Help Me Become More Well-Read
I don’t make resolutions in January, but I do tend to make them for new school years. One of my resolutions for 2008-2009 is to read fiction again and to fill in some of the gaps (or rather, ginormous canyons) in my literary knowledge. And also to find new books that I really, really enjoy.
I just cracked open Atlas Shrugged, but I’m not quite sure what to read after that (other than The Fountainhead — Animal Farm? Slaughterhouse-Five? Anna Karenina?). So, dear readers, help me with my reading list!
The books don’t necessarily have to be from the Canon of Dead White Guys, but I’m definitely looking for things that are more foundational and less, y’know, Jurassic Park IV or Some Hotshot Lawyer Runs Away Yet Again (and for the love of all things holy, no romance novels). To help you, here’s some background on what I’ve liked and hated:
Loved
- 1984
- Brave New World
- Fahrenheit 451
Indifferent
- The Great Gatsby
- Catcher in the Rye
- Sense and Sensibility
Hated
- The Metamorphosis
- Things Fall Apart
Attempted and Abandoned
- Pride and Prejudice (on three separate occasions)
- Wuthering Heights
- Jane Eyre
This list is obviously not exhaustive (I do like novels that aren’t set in dystopias), but I’ll leave it here for now and see where the comment trail goes.
Chipanglish
CogKnition
Gustatory Circuit
Some books which are of the same general philosophy, liberty-oriented:
Non-fiction: anything by Dr. Thomas Szasz. Personal favorites include The Myth of Mental Illness; Ceremonial Chemistry; Psychiatric Slavery; Psychiatric Justice; Heresies
The Law, by Fredric Bastiat (I think you currently can download it for free from many places online)
For fiction, try Sometimes A Great Notion (by Ken Kesey)which also was made into am movie you sometimes can find on television and which is available for rent from many of the typical video outlets
Metamorphis–hell, Kafka in general–is better in German. Not any easier to read, mind you, but most translations miss fundamental subtleties.
Also, I abandoned Pride and Prejudice many a time myself, but found on my last attempt that it gets better after ~100 pages in. It’s now one of my favorite rereads, but I never actually reread the beginning.
Some stuff I think you might like: (authors in parentheses)
My Name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok)
The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
Ragtime (E. L. Doctorow) [I have a feeling you'll really love or really hate this one]
Given what’s on your hated list, I recommend skipping anything by Faulkner or Rushdie.
I have more ideas, but I think a half dozen is start enough. Next round, I’ll give you stuff that isn’t 20th century.
Oops, meant to make that a bulleted list. Must have messed up somewhere.
Modern works I enjoyed:
Survivor and Choke* by Chuck Palahniuk
The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
*Now a movie.
Currently reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Indifferent about it. I may like it more after a second read as the first read has been very segmented.
I think you’ll appreciate this.
Over at The Gene Pool, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten (who wrote the feature on Joshua Bell a while back) dared people to condense famous speeches or works of literature into < 140 characters (i.e., the approximate length of a Tweet). One clever soul contributed the following:
Heh.
Let me know what you think about Atlas Shrugged. I enjoyed my first reading 3 years ago.
Here is a list of 100 books listed by The Big Read (I couldn’t find the actual list on the site so I’m sharing this bloggers’ list) -
http://www.yoonamania.com/blog/?p=180
Jane