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I'm a reader who enjoys posting comments and recommendations about the books I read. You will not find a synopsis with my recommendations because you can just click on the book title for a link to www.goodreads.com for a synopsis and reviews by other readers. I prefer the 3 Reason format: the reason I chose to read it; the reason I liked (or disliked) the book; and the reason I recommend it.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Classics and Contemporary Classics

Read any good books lately? I felt dissatisfied with many recommendations I received from book club members and some best-selling lists. My reaction to my dissatisfaction has been to suggest we find some classics that I have not gotten around to reading yet. I suggested we pick from these lists of Classics and Contemporary Classics pasted in my 1983 journal.
Classic Fiction
Acevedo Diaz, Eduardo – The Cry of Glory (Uruguayan, 1894)
Alcott, Louisa May- Little Women (American, 1868)
Alegria, Ciro-Broad - Alien is the World (Peruvian, 1941)
Anderson, Sherwood - Winesburg, Ohio (American, 1919)
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice (British, 1813)
Balzac, Honore de - Pere Goriot (French, 1834)
Baroia, Pia - The Restlessness of Shanti Andia (Spanish, 1911)
Beerbohm, MJt.x - Zuleika Dobson (British, 1911)
Bennett, Arnold - The Old Wives' Tale (British, 1908)
Bernanos, Georges - The Diary of a Country Priest (French, 1936)
Bierce, Ambrose - In the Midst of Life (American, 1898)
Bowen, Elizabeth - The Death of the Heart (Anglo-Irish, 1939)
Bromfield, Louis - The Rains Came (American, 1937)
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre (British, 1847)
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights (British, 1848)
Buck, Pearl - The Good Earth (American, 1931)
Bunyan, John - The Pilgrim's Progress (British, 1678)
Burney, Fanny - Evelina (British, 1778)
Butler, Samuel - The Way of All Flesh (British, 1903)
Cabell, James Branch - Jurgen (American, 1919)
Cable, George Washington - The Grandissimes (American, l880)
Caldwell, Erskine - God's little Acre (American, 1933)
Camus, Albert - The Stranger (French, 1941)
Carroll, Lewis - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (British, 1865)
Cary, Joyce - The Horse's Mouth (Anglo-Irish, 1944)
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop (American, 1927)
Cela, Camilo Jose - The Family of Pascual Duarte (Spanish, 1942)
Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote (Spanish, 1606)
Chandler, Raymond - The Big Sleep (American, 1939)
Chekhov, Anton - Short Stories (Russian, I880s and 1890s)
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening ( American. 1899)
Christie, Agatha - The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (British, 1926)
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg- The Ox-Bow Incident (American,1940)
Collins, Wilkie - The Moonstone (British, 1868)
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness (British, 1902)
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Prairie (American, 1827)
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage (American, 1895) Cummings, E.E. - The Enormous Room (American, 1922)
Dana, Richard Henry - Two Years Before the Mast (American, 1840)
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe (British, 1719)
De Forest, J.W. - Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty
(American, 1867)
Dickens, Charles - Great Expectations (British 1860-61)
Dinesen, lsak - Seven Gothic Tales (Danish, 1934)
Dos Passos, John - U.S.A. (American, 1919-36)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment (Russian, 1866)
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (British, 1891)
Dreiser, Theodore - Sister Carrie (American, 1900)
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers (French, 1844)
DuMauier, Daphne - Rebecca (British, 1938)
Eggleston, Edward - The Hoosier School-Master (American, 187l)
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss (British, 1860)
Farrell, James T. - Studs Lonigan (American 1932-1934)
Faulkner, William - Absalom, Absalom! (American, 1936)
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones (British, 1749)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby (American, 1925)
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary (French, 1857)
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier (British, 1915)
Forster, E.M. - Howards End (British, 1910)
Frederic, Harold - The Damnation of Theron Ware (American, 1896)
Galsworthy, John - The Forsyte Saga (British, 1921-1928)
Garland, Hamlin - Main- Travelled Roads (American, 1891)
Gide, Andre - The Immorailist (French, 1902)
Gissing, George - The Nether World (British, 1889)
Gogol, Nicolai - Dead Souls (Russian, 1842)
Goldsmith, Oliver - The Vicar of Wakefield (British, 1766)
Gonchavrov, Ivan - Oblomov (Russian, 1855)
Gorky, Maxim - Mother (Russian, 1907)
Graves, Robert - I, Claudius (British, 1934)
Hammett, Dashiell - The Maltese Falcon (American. 1929)
Hardy, Thomas - The Return of the Native (British, 1878)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter (American, 1850)
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms (American, 1929)
Hemon, Louis - Maria Chapdelaine (Canadian, 1914)
Hesse, Hermann - Siddhartha (German, 1922)
Howells, William Dean - The Rise of Silas Lapham (American, 1885)
Hughes, Richard - A High Wind In Jamaica (British, 1929)
Hugo, Victor - Les Miserables (French, 1862)
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God (American,1937)
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World (British, 1932)
Irving, Washington - Short Stories (American, 1820s and 30s)
James, Henry - Daisy Miller (American, 1879)
Johnson, Samuel - Rasselas (British, 1759)
Joyce, James - Dubliners (Irish, 1914)
Koestler, Arthur - Darkness at Noon (Hungarian, 1940)
Lawrence, D.H. - Sons and Lovers (British, 1913)
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt (American, 1922)
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild (American, 1903)
Malraux, Andre - Man's Fate (French, 1934)
Mann, Thomas - Death in Venice (German, 1913)
Mansfield, Katherine - Collected Stories (New Zealand, 1945)
Marquand, John P. - The Late George Apley (American, 1937)
Maugham, Somerset - Of Human Bondage (British, 1915)
Maupassant, Guy de - Short Stories (French, 1880s)
Mauriac, Francois - The Nest of Vipers (French, 1932)
McCullers, Carson - The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (American, 1940)
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick (American, 1851)
Meredith, George - The Egoist (British, 1879)
Mitchell, Margaret - Gone With the Wind (American, 1936)
Moore, George - Esther Waters (British, 1894)
Murasaki, Shikibu - The Tale of Genji-One (Japanese, about 1000)
Norris, Frank - The Octopus (American, 1901)
O'Hara, John - Appointment in Samarra (American, 1934)
Peacock, Thomas Love - Nightmare Abbey (British, 1818)
Poe, Edgar Allan - Short Stories (American, 1840s)
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Wav (French, 1913-17)
Pushkin, Alexander - Short Stories (Russian, 1820s and 30s)
Rabelais, Francois - Gargantua and Pantagruel (French, 1532-64)
Radcliffe, Ann - The Mysteries of Udolpho (British, 1794)
Rand, Ayn - The Fountainhead (American, 1943)
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front (German, 1928)
Richardson, Samuel - Clarissa (abridged) British, 1747-48)
Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Circular Staircase (American, 1908)
Rivera, Jose Eustasio - The Vortex (Columbian, 1924)
Rolvaag, O.E. - Giants in the Earth (Norwegian-American, 1927)
Scott, Sir Walter - Ivanhoe (British, 1891)
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein (British, 1818)
Silone, Ignazio - Bread and Wine (Italian, 1937)
Sinclair, Upton - The Jungle (American, 1901)
Smollett, Tobias - Humphry Clinker (British, 1771)
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath (American, 1940)
Stegner, Wallace - The Big Rock Candy Mountain (American,1931)
Stendahl - The Red and The Black (French, 1830)
Sterne, Laurence - Tristram Shandy (British, 1760-67)
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island (British, 1882)
Stoker, Bram - Dracula (British, 1897)
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin (American, 1852)
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels (British, 1726)
Tate, Allen - The Fathers (American, 1938)
Thackeray, William Makepeace - Vanity Fair (British, 1847-48)
Tolstoy, Leo - Anne Karenina (Russian, 1873-76)
Toomer, Jean - Cane (American, 1923)
Trollope, Anthony - Barchester Towers (British, 1857)
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons (Russian, 1892)
Twain, Mark - Huckleberry Finn (American, 1885)
Undset, Sigrid - Kristin Lavransdatter (Norwegian,1920-22)
Verne, Jules - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (French, 1869)
Voltaire - Candide (French, 1759)
Walpole, Horace - The Castle of Otranto (British, 1764)
Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited (British, 1964)
Wells, H.G. - Tono-Bungay (British, 1908)
West, Nathanael- The Day of the Locust (American, 1939) Wharton, Edith - The Age of Innocence (American, 1920)
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray (British, 1891)
Wilder, Thornton - The Bridge of San Luis Rey (American, 1927) Wisler, Owen - The Virginian (American, 1902)
Wolfe, Thomas - Look Homeward, Angel (American, 1929)
Woolf, Virginia - To The Lighthouse (British, 1927)
Wright, Richard - Native Son (American, 1940)
Zola, Emil - Germinal (French, 1885)


Contemporary Classics (from WWII until 1983)

Abe, Koo - The Woman In The Dunes (Japanese, 1964)
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart (Nigeria, 1951)
Agee, James - A Death In the Family (American, 1957)
Amis, Kingsley - Lucky Jim (British, 1953)
Atwood, Margaret - Surfacing (Canadian, 1972)
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on The Mountain (American, 1952)
Barth, John - The Sot-Weed Factor (American, 1960)
Bellow, Saul - Sammler's P1anel (American, 1969)
Boll, Heinrich - Billiards At Half-Past Nine (German, 1962)
Borges, Jorge - Labyrinths (Argentine, 1962)
Braine, John - Room at the Top (British, 1951)
Brown, Claude - Manchild In the Promised Land (American, 1965)
Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange (British, 1962)
Cheever, John - The Wapshot Scandal (American, 1963)
Connell, Evan S. - Mrs. Bridge (American, 1951)
Coover, Robert - The Public Burning (American, 1977)
Crews, Harrv - Car (American, 1972)
Dickev, James - Deliverance (American, 1970)
Didion, Joan - Plav It as It Lays (American, 1975)
Doctorow, E. L. - Ragtime (American, 1975)
Drabble, Margaret - The Garrick Year (British, 1964)
Durrell, Lawrence - Justine (British, 1957)
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man (American, 1947)
Fowles, John - The French Lieutenant's Woman (British, 1969)
Friedman, Bruce Jay - Stern (American, 1962)
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel - One Hundred Vears of Solitude (Columbian,
1967)
Gardner, John - Grendel (American, 1971)
Gironella, Jose - The Cvpresses Believe in God (Spanish, 1953)
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies (British, 1954)
Grass , Gunter - The Tin Drum (German, 1959)
Greene, Graham - The Heart of the Matter (British, 1949)
Heller, Joseph - Catch-22 (American, 1955)
Hersey, John - Hiroshima (American, 1946)
Himes, Chester - Pintoes (American, 1965)
Hoban, Russell - Riddley Walker (British, 1981)
Jona, Gayl - Corregidora (American, 1975)
Jones, James - From Here to Eternity (American, 1951)
Junichiro, Tanizaki - Some Prefer Nettles (Japanese, 1965)
Kawabata, Vasunari - Thousand Cranes (Japanese, 1959)
Kerouac, Jack - On the Road (American, 1955)
Kesey, Ken - One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (American, 1962)
Kim, Richard E. - The Martyred (Korean-American, 1964)
Knowles, John .- A Separate Peace (American, 1959)
Lagerquist, Par - The Dwarf (Swedish, 1953)
Lampedusa, Giuseppe di - The Leopard (Italian, 1960)
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird (American, 1960)
Le Guin, Ursula - The Left Hand of Darkness (American, 1969)
Lessing, Doris - In Pursuit of the English (British, 1960)
Lowry, Malcolm - Under the Volcano (British, 1947)
Mailer, Norman - The Naked and the Dead (American, 1948
Moore, Brian - The Lonelv Passion of Judith Hearne (lrish-Canadian-
American, 1955)
Moravia, Alberto - Mistaken Ambitions (Italian, 1955)
Morris, Wright - Love Among the Cannibals (American, 1957)
Morrison, Toni - Sula (American, 1973)
Murdoch, Iris - Under the Net (British, 1954)
Nabokov, Vladmir - Lolita (American, 1953)
Oates, Jovce Carol - Them (American, 1969)
O'Connor, Edwin - The Last Hurrah (American, 1956)
O'Connor, Flannery - The Violent Bear It Awav (American, 1955)
Olsen, Tillie - Yonnondio (American, 1974)
Orwell, George - 1984 (British, 1949)
PaleY, Grace - Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (American, 1960)
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago (Russian, 1951)
Paton, Alan - Cry, the Beloved Country (South African, 1948)
Percv, Walker - The Moviegoer (American, 1960)
Plath, SYlvia - The Bell Jar (American, 1971)
Porter, Katherine Anne - Ship of Fools (American, 1945)
Potok, Chaim - My Name is Asher Lev (American, 1972)
Powell, Anthony - A Dance to the Music of Time (British, 1951)
Powers, J.F. - Morte D'Urban (American, 1956)
Power., John R. - The Last Catholic in Armerica (American, 1973)
Purdy, Jame. - The Nephew (American, 1960)
Read, Piers Paul - The Professor's Daughter (British, 1971)
Robbins Tom - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (American, 1976)
Roth, Philip - Goodbye, Columbus (American, 1959)
Salinger, J. D. - The Catcher in Ihe Rye (American, 1945)
Shaara, Michael - Killer Angels (American, 1974)
Sheed, Wilfred - People Will Always Be Kind (American, 1973)
Sillitoe, Alan - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (British, 1958)
Singer, Isaac Bashevis - The Familv Moskat (Arnerican, 1950)
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian, 1963)
Spark, Muriel - Memento Mori (British, 1958)
Stone, Robert - A Flag For Sunrise (American, 1981)
Styron, William - Lie Down in Darkness, (American, 1951)
Thomas, D. - The White Hotel (British, 1981)
Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Lord of the Rings (British, 1954-55)
Toole, John Kennedy - A Confederacy of Dunces (American, 1980)
Updike, John - Rabbit, Run (American, 1960)
Vonnegut, Kurt - Cat's Cradle (American, 1963)
Wain, John - Hurry On Down (British, 1953)
Walker, Alice - Meridian (American, 1977)
Wallant, Edward Louis - The Pawnbroker (Arnerican, 1962)
Warren, Robert Penn - All The King's Men (American, 1946)
Welty, Eudora - Delta Wedding (American, 1945)
White, Patrick - The Aunt's Story (Australian, 1946)
White, T. H. - The Once and Future King (British, 1958)
Williams, John A. - The Man Who Cried I Am (American, 1967)

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