Can you recommend some of your favorite Literature works?

Question

I really like Hawthorne's works, Louisa May Alcott, and Charles Dickens if that helps you get the gist of what I like to read. I'm trying to pick out some more books to read but don't know which ones are really good. Please recommend some, the less common the better, and explain, if you can, the plot. Thanks!

Answer 1

i adore Jonathan Swift

Answer 2

I take it that you like old-fashioned themes. Here are some books written in the 20th and 21st centuries but deal with old times:

Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

-The lure of Italy, particularly during a dismal, rainy day elsewhere, is hard to resist. For four British women, the attraction brings them to San Salvatore, a Tuscan villa, for an entire month of vacation.

The women are very different. Lotty Wilkins, nervous and talkative, is treated like a child by her husband and is starting to chafe from his oppression. Rose Arbuthnot, with a "face like a disappointed madonna," is pious, sweet, and desperately unhappy. Margaret Fisher, stern and demanding, lives in a past peppered with famous literary encounters. And Caroline Dester, striking beautiful and popular, is lonely and bored with her whirlwind social life.

The four rent San Salvatore together, and immediately begin to change. Lotty loses her nervous demeanor, and becomes a self confident, mature woman. Rose blossoms when she realizes that she does possess beauty, and wins back the love of her formerly indifferent husband. Margaret thaws out and begins to smile and relax, even conversing with the other tenants, living in the present instead of the dusty past. And Caroline re-opens her heart to love and friendship by recognizing the emptiness of her life before she left for Italy.

The Mother by Pearl Buck (same theme, just with Asian characters)

-Within this novel Ms. Buck paints the portrait of a poor woman living in a remote village whose joys are few and hardships are many. As the ancient traditions, which she bases her philosophies upon, begin to collide with the new ideals of the communist era, this peasant woman must find a balance between them and deal with the consequences.

Katherine by Anya Seton

-This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history—that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

The Turquoise Ring by Grace Tiffany

-In 1568, twenty-one-year-old Shiloh ben Gozán flees the Spanish Inquisition to live openly as a Jew in Venice. He brings with him a baby daughter and an oddly made turquoise ring, given to him by a woman he cannot forget.

In Venice, as this ring is hidden, stolen, traded, lost, and finally found again, it shapes not just Shiloh's life but also that of his great enemy and business rival, whom he finally-and horrifyingly-confronts in a Venetian courtroom. The ring also becomes entangled in the fortunes of five women: Leah, Shiloh's first love; Jessica, his rebellious daughter; Nerissa, a maidservant; Portia, an outrageously rich and alarmingly intelligent heiress; and lastly Xanthe, a Spanish refugee who alone can unlock the secret of his past.

Answer 3

Maybe you should hop onto the worldwide bandwagon and try Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series.  They are amazing, especially if you're a girl.  Also, The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy is a very inspirational story.  I recently had to read it for a school assignment.  And it should appeal to most everybody.  And Ernest Hemingway is a classic.  You can't go wrong.

Answer 4

I find Hawthorne and Dickens tedious, but I won't deny Dickens was a master of words, and Hawthorne of short stories.

But you apparently like the classics, so...:

"Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo

"Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte

"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

These are among my favorite literary classics.

You should also check out some of Elizabeth B. Browning's poetry (namely "The Cry of the Children") if you like Dickens.  It's about child labor laws.

Robert Browning wrote the some most amazing and twisted dramatic monologues I've ever read.  Read "Porphyria's Lover"

T.S. Eliot is the best poet that ever existed.  In my opinion.  Though he's from a completely different time period.  "Hollow Men" "The Wasteland" and "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" are his most famous works, though anything that comes from that man is gold.

EDIT:  The Twilight series does not count as literature.  If you like Dickens, you should know that Twilight is nothing more than glorified fanfiction written by a fourteen year old in a 30 year old body.