Book List

"An Utterly Biased, Random, and Partial List of Books (in No Particular Order) I Think You Should Read Sometime, and Only Including Books that I Have Actually Read "

If books are out of copyright and in the public domain, then they are easily found on the internet (although they often need re-formatting). www.manybooks.net is a good source, as you can download texts in a variety of formats.

Other good places to try:       
 http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
www.gutenberg.org

If you have a Kindle, or the Kindle app on your PC or iPad, you can search on Amazon for free books (yes, they do exist).

If there is no hyperlink for a text below, then the book is either still copyright, or I have not been able to find an online version.

The “Anything By ...” List

• Terry Pratchett OK, it’s fantasy … but the best fantasy ever, from the man who has one of the clearest understandings of the human condition than just about anyone who ever put pen to paper in English … your great-great-grandchildren will still be reading these books.  Such awful news that Pratchett is suffering from Alzheimer's.   
• William Shakespeare - One really must read all of Shakespeare (the first link takes you to a pretty good covers-it-all website. Can you guess where the second takes you?)
• P.G. Wodehouse (incredibly dated, and such jolly good fun - read Wodehouse to feel much better about your life no matter how bad it is, whilst reveling in some of the most wonderful sentences ever written in English)
• Saki / H.H. Munro (impossible to describe … just read something)
• Agatha Christie (the undisputed Queen of the Golden Age - great plots)
• Raymond Chandler (he invented the first-person detective style people have been trying to copy ever since)
• Lawrence Block  (modern detective fiction … he gets closest to Chandler … but much more than just escapism - the characters, especially Matt Scudder, have very interesting moral perspectives that challenge simple black/white answers)
• Michael Connelly (modern detective fiction, but another interesting moral voice … just good … that’s all you need to know)

The Rest

• The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer (in the original, not in a “translation” – much easier than you think)
• Gawain and the Green Knight (give the original a try, or read the J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon modernised version – unlike Chaucer you really will need some help with this book)
• Meditations Marcus Aurelius
• The Number One Ladies Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith (and all sequels; a great introduction to Africa beyond the bad news headlines … and they make you feel good … what else is needed?)
• Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome (one of the funniest books ever written)
• The Odyssey Homer (no, the other one)
• Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
• Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
• Persuasion  Jane Austen
• Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
• Mansfield Park Jane Austen
• Emma Jane Austen (Emma Woodhouse is number one on my list of fictional characters I want to bitch-slap)
• The Woman in White Wilkie Collins (regarded as the very first detective novel)
• Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe (the first proper African novel - a challenge to the British colonialists, and to Achebe's own Ibo culture)
• No Longer at Ease Chinua Achebe
• Arrow of God  Chinua Achebe
• The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born Ayi Kwei Armah
• The Man Died Wole Soyinka
• God's Bits of Wood Ousmane Sembène 
• Weep Not, Child  Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• The River Between Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• Devil on the Cross Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• A Grain of Wheat Ngugi wa Thiong'o
• From a Crooked Rib Nuruddin Farah
• Sweet and Sour Milk Nuruddin Farah
•  So Long a Letter Mariama Bâ (a powerful story of an woman trying to explain her place in the world)
• The Concubine  Elechi Amadi
• Going Down River Road Meja Mwanji
• The Famished Road Ben Okri 
• Disgrace J.M. Coetzee
• When Rain Clouds Gather Bessie Head 
• Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
• Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
• Frankenstein Mary Shelley

More to come - watch this space

Interesting Things

http://www.refdesk.com/books.html 
http://www.refdesk.com/factelec.html

Several interesting things, from a variety of writers.
If it here, it is worth taking your time to read it.
The files here are copyright to their owners as specified on each file.

philip_larkin_on_books.docx
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w.h._auden_on_writing_and_writers.docx
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