Book recommendations?

[Goddlefrood]

> Kemper:
> if the English can suggest someone other than Shakespeare that 
> would be super.

Goddlefrood:

Just who was this Shakespeare character anyway? Answers of 
thesis length only, off list ;-)

My personal favourites of what you describe as old would be:

1. Anything in prose by Thomas Hardy, plus The Dynasts in 
poetry.

2. Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

3. Any of the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott.

For new:

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, although Mostly 
Harmless is not the greatest ending to a great series (oddly 
enough a little like the way I feel about HP).

2. London Fields by Martin Amis.

3. Great Apes by Will Self.

Influential:

1. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

2. Look Back in Anger by John Osbourne.

3. Any Holmes book or short story collection by Conan Doyle.

In respect of Leviathan, I wouldn't recommend that you actually 
read it unless you've got a lot of time on your hands and really 
want to know why human life in its natural state without controls 
would be nasty, brutish and short in Hobbes' view.

Goddlefrood, with an extremely small selection.