Great Great Books

[dungrollin]

Bonnie:
> I'd love to hear what you all think are the "Great Books".  Maybe 
I can broaden my horizons, or at least figure out why these books 
grab me like they do.

Dungrollin:
One of my all-time favourites is The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. 
Chesterton. It's quite short, and although the ending's a bit lame, 
it's definitely worth a read because there's a punch in the face at 
the end of every chapter. 

Others I love are The King Must Die, and The Bull From the Sea, by 
Mary Renault, which tell the story of Theseus, his time in Crete
as a bull dancer, the labyrinth, his return to Greece and so on. 
Very nicely written, Theseus ascribes all sorts of natural phenomena 
to the will of the Gods, and it works *perfectly*, turning a myth 
into fantasy that could easily have been real.

Snape fans might enjoy the Flashman series by George McDonald 
Fraser. He takes the school bully Harry Flashman, from Tom Brown's 
Schooldays, and writes a series of adventures beginning from the day 
he's expelled from Rugby for drunkenness. Hilariously funny, 
historically very accurate (Flashman turns up in all the major 
foriegn campaigns Victorain England got involved in), but don't read 
them if you like virtuous heroes who hang around to defend their 
friends and don't turn tail and flee when danger threatens!

Someone else mentioned the Time Traveller's Wife, which I'll second 
as excellent. Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Kate Atkinson) is 
likewise excellent, Enduring Love is bloody marvellous, as is 
Atonement (Ian McKeowan), and anything at all by Margaret Atwood.

If you like animals and like laughing very *very* hard, read 
everything you can get hold of by Gerald Durrell, starting with My 
Family and Other Animals.

More historical stuff: An Instance of the Fingerpost (Ian Pears), 
which is dense and thick with small type and difficult language, but 
the story is *brilliant*. Set in Oxford just after the Restoration 
of Charles II, about puritans and science, and spies and secrets 
and... oh it's *lovely*!

Just to give you an idea, I hated The Lovely Bones, and I *detested* 
The Da Vinci Code, so you might not want to listen to anything I 
have to say at all.

Dungrollin