TIM POWERS'S RECOMMENDED READING (& movie) LIST
Novels:
Amis, Kingsley -- Lucky Jim; I Want It Now; The Green Man Bronte, Emily -- Wuthering Heights
Chandler, Raymond -- The Little Sister; The Long Goodbye
Dick, Philip K. -- Martian Time Slip; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?/Bladerunner
Dickens, Charles -- at least Great Expectations and David Copperfield
Donleavy, J. P. -- The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B
Dostoevsky, Fyodor -- The Idiot
Francis, Dick -- Bonecrack; Forfet; Break-In.
Gibson, William -- Neuromancer
Golding, William -- Lord of the Flies
Harris, Thomas -- The Silence of the Lambs
Heinlein, Robert A. Have Space-Suit, Will Travel; Citizen of the Galaxy
Hemingway, Ernest -- The Sun Also Rises
Kerouac, Jack -- On the Road
King, Stephen -- The Shining
LeCarre, John -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Lewis, C.S. -- The Narnia books; That Hideous Strength
McDonald, John D. -- A Deadly Shade of Gold; The Dreadful Lemon Sky
Mirrlees, Hope -- Lud-in-the-Mist
Pynchon, Thomas -- V, The Crying of Lot 49
Sterne, Lawrence -- Tristram Shandy
Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde; Treasure Island
Sturgeon, Theodore -- More Than Human; The Dreaming Jewels
Thompson, Hunter S. -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Twain, Mark -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Vonnegut, Kurt -- The Sirens of Titan; Cat's Cradle
Waugh, Evelyn --Decline and Fall, Brideshead Revisited
Wodehouse, P. G. -- any book with Jeeves in the title.
Wolfe, Tom -- Bonfire of the Vanities
Wouk, Herman -- The Caine Mutiny
Poetry:
Amis, Kingsley (editor) -- The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse, especially the Introduction and "Hiawatha's Photographing."
Auden, W. H. -- lots of stuff, especially "As I walked out one evening"
Baudelaire, Charles -- Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), the Edna St. Vincent Millay/George Dillon translation, ideally.
Lord Byron -- a good lot of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (especially Cantos 3 & 4), & a good lot of Don Juan (especially the early Cantos.)
Chesterton, G. K. -- "Lepanto"
Coleridge, Samuel -- at least The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
Dowling, Bartholomew -- "East India: The Revel"
Eliot, T. S. -- The Waste Land (in a Norton anthology, with lots of footnotes), & "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Ginsberg, Alan -- you have to have read Howl
Housman, A. E. -- especially Last Poems and More Poems
Khayyam, Omar -- The Rubaiyat, in the Edward Fitzgerald translation (ideally with the Edmund Sullivan illustrations) and/or the Richard LeGalliene translation
Kipling, Rudyard -- "The Ballad of East and West," "Christmas in India"
Macneice, Louis -- "Bagpipe Music"
Millay, Edna St. Vincent -- Collected Sonnets, and then Collected Lyrics
Plath, Sylvia -- the "Ariel" poems, at the very least
Shakespeare, of course -- the Sonnnets
Swinburne, A. C. -- "The Triumph of Time," "The Garden of Proserpine," etc.
Thompson, Francis -- "The Hound of Heaven"
Yeats, William Butler -- obviously "The Second Coming"
Plays:
Albee, Edward -- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Beckett, Samuel -- Waiting for Godot
Bolt, Robert -- A Man For All Seasons
Brecht, Bertolt -- Mother Courage; The Threepenny Opera
Crowley, Mart -- The Boys in the Band
Goldsmith, Oliver -- She Stoops to Conquer
Rostand, Edmond -- Cyrano de Bergerac, in either the Hooker or Anthony Burgess translations
Shakespeare, of course -- especially Antony and Cleopatra
Shaw, George Bernard -- Arms and the Man; Caesar and Cleopatra
Wilde, Oscar -- The Importance of Being Earnest
Williams, Tennessee -- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Suddenly Last Summer
Nonfiction:
Alvarez, A. -- The Biggest Game in Town
Asimov, Isaac -- The Universe
Burke, James -- Connections
Burton, Robert -- The Anatomy of Melancholy (just open it anywhere and start reading; after four pages, stop.)
Ciardi, John -- How Does a Poem Mean?
Didion, Joan -- The White Album
Ferris, Timothy -- Coming of Age in the Milky Way
Frazer, Sir James George -- The Golden Bough (more reference than straight-through reading)
Gleick, James -- Chaos (difficult, but astounding)
Hamilton, Edith -- Mythology (everything you need to know)
Hewitt, Paul -- Understanding Physics (a high school text, therefore comprehensible)
Hotchner, A. E. -- Papa Hemingway
Krakauer, Jon -- Into This Air
Leakey, Richard -- The Origins of Humankind
Russell, Bertrand -- Why I Am Not A Christian and Lewis, C. S. -- Mere Christianity (consider them together, as a debate)
Thurber, James -- My Life and Hard Times (in The Thurber Carnival)
Wolfe, Tom -- The Painted Word
Movies:
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse's cinematic suicide note)
Broadway Melody of 1940
Cabaret
of course Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon
Chinatown and L.A. Confidential
City Lights and The Kid (Charlie Chaplin)
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The Godfather
Gold Diggers of 1933
Henry V (the Kenneth Branagh version)
Horsefeathers and Duck Soup
The Hustler
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Manchurian Candidate (Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey)
Man on Fire (bloody but good)
Moonstruck
A Man For All Seasons
The Phantom of the Paradise
Repo Man (low-budget, but pretty essential)
Roman Holiday
Satyricon (weird, but good)
Terminator and Terminator 2
The Third Man
The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, the Richard Lester-directed versions
True Romance (rough, but good)
West Side Story (a bit dated, but good)
The Wind and the Lion
13 comments:
Good grief, who is Tim Powers??
Good point. Good as he is, he is not a household name.
See here.
So much great lit, movies, art and so little time. ;o)
Seen it, seen it, read it, want it,...
Thanks for your valuable contribution!
Glad to see plenty of Amis (of the elder variety). The contribution to cleanliness and clarity is so often lost in the dismissal of "yet another" academic send-up.
Where's the Chatwin? And why so much sci-fi?
"Good point. Good as he is, he is not a household name."
Good in your opinion, of course. He actually kind of sucks. I'm not surprised you like him actually.
Anonymous:
1: Please use your name.
2: Don't be nasty.
3: What books of his have you read?
Just bear in mind that not all anonymouses are the same person. I'm thinking I should create an account. Even people who click "Other," you can put any name in there.
"Even people who click "Other," you can put any name in there."
I know I do. But somehow, Eolake always manages to find me out.
I wish I knew how he does it!!!
Signed: An anonymous Pascal who's not going to tell you his name.
You aren't secretly that religious nut, who posts every once in a while, are you? You know, just for shits and giggles.
Why point out Repo Man was low budget, but not Terminator?
Repo Man (1984) $1,500,000
Terminator (1984) $6,400,000
Risky Business (1983) $6,200,000
Sure $1.5M is low compared with $6.4, but a no name SF action adventure for the same as a no name (except Legend) high school drama!
Naah, I'm not him (her? it?). Bile for the sake of bile ain't my kick. I have a slightly higher standard of what "funny" is.
Besides, I might be a nut (maybe nut, maybe not), but definitely not a religious one. Too many of those already.
Giggles, yes. Shits, no.
I read some of Les Fleurs du Mal in original version. If your French level is up to it, you'll be able to realize how awesome a poet Charles Beaudelaire was. Poetry is always best in its original state. (Which proves the talent of those who can translate it faithfully enough. Never an easy task.)
It should be noted that Beaudelaire had several of his poems prohibited from edition by the censorship of his days. "That'll teach him to sing the beauty of women and the delicacy of physical love!"
The more things change, the more they remain the same...
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