A L P H A B E T I C A L
B Y
A U T H O R
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Why? It's a frightening experience to watch a woman with
a family,
career, and independence lose her identity when [a Christian
fundamentalist] goverment takes over and creates 3 classes
of women:
wives (with social status), handmaids (who breed), and
aunts (who are
the rest/teachers/enforcers). Another one that just stuck
with me.
- Jen
(kuehne@cae.wisc.edu)
I'll second this one. I'm in the middle of reading it
right now, but I'm
enthralled! It really is a frightening look at America,
if the Fundamentalists
take over America. Very 1984-ish, and very good. - Grimm
Borges, Jorge Luis
Labyrinths
Bradbury, Ray
Farenheit 451
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth
Lady Audley's Secret
A female response to Wilkie Collin's The Woman in
White. Just goes to
show that sweet little innocent Victorian angels were
not all that men
thought they were. -
Twilight
Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre
This is _beautifully_ written, very romantic (and not
in a silly, floofy way), and
the title character is very real and believable and,
once again, I could identify
with her. - ~E.V.
Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights
A book about passionate love which even death cannot
conquer *hand, staple,
forehead* which is notable because the protagonists are
not particularly likeable
people. Goes into themes of class structure and revenge,
as well. I prefer this
one to Jane Eyre; with the exception of a ghostly
incident or two, it is a much
more plausible story overall. And so beautifully written.
- Thessaly
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Byatt, A.S.
Possession
Calvino, Italo
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
If on a winter's night a traveller...
Carter, Angela
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman (aka The War of
Dreams)
Love
A short novel (120pp) about a young teacher in an English
university town
who meets and marries a mentally unstable teenage girl.
When the teacher's
eccentric and violent younger brother returns to live
with them, and the
teacher's affairs with other women become public knowledge,
the wife's
mental illness takes over. This is a very nasty book
- nobody is remotely
sympathetic - I think I've read it at least five or six
times. ;) -
Thessaly
The Magic Toyshop
Nights at the Circus
Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness
It changed how I looked at the good and evil in humanity,
and really
opened my eyes when I was in high school. - faile alizarine
Coupland, Douglas
Generation X
Microserfs
Shampoo Planet
Just found myself a remaindered hardcover copy and am
rereading this
for the second time. It's not my favorite Coupland piece,
but it's still quite
worthwhile. -
Christabel LaMotte
Davies, Robertson
Rebel Angels
What's Bred in The Bone
The Lyre of Orpheus
Yah, so it's a trilogy.... it's more like one big, long
book. Straight fiction, it's
about art and education and people, and they're bloody
wonderful.
-
Leanan Sidhe
Dinesen, Isak
Out of Africa
Winter's Tales
Dunn, Katherine
Geek Love
This is a book that took me a while to know if I liked
or not. It's
fascinating, disgusting, and fantastically real. If you
like "real-life"
stories of carnies, genetic mutations, and a mother's
love, this is
the novel for you. -
Twilight
Eliot, George
Middlemarch
This book is 800 pages long. It is also funny, sad,
absorbing, heartwrenching,
and likely to make you say things like "Dammit, Rosamund,
you bitch!" and
cause people to look at you funny. Virginia Woolf (I
think) called it "a novel
for grownups," which it is. This is a book to be savored
and digested.
- rufus
Follett, Ken
Pillars of the Earth
It's way up there on my book list, and it's something
like 950 pages, and I've
still read it nine or ten times, I think. It's about
the politics and nuances of life
in the Middle Ages (around 1100) and the building of
a cathedral. It's the kind
of book you don't put down. Plus it has one of the best
opening lines ever...
"The small boys came early to the hanging." -
eloquence
Quite possibly the best, most intricate piece of historical
fiction ever to hit the
NY Times best-seller list. The medieval story of the
construction of a Cathedral
and the lives connected to it, spanning 3 generations.
- Raphrat
Forster, E.M.
Howards End
A Room With A View
It's sharp, very witty, every time I read it I find another
nuance I haven't noticed
before. The language and story are beautiful. It's one
of my favorite movies as well.
It's one I've read about nine or ten times, when I'm
feeling really depressed.
-
eloquence
This is one of my favorite books, as well... it's about
a girl who meets an
unconventional young man while on a trip to Italy in
the early 1900s. When they
return to England, she becomes engaged to an upstanding
and well-meaning but
hopelessly dull prig, but very soon things that happened
while she was in Italy
start to interfere with her engagement, and she finds
herself having to choose
between the two men. It is *oh* so swoony and romantic,
but makes some
good points about relationships and independence as well.
- Thessaly
Fraser, George MacDonald
The Pyrates
I'm a longtime fan of his other work (the inimitable
Flashman novels and his
Highland regiment short stories) and have heard many
recommendations for
this particular novel over the years. Well, I'm currently
in the midst of it, and
they were all right -- it is the most over-the-top,
uproarious, hysterical
swashbuckling piece of derring-do I've seen in ages.
- Christabel LaMotte
Fry, Christopher
The Lady's Not For Burning
Fry, Stephen
The Hippopotamus
The Liar
Gira, Michael
The Consumer
This book is a collection of what Michael Gira refers
to as his "fairy tales."
Written at different times and at different junctures...
this book is, if nothing else,
a collection of some very grim situational satire and
random malignant thoughts
on life and love. If you liked Animal Farm... you'll
LOVE The Consumer. It's a
nice walk through the corridors of the former SWANS'
mind.
- The Lighthouse Keeper
Graves, Robert
I, Claudius
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The Scarlet Letter
Classic and devastating in a weird puritanical sort of
way. The movie should be
banned because it is awful. - Ash
Twice-Told Tales
A collection of somewhat Poe-like gothic tales. My personal
favorite is
"Rappaccini's Daughter", which is about a botanist who
experiments with
poisonous plants, his beautiful daughter, and a young
man who falls in love
with her. -
Thessaly
Helprin, Mark
A Soldier of the Great War
Homes, A. M.
The End of Alice
Disgusting book about a pedophile in jail and his
correspondance with a
19-year-old girl obsessed with a young boy. Well-written
and fascinating.
- Opium Poppy Fields
Irving, John
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Lamb, Wally
She's Come Undone
It blew me away - truly amazing, engaging, easy to
get very absorbed in and
just...ja. damned good. Follows a girl from age
4 to 40 as she goes insane,
to college, gets married, has an abortion, is raped,
has all of her family die
one by one but still manages to be sarcastic and humorous.
- mayfair
Leroux, Gaston
The Phantom of the Opera
[This was recommended by several people; it seems to
be a sort of goth favorite,
although not as notoriously as, say, Dracula.
It's about a deformed genius named
Erik, who has for various reasons been able to build
a virtual castle in the cellars
of the Paris Opera House. The story's major plot involves
a young soprano,
Christine Daae, who he has become obsessed with
and decided to make a star,
and her childhood friend, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, who
has recently come
back into her life and wishes to marry her. At the same
time, there is an amusing
subplot about Erik's penchant for bilking the Opera's
managers out of a fortune.
Just the right balance of excitement, mystery, romance,
and horror, with a tear-
jerker ending, all presented in a journalistic style.
Try to get the Bantam Classics
edition translated by Lowell Bair: it's the only modern
translation, as well as the
only unabridged edition available. Other editions have
a more Edwardian flavor
and edit a lot of detail information regarding the Opera
House itself and the
characters' pasts. - T.]
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Love and Other Demons
Love in the Time of Cholera
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Maupin, Armistead
Tales of the City
These are highly absorbing and addictive books about
a bunch of people living
in an apartment building in San Francisco. - rufus (also
recommends the sequels)
Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita
Pinkwater, Daniel
Young Adults
This is the funniest thing that I have ever read. It's
about a group of high school
boys who worship the Dadaists, and create art, sort of,
heh. In the second part/sequel,
they get really, really interested in Zen because of
a cookbook. In the third part,
they go to college, sort of. This is sort of a comfort
book, and most of the stuff is
still funny, even after repeatedly reading it. -
~twilight~(little t.)
Pirsig, Robert M.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Zen was one of the cult books of the late sixties and
early seventies,
and is still one of the most brilliant books ever written.
It details the
author's cross-country cycle trip with his young son
and some friends,
intermixed with recollections of another personality,
called Phadreus.
It goes through a huge amount of philosphy and thought,
and gradually
arrives at a superb conclusion. You can read it in any
number of ways,
and any number of times - I'm currently on what must
be my twentieth
re-reading. -
Gothwalker
Poe, Edgar Allan
Complete Works
Potter, Stephen
One-Upmanship
This book, and the rest in the series, is about "how
to win life's
little games without appearing to try," as the subtitle
claims. This
book is a primer for social interaction in the way
Machiavelli is a
tutorial for public service. I was reading this while
waiting for a
philosophy club lecture on ethics and authenticity, when
a professor
(Dr Mehring) walked up and asked me what I was reading.
After I told
him, he commented that I was behind the times by some
fifty years, to
which I replied that I wasn't particularly born in 1950,
so subtracting
twice my age meant I was only two years behind. He told
me that that
was the most sophistic thing he'd heard all year. Were
you up on your
knowledgeship, you'd see how I'd trumped him, and how
I've trumped you
in Litmanship. - Jim Rantschler
Rand, Ayn
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
These are incredible works of literature, and very
descriptive of what America is
really like, that the mediocre are for the most part
embraced and admired the most,
that real talent and drive are just not acceptable any
longer. I don't know which one
I like better. You basically have to read them both.
- eloquence
Rhinehart, Luke
Adventures of Wim
One of the most fun books I've ever read, Adventures
of Wim is an
account of the life and times of Wim, a member of an
almost extinct
Indian tribe whose motto is "Brave men run." Wim is given
a mission by
the gods, to seek enlightenment, and in the process manages
to collapse
any reader on the ground laughing. -
Gothwalker
Rice, Anne
Cry to Heaven
Never really cared for her vampire stuff, but this book,
about castrati singers,
had me mystified. I didn't even think I would like it.
- Opium Poppy Fields
Robbins, Tom
Jitterbug Perfume
Stoker, Bram
Dracula
[Duh.]
Weiss, Peter
Marat/Sade
Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Grey
The Complete Works
[Note: Wilde is a popular figure with many goths, and
is considered proto-goth
himself by many people. So many people mention Wilde
or read him on a
regular basis that it would be unfair to attribute just
one or two comments
about him. While I'm sure there are also a few who will
tell you not to bother
with his work, the overwhelming majority of bookish goths
love him.]
Winterson, Jeanette
Art & Lies
The Passion
Sexing the Cherry
Written on the Body
Wodehouse, P.G.
Cocktail Time
The Inimitable Jeeves
This book isn't quite a novel, but a series of related
short stories
that is almost a novel. The Jeeves and Wooster novels
are wonderful,
but this is my favorite of the (quite large)series. The
prose is wonderful,
and the plots are unparalleled. High compliments come
from a wide range
of worthies, from Douglas Adams and George Orwell. Almost
all of his
books are worth your attention, but watch out, there's
at least one book
of golf stories lurking in wait for the unwary. - Jim
Rantschler
The World of Jeeves
[contains all of Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, including
those from The
Inimitable Jeeves, but not the novels.]
Yoshimoto, Banana
Kitchen
n.p.
Amrita
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Last update 27 March 1998.