guanyinmiao's musings
Even though I was a literature student back in High School and College, I never did develop a keen interest for fiction texts or literature novels; most of the time, I only read books because they were prescribed in the reading lists. However, with pockets of time in the army, I have started to develop a mild passion for reading; and as part of my 2011-12 resolutions, I compiled a list of famous novels for me to read and review throughout the year. Doing the aforementioned – and establishing The Book Club – allows me to keep track of the books I have read, and provides a proper closure for each book explored.
I am not a literary expert: the Ten Things I have picked up are personal perspectives, which may sometimes differ from critical analysis or academic commentaries. More importantly, as I have realised, just because a book is famous or critically acclaimed does not necessarily mean the reader will – or have to – enjoy it. Personally, I am a little biased towards detective and crime fiction, and enjoy thrilling plot developments over extensive descriptions of the settings or intricate characterisation. But that’s just me.
On a wider scale, I hope this list would inspire more individuals to start picking up fiction novels and read. You will never know what you are missing out on until you wholeheartedly decide to commit and read.
Singaporean Authors
Stella Kon Emily Of Emerald Hill
Catherine Lim Little Ironies: Stories Of Singapore
Simon Tay Stand Alone
International Authors
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Dante Alighieri Inferno
Honoré de Balzac Old Goriot
Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland
Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep
Agatha Christie And Then There Were None | Death On The Nile
J.M. Coetzee Disgrace
Joseph Conrad Heart Of Darkness
Roald Dahl Ten Short Stories
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe
Charles Dickens Great Expectations
Arthur Conan Doyle A Study In Scarlet | Hound Of The Baskervilles
Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers
Umberto Eco The Name Of The Rose
George Eliot Middlemarch
Brent Easton Ellis American Psycho
Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary
William Faulkner As I Lay Dying | The Sound And The Fury
Arthur Golden Memoirs Of A Geisha
William Golding Lord Of The Flies
Joseph Heller Catch-22
Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner
Victor Hugo Les Misérables
Aldous Huxley Brave New World
John le Carré Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird
A.A. Milne Winnie-The-Pooh
Vladimir Nabokov Lolita
Audrey Niffenegger The Time Traveller’s Wife
George Orwell Animal Farm | Nineteen Eighty-Four
Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar
J.D. Salinger The Catcher In The Rye
Mary Shelley Frankenstein
John Steinbeck Of Mice And Men
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
Leo Tolstoy War And Peace
Mark Twain The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
H.G. Wells The War Of The Worlds
P.G. Wodehouse The Code Of The Woosters
Virginia Woolf To The Lighthouse
Discussion
4 Responses to “The Book Club (Ten Things)”
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Might I suggest also two British writers. Graham Greene and Kazuo Ishiguro.
I find Greene’s prose useful as studies in effective story telling. He effortlessly combines the most common techniques, from memorable characterization, to metaphors, to action flow. Outside of these, his humour makes his stories very enjoyable reads, even if they are of a gone era.
Some folks criticize Ishiguro for being haphazard. But I think he accurately reflects how people remember things, frequently jumping from one topic to another, and back. That makes his tales enduring.
Posted by timmytimtim93 | November 30, 2012, 5:41 pmVery very late reply, but thanks for the comment (and I appreciate the email correspondences we had).
Hope things are going great.
Jin Yao
Posted by guanyinmiao | March 11, 2013, 6:32 pm