Aside from getting a couple duplicates that I’ll bring back tomorrow, here’s what I picked up in an hour of searching:
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck
A Room with a View – E. M. Forster
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
A Passage to India – E. M. Forster
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Daughter of Fortune – Isabel Allende
Falconer – Jonathan Cheever
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Brand – Henrik Ibsen
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
S. – John Updike
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
–> Travels with Charley
–> John Steinbeck
Love that one!
–> Heart of Darkness
–> Joseph Conrad
On my top ten list. A book that fascinated me endlessly when I read it more than 20 years ago. I’ve read it several times since (a rare thing considering the thousands of books I have). “The horror, the horror”. Wow, what a “wonderful” (considering the subject matter, perhaps not the appropriate way to label it) book. If my site was about books, I would rave endlessly about this (also very influential) literary masterpiece.
–> Frankenstein
–> Mary Shelley
Considering my love for classic and contemporary horror fiction (gothic, dark fantasy, or whatever label you want to apply to the various genres or stages), it is and was a must-read.
–> The Invisible Man
–> H. G. Wells
Ditto.
I’m really looking forward to these, and the rest of the “to read” pile listed on the right sidebar here. But it’s going to take a while! I too love gothic and horror, and have the complete works of Poe. It was my first major acquisition and it was well worth the $30 or so I spent for it 40 or so years ago.
Poe?
Poe!
What a wonderful writer .. and what an intriguing life story. Endlessly fascinating. Add to that Kafka, and what you have is endless winter evenings spent with some of the best literature on this planet albeit a bit “dusty” for some more accustomed to modern treatments of the themes).
Poe’s theory of the short story is still as relevant today as it was then, and Kafka has that quirky sense of reality that resonates with me. Plus absolutely wonderful imagery.
I’ll drop by regularly here to see what’s cookin’.
Volkher
P.S.: Let me throw out a jumbled list of (gothic/dark fantasy/horror/psychological) authors I enjoy, all of which have a (mostly very) modern voice that is all too often ignored by the critics today.
Dan Simmons, Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Joe R. Lansdale, Peter Straub, Mark Z. Danielewski, plus a large number of others that I enjoy reading. Plus – don’t hit me, please – Stephen King, whose latest book even got the New York Times (which regularly trashed his work in the past) to pull out the James Joyce reference. They thought it was that good. I don’t think that reference was a fitting one, but “Lisey’s Story” is a wonderful book of love and pain. An achievement that we haven’t seen from him in decades. A must-read, if there ever was one.
Oops.
I need an edit button.
But I think you get my drift. 😉
Nothing wrong with liking Stephen King. I have about twenty of his earliest books, then fell out of love because I preferred the more realistic horror that he originally did to the weirder stuff that was more like sci fi or fantasy. On you recommendation, I’ll add this latest of his to my list.
If you need someone else to chime in on the King book, read this review:
http://tinyurl.com/vbcxa
It’s the shortened link to the review of the book by JANET MASLIN of the NYT.
It’s what sold me on the book, together with one review from Germany’s most conservative (and biggest) daily newspaper … which surprisingly heaped even more praise on it (after equally having trashed King for more than 20 years [before that, they didn’t even admit he existed]).
I started with King way back when, with his first book, and I’ve been faithful since then, despite some of the real clunkers he put out. I have some loooong shelves filled with the hardcovers (whenever affordable) and the original paperbacks.
Although I’ve alway been a bookworm, later King and my interest in him pushed me into completely new directions which lead me to some really, really good writers, most of which are virtually unknown to most.