huxley
Cather in the Rye-Salinger
Tried a few times to read Atlas Shrugged(Ayn Rand) in high school and later, but couldn’t do it till last year, when I *devoured[/] it.
And my all time favorite(still is):
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Mr. Robert M. Pirsig. This is the best book of all time IMHO.
(btw, there is someone who posts on GD all the time named Phaedrus, if you’re out there, is this where you got your name or Plato?No e-mail listed)
“I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.”
Damn! Note to self: review msg before posting. Yeah, I loved Cather in the Rye and Brace New World! Duh! It’s that damn three finger typing class I took.
I don’t think there is enough room here for me to list them all.
Firstly; the Jerry Todd books. Bound in red covers, they were adventure books for grade schoolers, are now out of print and available only at high prices from collectors. I loved them, but they were old when I came across them in something like 3rd or 4th grade.
Tom Swift
Boys Life
National Geographic
Life
Look
All books by Heinlein (Science fiction writer)
All books by A. Clark (Science fiction writer)
Tom Sawyer
House of the 7 Gables
The fall of the House of Usher
The Haunting of Hill House
Huckleberry Finn
A tale of 2 cities
The Prince and the Pauper
The Three Musketeers
The Man in the Iron Mask
Oliver Twist
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Tell Tale Heart
The Red Badge of Courage
Blackbeard
To Kill a Mockingbird
Good Morning Miss Dove
To Sir With Love
Up the Down Staircase
Mrs. 'Arris goes to Paris
Madeline
Curious George – (I wanted, after the first few issues, to stomp that damnable monkey into the pavement.)
Fahrenheit 451
1984
The tattooed Man
The Past Through Tomorrow
Farnums Freehold
Davie Crockett
Daniel Boon
And many, many more. I was, and still am, an avid reader. I’ve thinned out my pile of books but still have about 2,000. I loved to read the hard bound Readers Digest Condensed Books.
Thieves World series
Incarnations of Immortality series
Bloodletters, and a whole shitload of other books about serial killers, murderers- was into Jack the Ripper.
Stuff about WW2, especially the Holocaust, spies and the resistance.
Never liked ANYTHING that was required reading, always too juvenile.
I’ll be there
Where I’ll teach what I’ve been taught
And I’ve been taught…
I went through “subject” phases, basically consuming the library by decimal.
Humor (Everything from 1001 Jokes about to Lewis Grizzard)
Holocaust ( I know way too much about this)
American Playwrights (sp?) (T. Williams, Wilder, Sam Shephard mostly)
Wicca
“Utopia” Lit (Walden 2, Brave New World, 1984, you know the drill.)
I have to also confess that I went through the biography of dead/ drug addicted rockstar phase, as well.
I had both the Morrison poetry books, No One Here Gets out Alive, the Danny Sugerman book, John Densmore’s take on J.M., a couple of picture books, probably more. Enough to make me ALMOST grateful that my mom threw out my whole library when I moved away.
the first book I ever read that I considered an “adult” book (and this doesnt include judy bloom) was in the 7th grade and I was enraptured by it… it was called “Mrs. Mike” I havent herd much of it since… but its content shaped my life and emotions at such a young age. I even stole the copy that was given to me to read and I think it may even be in my parents basement to this day. It was a defining moment from childhood to adulthood. Has anyone ever heard of it before? I wouldnt mind re-reading it.
“Boy, wouldja get a load of the cloaca on that one”? -Cecil Adams, october 8 1999
Geez, all you literary lovers, I read a lot of those books cause I had to, but I don’t remember actually loving any of them. I suppose Huck Finn was my favorite of the required reading books. That, and The Crucible, which was an awesome play.
Aside from the literary stuff, I loved Gone with the Wind, Thorn Birds, Emmeline by Judith Rossner, and various “off limits” books that I stole from my mother’s boxes of paperbacks.
BTW, Kat, you actually loved “Last of the Mohicans”? Wow. I read that a couple years ago b/c I liked the movie, and I had a hard time reading it as an adult. Cooper’s style of writing is just so obscure, IMO… The plot was interesting, though, if you could figure out what he was saying.