I just finished reading “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which is set in Barcelona during the lead-up to the Spanish civil war & beyond. We got it as a send off for our trip to Spain, and I wish I had finished it before we went, it’s a great story.
I’ve picked my way around the thread and have seen a lot of fine suggestions – someone said that science fiction reading starts with “The Foundation Trilogy” as the cornerstone. I have been meaning for so long now to go back and read it, and now’s as good a time as any given that October 27 is not quite here yet.
In recent years I’ve particularly enjoyed Ray Bradbury, who seems to me to be miscast as purely a science-fiction writer, there are so many other genres skillfully presented in his work. Jack London has been knocking my socks off too (Call of the Wild, The Sea Beast, and a collection of his short stories called "The Call of the Wild and Other Stories"... the story titled "The Big Red One" is just mad nuts.
In looking at the past five years or so, these books stand out for me (among many other good reads such as The Kite Runner, The Secret Life of Bees, a bunch of Grishams, Dan Browns, Pat Conroys, et al):
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, The October Country, The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles.
Ayn Rand: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged
Pearl Buck: The Good Earth
Howard Zinn: Voices of a People’s History of the United States
Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear
John Knowles: A Separate Peace
Johnathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs & Steel – The Fates of Human Societies
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle & Breakfast of Champions
Chaim Potok: The Chosen
Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Camille Paglia: Break, Blow, Burn
Sun Tzu: The Art of War
Don’t worry guys, Danny’s put together a hell of a team for us this year. Barring an unforeseeable injury (knocks on wood), the title is ours. And that’s a book I’ll be glad to read in 2010.