The Best Books I Read Before and Have Read Since Peace Corps
- A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
- A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
- Julian by Gore Vidal
- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
- The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
- The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
- Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver
- The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
- Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
- Demian by Hermann Hesse
- every book by Jane Austen except Love and Friendship
- every book by Charles Dickens except The Old Curiosity Shop
- Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
- Moo by Jane Smiley
- Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
- the "Palliser" novels by Anthony Trollope
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- The Red and the Black by Stendhal
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Source by James Michener
- Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
- West with the Night by Beryl Markham
- Mephisto in Onyx by Harlan Ellison
- the "Aubrey/Maturin" novels by Patrick O'Brian
- Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
- Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
- Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
More to come on this, of course, as I recall great reading experiences. I am thinking of these books off the top of my head, of course. This is a much shorter list than the Peace Corps list; I'm not sure why. Be careful if you choose to read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--it's not (emotionally) easy to read.
This is not necessarily a comparative list, that is, The Source by James Michener is on the list . . . do I think that is the best Michener nove1? No, it is just the only one I've read. However, I did prefer Out of Africa to the other Dinesen I've read (although all Dinesen is preferable to bits of formulaic fluff such as The Bridges of Madison County). And some of them, like Far From the Madding Crowd, make the list because they gave me a welcome surprise (in the case of FFtheMC, it ended happily).
Have you read Isak Dinesen's essay the Blank Page? If not you should be able to find a copy on-line easy enough. Quite interesting.
No, I haven't. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look for it. I did read the Seven Gothic Tales, which I thought were interesting but not a masterpiece like Out of Africa.