[Boon[_2_]]

On Mar 31, 9:27*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
What three books would you say are your all-time favorites?

That's an easy one for me, since my degree is in Literature, and I
specialized in 20th Century American Novelists.

I loved On the Road for much of my younger days, but I think I burned
myself out on Kerouac a few years ago. Still, I consider it my
favorite because it's connected to a very important time of my life. I
also love The Sound and the Fury, The Grapes of Wrath, The Sun Also
Rises, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobacco Road, The Sheltering Sky...crap,
that's more than three.

I revisit both Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow every few years to push
myself. Of contemporaries, I enjoy T. Coraghessan Boyle, Thomas
McGuane, Peter Matthiessen, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick. (I don't
know if the last two qualify as contemporaries since they've passed
on, but I refer to the fact that their output was focused on the
latter part of the century.)


I'd say (off the top of my head) Anna Karenina, Catch-22 and maybe
David Copperfield. Little Big Man (great movie as well). Two Years
Before the Mast which gives an insightful look into California when
the white (not angry white, just white) population of that state was
probably in the low hundreds.

I enjoy Catch-22. I have a first edition hardcover of it.


There are a few military-related books, for example Shelby Foote's
very readable history of the Civil War or "A Few Great Captains", that
are up there too. the Caine Mutiny and Mutiny on the Bounty. The list
goes on and on.

I liked The Caine Mutiny as well. I also enjoyed From Here to
Eternity, the Naked and the Dead, and Tales of the South Pacific.

I'll tell you what's a great book...Deliverance by James Dickey.
Forget the movie (although it is a good movie). Dickey was a poet, and
Deliverance was his only novel. He has a fantastic gift for phrasing.

I also have a soft spot for short stories. Some of my favorite writers
in that form are Flannery O'Connor, John Updike and the aforementioned
Boyle.

Since I've spent the first forty-odd years of my life reading
literature, I've tried to expand my horizons with more non-fiction
over the last few years.


It's kind of funny. I don't think I could possibly stop at three and
ScottW cannot come up with one.

I wonder if ScottW would ever consider joining a friendly discussion
on literature.

I seriously doubt it. Engineers generally aren't fiction readers.