Please recommend me esoteric and classical literature

[discojoe]

Thank you.

[Socionics Is A Cult]

Would you appreciate a story with faeries in it?

[Lotus]

[discojoe]

Would you appreciate a story with faeries in it?

If it's good.

[Socionics Is A Cult]

My favourite book of recent years is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonatha...e_&_Mr_Norrell

But seeing as I can't get my brother to read it, I don't think you would. It's too long a book, apparently).

It won the Hugo Prize, which might suggest how good it is (I know Stranger In A Strange Land won it too, and I really liked that book).

[discojoe]

My favourite book of recent years is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonatha...e_&_Mr_Norrell

But seeing as I can't get my brother to read it, I don't think you would. It's too long a book, apparently).

It won the Hugo Prize, which might suggest how good it is (I know Stranger In A Strange Land won it too, and I really liked that book).

I will add this to my Amazon cart.

[crazedrat]

the psychogenesis of homosexuality, by a fag like yourself.

[discojoe]

the psychogenesis of homosexuality, by a fag like yourself.

lol!

Anyway, this is actually a serious topic. Recommend me some good, non-mainstream books.

Thank you.

[Gilly]

My sister recommended Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to me, but I got bored about 100 pages into it.

[Darkstar]

Don Quijote
atlas shrugged
Hamlet
Crime and punishment
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The stranger
One Thousand and One Nights
The Legion of the Damned
sas survival handbook: how to survive in the wild, in any climate, on land or at sea
A brief history of time
The bible

[Ezra]

The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. I've not read it, but it's on my bookshelf for a reason, and the name sounds esoteric, and he is one of the world's top three intellectuals besides Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins. Another book on my shelf is called A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. It's about some kid who kills another kid with a baseball and thinks he's some kind of instrument. Yeah, this isn't really classical, but read it anyway and tell me what you think.

I would actually be very surprised and gratefully amused if you read these books and gave me your feedback.

[tiny_dancer]

Have you ever been to this website? It's not as pared-down a list as you're looking for at the moment, but sometimes it's interesting to surf the randomness of what other people are reading.

www.goodreads.com

[iAnnAu]

The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. I've not read it, but it's on my bookshelf for a reason, and the name sounds esoteric, and he is one of the world's top three intellectuals besides Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins. Another book on my shelf is called A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. It's about some kid who kills another kid with a baseball and thinks he's some kind of instrument. Yeah, this isn't really classical, but read it anyway and tell me what you think.

I would actually be very surprised and gratefully amused if you read these books and gave me your feedback.

Noam Chomsky is some fuckin' dry reading. I have some amount of generic respect for the man, but I read for pleasure, and after reading a couple of his articles and attempting two of his books, I keep him at arm's length.
John Irving, however is quite enjoyable. His most well-known is The World According to Garp. The movie is OK, but the book is amazing.
Which reminds me, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE! Kurt Vonnegut is another author I think history will be kind enough to remember. And while I definitely recommend the book over the movie, I would say the movie is one of the best adaptations of a book ever done. I would also recommend Blue Beard, Galapagos, Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions - or watching a video of him speak; he's actually entertaining "live" as well (I was sad when he died not too long ago).
And referencing killers - Catcher in the Rye was merely OK. I doubt it would have captured the US's interest if John Lennon's killer hadn't claimed that this book "told" him to do it.
Dammit, you've got me started, and now it's hard to stop. I love reading. I'm taking notes on this thread myself.

[unefille]

WHOA. Ok, now, he has to have smoother skin, more cheekbone definition, a slight touch of um, cruelty or disdain to his mouth and er, a different nose. But otherwise, we're totally there!

The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. I've not read it, but it's on my bookshelf for a reason, and the name sounds esoteric, and he is one of the world's top three intellectuals besides Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins. Another book on my shelf is called A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. It's about some kid who kills another kid with a baseball and thinks he's some kind of instrument. Yeah, this isn't really classical, but read it anyway and tell me what you think.

I would actually be very surprised and gratefully amused if you read these books and gave me your feedback.

Umberto Eco is both brilliant and an insufferably self-satisfied pretentious asshat. Chances are, he's probably Beta. I've read passages from The Name of the Rose because I was using it to teach semiotics. It's brilliant and unlike his essays, less suffused with self-satisfaction with his own overwhelming intellect. Not that I mind that, just a warning to others who don't enjoy the company of self-absorbed people. He's self-absorbed, but I think he has a sense of humour about it - it flavours his writing.

On an only somewhat related note, there's also the issue of physical maturity.
I read Judy Blume's Forever when I was 9, which is a teen romance novel. I was old enough to understand that the characters were having sex, but since I had not yet myself felt the stirrings of my own pubescence, I was totally left behind by their subsequent motivations. The characters basically proclaim their undying love for one another and then inevitably drift apart, even sleeping with other people before breaking up. This confused the hell out of me.
A few years later, I was like "OH!" and I had to go back and read what I already knew was a mediocre story at best, just because I had to put my mind to rest about the characters' actions. Sure enough, the whole thing made sense. Not that I approved of their actions any more than before, but I understood how their bodies' feelings played into their emotional feelings.
What a difference hormones make.

God yes. I read Flaubert, D H Lawrence, Anais Nin, Henry Miller etc all too young. So much literature is written about underlying and deeply disguised (well, less disguised in the case of Miller, Nin etc), impulses that only comes post-adolescence and I was just...could only access it at a very intellectualised level, which meant I was missing so much of what they were trying to convey.

[olduser]

Most authors are bad. dostoevosky could not get over the conditions of people's jackets enough to understand the human condition. or was that me?

[Park]

WHOA. Ok, now, he has to have smoother skin, more cheekbone definition, a slight touch of um, cruelty or disdain to his mouth and er, a different nose. But otherwise, we're totally there!

Are you ever satisfied with anything? (j/k) It would have been much easier if I knew how the person we're talking about actually looks.

And I guess I should consider applying for a police sketch artist job lol.

[Ezra]

Umberto Eco is both brilliant and an insufferably self-satisfied pretentious asshat. Chances are, he's probably Beta. I've read passages from The Name of the Rose because I was using it to teach semiotics. It's brilliant and unlike his essays, less suffused with self-satisfaction with his own overwhelming intellect. Not that I mind that, just a warning to others who don't enjoy the company of self-absorbed people. He's self-absorbed, but I think he has a sense of humour about it - it flavours his writing.

lol @ the eco man

[Ezra]

Are you ever satisfied with anything?

Trust a Delta.

[unefille]

Are you ever satisfied with anything? (j/k) It would have been much easier if I knew how the person we're talking about actually looks.

And I guess I should consider applying for a police sketch artist job lol.

YOU SHOULD.

I'm rarely satisfied with anything, but I'm pleased with a lot. And hey, what makes this so much fun is that you don't know what he looks like.

[Minde]

I know it's kinda late, but I just thought of two and wanted to post them before I forgot:

Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt

They're both fiction. The first is mostly just a fun story; the other has more a philosophical bent and is perhaps a little more thought provoking. I'm not sure if you can call them esoteric (I'm not sure exactly what's on school reading lists these days), but I think they're classics. And enjoyable.