Classics of literature?

[Replicant]

On a slight tangent, what are the classics of Stephen King? I've read Carrie, and I'm placing holds at the library for Cujo and Christine. (I also read Firestarter, many years ago.) I _think_ I read Salem's Lot, many years ago, as well, but it might be fun to read again. So what are his best books?

Run, don't walk, and find yourself a copy of The Stand. Make sure it's the uncut version circa 1990. This is King's finest book, IMO, and one of the best ever written in the fantasy/horror genre.

 

[John Crichton]

Re: Re: in addtion to what has been mentioned...

I'm a big reader and I have a rule of never reading english-language literature in the translated versions (being good in english). When I found an english pocketbook version of the famous so-called-masterpiece 'The Catcher in the Rye' in the shelfs of my library I was really thrilled. I read it in one night.

How. Utterly. Boring.

I can see why this book was so ground breaking. I mean, it's called the first 'Teen Literature'. But with the flood of similar books since then, I found the book offered me nothing of any value.

It was well written and all, but had nothing in it that I don't see in TV every single day.

It's one of those books that must be looked at in context. I wasn't thrilled by it on my first read either but when I re-read it my last year of high school it was much better.

Actually, while I am posting I should probably mention that my favorite "classic" book was "Around the World in Eighty Days." That is a must-read, IMHO. It's a mite dry, but I have enjoyed it thought multiple reads.

 

[John Crichton]

Re: Re: Classics of literature?

Run, don't walk, and find yourself a copy of The Stand. Make sure it's the uncut version circa 1990. This is King's finest book, IMO, and one of the best ever written in the fantasy/horror genre.

I can't second it because I never finished it (yet!) but King's stuff is great. If you are really into King check out his autobiography, "On Writing." Very entertaining!

 

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I've always found King's short stories and novellas to be better than his novels - so "Skeleton Crew" and "Four Past Midnight" are my favourites.

Classic-wise there's 1984 (Orwell)
HG Wells (esp. Time Machine, War of the Worlds)
Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
PG Wodehouse
Of Mice & Men (John Steinbeck)
Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco)
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)
Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Hagakure (Yamamoto Tsunetomo) (just make sure that you see the film Ghost Dog first)
American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis)
The Screwtape Letters (CS Lewis)
To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

That should keep you going for a day or two...

 

[theT0rmented]

Don't know much about the great classics, but I remember reading Of Mice and Men in high school, 10 years or so ago, and liking it.

I've read probably 10 or so of King's novels. I really liked IT, and Needful Things too. Had a lot of trouble reading Cujo, though.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

I've read 1984 (I would have REALLY loved to have read the book the main character was reading...), Of Mice and Men, Fahrenheit 451, Catcher in the Rye, and The Grapes of Wrath. All good books.

I'm having fun with Catch-22 right now. The whole court martial scene was pretty funny, as was the whole Loyalty Oath crusade. I'm only about 80 pages in, as it's weightier literature than the pulp fiction that I'm used to.

 

[Warrior Poet]

More greats from American (U.S.) lit. (in addition to some already named, and perhaps some repeats):

Melville: Billy Budd, Moby Dick

Hawthorne: Young Goodman Brown, The Scarlet Letter

Twain: Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court

Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales

Edgar Allen Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Flannery O'Connor: Collected Short Stories

Eudora Welty: Collected Short Stories

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian, The Orchard Keeper, All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain

James Carlos Blake: The Pistoleer, Borderlands, The Friends of Pancho Villa

Pinkney Benedict: Dogs of God

Saul Bellow: Herzog

Don DeLillo: Underworld

Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow

Sarah Orne Jewitt: The Country of the Pointed Firs

Ambrose Bierce: The Devil's Dictionary

Dorothy Parker: Essays

Alex Haley: Roots

Ian Frazer: On The Rez

Sherman Alexie: Reservation Blues

Raymond Chandler: The Long Goodbye, The Big Sleep

William Faulkner: Go Down Moses, A Rose For Emily, Intruder In The Dust, As I Lay Dying

There's much, much more ...

More greats from English lit. include:

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Max Beerbohm: Zuleika Dobson

Ford Maddox Ford: The Good Soldier

George Elliot: Middlemarch

Author Unknown: Beowulf

John Milton: Paradise Lost

Charlotte Bronte: Villette

Elizabeth Gaskell: Cousin Phyllis

Samuel Beckett: Waiting For Godot (o.k., technically French)

Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim

Virginia Woolf: To The Lighthouse

Graham Swift: Last Orders

and, of course, many, many more ...

Warrior Poet

 

[Bob Aberton]

Can't say I really like Catcher in the Rye much, either. I mean, I know Holden Caulfield is messed up and all, but what's the point? Of the book, I mean. It's like "A Day in the Life of Holden Caulfield."

Anything by Mark Twain is good, though I think that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer are his best books.

I third Old Man and the Sea , by Ernest Hemingway. Excellent book.

Moby Dick is a good book as well.

Treasure Island is one of my favorite stories...

Most of Joseph Conrad's books, Heart of Darkness , Lord Jim , and Children of the Sea are pretty good books.

 

[Mallus]

"I don't like people who read Catcher in the Rye
Yeah I read it too, but someone tell me why
Some people say I am like that guy
I don't want to grow up, cause I don't want to die"

--William Holden Caufield by Too Much Joy.


Anyway... books.

Pale Fire by Nabokov --for expanding the definition of the novel.

White Noise by Don Dellilo --its funny, and considerably shorter than Underworld

The stories of Raymond Carver --I don't like them, but they did have a really big impact on short fiction.

 

[Shadowdancer]

"Slaughterhouse 5" by Kurt Vonnegut

"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

"Hotel New Hampshire" by John Irving. Actually, just about anything by Irving, from "The World According to Garp" to the present, is worth reading.

"The Magus" by John Fowles. Talk about a book that will mess with your mind.

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey

"Sophie's Choice" by William Styron

"Dune" by Frank Herbert

"A Bridge Too Far" by Cornelius Ryan

"Eye of the Hunter" by Dennis L. McKiernan