Suggestions?

[PrettyHowTown]

Good afternoon everybody.

I'm new to the forum and was curious if anyone had some books to recommend for me? I'm going back to school soon and I'd like to read a couple more books by the time I go back.

I love contemporary american pieces such as Tennessee Williams, E.E. Cummings and Gwendolyn Brooks. I don't have a preference to short stories, novels or poetry.

Any suggestions are most appreciated.

Thank you1

[Jeremydav]

Give Faulkner a read. :)

[stlukesguild]

You might try Flannery O'Connor's short stories, poetry by Robert Frost, Wallace Steven, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Marianne Moore; Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts, and certainly Faulkner. I personally found As I Lay Dying to be a good introduction to his work... as well as being one of his best and not incredibly difficult.

[dfloyd]

would have won it if he had lived a little longer. These are books which every American should read, as well as some foreigners.

Sinclair Lewis
Babbitt
Main Street

Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Alos Rises
A Farewll to Arms

William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying
Absolom! Absolom

John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath
East od Eden

F. Scott Fitzgerald (non-winner)
The Great Gatsby
Tender Is the Night

Thoodore Dreiser (on second thought, another non-winner)
Sister Carrie
An American Tragedy

[spookymulder93]

Ham on Rye or Watership Down.

[Alexander III]

I know this may not be the style you seek or are accustomed to, but I would give the Picture Of Dorian Gray a read.

[LMK]

I didn't care for Dorian Gray, I liked the concept, but there is so much droning on and on in between parts, I think that they might be the bits Oscar Wilde added to turn it from a short story into a novel, but I don't know. I don't usually skim, but did throughout Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde is Irish by the way, isn't he?

Anyway, give it a go, it is a fun idea for a story and the relationships are nicely drawn.

What about some Stephen King, or Pearl Buck?

[Jay on blues]

Winnesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

If your looking for some of the best American Literature around, go for it. It's my favorite book of all-time, probably(I've never really took time to choose one).

[kelby_lake]

Good afternoon everybody.

I'm new to the forum and was curious if anyone had some books to recommend for me? I'm going back to school soon and I'd like to read a couple more books by the time I go back.

I love contemporary american pieces such as Tennessee Williams, E.E. Cummings and Gwendolyn Brooks. I don't have a preference to short stories, novels or poetry.

Any suggestions are most appreciated.

Thank you1

Have you read Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending? Night of The Iguana's pretty good too.

Carson McCullers' stuff, in particular, The Ballad of The Sad Cafe.

Lolita.

[Seasider]

Alice Walker Beloved and Sula Annie Proulx The Shipping News
Steinbeck Of Mice and Men Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage Ian McEwen Atonement
Good Luck with school

[BrunoSchulz]

Well, these are not primarily American novelists, albeit there are a number of very good ones going around but this is more a list if you want to expand your horizons a little further. I recently posted this list on another thread and they may be authors whose work you will want to investigate over time.

Good luck with school!!......:thumbsup:

Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Doblin
Palefire (collection) - Vladimir Nabokov *I personally could never leave this Nabokov collection out of any list, albeit you do have Lolita listed.
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
I Served the King of England - Bohumil Hrabal
Closely Observed Trains - Bohumil Hrabal
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Tartare Steppe - Dino Buzzati
If On A Winter's Night A Traveller - Italo Calvino
Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
The Painter - R. K. Narayan
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
Terra Nostra - Carlos Fuentes
Radetzsky March - Joseph Roth
Obscene Bird of the Night -Jose Donoso
Labyrinths - Jorge Louis Borges *I realise this is one of his short story collections but I could not leave it out.
Love and Garbage - Ivan Klima
Memed My Hawk - Yasar Kemal
Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter *A collection but a very great one.
Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald
Wittgenstein's Nephew - Thomas Bernhard
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
Blow-Up and other stories - Julio Cortazar *Another collection but I couldn't leave out whom I regard as no. 2 in the Latin American canon behind Borges.
Makioka Sisters - Junichero Tanizak
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Cairo Trilogy - Naghuib Mahfouz
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Cheers.