WetLeather Classics - Non-Annotated List
Non-Annotated |
Novels |
Plays |
Science Fiction |
Short/Novella
BB:
Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson
Ed Gardner:
Grapes, East of Eden, The Red Pony, Travels with Charlie: John Steinbeck
The Caine Mutiny, Winds of War, War and Remembrance, Marjorie Morningstar:
Herman Wouk
Gone With the Wind: Margaret Mitchell
To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee
1984: George Orwell
Catch-22: Joesph Heller
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Ken Kesey
Fried Green Tomatoes: Fannie Flagg (the secret's in the sauce :)
The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
The only really moldy books I remember enjoying are The Mill on the Floss
and David Copperfield, but they don't have the entertainment zing of these
more modern "classics".
Kathy Gill:
Classic Mystery:
Edgar Allen Poe - he invented the mystery novel. Pit and the Pendulum would
be a good one.
Arthur Conan Doyle - Original Sherlock Holmes Series - still selling
Dashiell Hammet - he created the hard-boiled PI. Maltese Falcon, The Thin
Man. Sam Spade is his protagonist.
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep. His PI is Philip Marlowe ... what more
rationale do you need? :)
Classic Sci-Fi:
The Foundation Series - Asimov
Stranger in a Strange Land - Heinlein
Neuromancer - Gibson
Ender's Game - Card
Beggars In Spain - Kress
Chris Hunter
Short:
"Myth of Sisyphus", Albert Camus
"Telltale Heart", Edgar-Allen Poe
"Nightfall", Isaac Asimov
"Mass, energy and population", Isaac Asimov
"A Modest Proposal", Jonathan Swift
"How to travel with a salmon", Umberto Eco
Plays:
"Meet Me at the Pussycat! (La Puce ý l'Oreille)", Georges Feydeau
"Rhinoceros", Eugene Ionesco
Recent(1990+):
"Skinny Legs and All", Tom Robbins
"Green Grass, Running Water", Thomas King
"La Geurre, Yes Sir!", Roch Carrier
Classics:
"The Moon is a harsh mistress", Robert A. Heinlein
"The Great Gatsby", Scott F. Fitzgerald
"Catch-22", Joesph Heller
"Siddartha", Herman Hesse
Jenner:
Two Years Before the Mast (I forget the author)
The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
Call of the Wild (Jack London)
*Anything* by Edgar Allen Poe (pit and the pendulum...)
Chris Jones:
Witches of Eastwick, John Updike
Michael La Riviere:
I will second the Hemingway recommendation, and add one of his other novels,
"The Sun Also Rises" (especially if you like Camus).
My pick of 20th century classics would also include:
- "Animal Farm" by George Orwell (didn't he mean "Two wheels good, four
wheels bad!")
- "Brave New World" by Aldus Huxley
- short stories like "The Penal Colony", and "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka
- either "Interzone" or "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs
- "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (might want to watch "Apocalypse Now"
afterwards)
Personally, I find the 20th century classics more approachable and relevant
than some of the older classics. That's just my opinion, though, and many
people seem to either love or hate many of the books I mentioned....
H. Marc Lewis:
SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION, Ken Kesey
NOBODY'S ANGEL, Thomas McGuane
NEUROMANCER, William Gibson
BLACK SUN, Edward Abbey
RANSOM, Jay McInerney
Shannon McRae:
John Dos Passos USA Trilogy
Djuna Barnes Nightwood
Radcliffe Hall Well of Loneliness
Karl Marx Communist Manifesto (especially if you're reading Ayn Rand)
Thomas Kinsella The Tain (Irish epic. Good double feature with Beowulf)
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God
Toni Morrison Beloved
Jack Kerouac On the Road
Chaucer Canterbury Tales (lots of cheerful smutty parts in archaic
language)
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse
Sigmund Freud Interpretation of Dreams
Richard Wright Native Son
Sherman Alexie Reservation Blues
Pauline Reage Story of O
DeSade Justine
Lady Murasaki Tale of Genji
Christopher Marlowe Dr. Faustus
Claude Levi Strauss Structural Anthropology
Don't get me started on poetry. I'll make you all read, discuss and quote
extensively from The Waste Land.
Steve Powers:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Soltzhenitsyn
Tin Drum - Gunter Grass, was also another good one.
Mike Stevely:
I am Legend by Richard Matheson.
Mike Temple:
Lord of the Rings Tolkien
Ken Wiljanen:
A Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens
T. Wilson:
By Vladimir Nabokov:
Pale Fire
Pnin
Lolita
Speak, Memory
Despair
By Maria Vargas Llosa:
The Green House
Faulkner:
Absalom, Absalom!
The Sound and the Fury
Sartoris
Any of about twenty others
Alain Robbe-Grillet
La Jalousie
F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night
The Great Gatsby
Banana Yoshimoto
(any of her three books)
Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Far from the Madding Crowd
Fielding
Tom Jones
Moll Flanders
Thoreau
Walden
And I forgot yesterday -- Ulysses, by James Joyce.
It's not as difficult as its reputation would have you believe (now
Finnegan's wake -- that's another matter entirely. I read about 150
pages of it and, as I still had no clue why Joyce had placed any one word
next to any other word, I gave up.) And no one has mentioned Thomas
Pynchon - I'd recommend V or the Crying of Lot 49, and Mason-Dixon if you
have the time.
And how about Saul Bellow - Henderson the Rain King
Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
Alfred Jarry, The Ubu Plays
And another vote for Shakespeare. Make sure to read both Henry the Vth
plays, so you'll understand why the latest version of the Pontiac
Firebird is the Bardolph of cars.
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