Reading List Suggestions
Hi All
So I've come here twice before for this purpose, and it's worked out well both times, so I'm back.
I'm in a grad fiction-writing program and before the start of each semester, I have to come up with a 25-30 book reading list. I wind up haggling/bartering/pleading with the writer that I'm paired to work with and the list usually works out to be 50/50, writer/my choices. My first semester, I read a bunch of modern authors, and this last semester I worked with a writer who was a bit more interested in me getting some classics under my belt. This was the last reading list:
Packet #1 (Due: July 29th)
Herman Melville- Moby Dick
Gustave Flaubert- Madame Bovery
Charles Baudelaire- Paris Spleen
Arthur Rimbaud- Complete (Wyatt Mason, ed.)
Jorge Luis Borges- Collected Fictions
Packet #2 (Due: August 29th)
George Eliot- Middlemarch
Gabriel Garcia Marquez- 100 Years Of Solitude
Ford Maddox Ford- Parade’s End (Vol. 1)
J.D. Salinger- Franny And Zooey
Packet #3 (Due: September 29th) (E-Mail Submission)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky- Crime And Punishment
Milan Kundera- The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Denis Johnson- Angels
Don Delillo- Cosmopolis
Packet #4 (Due: October 29th) (E-Mail Submission)
Nicholas Mosley-Hopeful Monsters
Fyodor Dostoyevsky- Notes From Underground
Graham Greene- The Quiet American
Ken Kesey- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Packet #5 (Due: November 29th)
Charles Simic & Mark Strand- Another Republic
Hubert Selby Jr.- Requiem For A Dream
Mark Richard- The Ice At The Bottom Of The World
Tom Spanbauer- In The City Of Shy Hunters
Raymond Carver- Where I’m Calling From
Miscellaneous
Jane Smiley- 13 Ways Of Looking At The Novel
I've already started writing down some ideas for this semester, which include:
Stories-T.C. Boyle
Phineas Poe Trilogy-Will Christopher Baer
Faraway Places-Tom Spanbauer
The Collected Stories-Amy Hempel
Why Did I Ever-Mary Robison
Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy
And even with some of those, i.e. Hempel, who I've read most of, and Spanbauer, who I've read a couple from, it's really more to serve as a jumping-off point.
I really respect the crowd that gathers on this forum, and I'm interested to see what everyone is reading/suggests. Novels, Short Stories, Non-Fiction, Poetry--I'm open to everything.
Have fun, and thanks in advance for the help.
[B]"Answer this/When all is said and done/Are you a memorable trooper or just a lab rat on the run/Choose one"[/B]
Aesop Rock
Speaking of the Southern flavor - what about Harry Crews and Larry Brown?
I really love Harry Crews' writing. You should check out [B]A Feast of Snakes[/B] first.
[B]The Boys of My Youth[/B] by Jo Ann Beard. It's really awesome writing. Very Minimalistic.
[B]The Quick and The Dead[/B] by Joy Williams. One of my favorites.
I have more that you might not have read but I'm drawing a blank...
That's a great list. It's really well balanced, too.
Have you read any Flannery O' Connor or Truman Capote? How about A Confederacy of Dunces? You've got to get your Southern on, Y'heard?