The ClassicsFollow

I'm a big Steinbeck fan too, Tricky. That's a great one.

I started reading "Great expectations" and found boring as watching paint dry. Maybe a bit more boring, even. It's like Zola/Stendhal/Flaubert and all those other "realists", it takes them 25 pages to describe a freaking door.

That the character doesnt even open.

So try it, but the sugegstions here are a million times more intresting, inspiring, and fun. In my opinion.

Miller's Tropic of Cancer

Saucy!

I know you don't care, but I could probably hate you for life for saying that.

The Mayor of Casterbridge, Of Mice and Men... ick. The list goes on. I think I'm permanently drain bramaged when it comes to "classic" literature because of being forced to read that shi[/Azure] at such a young age.

I'd agree whole hartedly with some of those other ones and the Foundations series is great if you can get into politics and what not. Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn was alright but I never got more than half-way though the first book. I don't know why. Actually, that was the last thing I read. I started listening to audiobooks and put that one down. I'll pick it up someday soon, I imagine.

Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm were other "school books" but they at least didn't suck donkey nuts. Alas Babylon was pretty good as well. Actually it was probably the best book I read in school until college.

There were only two books that I had to read in college: Fire from Heaven and Bright Orange for the Shroud. I particularly enjoyed the later of the the two. It was wildly different from anything that I had ever read for school and I just enjoyed it for that. The former was a really dumb account of a village that burned down twice or somthing. It was like reading about watching paint dry from the point of view of someone who named each flake.

As I Lay Dying was very wierd to me and I don't remember very much. Of course I read it when I was 11 or 12. Probably shouldn't have done that. I just remember it being really morbid. I also attempted The Sound and the Fury around that same age. I read every page but all that came across was a confusing jumble and somthing about sex. I've been meaning to hit it again, but I read the Cliff's Notes at about 18 or 19 and they didn't even make any sense so I've decided to put that off.

Lately I've read Tales of the Otori and anyone in to the pseudo-Far Eastern thing should like them. Recently I read Pillars of the Earth and found the story to be qutie involved despite the topic. Also I'm sticking with Starship Troopers as my favorite book of all time.

If anyone mentions Wuthering Heights they should go and drink bleach and die. Probably.

Edit: @YSU - Paradise Lost... you're fuc[Azure]king killing me here. I forgot I had to read this absoute pile of shi[Azure][/Azure]t as well in the last english class in college. I had brutally supressed that memory. Enjoy the rest of your day knowing you have unleashed that horror on me anew. Thank you sir.

The Sound and the Furry is quite a funny thing

Edited, Wed May 3 09:24:05 2006 by AngryUndead

I was being overly dramatic. I'm pretty sure that what I didn't like about it was being forced to read it and my professor being a di[/Azure]ck.

It did present some interesting ideas and most certainly in an interesting way... but I've always had a bad reaction to books I'm forced to read. Almost always anyway. Especially when they want me to conform to their ideas of what I should be getting out of it and exactly what everything means. Just because it is their pet novel or whatever. Really oppressive.

Plus the teacher was a co[Azure]ck. Wait, I already said that.

Seriously, he gave me a D on a paper because he couldn't figure out where I had gotten the ideas in it. Some of them were from my own brain, true, but I thought they were good. The rest were from my notes, copied verbatim out of his mouth, and shown to him. He still said the ideas were crap. Plus he got me put on 20 hours of punishment for sleeping in his (snoozefest) class.

And this is why I have a bad reaction to Paradise Lost.

Oh, and I love Beowulf.

Edited, Wed May 3 10:03:31 2006 by AngryUndead

Try www.classicreader.com for free online classics. I really enjoy reading plays, and two of my favorites include Wilde's An Ideal Husband, and I always liked A Streetcar Named Desire. The best play written in the last 20 years is Angels in America.

As far as novels go,Slaughterhouse 5, because it makes the horrible comical. Vonnegut writes like he's at a poetry slam. I'm also a fan of the darkness-and-salvation theme of The Count of Monte Cristo and the very accurate representation of Peruvian Colonial society (suprisingy tender) in Thornton Wilder's Bridge over San Luis Rey. I also have to confess to having read Alcott's Little Women in three languages, and that sh[Black][/Black]it never gets old.

For more modern novels, I just love The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, not to mention Gabriel Garcia Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude, which, IMHO, kicks Love in the Time of Cholera's ***.



Edited, Wed May 3 10:21:50 2006 by Atomicflea

[:vomit:]

It was the middle of a depressing grey canadian winter, I had just quit reading George R.R. Martins a Storm of Swords because I was sick and tired of everyone dying. I then picked up Kiterunner to read. I got as far as the part with the forcible sodomy and I put it down. Once the leaves are on the trees I might try it again.

Bodhi KILLED DUMBLEDORE!!!

Smooth incredibly easy page turners:

Lolita
The Great Gatsby

Style that is still snappy fresh today, especially in comparison to the dry tedious words contained in many of the earlier recommendations in this thready.

More modern picks:

Eva Luna
Memoirs of a Geisha

One book I read over and over again is Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. Not exactly a classic, but he's an awesome writer.

J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is always one to pick up too.

Story of O and Return to the Chateau by Pauline Reage are also good. Have hubby by though because you may want to jump him after reading some of that.

Oh, and Dianetics!