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Thread: Help needed - book written before 1900

  1. #1
    Registered User Hayley Zero's Avatar
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    Help needed - book written before 1900

    Goodnight everyone !

    I have to read a book written before 1900 and I'd like some advice... Usually I love stream of conciousness and only read more modern books. I've already read Oscar Wilde & really liked it, but I have to read another before-1900-book and I'm not really interested in Victorian family drama.

    Could anyone recommend me a novel ? Thank you so much

    x
    Hayley
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    Pièce de Résistance Scheherazade's Avatar
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    Registered User armenian's Avatar
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    knut hamsun - hunger

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    blasphemer DisPater's Avatar
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    Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
    Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary or The Temptation of Saint Anthony
    Henry James - The Turn of the Screw or The Portrait of a Lady

    ..........
    Last edited by DisPater; 03-15-2009 at 07:16 AM.
    the main idea with the books is that there are too many not worthy to be read.

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    Mark Twain

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    Card-carrying Medievalist Lokasenna's Avatar
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    Bram Stoker's Dracula might be interesting - its quite an easy read, and is written as a succession of diary entries, allowing you a concioussness angle.
    "I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance. And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity- through him all things fall. Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity!" - Nietzsche

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
    Bram Stoker's Dracula might be interesting - its quite an easy read, and is written as a succession of diary entries, allowing you a concioussness angle.
    Yes I would probably second that especially if you enjoyed Dorian Gray. I would avoid Conrad and James as they are quite dense if you are not used to that sort of thing.

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    Alice's Adventures in Wonrderland

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    Registered User Hayley Zero's Avatar
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    Wow, thank you so much for the fast replies ! This is really great.

    Three Men in a Boat sounds like a lot of fun, and Dracula sounds very interesting too - I didn´t know it´s a diary. I´m going to get them in the library tomorrow. And perhaps I´ll read Hunger in German (I can´t read translated books...). I also tried reading Flaubert in French, but that was too hard for me.

    Thank again and I´ll let you know what I thought !

    x
    Where you a landscape,
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    Registered User bounty's Avatar
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    i agree with dracula being an innovative read, and with the admonition to be wary of james, the king of the multi-layered compound sentence! what did he just say? let me read it again for a third time....

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    And of course everybody loves Jane Austen -- start with Pride & Prejudice. Wuthering Heights would also be good, or something by Dickens -- Great Expectations maybe.

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    Literature Fiend Mariamosis's Avatar
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    Jules Verne (The Mysterious Island, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days)
    Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Hard Times, Tale of Two Cities) (mentioned)
    Oscar Wilde (already mentioned)
    Stephen Crane (The Red Bade of Courage)
    Mark Twain (already mentioned)
    Lewis Carroll (Alice Adventure's in Wonderland) (mentioned)
    Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
    Rudyard Kipling

    The list goes on...
    Last edited by Mariamosis; 03-15-2009 at 09:38 PM.
    -Mariamosis

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    Fyodor Dotoevsky - Everything

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    Registered User Etienne's Avatar
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    Try The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman by Sterne it's almost ridiculously modern, and it was written in the 18th century. He is, like Cervantes or Rabelais, an innovator, and pioneered techniques that were only "rediscovered" in the 20th century.
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    DON'T PANIC! Tsuyoiko's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wat?? View Post
    Fyodor Dotoevsky - Everything
    Agreed, but especially Crime and Punishment

    Also, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    "Books don't offer real escape but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw." David Mitchell

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