Classic lit

[Gravity Aided]

I've not read White Jacket but I did pick up Redburn, largely for it's descriptions of Liverpool and it's docks.

Redburn is an interesting book, also seemingly symbolic in many aspects, sort of a coming of age novel gone wrong. Haven't read that one in a donkey's years.

 

[HertzvanRental]

May I recommend the "Prey " series by John Sandford? Good yarns and a good depiction of how America "works"

 

[ufkacbln]

As an aside, do any of you find that you go through a period where you "eat books" then find that you cant really be bothered to read anything at all until something comes along to get you back again! I do!

I also have "reading books" which are books I read as fillers, and "real books" that I read because I wish to learn from them.

 

[swee'pea99]

For seafaring books, I'd recommend Eric Newby's The Last Grain Race - a wonderful evocation of a disappeared way of life - a true account of his passage on the very last commercial sailing vessel to bring produce from Australia to Britain.

Oh, and no - I never stop reading. The ladies of my book club would never forgive me.

 

[Hill Wimp]

Eric Newbys books are great.

A short walk down the Hindu Kush and A small place in Italy are my favourites.

Talking of travel Lit, William Dalrymple's books about India are excellent.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Yet another update:

I want to read some more Dickens:

David Copperfield - Not yet but bought my copy
Our Mutual Friend, in which Dickens makes up for his antisemitism in Oliver Twist

Then I'll get around to reading some foreign stuff:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
French classic #5

Anna Karinina by Leo Tolstoy
Something by Ffyodor Dostoevsky
Russian classic #3
Russian classic #4
Russian classic #5

Moby Dick by Herman Melville
On the Road by Jack Kerouac - READING, different to what I was expecting
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - READ, struck that everyone interviewed had a colourful turn of phrase
The Sea Wolf by Jack London - READ, London knows his bow sprits from his futtocks

Ullyses by James Joyce
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

And I still want to read some more British classics

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Shirley by Charlotte Brontë - last of the industrial novels that I want to read
Silas Marner by George Elliot - READ, written at a time when lone men who liked children were not suspected of being paedophiles
The Whirlpool by George Gissing - READ, not as good as New Grub Street, The Odd Women or The Nether World
The Monk by Matthew Lewis - READ, like a Ken Russell script
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe - READ, odd that Mr Crusoe thinks God is punishing him for disobeying his father rather than slave trading
Heat and Dust by Evelyn Waugh - READ, like the Spinal Tap LP, Smell the Glove. Makes you think how much more black it could be.

 

[AndyRM]

A few of my favourites:

Blindness - Jose Saramago
Morvern Callar - Alan Warner
A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil - Christopher Brookmyre
The Respectful Prostitute - Sartre
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Medea - Euripedes

 

[Fnaar]

Read Gatsby - he was mixed-race passing for white.

Intersting theory... have read a bit about this... I'm not convinced, but open to the idea

 

[swee'pea99]

Wuthering Heights at the moment. Blimey. Full on or what?

 

[AndyRM]

Intersting theory... have read a bit about this... I'm not convinced, but open to the idea

There are a lot of references in the book which suggest Gatsby was black.

I've read it a few times and like you am not particularly convinced, but it's interesting how it reads when you consider the possibility.

 

[smutchin]

French classic #5

Try some Balzac - big influence on Flaubert and Dickens.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac - READING, different to what I was expecting
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote - READ, struck that everyone interviewed had a colourful turn of phrase

I like Capote's line about Kerouac: "That's not writing, it's typing."

Silas Marner by George Elliot - READ, written at a time when lone men who liked children were not suspected of being paedophiles

Have you read Middlemarch? If not, you should. You'd love it.
[EDIT: just looking back through the thread, I see we've already discussed Middlemarch]

Heat and Dust by Evelyn Waugh - READ, like the Spinal Tap LP, Smell the Glove. Makes you think how much more black it could be.

I presume you mean A Handful Of Dust. I found that a deeply troubling book - very funny but at the same time bleak and depressing.

 

[Fnaar]

Try some Balzac

The Vicar was complaining of that after Miss Goodbody's ^come as a literary hero " soiree.

 

[Gravity Aided]

Try some Balzac - big influence on Flaubert and Dickens.

Droll Stories-Bound to be a hit with Ms. Goodbody and the Vicar

 

[smutchin]

@Yellow Fang If you fancy some 20th century classics, try Patrick Hamilton, the natural successor to George Gissing - in particular The Slaves Of Solitude, Hangover Square and Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky.

And in a similar vein, Of Love And Hunger by Julian Maclaren-Ross - the woeful tale of a wannabe writer scraping a living as a vacuum cleaner salesman in 1930s Brighton. Quite brilliant.

 

[MiK1138]

i have just read Of Mice and Men,(dont know how i managed to miss it at school) what a very moving wee book, the end was a total shock