It was asked recently on a writer’s email list I’m on what books we’ve read recently. Since I’ve been woefully inconsistent with my blogging lately, I thought I’d share this list with you folks as well.
First, books I'm reading and haven't had a chance to finish yet:
Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Some book about this kid named Harry who's got a lightning bolt tattooed to his forehead.
The Phantom Ship - Capt. Frederick Marryat
Paradise Lost - Milton
Books I've read recently (in no particular order):
Light in August
As I Lay Dying
Sound & the Fury
all by William Faulkner (for a class, so not sure if this really counts :-)
Significance: although I can't say he's one of my favorite authors yet, his style and what he wrote about is starting to grow on me.
Salem's Lot - King
Significance: yeah, right :-)
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Bradbury
Significance: his storytelling style is similar in some ways to Faulkner in that it's stream-of-consciousness and emotionally provocative. It makes for an interesting and incredibly unique read.
Dune - Frank Herbert
Significance: world building, world building, world building. There are and have been a lot of great SF authors who can create vivid worlds, but for my money, Herbert's got them all beat if for no other reason than that he was there first. I can still taste the hot sand and smell the spice. If he wasn't so enamored by a strange mixture of Bolshevist and Hindu/Eastern religion in his personal beliefs, I might have enjoyed him more :-)
The first Earthsea book - Ursula LeGuin
War of the Worlds
The Time Machine
The Invisible Man
by H.G. Wells
Significance: Wells is so ingrained in English-speaking culture I doubt he needs any explanation.
Inferno - Dante
What a fantastic tome. 13th century literature at it's best, IMHO. Who else could have gotten away with that? (Sometime look up the significance of hairy palms to a medieval audience...caveat emptor ;-)
Well at the World's End - William Morris (1834-96, no relation to the tobacco company :-)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Who knows?
Frankenstein - Mary (Mrs. Percy B.) Shelley
The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
Significance: The Horace Walpole school of writing:
1) Get fantastically rich on inheirted money.
2) Do all kinds of interesting, but entirely pointless things for the sheer adventure of it.
3) Write a hilariously cheeky book that will be considered by many as the first Gothic novel.
4) Get bored with writing after one book and never do *that* again.
The Princess Bride - William Goldman...I mean, S. Morganstern :-) Explain to me again why he did that, please?
Beowulf
Planet of the Apes - Pierre Boulle
The Dreamquest of Unknown Kaddath - H.P. Lovecraft
