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From: rob@denelcor.UUCP (Rob Wahl)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Classics and non-classics
Message-ID: <493@denelcor.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jul-84 17:55:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: denelcor.493
Posted: Wed Jul  4 17:55:26 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jul-84 00:38:43 EDT
Organization: Denelcor, Aurora, CO
Lines: 68

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The list below is presented in response to the request for "classics".  In
browsing through my bookshelves I noticed a number of non-classics as well
which I thought worth recommending to the public-at-large.  The list is
necessarily incomplete.  An asterisk by the author means I consider almost
anything by this person a good read.  I give no synopses; it's a rare book
that doesn't have jacket notes.

  All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
  And Again? - Sean O'Faolain
  archy and mehitabel - Don Marquis
  Auto-da-fe - Elias Canetti
  The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - Gertrude Stein
  Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope *
  The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler *
  A Burnt-Out Case - Graham Greene *
  Candide - Francois(?) Voltaire
  The Children's Hour - Lillian Hellman
  Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino *
 	The lighter side of this prose-poet.
  Cosmos - Witold Gombrowicz
  Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
  Edwin Mullhouse [The Life and Death of ...] - Steven Millhauser
	A personal favorite, though many may question why.
  The Enormous Room - e e cummings
  Eugene Onegin - Aleksandr Pushkin
	Nabokov's translation is unquestionably the best, though rather
	difficult to find.
  Fifth Business [part of the Deptford trilogy] - Robertson Davies
  The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald *
  The Greek Passion - Nikos Kazantzakis *
  The Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun *
  The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll *
	Everyone should reread Lewis Carroll several times as an adult.
  Lafcadio's Adventures [Les Caves du Vatican] - Andre Gide *
  Loitering With Intent - Muriel Spark *
  Lord of the Flies - William Golding
  Magister Ludi [The Glass Bead Game] - Hermann Hesse *
  The Magus - John Fowles *
  The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett *
  A Modest Proposal (pamphlet) - Jonathan Swift
  The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
  Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham *
  A Passage to India - E. M. Forster *
  The Possessed - Fyodor Dostoevsky
  Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
  The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea - Yukio Mishima
  The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy
  The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad *
  A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood *
  Six of One - Rita Mae Brown *
  Some Kind of Hero - James Kirkwood *
  A Smuggler's Bible - James McElroy
  Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John LeCarre *
  Tom Jones - Henry Fielding
	Also "Shamela", but wade through Richardson's "Pamela" first.
  Tristam Shandy [The Life and Opinions of ..., Gentleman] - Lawrence Sterne
  War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Short stories: V. S. Pritchett, H. H. Munro (Saki), Roald Dahl, Maugham,
	Forster, Greene, Fitzgerald

If you wish me to expand on some of my recommendations, just let me know.
You will notice there is very little poetry in the above list (and none of it
serious).  Perhaps someone else can make up for this deficiency?

Robert Wahl {hao!denelcor!rob}