The Lit List, by Esther Graham

Who is Esther Graham, you may ask? Well, she was my English teacher for seventh form, and not only that, she's one of the best English teachers I've ever had. Anyways, this Lit (short for literature) List is compiled by her, not me. I'm merely putting it up on my blog, so even if I do lose the hard copy she's given us, I won't lose the entire list. Don't forget to take the list [or part of it, anyway] with you the next time you visit the library. I won't, either.

NZ Writers:

Fiegel, Sia - Where we once belonged.
Grace, Patricia - Potiki.
Frame, Janet - Owls Do Cry; To the Is-Land; An Angel at My Table.
Hulme, Keri - The Bone People.
Jones, Lloyd - Mr Pip.
Mansfield, Katherine - The Garden Party and other short stories.
Knox, Elizabeth - The Vintners Luck; Daylight.


'Classic' British Novels:

Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Sense and Sensibility.
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre.
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights.
Forster, E. M - A Room With a View.
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies.
Greene, Graham - The Power and the Glory.
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Lawrence, D. H. - The Picture of Dorian Grey.
Stoker, Bram - Dracula.
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein.

'Classic' American Novels:

Recently I read a non-fiction memoir by Azar Nafisi called Reading Lolita in Tehran, and it completely re-inspired my love for classic novels, including the first two on this list. She is an Iranian English professor who dared not to wear the veil and set up a secret book club for her female students after they were banned from attending university. I highly recommend that book too - but you'll have to read it in tandem with the books she discusses.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby.
Nabokov, Vladimir - Lolita.
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying.
Lee, Harper - To Kill A Mockingbird.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Modern and Post-Modern American Writers:

My favourite on this list is Extremely Loud ... about a boy who loses his father in 9-11 and goes in search of him around New York City. It's accessible, clever, and fun to read.

Delillo, Don - White Noise.
Foer, Jonathan Safran - Everything is Illuminated; Extremely Loud; Incredibly Close. [Check the movie out, too!]
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22.
Kerouac, Jack - On the Road. [Classic novel for the Beat generation]
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49.
Proulx, E. Annie - The Shipping News. [She also wrote Brokeback Mountain]
Salinger, J. D. - The Catcher in the Rye.

20th Century Women writers:

I have grouped together these writers because their main concern is to write about women's lives, issues, and relationships. Some of them reflect on the unique struggles women face in a male-dominated world and have become feminist classics [e.g. Oranges are not the Only Fruit, The Handmaid's Tale] or reflect on what makes us women [The Passion of New Eve, Orlando]. Many of these books are also modern classics, and have been inspirational for women around the world.
For me, the best author on the list [and possibly the most complex] is Toni Morrison. She, like Angelou and Walker is an African-American writer whose stories reflect on the struggles of black women, and the legacy of slavery.
However, I would recommend starting with Mrs Dalloway, an early 20th C novel which is beautifully written and remains as poignant and relevant today as it was then. Then read The Hours by Michael Cunningham [or see the film!]

Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale; The Robber Bride; The Blind Assassin; Cat's Eye.
Atkinson, Kate - Behind the Scenes at the Museum; Human Croquet.
Angelou, Maya - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Carter, Angela - The Passion of New Eve.
Cunningham, Michael - The Hours.
Morrison, Toni - Beloved; Sula; Song of Solomon; The Bluest Eye; Paradise.
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar.
Rhys, Jean - Wide Sargasso Sea [read it after Jane Eyre]
Spark, Muriel - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
Tan, Amy - The Joy Luck Club; The Kitchen God's Wife; The Bonesetter's Daughter.
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple; Possessing the Secret of Joy.
Winterston, Jeanette - Oranges are not the Only Fruit.
Woolf, Virginia - Mrs. Dalloway; Orlando.

Modern British novels:

Banville, John - The Untouchable.
Barnes, Julian - England, England; Flaubert's Parrot; Taking it Over.
Byatt, A. S. - Possession.
De Bernieres, Louis - Captain Correlli's Mandolin.
Haddon, Mark - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. [Great childrens/adults book]
McEwan, Ian - Antonement; The Cement Garden, Saturday.
Smith, Zadie - White Teeth.
Kureishi, Hanif - The Buddha of Suburbia.

Futuristic novels:

I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I do enjoy novels that imagine the world in the future.

Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale [Women have become mere vessels for child-bearing]
Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451 [All the books get burnt]
Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange [Violent youth is reformed by brain washing]
Orwell, George - 1984 [Written in 1948, imagining a world ruled by Big Brother]
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World [Genetic engineering and happy drugs control society]

European writers:

These books are written by Italian, Czech, Russian and German writers who have been translated into English. The opening lines of Calvino's novel are, "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade."

Calvino, Italo - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
Eco, Umberto - In the Name of Rose.
Hesse, Herman - Narziss and Goldmund.
Kafka, Franz - Metamorphosis.
Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Identity.
Doestoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment.

Post-colonial writers:

[Writers who write about countries under colonialism and independence, and writers from post-colonial nations, e.g. India, Pakistan, South Africa, etc.]

Disgrace is a book that you read, and immediately think, 'I have just read a good book'. It is set in modern South Africa and concerns an English professor who was involved in a sex scandal at his university, and his liberal daughter who is attacked but refuses to revenge. It won the Booker Prize. Michael Ondaajte's English Patient is also wonderful, and has everything a good novel should - love, loss, and meditation on what it means to be human.

Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness.
Coetzee, JD - Disgrace.
Desai, Kiran - The Inheritance of Loss.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Purple Hibiscus.
Ishiguro, Kazuo - When We Were Orphans.
Lahiri, Jhumpa - The Namesake.
Martel, Yann - The Life of Pi.
Ondaajte, Michael - The English Patient.
Roy, Arundhati - The God of Small Things.
Rushdie, Salman - Shame. [Set in Pakistan]
Smith, Alexander McCall - The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series. [Just for fun. This is well-written detective fiction set in Botswana]
Another classic post-colonial novel is Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

Magic Realist novels:

Most of these books are by Latin American writers. Their writers use colourful descriptions, unexpected metaphors and strange plots. They are deliciously imaginative, and full of odd happenings like a woman crying tears that turn to flood, of baking a cake that makes people fall in love [Like Water for Chocolate]. They often span generations of quirky characters who love, lose and struggle [The House of Spirits, One Hundred Years of Solitude].

Allende, Isabel - The House of Spirits, Ines.
Esquivel, Laura - Like Water for Chocolate.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude; Love in the Time of Cholera.
Rushdie, Salman - Shame, The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Midnight's Children.



[Angelica's Note: Well, that calls for a seriously long trip to the library, now that I've got holidays! I admit, I was ignorant about some of the books in this list, but I can't wait to read them out!]