Good Books

Can anyone recommend (with reasons) any really good books to read. I know there are loads and I just don't know where to begin. Anything relating to Dante's Inferno which I am just about to start might be good.

A friend who has read Dante's "The Divine Comedy" has also been reading "Paradise Lost" by John Milton. I'm not sure how closely related they are, but he has been getting a lot of inspiration from both. Milton is quite difficult reading. I imagine it's suitable if you liked "Inferno", or the Bible.

I've never read any of them though (but I will)

I don't know too much about this inferno book, but if you like a good laugh and a little philosophy, I suggest the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy a trilogy in five parts by Douglass Adams. It is an amazing book that deals with Life the Universe and Everything (pun intended). Also I would suggest picking up a Stanislaw Lem book if your into Sci Fi, or even an Isaac Asimov book, specifically the history of Ibotics. I would also suggest the wars by timothy findley, not a bad wwi novel, kinda depressing though.

Boccaccio'sDecameron, was written around the same time as The Divine Comedy. I heard somewhere that they were friends, or Dante was Boccaccio's mentor; or something like that.

I'll second Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The fight between God and Satan is wonderful.

Chauncer's Canterbury Tales.

Dante had a big influence on James Joyce, and he is amazing in his own right.

I loved reading thr Hitchhikers Guide. It really is one of the funniest books i ever read. thanks for the other hints. Can you recommend a good Canterbury Tales, I can never find an unabridged version.

The Riverside Edition is good.

Try El Aleph, by Jorge Luis Borges. It's a great book, and two of the tales contain references to Dante's Comedy: La Espera (The Waiting or something like that, if you get the english version), y El Aleph.

Cassandra,

The Bridge by Iain Banks, Lanark by Alasdair Gray, Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Ghostwritten by David Mitchell, The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker, Wide Open by Nicola Barker, Last Orders by Graham Swift (also Waterland by him), Atonement by Iain McEwan, Spies by Michael Frayn: all great contemporary literature.

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne (centuries ahead of its time),
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Don Quixote
Tom Jones
Caleb Williams by William Godwin

all great lit from an earlier age.

Well Cas, how do you define "really good books"? I read some books which I think really good like Sartre's trilogy (Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Troubled Sleep)

For a lovely book about books and reading I would suggest Helen Hanff´s "Letters to a bookstore" - a genuin collection of her letters to an owner of a bookstore selling rare books. The friendship that grows between them while they write is fascinating. The book also gave me alot of tips on literature.

Cassandra, I'd second the reccomendations for Paradise Lost (Not for Paradise Regained, though), the Decameron, Certainly Tristram Shandy and Don Quixote. If you are interested in the laughter with philosophy category, i personally haven't found anything to beat Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance and Lila

Oh dear I'm surely an amateur in literature. I mean I read all posts and there are some books which sounds very interesting, yet I never even heard about :(

I've never heard of a few either. Thanks for the tips. I guess I've got my work cut out for me.

I usually have to fight for this opinion of mine but I think the Decameron is one of the biggest pieces of crap ever written in this side of the world...

I'm not sure about Dante and Boccaccio being friends, I have vague memories of them and I believe they might have met or anyway heard of each other, but the friends bit...uhm I'll check.

Now that you get me started on the Italian 1300s, let me tell you about Francesco Petrarca...he's mainly a poet and I love his works, not sure he's famous in translation but he influenced poetry for the next 5 centuries at least, not only in Italy.

The thing with the Decameron is that after you've read some of it, you feel that you've read it all. After the fifth or sixth day, all the stories are the same.