• Jane Austen (Persuasion)
• Charlotte Bronte (Shirley)
• Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights)
• Anne Bronte (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall)
• Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
• Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Mayor of Casterbridge)

Damn the French!

• The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas. Tale of revenge…
• The Knight of Maison-Rouge, Alexandre Dumas. French Revolution, *Marie Antoinette.
• Les Miserables, Victor Hugo. Strong in themes of justice, endurance, and love.
• The Toilers of the Sea, Victor Hugo. Woes of the illiterate working-class, irony and love…
• Moliere (playwright). He is amazingly funny and irreverent.
• Germinal, Emile Zola. More working-class woes, a little Marxism…it’s a brutal story.
• The Stranger, Albert Camus. Murder, justice, guilt…a character study of sorts.

German Philosophy…ish….

• The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe. German Romanticism. *Unrequited Love. 19th-century cult icon.
• The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann. Issues of life and death in a sanatorium for people with Tuberculosis.
• Death in Venice, Thomas Mann. Obsession with youth.
• The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (not exactly German). Gregor Samsa turns into a bug…satire, human condition.

I’m not actually a Socialist, but…

• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair. Socialist propaganda about Lithuanian immigrants….thought-provoking.
• The Valley of the Moon, Jack London. Young couple with ideals and a touch of Socialism.

Thinking of Socialism makes me think of Russians

• Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy. It’s about redemption.
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov. Yes it’s about a pedophile, but the creepiest part is how much compassion it inspires.

Mystery, Suspense

• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier. Mousy woman lives in the shadow of her husband’s first wife, Rebecca.
• The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins. Mystery and corruption…mistaken identity, ghosts…
• The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde. Alternate universe that is very…literary…
• The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A boy’s quest in solving the mystery of a rare novel…
• Dracula, Bram Stoker. Read anything by him…he is good.

Dryer than the Sahara…

• Evelyn Waugh. Arrogant prick, but a profound and merciless satirist. Short stories and novels. Brideshead Revisited, A Handful of Dust, Scoop.
• Robert Graves. I, Claudius. A brilliant “auto-biography” of a Roman emperor…
• Saki. A great playwright and short-story writer.

MORE British authors…

• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith. A personal favorite. Coming of age in a dysfunctional family…
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton. Schoolmaster reminisces about a long life of teaching.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. Obsession with youth and such…creepy…Wilde is awesome.
• Utopia, Sir Thomas More. Description of an ideal society. Hilarious. 16th-century.
• North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell. Industrial Revolution. *Contrasts North and South England. Bildungsroman.
• Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell. More working class woes during *Industrial Revolution. Bildungsroman.
• Midshipman Horatio Hornblower, C. S. Forester. Adventures in the British navy.

American (and Canadian) authors---yes, there are some good ones!

• The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Americans in Italy…love and very bad luck. It’s haunting…
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey. Chaos comes to an insane asylum in the form of McMurphy.
• The Linnet Bird, Linda Holeman. About a prostitute in 19th-century England. Colonialism and opium, too.
• Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank. Written in the Cold War, set in future. One town left after Nuclear Holocaust.
• The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac. The 1960s and zen…drugs and orgies…etc….
• Joy in the Morning, Betty Smith. A young couple starting out in 1920s.
• The Sea-Wolf, Jack London. About a sea captain who is a really terrible person, yet has a certain charisma…

Fantasy-ish….(no, not that kind) and Sci-fi

• Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. A satire about the end of the world. MUST READ.
• Stardust, Neil Gaiman. A funny little fantasy-quest thingy…really humorous.
• The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett. The first in his Discworld series…but read anything by him.
• Maskerade, Terry Pratchett. Discworld. Phantom of the Opera spoof.
• Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett. More Discworld, but worthy of note…
• Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis. Space Trilogy…it’s weird.
• Perelandra, C. S. Lewis. 2nd Space Trilogy.

That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis. 3rd Space Trilogy

• A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin. An epically long book in an epically long series. Political Intrigue.
• Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake. A really odd trilogy. Primary character: Gormenghast, a castle.
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia A. McKillip. Sorcerers and legendary beasts…love…
• Sunshine, Robin McKinley. A GOOD vampire novel.
• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card. Read everything in the series, and everything by OSC….
• Enchantress from the Stars, Sylvia Engdahl. Sci-fi based on The Faerie Queen.
• A Princess from Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Space discovery…futuristic, but written a long time ago.

Non-fiction

• Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther. Father’s memoir of his son’s death at an early age.
• Voltaire Almighty, Roger Pearson. Best biography I’ve ever read.