I am being so earnest right now— I just downloaded Infinite Jest to my kindle!
Genuinely though, I would like to be a part of the conversation when my friends debate the literary canon and whatnot.
I’m a reader, but never really engaged with more literary works and, if left to my own devices, really just stick to genre fiction (favorites: gaiman, sanderson, le guin, gibson, rothfuss, asimov).
Not really sure where to start, but would specifically love recommendations that would be widely read by pretentious college students!
(( note: the impetus for this pursuit was because i want to seem intellectual and cool to my friends, but i genuinely do want to expand into reading more challenging works ))
For reference, I’ll name some of the authors my friends talk about, but I’d also love specific works that I can compile a reading list from
authors (non-comprehensive):
– david foster wallace
– salinger (i’ve read catcher in the rye but not his short stories)
– vonnegut (i’ve read cats cradle and mother night and enjoyed both)
– satre
– ishiguro
– marikaumi
– dostoyevsky
– nobikov
I’ll take recommendations from any author, the list is just to get a sense of the vibes. Thanks so much!!
by Clear_Yam_7402
4 Comments
Start with Shakespeare
Jeanette Winterson is worth adding to the list I think.
In no particular order:
* Hemingway
* Steinbeck
* Orwell: 1984, Animal Farm
* Camus: The Stranger
* Dickens
* Dumas: The Count Of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
* Tolstoy: War And Peace, Crime And Punishment
* Melville: Moby Dick
* Heller: Catch-22
* Truman Capote
* Hunter S. Thompson: Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
* William Faulkner
* Beckett: Waiting For Godot
* Gabriel Garcia Marquez
* Alice Walker: The Color Purple
* James Joyce: Ulysses
* Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
* Kafka: Metamorphosis
* Golding: Lord Of The Flies
* Kerouac: On The Road
Hemingway – I would start with his short stories like the Hills Like White Elephants. My favourite novel of his is for whom the bell tolls. His style is just so influential.
Raymond Carver – What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Also very influential for short stories and dialogue.
I also have to throw in a vote for Steinbeck, my favourite author. Cannery Row and East of Eden.
For modern stuff, it might impress them if you show some diversity and read some modern classics by people of color and women such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.
Something between your tastes and theirs could be classic dystopian fiction like 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.