"Classical" Literature from your country

[Bioture]

sun tzu - the art of war

[SpiderMage]

Don't know if these were written by Americans or not but...

Farinhiet(sp?) 451 and Shogun, Shogun is long though.

[NaiLed]

Lord of the flies


Some web site: The book describes in detail the horrific exploits of a band of young children who make a striking transition from civilized to barbaric.


Suhs comment: i thought it was a very good book with plenty of tension and suspense. Also ignore any films of it that you may come across and the americans really screwed it up.





sorry William Golding (1954)

oh God. reading this book is fine, but having to study every sentence for a year drains the fun out of the book. but it is a good read though, and you're right about the films

[NaiLed]

i' not sure what counts as "classical", but

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP!

edit: yeh, i know this isn't from my country but it's my favourite ever book. thanks TK

[Da1andonly]

Kalevala

[Jerome Scuggs]

Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions

YES.

And Cat's Cradle. Either of those should replace Slaughterhouse-Five as igh-school reading literature.

[DoTheFandango]

Slaughter-House Five was disallowed in our school, and not because of the content, but the name.

I HATE THE CONSERVATIVE CATHOLICS WHO RULE MY TOWN FKJASLFAJA

[Squeezer]

ummmm....Sam.....I go to a Catholic school, and one of our readings for Senior Honors English is Slaughterhouse Five.

And btw, when you said that, I immediately thought of footloose. :P

[Spider]

Two more books

Canadians aren't generally known to be super great authors or anything but being from Canada I know a book you might want to try...

Timothy Findley's The Wars is rather decent. I enjoyed it. It won an award or two, probably just Canadian ones though. Its about a guy that gets sent off to fight in WW1. It's been a while but it was good. It's from 1977. Has a gay-sex part.

Heres one from England: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It's kinda like the movie Gattica (sp?) with cloning and all that kind of stuff. It's a futuristic and bizzare society. Very interesting. it's from the 1930's if I remember correctly. Has lots of straight-sex implied, and a bit of explicitly sexual parts.

FYI: I have read some books that don't have sex as a theme or sub-theme... Just can't think of any right now.

1984 is another good book. I second that one. It has sex in it also. Straight-sex.

Oh, and regarding William Faulkner... That is some heavy stuff. Don't read that unless you want to make it your day job. Wow. I read most of Sound and the Fury. Yikes! It was published during the depression and the idea originally was to have all the jumping forward and backward in time printed in different colors. That's what I've heard. Would have made it easier. If you read it you'll know what I mean. ROFL!! Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure there is sex in this one too. (Straight-sex) The sister loses her virginity. It's implied. No moans or anything. Haha. I'm a sicko. :/

[schope]

John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"

without glasses i thought it was of mice and hen

[Colossos]

Anything by Shakespeare tends to be pretty good (plays are literature too, you know). Same goes for Charles Dickens (stating obvious, but you asked)

Also, Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

[Blanke]

haha

aHAH!

Turns out

People on subspace

Can say things besides

"STFU GG SIT"

Go you

[pv=nrt]

kafka is interesting in a weird way.


brave new world- aldous huxley

[Fit of Rage]

A passage from Wuthering Heights was by far the most pain-staking excerpt I have ever had the misfortune of reading.

[Jeansi]

I'm not sure of the exact english title but one of my all time favorite books is Sinuhe, The Egyptian by Mika Waltari. I definately recommend it and it's one of the few basic books that finnish people read in school (aside from The Unknown Soldier).

It's about an egyptian man's life which is sort of strange since the author had never even been to the country. Doesn't tell that much about Finland if that's what you were looking for but as a book I can't find the words to praise it enough.

If you want to read a book that might bring you closer to why finns are what they are, consider The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna.


edit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...207017-3027806
The title seems to be
Egyptian: A Novel

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/cus...Fencoding=UTF8