<p>I second:
The World is Flat
Tipping Point, and Malcolm Gladwell's next book, Blink
Freakonomics</p>
<p>Also I suggest:
Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam</p>
<p>and instead of Nickled and Dimed,
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
and Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple
for insight into what it's like to lead a tough life.</p>
<p>and some history from the above lists (it always
helps to give a broader view)</p>
<p>Well, you probably either love JD Salinger or not. I think his Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters arequite wonderful. I also think everyone should read some Jane Austen. She even deals a little in the economics of the time (marriage as currency). David Copperfield is my favorite Dickens novel. A Confederacy of Dunces is sublime. Lucky Jim, A Severed Head, A Handful of Dust, Bel-Ami, The Portrait of a Lady, The Return of the Native (depressing, but less so than Hardy's others), Sister Carrie and my favorite children's book, The Long Winter. Anything about Sherlock Holmes is fun and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a classic mystery. A really fun recent book is Brainiac by Ken Jennings about trivia.</p>
<p>I remember loving CITR and reread it a few years ago and still loved it. My son, otoh, expressed repeatedly that he thought Holden was an immature, whiny idiot (like mathmom). He couldn't stand the book.</p>
<p>Some of my all-time favorites (maybe you have to be a girl to like these?):</p>
<p>Dreiser's Sister Carrie (The Financier and The Titan are also good), James' The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians, The European and The American. Wharton's The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. William Dean Howells' A Modern Instance and The Rise of Silas Lapham. Lewis' Main Street. The Call of the Wild.</p>
<p>I loved The Catcher In The Rye, and Holden Caulfield. It's on my all time favourite list too, but my all time favourite all time favourite is probably The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (by Douglas Adams). Everyone should read that. EVERYONE!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions. As an Indian headed off to the US to study Creative Writing (and Computer Science), which books do you recommend for me to read, to prepare for the English courses. Indian 12th grade English (in the curriculum) is maybe 7th grade level in the US, although I've done lots more reading that that, so my English is much better. I'm currently reading Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky.</p>
<p>edit: I love Call of the Wild, too! I think White Fang is better, though. Marginally. I love both.</p>
<p>Get a hold of the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannic and randomly read any thing that interests you for one hour a day. The rest of the time read some of the many good books listed by others.</p>
<p>For variety:
Some great, short Italian novels and collections of shorter writings:
Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night A Traveler...; Cosmicomics
Moravia, Contempt, The Conformist
Nicolo Ammaniti, I'm Not Scared
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table</p>
<p>Some French novels:
Stendhal, The Red and the Black
Zola, Germinal
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Gide, Lafcadio's Adventures</p>
<p>TheOneCurlyFry:
some typical high school reading in English courses includes:
Morrison, Beloved
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Orwell, 1984</p>
<p>Anything by Orwell is good reading (and excellent writing -- and a connection to India, too, in some of his writings).
Some of the classics of English literature (all great) you might expect to encounter as an English major:
Dickens, Great Expectations, David Copperfield
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss
Austen, Emma, Pride and Prejudice</p>
<p>I read an abridged version of Huckleberry Finn when I was a kid, maybe I should try reading the original one. </p>
<p>Crime and Punishment isn't hard to read. I get bored with the English when I read Shakespeare, though, which is why despite owning a Complete Works of Shakespeare, I haven't actually finished anything in it :(.</p>
<p>I actually do what you said with Encyclopedia Britannica, but I do it with Wikipedia, it's a lot of fun :).</p>
<p>Thanks for all your suggestions.</p>
<p>edit: Thank you, mamenyu. I love Orwell, I've read both 1984 and Animal Farm, and I don't like Austen, I've read Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, and a slightly abridged version of Emma.</p>
<p>Shakespeare is hard to read, but wonderful to watch. See if you can find some videos or even better a live production. I liked White Fang slightly better than Call of the Wild too, though it's been so long since I read them, I haven't a clue why!</p>
<p>I read Crime and Punishment one summer when I was traveling alone through Europe doing research on low cost housing. Not the most cheering thing to read!</p>
<p>TheOneCurlyFry:
Most definitely read the unabridged version of Huckleberry Finn!
Often, books you might have read as a kid, especially abridged versions, turn out to be a revelation when reread -- Great Expectations is an example of that; it is hilarious and moving to a mature reader, perhaps scary and baffling to a kid.
The same is true of Huckleberry Finn.
If you do read Shakespeare, be sure to get an updated edition -- Oxford has been doing facing text versions of some of the plays -- King Lear, for example.
Of the Shakespeare plays, the ones most commonly taught in US high schools include:
Hamlet, King Henry IV Part I, King Lear, The Tempest, and Twelfth Night.
I doubt if you would find them boring!</p>
<p>It's ok if you don't love Jane--but never read her abridged. She is word-perfect for those who love her. You do need to be familiar with her to be familiar with Western Lit, imo. Having read what you have, you've met the requirements. Read whatever you love, but the best writers should never be abridged. Later in life, though, check back in with the ones you didn't like so well--you may find you have changed and some you didn't love earlier are now just right. </p>
<p>One Hundred Years of Solitude, Siddhartha by Hesse, Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle or most anything by Vonnegut. Candide by Voltaire and, for laughs, David Sedaris or James Thurber.</p>
<p>This is a selection of what the cool creative writing kids are reading:</p>
<p>Lots of Cormac McCarthy -- Blood Meridian, All The Pretty Horses, The Road
Joan Didion -- The Year of Magical Thinking, the book on Los Angeles
Jack Kerouac -- On The Road -- still the bible of hipsterdom
Charles D'Ambrosio's short stories
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
Jonathan Safran Foer -- everything, especially Everything Is Illuminated
Nicole Krauss -- A History Of Love (aww, it's cute, they're married)
Michael Chabon -- Kavalier & Clay
Jonathan Lethem -- Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn</p>
<p>Among older novelists, other than McCarthy, Phillip Roth, Don DeLillo, Henry Miller</p>
<p>But . . . you've got to train yourself to get through Shakespeare. Everyone has. It's a universal reference point in English.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone, and sorry for hijacking your thread, OP :(. </p>
<p>I have no idea how I'm going to get all these books, though. The classics should be easy to find, but the ones on your list, JHS - I dunno, I've read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, though. That's a wonderful book. I guess I'll make aother attempt at Shakespeare.</p>
<p>bethievt, I've read two unabridged Austens, Sense and Sensiblity and Pride and Prejudice. I read them pretty recently,too, Sense and Sensiblity about one year ago, and Pride and Prejudice about six months ago. The only abridged Austen I read was Emma.</p>