What to read when flat on your back in bed

Sep 4 15:47 UTC 2003

I will have a lot of time for reading in the next few months.  Usually I read
things like genetics or archeology but I should educate myself given the
chance.  Please list one great book (hopefully pre 1900) by a great author
that I ought to read, English language or in translation, and why.  Jim was
asked to get me some 'light' (under 8 oz paperback) classic fiction from the
library and returned with the Norton Anthology of English Literature so I
already have Beowulf, Chaucer, biographies of various writers (the Victorians
were pretty promiscuous!), essays, lives, etc.  Hardly 'light'.
Please no murder mysteries, anything with much violence, sci fi or westerns,
just the famous stuff that people refer to elsewhere, hopefully annotated.

response 2 of 119:

Sep 4 18:49 UTC 2003

Did Jim take a kitchen scale to the library?

response 4 of 119:

Sep 4 20:07 UTC 2003

(it's not pre-1900, but it's close:  _Invitation To A Beheading_ by 
Vladimir Nabokov.)

response 6 of 119:

Sep 4 22:43 UTC 2003

_Life on the Mississippi_ by Mark Twain is one of my favorites, and will
keep you busy for a while.  How much you'll enjoy it depends on how much
you like Mark Twain's style of humor, though.

response 8 of 119:

Sep 4 23:28 UTC 2003

Cock & Bull by Will Self. it's a quick read about a woman that sprouts a fully
functional penis followed by the tale of a man who grows a vagina on the back
of his knee.

response 10 of 119:

Sep 5 00:00 UTC 2003

Dracula, by Bram Stoker.  Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.  (I've read the
first, but not the last.)

King Solomon's Mines.  The Picture of Dorian Grey (and the rest of Wilde,
while you are at it. ;)

Beau Geste  (may not be pre-1900).

Too bad you eliminated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; his "Professor Chandler"
stories were fun, too.

Same for H G Wells.  The Invisible Man and The Time Machine are both 'must'
reads.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Treasure Island.  Kidnapped.

Robinson Crusoe.  Gulliver's Travels.

The complete works of Edgar Allan Poe (the *real* inventor of the modern
mystery story, no matter what pretenders may be put forward).  If you can't
read anything else of his, read "The Purloined Letter."  But "The Raven" and
"The Bells" are both excellent.

response 12 of 119:

Sep 5 00:32 UTC 2003

Speaking of Arthur, _The Winter King_ and its two sequels are very recent but
very good, too.

response 14 of 119:

Sep 5 00:42 UTC 2003

(Holding a book over your head while reading it gets very tiring, very fast.)

response 16 of 119:

Sep 5 01:31 UTC 2003

HEY, GELINAS< that MAKES SENSE.  I always get that, myself.

response 18 of 119:

Sep 5 02:57 UTC 2003

I was, among other things, a Russian major, and read Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov
and others in Russian (and War and Peace in English).  Tolstoy's Childhood
is my favorite.

Thanks for a really carefully thought out selection of books.  I will send
JIm after specific titles.  Today he went through the paperback section A-M
and picked out authors he recognized.

The weight is because I am reading in bed mostly on my back with the book
propped up on a small pillow on my lap which leaves two hands free.  I sit
up 1/2 hour at a time, walk a few minutes (looking for things to make me walk
- I went after the sewing kit but Jim had piled a lot of stuff on top that
is still on the floor - I have some trouble getting things off the floor).

Jim weighed a couple of nice art books he got me first time I sent him for
something lightweight - 1.9 kilos.  He was going to get me one that was twice
that weight but it was reference.  

I have no fat for padding.  The extra weight lands on my bones against the
futon.

I am thinking I might want some sort of history of English fiction to go with
the reading.  Norton (which is also sort of heavy) has good biographies of
the authors who did poetry, plays, essays, but not novels.  Please recommend
some good books bout English literature.


World literature - I have read Tale of GEnji and Dream of the Red Chamber and
a bit of Boccacio and Don Quixote.  What are the best few books of other
cultures? Borges confuses me.  Egyptian, Syrian...?

response 20 of 119:

Sep 5 05:04 UTC 2003

  re #18:  given your experience in Eastern European languages I figured 
  there was a pretty decent chance you'd already read lots and lots of 
  Tolstoy but I figured it was worth posting anyway, as other Grexers
  might be scanning this item for recommendations as well.

  On a completely different note, and for something much more lighthearted
  than Russian literature :-) you might enjoy some of Bill Bryson's humorous
  travel books, particularly "A Walk in the Woods" and "Notes From a Small
  Island" which deal, respectively, with walking the Appalachian Trail and
  walking around Britain..  I've enjoyed the sense they give of being 
  someplace else and I can imagine that right about now there's an awful
  lot of places you might rather be..

response 22 of 119:

Sep 5 07:51 UTC 2003

which is a nice read while playing a cd of the 
zoogz rift classic: "Mobey Penis"

response 24 of 119:

Sep 5 08:03 UTC 2003

Rivethead by Ben Hamper