Okay, Matt, have at us...you promised us a list. Go for it.
Okay, Matt, have at us...you promised us a list. Go for it.
Originally Posted by Erfael
Quick-like, off the top of my head . . .
Josef Conrad
Lord Jim
Heart of Darkness
Nostromo
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A Farewell To Arms
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (Collected Stories)
Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
Captains Courageous
Collected Stories
Mark Twain
Huckleberry Finn
Life on the Mississippi
The Mysterious Stranger
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace
"The Death of Ivan Ilych"
Homer
The Iliad
The Odyssey
Euripedes
The Trojan Women
The Bacchae
Aeschylus
The Orestaia
Jean-Paul Sartre
The Flies
"The Wall"
William Shakespeare
Collected Works, but especially
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
The Tragedy of King Lear
King Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2)
The History of Troilus and Cressida
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Christopher Marlowe
Doctor Faustus
I guess that'll do for a start. Many of the above are actually in-genre, too.
No female writers whatsoever. I read alot (obviously) and a lot of classics too, and I try and get a gender balance. Having tried and failed to get interested in Hemmingway and Conrad, it is likely that I will not read quite a lot on this list. And surely Marlowe should be enjoyed on stage?
But back to my original point. No female writers. Any chance of adding some to your list?
And I bet none are black or gay either!!! BURN HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Leiali, if asked to make any list of favourites, should you be honest and state your faves or try and go for gender balance? Gender balance for the sake of a PC list seems pointless.
Sorry if I read too much into your post, the Internet is priceless for 'wrong-end of stick' grabbing.
I take your points Glelas and Juzzza and I must confess I am instinctively PC. My issues were since women are half the population, a representative voice would be nice. And when I meant gender balance, I meant 'don't you have any female writers you like off the top of your head?' Not please satisfy my sense of PC ness. Although I appreciate that this is his list, and he can write what he likes, surely interactive feedback would keep this thread on its toes? I figured one obvious problem for me. And said it.
PS - Marlowe was gay
PPS - Remember that sort of row we had about machismo Juzzza? I think this thread ties in with that for me, I personally found Hemmingway and Conrad difficult to get into because I found the writing dry and too masculine for me to have any real commitment to the reading. I won't even get started on Henry Miller. Again, part of the reason why I brought it up was to explore that....I forgot to add to that the fact that I really like Caine, which could be considered contradictory to the point I was trying to make.
Last edited by Leiali; January 19th, 2005 at 07:55 AM.
Leiali - This is Matt Stover's forum. What did you expect? Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Plath and Evelyn Waugh? I think you have the wrong author for that. Here you get no-nonsense, hard talking, machismo. He's 'the bear', remember? Though I really do believe there is another side to MWS that maybe he will confess to one day. I don't think you can be a superb author and not be intuitive and sensitive, though that persona may not suit his image.
It is a thread for HIS preferences not yours.
If I am not mistaken none of those authors on the list were black-irish jews either, I don't see the black-irish jewish people complaining.
I was exhausted just reading the list. It looks like a reading list for a degree in literature (look, I said the dirty 'L' word in an sf forum).
My library has a habit of throwing out old books. I had to go and wrestle one of Andre Norton's early books out of the back room and I wouldn't give it back until they promised to tape it up and put it back on the shelves... I tried to tell them it was a classic. Perhaps I'm not quite in tune with the meaning of 'classic'.
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