• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Recommend Some Literature

Adam Barkley

Adam Barkley

Mayday!
Aug 26, 2003
6,611
12
41
Jackson, MS
www.facebook.com
#1
Tis summertime and the living, as they say, is easy. So I'm looking for some interesting books to read.

To give you an idea of my interests, the last books I've read are The Sound and the Fury - Faulkner, Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol, Cosmopolis - Don Delillo, and Government in the Future - Noam Chomsky. Currently, I've just started Joyce's Ulysses and I'm about half of the way through Sandy Koufax's auto-biography.

I dig the easy-read, dark comedy stuff about economics, music, and life like Dead Souls, Cosmopolis, and Nevermind the Pollacks, but I also dig the "stretch-the-mind" stream of consciousness stuff like The Sound and the Fury.

I'll research any suggestions that you might have.

Thanks,
Adam
 
#5
Classics:

Knut Hamsun
Hermann Hesse
Thomas Mann
Willa Cather
Ernest Hemingway
Joseph Conrad

Modern:
Jim Harrison
Kent Haruf

EDIT:
Right now! Go buy yourself Norman Mclean's A River Runs through It. This is the greatest literary achievement in under 100 pages in the past 50 years.
 
#6
Eric Cioe said:
Classics:

Knut Hamsun
Hermann Hesse
Thomas Mann
Willa Cather
Ernest Hemingway
Joseph Conrad

Modern:
Jim Harrison
Kent Haruf

EDIT:
Right now! Go buy yourself Norman Mclean's A River Runs through It. This is the greatest literary achievement in under 100 pages in the past 50 years.
Click to expand...

I only recognize Conrad and Hemingway out of the list. Conrad only for the Kubrick adaption of Heart of Darkness. I read For Whom the Bell Tolls back in a World Literature class a few years ago and I didn't really care for it. Maybe I'll dig it out and give it another try.
 
#7
abark000 said:
I just realized how bad my spelling was. Fixed.

My girlfriend is reading Catch 22 currently. The parts that she has read to me sound pretty funny.
Click to expand...

Absolutely.

My favorite:
"They are trying to kill me!"
"No one's trying to kill you!"
"But why are they shooting at me?"
"They are not shooting at you, they are shooting at everyone!"
"What difference does that make?"

I see my whole life described there.:cool:
 
#11
Eric Cioe said:
Classics:

Knut Hamsun
Hermann Hesse
Thomas Mann
Willa Cather
Ernest Hemingway
Joseph Conrad

Modern:
Jim Harrison
Kent Haruf

EDIT:
Right now! Go buy yourself Norman Mclean's A River Runs through It. This is the greatest literary achievement in under 100 pages in the past 50 years.
Click to expand...


Knut Hamsun was a Norweigan novelist from 1890-1930 or so, and won the Nobel Prize in 1920 for Growth of the Soil and Hunger. Other works include Pan, which to me is a pinnacle of storytelling, Victoria, and Dreamers.

Hermann Hesse was a German who was obsessed with the East. He wrote, among others, Siddhartha and Steppenwolf.

Thomas Mann was a German who won the Nobel Prize in 1929 for Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain. He also wrote Death in Venice and Doctor Faustus.

Willa Cather is an American who wrote primarily about the plains. My Antonia is a recent favorite of mine.

Hemingway you know, though you ought to give For Whom The Bell Tolls another chance. Another thing you might consider are his short stories or Old Man & The Sea.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the densest 100 pages in Western literature, I think. He has a way of telling a story so that you understand what's going on only gradually. A total literary master, and this novella is a great, great read.

Jim Harrison is a contemporary author from northern lower Michigan. His True North is great, and Legends of the Fall and Farmer are short, sweet, and well-written.

Kent Haruf was just one other thing thrown in the mix. He wrote Plainsong and Eventide, which are about a small community in east Colorado. Not particularly challenging, but it tells a story.
 
#17
Here are some of the best books I think I have
ever read (in no particular order):

An American Tabloid - James Ellroy - noir - 1963, Kennedy, Miami,
CIA, Castro and Big gummint on the collison course.


Berlin Noir - Philip Kerr - defies description, noir set in
Nazi Germany.


The Grifters - Jim Thompson - one of the fifties hardest hitting writers.


Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein - eveyone should
grok this one at least once.


Stalingrad - Antony Beevor - a beautifully written, gripping
account of the annihilation of General Paulus' German 6th
Army.


Chickenhawk - Robert C. Mason - a masterful tour of duty in
a Huey in Vietnam.

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler - heck, any Chandler book is great.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - the classic
parable of Americana.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back