 | Notre-Dame of Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) by Victor Hugo
Buy new: $11.11 / Used from: $0.01 The name of this book is *not* the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Far greater than any Disney ghastliness.
|
 | The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
Buy new: $12.24 / Used from: $4.30 The only criterion for literary greatness is aesthetic. The appendices give the largest list of the best that has been written and thought that I have seen.
|
 | The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love by Thomas Moore
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $0.01 Nearly devoid of meaningful content.
|
 | The Rainbow (Oxford World's Classics) by D. H. Lawrence
Buy new: $9.95 / Used from: $0.01 The best of the three Lawrence novels I've read. Nice to see that Lawrence appreciated the beauty of algebra.
|
 | Women in Love (Signet Classic) by D. H. Lawrence
Buy used from: $0.01 A sequel to The Rainbow, not quite as good as its predecessor.
|
 | The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin
Buy new: $13.57 / Used from: $0.10 Third of a trilogy; I read the first two a few years previously. Recommended.
|
 | Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyam
Buy new: $8.60 / Used from: $1.46 Medieval Persian poetry in the famous FitzGerald translation.
|
 | The Aeneid (Everyman's Library) by Virgil
Buy new: $15.60 / Used from: $6.15 A different Fitzgerald did this translation. I've read that there are no truly good translations of this; perhaps that's why I found it vaguely lacking.
|
 | The Taming of the Shrew (The New Folger Library) by William Shakespeare
Buy used from: $0.01 Shakespeare's comedies are not as good as the tragedies in my mind, but this does contain one of his best dirty jokes.
|
 | Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $4.94 Stunningly beautiful, perhaps the best novel of one of the greatest stylists in English. A round of word golf, anyone?
|
 | How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $0.82 We are but briefly here.
|
 | In Mortal Combat by John Toland
Buy new: $17.59 / Used from: $0.01 The 20th Century's forgotten war, it answers the question of why we didn't invade North Vietnam 15-20 years later - fear of Chinese intervention.
|
 | Great Expectations (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens
Buy new: $8.00 / Used from: $0.78 My favorite Dickens novel. Don't sit around waiting for your supposed benefactors to elevate you to greatness.
|
 | Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx
Buy new: $11.70 / Used from: $0.01 Wonderful exploration of the multifaceted immigrant experience as seen by the musical instrument from hell.
|
 | Complete Sonnets (Dover Thrift Editions) by William Shakespeare
Buy new: $2.00 / Used from: $0.01 Some of the finest poetry in English.
|
 | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Signet Classics) by Anonymous
Buy used from: $0.64 Wonderfully weird tale by that most prolific of authors, Anonymous.
|
 | The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Buy new: $6.99 / Used from: $0.01 Ah, youthful angst. Holden needs catching.
|
 | t zero (A Harvest/HBJ BookH) by Italo Calvino
Buy new: $11.90 / Used from: $1.50 Inferior to his similarly themed Cosmicomics.
|
 | Pagans and Christians by Robin Lane Fox
Buy used from: $3.09 The relations between pagans and the tiny Christian minority in the Roman Empire from the 2nd to 4th Centuries. Excellent and thought-provoking.
|
 | Jack Maggs: A Novel by Peter Carey
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $0.01 Don't read this if you haven't read Great Expectations. Then by all means do so!
|
 | The Age of Louis XIV (The Story of Civilization VIII) by Will Durant
Buy used from: $0.01 The eighth of eleven greatnesses.
|
 | The Lion in Winter (Penguin Plays) by James Goldman
Buy used from: $0.01 I've read the book, I've seen the play live, and I've seen the movie. A bit ahistorical but a delight. If you think *your* family is dysfunctional...(List continues in Part 2...)
|
Listmania!
