Log in

View Full Version : a good classics 'capsule' collection


grittylit
10-23-2007, 08:43 PM
Hi there,

i have just escaped High School (graduated) and having to read books in a certain mindset - say for a certain curriculum.

I do love classic books (and by classic i mean the books that are widley regarded as some of the best fiction/ biographical etc out there), and have just started reading the great gatsby and some capote etc and loving it.

what i wanted to know is what everyone thinks a good starting collection is - prefferably modern (im not fond of say, Henry James - too wordy!) and universal books (but all printed in English please!) im not from America and i seem to only be recommended American Classics (im not too fond of Huckleberry finn or Grapes of Wrath etc:blush: ).

thanks for any help! :)
JBI
10-23-2007, 09:20 PM
Eugene Onegin, Germinal, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Etienne
10-23-2007, 09:45 PM
Some great authors the 20th century:
Proust
Nabokov
Grombowicz
Huxley
Sartre
Camus
Borges
Garcia Marquez
Mann
Hesse
Conrad
Gide
Kafka
Bulgakov
Orwell
Joyce
Solzehitsyn
Sholokov
Vian
grittylit
10-23-2007, 10:10 PM
thanks!!

great ideas!
Old Crow
10-23-2007, 11:43 PM
Some great authors the 20th century:
Proust
Nabokov
Grombowicz
Huxley
Sartre
Camus
Borges
Garcia Marquez
Mann
Hesse
Conrad
Gide
Kafka
Bulgakov
Orwell
Joyce
Solzehitsyn
Sholokov
Vian

This list is an excellent place to start. I might add Ralph Ellison and Flannery O'Conner to that as well.

...And if you didn't like Grapes of Wrath I have to try and convince you not to give up on Steinbeck altogether. I always though that novel was slightly overrated when compared to some of his other books: Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, The Winter of our Discontent, and The Wayward Bus.
mtpspur
10-24-2007, 10:32 PM
Might try To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee if you're after more modern classics. This will probably get me moaned and groaned at but Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell really shouldn't be ignored. One wonders what Jane Austen would have done with Miss Scarlett. The mind boggles with the possibilities.
Virgil
10-24-2007, 10:35 PM
I recommend D.H. Lawrence. Try his short stories or his best novels: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, or Women In Love.
Old Crow
10-25-2007, 02:44 AM
One wonders what Jane Austen would have done with Miss Scarlett. the mind boggles with the possibilities.

Now that is an interesting question. Unfortunately it's also an unanswerable one.