Compulsory reading

[deleted01]

It took me far too long to get around to reading 1984, and when I finally did, I loved it, so that gets my vote! Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier was also a fantastic read. To my surprise, I really liked The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath too. I had to study Of Mice and Men at school, such a brilliant book. Carroll gets my vote too, as well as the fairy tales by Grimm and Andersen. Aesop's fables, anyone? ;)

I despise Austen and most books from that era really, though Jane Eyre isn't too bad.

Obviously I recommend Shakespeare, my favourites being Hamlet, Othello and his sonnets. I also liked Play by Samuel Beckett, though I'm not sure that'd count as a classic.

ETA: I currently have Lolita, Girl Interrupted, A Clockwork Orange and Birdsong in my Amazon basket. I've listened to some of Lolita on an audiobooks, and so far it's brilliant, I just can't deal with audiobooks.

[Talleyrand]

Biff and Chip. The greatest series of books i've ever been forced to read.

[A Menina Cebola]

Tentatively jumping in here and suggesting one that really gripped me from start to finish.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

Not to everyone's tastes but reading it changed the way I saw the world, and really pushed me into reading books I wouldn't normally go for.

It might not be generally considered a classic, but I think it's way up there with War and Peace.

Also, I'm pleased that Poe got a mention. Tennyson's "The Lady of Shallott" should be read. Especially since the ballad style of poem has died out and it's a perfect example.

And if you read 1984 and Animal Farm, you may as well read "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood as well. :)

[Ylva]

Most of the things I would have put up have already been mentioned, so I'll only add some things I've been missing here.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (the movie's great, but the book's even better)

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Love in the Times of Cholera by Gabríel García Marquez

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Dracula (yes, everybody thinks they know the story, but still, read it, I think it's absolutely worth it)

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

For Poetry, maybe you should get a good Anthology. I agree about "The Lady of Shalott". I also think everyone should read Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" (dramatic monolouge was a genious invention, and this is one of the best, imo).

If you read Hamlet make sure you also read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

Similarly, if you read Jane Eyre, read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (it's the story of the first Mrs Rochester, and it's very gripping).

I'm not sure if Margaret Atwood can already be called a classic, but I really, really like her, so what. Oryx and Crake is great, so is The Handmaid's Tale. Oh, and The Year of the Flood, of course.

Oh, and some of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories (especially The Cask of Amontillado and The Black Cat) and poems (The Raven, obviously, but check out some of the others, too.)

[gordonah]

I found myself in a similar position, where I felt I wasn't well read. It was partially prompted by the BBC's The Big Read survey, where excepting Tolkien and CS Lewis, I'd only read about four of the top two hundred, and those four were ones I'd been made to read in school. Since then, I've used the list, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Read, to give me an idea of what books other people think are great.

It's limited to novels, so no plays or myths, but I've got a lot of value out it.

As you've noted some of them may not be to your own cup of tea, I've certainly not been overawed by all of them (including some getting highly recommended here), but there have been some excellent ones which I might not have read otherwise. In particular I've enjoyed 'Of Mice and Men' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo'.

[Tehol]

gordonah you are right about some of them NOT my cup of tea.

jeffry archer, jeffrey freakin archer in that list! urgh.

the list can be used as a navigation point but not a standard. thnx.

[cseresz.reborn]

Marguerite Duras: La Douleur (War: A Memoir)

Maurice Blanchot: Thomas the Obscure

James Salter: Light Years

Henri Alain-Fournier: The Lost Estate

Anatole France: The Red Lily

Erich Maria Remarque: Arch of Triumph

Maxim Gorky: My Childhood, in the World, My Universities

Kjell Askildsen: The Dogs of Thessaloniki

Elias Canetti: Auto-da-Fé

Mario Vargas Llosa: The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and "Les Misérables"

Gustav Meyrink: The Golem

Tom Wolfe: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

+ another Hungarian author:

Örkény István: One Minute Stories (you could read his most famous one minute story here:)

In memoriam dr. H.G.K.

"Hölderlin ist ihnen unbekannt?" Dr. H.G.K. asked as he dug the pit for the horse’s carcass.

"Who is that?" the German guard growled.

"The author of Hyperion," said Dr. H.G.K., who had a positive passion for explanations. "The greatest figure of German Romanticism. How about Heine?" he tried again.

"Who're them guys?" the guard growled, louder than before.

"Poets," Dr. H.G.K. said. "But Schiller. Surely you have heard of Schiller?"

"That goes without saying," the German guard nodded.

"And Rilke?" Dr. H.G.K. insisted.

"Him, too," the German guard said and, turning the color of paprika, shot Dr. H.G.K. in the back of the head.

[Inigima]

Some really good recommendations here. A few thoughts, and some questions:

Vonnegut - Everyone says to read Slaughterhouse-Five. I thought it was just okay. Cat's Cradle, on the other hand, is incredible.

Updike - John Updike is worth reading. A&P, a short story, was my introduction to his work. The ending paragraph gets me every time.

Steinbeck - Of Mice And Men was assigned reading in high school. I didn't much care for it then, but these days I am glad to have read it. The Grapes of Wrath is incredible, and will make you want to slit your own wrists.

Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude is, again, the standard recommendation, but I found it impenetrable. I recommend Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a novella, as an easier introduction.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: Murakami is brilliant, and this novel blew me away.

I read this and enjoyed it but I don't begin to understand it. I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for BwB Book Club and really liked it. I'd be interested in further Murakami recommendations, or Cliff's Notes for Kafka.

Hemingway - I read a little Hemingway in high school and barely remember it. What's the best place to start? Novels are fine and so are short stories and anything in between.

[Inigima]

Double post due to server issues

[Myshkin]

I read this and enjoyed it but I don't begin to understand it. I read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for BwB Book Club and really liked it. I'd be interested in further Murakami recommendations, or Cliff's Notes for Kafka.

The other Murakami novels I've read are A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, both of which I highly recommend. I have Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Norwegian Wood on my to read pile. What questions do you have about Kafka on the Shore? I'm not sure it's even meant to be understood completely, but we can always try.

[Inigima]

To be honest, I read it months ago and don't even really remember it well enough to articulate questions.

Incidentally, I just read Norwegian Wood for the Awful Book Club (that's the one for Something Awful, not a book club for awful books). I liked it. I think. You know how it is with Murakami.

Do we have a running general recommendations thread? I only see stickies for SF/F books. We should have a general recommendation thread. I might PM a mod about that.

[Fragile Bird]

Someone asked about poetry, and I would highly recommend Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1996. I bought an English translation, fearing my Polish wasn't good enough to catch subtlety, and her translator is incredible, her poems are amazing. I'm also very fond of the poetry of Leonard Cohen. Of course, you may prefer hearing him sing his poetry.

For poetry overall, I would highly recommend simply buying an anthology of verse in a university bookstore in a topic you like or are interested in, like an Anthology of Canadian, American, English poetry, or whatever language or style, Modern, Romantic, whatever, and dip into that to find someone you enjoy.

Another writer no one has mentioned yet is Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook.

Someone in this thread mentioned Dickens' Christmas Carol: along those lines, I'd recommend Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales, simply for the glorious language and imagery, and the droll humour. It was originally a radio piece, and his own reading of the story is one of my annual holiday listening treats.

[jonnyss]

"norwegian wood" is my favorite haruki murakami novel.

regarding ts eliot, "the love song of j alfred prufrock," gee, i don't find it impenetrable at all. to me it's quite transparent, approachable, and quite wonderful. a shy academic goes to a party, is attracted to the superficial women there ("in the room the women come and go, talking of michelangelo") but afraid to speak to one. he imagines trying to say something meaningful to one but hesitates as maybe she will dismiss him ("what if one should say, 'that is not what i meant at all'"). then he worries he'll get old and never accomplish anything, ("i'm not hamlet nor was meant to be"), never connect with a pretty woman. it's a very concrete, very visual poem. for example, to take one of the most quoted sections, in "i grow old i grow old, i shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled" he simply pictures himself shrunken and shorter in old age. "shall i part my hair behind?" - he'll be bald on top. "do i dare to eat a peach?" - his teeth will have fallen out. these are not obscure allusions, just approachable, simple visual imagery.

haven't most of us had the experience of standing in the midst of a party wondering if we have anything to say that will interest anybody?

[Fragile Bird]

regarding ts eliot, "the love song of j alfred prufrock," gee, i don't find it impenetrable at all. to me it's quite transparent, approachable, and quite wonderful. a shy academic goes to a party, is attracted to the superficial women there ("in the room the women come and go, talking of michelangelo") but afraid to speak to one. he imagines trying to say something meaningful to one but hesitates as maybe she will dismiss him ("what if one should say, 'that is not what i meant at all'"). then he worries he'll get old and never accomplish anything, ("i'm not hamlet nor was meant to be"), never connect with a pretty woman. it's a very concrete, very visual poem. for example, to take one of the most quoted sections, in "i grow old i grow old, i shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled" he simply pictures himself shrunken and shorter in old age. "shall i part my hair behind?" - he'll be bald on top. "do i dare to eat a peach?" - his teeth will have fallen out. these are not obscure allusions, just approachable, simple visual imagery. haven't most of us had the experience of standing in the midst of a party wondering if we have anything to say that will interest anybody?

Welcome to Westeos jonnyss, first post! Hope there are many more! :D

I have to welcome you, prufrock is my all time favourite poem in the whole wide world, and I agree with everything you say!

[Iskaral Pust]

The other Murakami novels I've read are A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, both of which I highly recommend. I have Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Norwegian Wood on my to read pile. What questions do you have about Kafka on the Shore? I'm not sure it's even meant to be understood completely, but we can always try.

I read 1Q84 after receiving it as a gift and I thought it was pretty good in the first half and then lost its way. Is his other work much better?

[Myshkin]

I read 1Q84 after receiving it as a gift and I thought it was pretty good in the first half and then lost its way. Is his other work much better?

I haven't read 1Q84 yet, so I couldn't tell you.