Rebecca OUP-US
School is out for summer, July 4th is rapidly approaching, ice cream trucks are circling your neighborhood (at least they are in mine…), and you need a good book to read on vacation. Now is when the Good Fiction Guide, edited by Jane Rogers, comes in handy. The guide features subject essays and over 1,100 entries on writers ranging from Chinua Achebe to Emile Zola. Each subject entry features a list of fiction books you MUST read. To inspire you towards lofty summer reading goals I have excerpted a few below.
Robert McCrum recommends the following Adventure books:
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883)
- G. A. Henty, With Clive in India (1884)
- H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1886)
- Anthony Hope, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894)
- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
- Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands ( 1903)
- John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915)
- Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios (1939)
- Nevil Shute, No Highway (1948)
- Arthur Hailey, Airport (1968)
- Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe’s Eagle (1981)
Jan Dalley recommends the following books about Childhood:
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-1)
- Henry James, What Maisie Knew (1897)
- Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (1901)
- Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913)
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
- Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love (1945)
- J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 (1982)
- Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
- Esther Freud, Hideous Kinky (1992)
- Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993)
Lesley Glaister recommends the following Short Story Collections:
- James Joyce, Dubliners (1914)
- Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party (1922)
- J. D. Salinger, For Esme, With Love and Squalor (1953)
- Elizabeth Taylor, The Devastating Boys (1972)
- Ian McEwan, First Love, Last Rites (1975)
- William Trevor, Collected Stories (1983)
- Raymond Carver, Elephant (1988)
- James Kelman, The Burn (1991)
- Alice Munro, Open Secrets (1994)
- T. Coraghessan Boyle, The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle (1998)
- Lorrie Moore, Birds of America (1999)
- Elizabeth Bowen, Collected Stories (1999)
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