7/12/2006

Reading List for the Future

My to read list (off the top of my head) for the next good bit (and not in any order):

1. All of Thomas Hardy's novels (again)

2. The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins

3. The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs

4. More Flannery O'Connor

5. Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

6. The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope

7. Don Quixote by Cervantes (not sure if I really want to read this---sounds crazy)

8. Demons by Dostoyevsky

9. Miss or Mrs? by Wilkie Collins

10. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

11. Strangers and Sojourners by Michael O'Brien

12. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

13. The Chronicles of Narnia (I have not read all but two, if you can believe it)

14. Romola, Adam Bede, Scenes of a Clerical Life, (and perhaps) Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

15. Haven't read any D.H. Lawrence

16. Need to read some Edgar A. Poe

17. Henry Esmond by Thackeray (Oh wretched Vanity Fair!)

18. Barnaby Rudge, Nicholas Nickelby, Hard Times, and anything else that is Dickens that I have not read

19. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (I think?)

20. Finish Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis

21. Faulkner---As I Lay Dying or Sanctuary or both



Any suggestions, comments, questions, or input on any of these books if you know them, have read them, or have heard about them? Let me know. Post here.

7 comments:

NattaScatta said...

curious questions... who is Wilkie Collins?... and how do you do returns in your blog? i can't figure it out... :)

Anonymous said...

This list badly needs Faulkner - I suggest that either As I Lay Dying or Sanctuary would suit you well.

R said...

I have thought of Faulkner, but forgot last night when I was typing it out (I had just ran almost five miles and felt like was was going to puke because I had just eaten---bad mix!). Here, I will edit it.

R said...

Natalie, maybe I am dumb, but what do you mean by returns? I have a weird template. I don't even have a way to view my profile unless you click on my name when I post comments. I kind of like it that way. I just think this template is the bomb so I don't want to mess anything up.

Wilkie Collins was a contemporary of Charles Dickens. They were best friends, it seemed like. He wrote one of the first (if not the first) mystery/suspense novel(s) with a detective (The Moonstone). He knew a lot about the law (I believe he studied it or used to be a barrister or something) and a lot of his novels and short stories have to do with some weird chink in the law. He loved to play on the weird marriage laws of Scotland, which makes for a fun read. Lots of drama, tons of twisty circumstances, and plenty of suspense. He wrote in the 1800's (mid to late) and what I think is interesting is that when Hardy started writing and considering publication, Collins was all the rave and the publishers were advising Hardy to write suspense like Collins. Hence----Desperate Remedies, Hardy's first published novel, and absolutely unlike him in every way. Hey, but it got published.

Oh, and looking quickly, he was not a barrister, but a law student for a time and considered painting (his father was a painter) but then started writing. So there you have it. Wilkie Collins. I recommend The Woman in White, Armadale, No Name, and basically anything else. They are great reads.

NattaScatta said...

sounds good... i love to read in the summer-when i actually have time! i will look for those books as they sound like the kind of thing i would read... lately i have just been grabbing random books at yard sales for a quarter and giving them a try... so far it's been kind of fun, but i don't often get books recommended to me, so that will be fun to try as well! and about returns--i think that i might have figured out how to do it--my blog wasn't letting me put spaces between my paragraphs, etc...

R said...

Oh, that kind of "return"! Well, I just press the "return" key and it does it for me. It is always a pain figuring out the blog stuff.

Emily said...

That's quite the list! I'm suitably impressed.