[Boon[_2_]]

On Mar 31, 10:32*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Mar 31, 10:07*pm, Boon wrote:

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.

Yeah, Steinbeck is a favorite. Believe it or not I haven't read Harper
Lee yet but I have Mockingbird here in my "to read" pile. Most of my
books are in storage.

My Big Three in college were Kerouac, Hemingway and Faulkner. My
thesis compared Kerouac and Hemingway and how their styles were
complete opposites, With Hemingway, you had to read between the lines
and really dig for meanings, while every word in Kerouac's brain
landed on the page.


While I liked "Old Man and the Sea" I confess to being outside the
norm. I remain predominately unmoved by Hemingway. Some of his short
stories were OK. I'll give him another go as I have a couple here.
Don't forget Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis.

I respect and admire The Great Gatsby, but I have three other
Fitzgerald novels that I haven't been able to get into. Sinclair Lewis
is great, as is Upton Sinclair. (I mix those two up all the time.)


Twain is another all-time fave. "A Connecticut Yankee" may be my top
one there.

I have first edition replicas of both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn with
the original illustrations. Beautiful, beautiful books.


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.)

P.G. Wodehouse, Vonnegut (I think I've read everything he's published)
Tim O'Brien (ditto), David Sedaris, Theodore Dreiser (these are not
all contemporaries either)...

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.

I read it before I joined the military and again after. It was funny
both times but for different reasons. A brilliant book. I've read a
couple other Heller novels. He was really good.

I tried reading God Knows, which Stephen just mentioned, but I wasn't
nuts about it. Catch-22 is spectacular. That reminds me of Philip
Roth, who I also enjoy. I'm a fan of Goodbye, Columbus. I still need
to read Portnoy's Complaint one day.

Also...Truman Capote. I've read In Cold Blood a few times and it's a
literary benchmark for me. Breakfast at Tiffany's is also a fun, fast
read.


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.

Mitchener's best IMO. Caravans was also very good and with the war in
Afghanistan pertinent today. I read it years ago though.

I went through a Michener phase when I was in my late teens...Hawaii,
Chesapeake, Centennila and a few others. My dad is a huge Michener
fan, so we share that.


Irving Stone's "The Agony and the Ecstasy" gave me insight into and a
love of Michaelangelo which drove me to a 17-day tour of Italy. I've
never read any of his others though.

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 haven't read it. The Godfather was terrific too, and I think
important in the development of American fiction, though I wouldn't
put Puzo in the "poet" category. Didn't they come out at about the
same time?

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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer and John Cheever too.

John Cheever, definitely. I'm less familiar with Singer.


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.

The military history arena is where I primarily fill up on nonfiction.
I also just read biographies of Edison and Gerald R. Ford.

McCulloch's (sp?) "John Adams" was good too.

I read his 1776 a couple of years ago and it was outstanding. I also
liked The March by E.L. Doctorow. Read those two back to back.


A great one military book I'd wager most US officers haven't read is
The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov.

I've never heard of it.


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.

But I didn't specify fiction. What do engineers read besides trade
magazines and journal articles?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

And Scott can be deadly dull.