Maybe Balzac is of interest, too?
Especially "La Peau de chagrin" (The Magic Skin).
Maybe Balzac is of interest, too?
Especially "La Peau de chagrin" (The Magic Skin).
A Canadian girl who likes YA, eh? Give her Atwood.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
I'd consider these to be "Young Adult" novels with literary merit:
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Huxley young adult? He's easier than a lot of authors but I would not really classify him as young adult. Good suggestion though. Thanks.Originally Posted by Desolation
I have War of the Worlds, The Odyssey and Frankenstein to give her. Should be a good start. Then maybe Dumas and a few others suggested on this thread. I appreciate all the responses.
When giving recommendations, the best way to shoot yourself in the foot is by pushing some abstruse brick of a book that'll just discredit you. So short stories are ideal to begin with...
I quite agree. You never know what sort of great novel another reader may love... or be repulsed by. I would suggest some classic shorter fiction. This will allow you to get feedback as to what she likes and dislikes and gear further suggestions based upon that.
Look at the various tales from the following authors:
Edgar Allen Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ambrose Bierce
Guy de Maupassant
Theophile Gautier
Robert Louis Stevenson
H.G. Wells
Rudyard Kipling
Charles Dickens
William Wilkie Collins
Franz Kafka
H.P. Lovecraft
Nicolai Gogol
Anton Checkov
Ernest Hemingway
Flannery O'Connor
J.L. Borges
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Arthur Conan Doyle
Herman Melville
Mark Twain
Donald Barthleme
Italo Calvino
Alice Munro
Julio Cortazar
etc...
You also might make suggestions taken from larger collections such as:
The Decameron
Aesop
Herodotus
The Arabian Nights
The Shanameh
Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics
Then think about novellas and relatively shorter length narratives:
Goethe- Sorrows of Young Werther
Mann- Death in Venice
Steinbeck- Of Mice and Men
Capote- Breakfast at Tiffany's
Melville- Billy Budd
Stevenson- Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde
Conrad- Heart of Darkness
Henry James- Beast in the Jungle, The Turn of the Screw
Tolstoy- Death of Ivan Ilych, Hadji Murat
Nathaniel West- Miss Lonelyhearts
Saul Bellow- Sieze the Day
From here you might be able to move toward suggestions of larger novels.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Kipling, The Decameron, Poe, Hemingway might all be good. Thanks SLG.
It really helped when I told her that at her age I was struggling hard to get through great books and was opening the dictionary 5 times per page on average. She is really really really interested in books. Her eyes widen everytime I mention a great book. I discoursed for like half an hour on the fact that in the stack of books on my desk there were such marked contrasts between pairs of books like Augustine and Nietzsche, The Iliad and The New Testament, Leaves of Grass and Paradise Lost. She hung on every word. I almost gave her Wuthering Heights but when I read that book at 18 I found it mighty difficult.
H.G. Wells, heck, yeah. I also like stlukesguild's suggestion of Arabian/1001 Nights (just maybe a more readable translation than the Burton one).
If she likes the spooky stuff, I can heartily recommend the classic ghost stories of J.S. LeFanu and M.R. James.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I think ur really best sticking to short stuff. I mean whatever you give her she is gonna feel obligated to finish.
St lukes suggestions I think are good. Here are some that got me into literature.
Animal Farm
Great Gatsby (though I've found that guys like this book more than girls)
1984
Slaughterhouse Five
Siddhartha
Of Mice and Men
I can't quite explain why but I think you should give her Siddhartha.
Also I don't think you should give her P&P or Lolita. P&P, I just think its too easy for the language of the book to be really offputting. Lolita for reasons already stated.
Check out my blog it has basically nothing to do with literature.
http://slingsandarrowsandtheproudman.blogspot.com/
I don't think Slaughterhouse-Five or On the Road are, either. I've yet to read The Bell Jar. Not that they're not good choices.
Never mind. There's a reason I haven't dated girls under 20 since I turned 20. Hahaha. This thread is a Sears-tower like testament to my utter foolishness. Pope said "fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Wise words.
This thread will come in handy when my young cousins come of age, or if I ever decide to again play hopscotch on a ledge.
Augustine was genius too. Now I see. lol.
Last edited by Darcy88; 03-30-2012 at 12:43 AM.
Crash and burn?! Just pour yourself a good beer (or two). Preferably something British or Belgian and crank up some appropriate music. Perhaps some Foggy Mountain Boys in honor of earl Scruggs who passed yesterday.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
I was going a bit liberal with the term "Young Adult"...Those are novels that I think young adults/teenagers are more prone to enjoy, not necessarily novels written for young adults/teenagers.
By the way, from experience, I'm going to recommend not giving her Tolstoy...I tried to give my girlfriend Anna Karenina...Now she won't take recommendations from me.
I think Anna Karenina is better than War and Peace. It's a tighter novel and appeals more to my aesthetic preferences, although I can admire the ambition of W&P.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
You gave her Lolita didn't you.
Sorry to hear it Darcy. But I think the irrational rush / rushing is the most fun part of any relationship (and the sex of course). You got to have some fun, with relatively little bruising.
At least you didn't work your way into a long-term something where you gradually and painfully become disenchanted, vacillating endlessly between holding on and ending it, only to culminate in an ugly breakup which leaves you embittered by all the time you've "lost" and "wasted" and seriously questioning not just your ability to make decisions about relationships but really about any sort of decision no matter how trivial.
Also.. really stlukes a British Beer? My rec would be to reach for an American
Check out my blog it has basically nothing to do with literature.
http://slingsandarrowsandtheproudman.blogspot.com/
Also.. really stlukes a British Beer? My rec would be to reach for an American
Oh please. Swill... with the exceptions of the better microbreweries.
I'll take this:
or this:
or this:
or any of these:
over most American beers any day.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
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