Good Books

[ennison]

To be honest I never noticed that it was two years old. Guess she'll have outgrown some of my suggestions then. But the novels I suggested to you I think you might still like.

[Hippolite]

Read Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (i.e. In Search of Lost Time). Read it in the original French because it’s no easier to understand in English, even if you don’t know any French. Read it cover to cover, all seven volumes, don’t skip any words. Re-read any passages you don’t understand. If after finishing the whole thing you still don’t understand it start over from the beginning and re-read it.

[Virgil]

Read Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (i.e. In Search of Lost Time). Read it in the original French because it’s no easier to understand in English, even if you don’t know any French. Read it cover to cover, all seven volumes, don’t skip any words. Re-read any passages you don’t understand. If after finishing the whole thing you still don’t understand it start over from the beginning and re-read it.

That would take me a life time. I don't think I can spend my entire life on just one novel.

[ennison]

Read it! And then read it again! Man that is cruel! That probably breaks several laws somewhere.

[Maida]

well I really enjoyed Pale Fire by Nabokov because it was hilarious and well written, and I'm reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and absolutely love it. Murakami is a genius when it comes to literature!

[Niamh]

I'd recommend Tom jones by henry Feilding for a bit of 18th century wit.

As for a modern book, if you can get your hands on it, Hellfire by Mia gallagher. its a really big book but very good. It's terrible, i've become completely obsessed with mentioning this book everywhere! and have yet to discover anyone else who has read it! i dont even know if you can get it outside of ireland!

[Virgil]

I'd recommend Tom jones by henry Feilding for a bit of 18th century wit. As for a modern book, if you can get your hands on it, Hellfire by Mia gallagher. its a really big book but very good.

It's terrible, i've become completely obsessed with mentioning this book everywhere! and have yet to discover anyone else who has read it! i dont even know if you can get it outside of ireland!

I've read it and it is an excellent novel. You should be able to get Tom Jones everywhere. It is a classic novel from the 18th century, perhaps the best english novel of that century.

[ghideon]

So you enjoyed reading Dante. So did I. I actually felt like reading The Inferno was one of the most important reading experiences of my life. One day riding on a subway I looked around and asked myself "Hmmm...I wonder what sin that fellow over there has committed and which circle of Hell he will spend eternity?" It was crazy.

Anyway, what to read next depends on what you liked about Dante. Certainly Paradise Lost covers similar terrain and is also an Epic Poem as well. If you want Epic but rather bleak (the Inferno, afterall, is not exactly a Romance) then there is Crime and Punishment which also leaves the reader pondering over morality,justice vs injustice, guilt vs innocence, and that great (just let em hang) topic punishment.

Now you might know this, in which case just ignore my ramblings, but one of the things that made Dantes Epic significant was that it was written in Italian vernacular and that had enormous literary,political,and religoius meaning. He used the "common" tongue and showed how astonishingly beautiful such language can be, when crafted by the right soul.

So if you love all things poetic...well you could read some Pablo Neruda. Reading Neruda(one of the greatest modern love poets) after Dante would be a strange experience, something akin to the decompression astronauts go through.

Oh, hell...you could try reading some nasty Crime Noir. I've been reading some mysteries written by Jim Thompson where the closest thing to love or morality is only kicking the addict one time not twenty. It is not poetic at all but you sure do feel like you are in a very dark hellish world.

Hey...do say what book/s you actually decide to pick up so that all of us "authorities" lol...can see how well we have done.

Me? I played Sudoku for about 6 months after Dante. I guess I needed it. hehe...but true.

[Scheherazade]

I'd recommend Tom jones by henry Feilding for a bit of 18th century wit.

Whole heartedly agree. And BBC's 1997 adaptation was great as well!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123351/

I played Sudoku for about 6 months after Dante.

I play Sudoku daily as part of my daily 'diet' without reading any Dante!

[Niamh]

Whole heartedly agree. And BBC's 1997 adaptation was great as well!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123351/I play Sudoku daily as part of my daily 'diet' without reading any Dante!

The tv series was what made me read the book. i use to have it on video but like many things gave a loan of it to someone in college and never got it back.

[ennison]

Just finished Tim Binding's novel 'A Perfect Execution' Amazingly good. What a clever writer!!. Read it.

[Guzmán]

Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49". I read it last year and what a discovery that was. One of my favorite novels, Pynchon's writing style is superb. Very good sense of humour too.

[Black roses]

I'd recommend Golding's Lord of the Flies. Superbly well-written and deeply disturbing. Also, Voltaire's Candid is nice, if you can find a decent, un-edited copy.

[ennison]

Pynchon is very good. Sometimes I feel that the modernists are exploring the wrong areas but Pynchon does have an exuberant vitality that has to be recognised.