Help an English lit noob out - need some good fiction

[kyzerjose]

Even though they are considered "children's" books:

Summer of the Monkeys - Wilson Rawls
The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter

Any Faulkner, Hemingway or Fitzgerald

[jeffnc]

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Don't know how Maugham slipped my mind. OHB and The Razor's Edge and others are all greatness.

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Haven't read the book, but I loved the movie - it's a real sleeper (the one starring Bill Murray, not the original. No, it's not a comedy.)

[Entity]

Snowcrash.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

here are some books i think young guys would like:

The Quiet American is a really great book. Greene is a very talented novelist.

Catch Me if You Can is a great lite read.

The Virgin Suicides won a bunch of prizes.

i really haven't been reading much fiction lately. if you want to read a great book about sexual evolution that is written by someone who knows how to write and not a scientist who bores you to death, check out The Red Queen - it really is an awesome read. One of my favorite books of all time.

[adsman]

I love how the vast majority of recommendations here are for American writers.

OP, try out books by these writers so as you're not completely Americanised:

Graham Greene,
Patrick White,
Evelyn Waugh,
George Orwell,
Tim Winton,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

An American writer that I feel is presently writing really good work is Paul Auster.

[enjoileo]

Although its not the most emotionally moving book, I really enjoyed Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Its probably one of the most fun books I have ever read, I sat and read the whole thing with a smile on my face, giggling the whole time.

Other than that I would suggest One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, and for a some decent sci-fi Phillip Jose Farmer's 'Riverworld' series is really good, it starts with the book 'To All Your Scattered Bodies Go'.

[Sciolist]

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Although its not the most emotionally moving book, I really enjoyed Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Its probably one of the most fun books I have ever read, I sat and read the whole thing with a smile on my face, giggling the whole time

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I agree, and literature should entertain you in my view. Iain M Banks has also made some very good sci fi books. Perhaps "The Player of Games" would best suit a poker player? I like "Excession" the most though.

I don't know what you'd make of Haruki Murakami, but I always recommend him in any literature threads. Some of his books are vaguely sci-fi too, though really would be best described as "weird".

Oh, and I really liked William Gibson - Pattern Recognition. It's not sci-fi, but he's written some in the past.

[Sciolist]

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Dostoevsky is excellent, top-shelf reading. He writes about human psychology and spirituality, politics sometimes, and talks about what the people are like in 19th century Russia. That last part's probably not that important, but most of his books take place around there, because that's where he's from. Exceptional writing, lucid and insightful

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Start with "The Gambler", just to be topical. It's a good short story on roulette. I don't really like books that're older than about 50 years old as the English has too many differences to the English I read today. I don't know if I like Dostoyevsky because his books were translated into a style I can still read, but it works for me whatever...

[Sciolist]

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Snowcrash.

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I liked Diamond Age more. Infact, I liked the Baroque Cycle books more, but they're probably not a great place to start reading books more.

[gumpzilla]

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I love how the vast majority of recommendations here are for American writers.

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- The vast majority of posters are American and thus more likely to be familiar with American letters. Evelyn Waugh isn't exactly standard fare over here.

- I sort of wondered about the appropriateness of suggesting literature that was translated from another language, e.g. Marquez, as that's not really English literature.

Between those two things, you get a pretty good explanation for it.