Book suggestions

[Eikon]

Hello. I have started on my book collection and I'm really enjoying what I've read so far. My first two books were 1984 by Orwell, and Anthem by Ayn Rand. I've already read A Brave New World and Animal Farm, but I don't own them. I like political things, and was wondering what your suggestions would be for my next purchases, based on my previous ones. Thanks.

[knowbody0]

1. anything by Hunter S Thompson

[Sequoia]

18. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

[peacefreak]

2. Handmaid's Tale--Margaret Atwood

People's History of the US--Howard Zinn
Electric Kool Aid Acid Test--Tom Wolfe(because you might need to lighten up a little & have some fun)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--Ken Kesey

[I Have A Dream]

20. Yeah, the "Handmaid's Tale" was great! n/t

[gmoney]

3. "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis

You can still get a nice old hardback used at biblio.com for about $10 or $15 (it's from shortly before WWII). It's a fictionalized version of what would happen in America if/when we got/get a dictator. As opposed to the actual version we're experiencing currently.

[ghostsofgiants]

4. I haven't read it, but...

If you like political fiction, I've heard good things about Max Barry's "Jennifer Government".

[HuckleB]

5. John Dos Passos' USA (trilogy) -- 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money

And a few others that come to mind when looking at the choices you mention:

Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy"
Lawrence Thornton's "Imagining Argentina"
Tomas Eloy Martinez's "The Peron Novel"
James Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man"
Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"
Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" and "Keep the Aspidistra Flying"

[Eikon]

6. Thanks guys. I'm writing these down. Keep 'em coming.

[jobycom]

7. Les Miserables, unabridged

Sort of an historical version of the sci-fi political books you've read. Only a lot longer. And more comprehensive. Read the unabridged version, since the shortened ones tend to focus on the romance at the end, and this is only a minor part of the whole--and not the most interesting part. The longer story is about repression and revolution, with a romance stuck in for fun.

[HuckleB]

8. Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita"

[Strawman]

9. Try "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?y=0&tn=God+of+small+things&x=0

Brief Amazon Reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060977493/qid=1120171070/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/102-4720980-1146525?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Wetzelbill]

13. I have that...just haven't gotten around to it yet.

That woman is gorgeous.

[Wetzelbill]

10. Fools Crow by James Welch

Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Ok, not all of those are political but they are great reads anyway.

Oh yeah, here is a political one:

The Indian Lawyer by James Welch

It's about a Indian lawyer who is running for Congress and gets blackmailed. The author told me I could make it into a screenplay before he died a few years ago. It's good.

[Kathleen04]

11. I just started reading..

Island which is also by Aldous Huxley, so far it's an interesting read..

I enjoy reading these types of books too, I'm going to bookmark this thread. :)

[trof]

12. Two words. Elmore Leonard.

For pure enjoyment.
Elmore can write the wheels off a speeding locomotive.
The dialogue in his street-smart small-time grifters jargon leaps off the page and puts you right in the same room (or alley-way).
He started as a crime/court reporter in Detroit.

I'm not a western fan...at all...but his earliest fiction work in that genre is a pure pleasure for me to read.

It ain't litrachur, but it's a damn good escapist read.

[caty]

14. Check out

100 greatest novels of all time.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1061037,00.html

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. "Invisible Man", by Ralph Ellison.

The "Invisible Man" of the title is a young black man, who is "invisible" to white society because of his skin colour...the point is that when they look at him, they see not him,, but a blank screen on which to project their prejudices. There's a LOT more to it, of course.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679732764/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-4709848-5119232?v=glance&s=books

Also, "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley...makes for an interesting dystopian counterpoint to 1984 (and in some ways is a lot closer to the "future" we're living in now).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060929871/qid=1120174533/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4709848-5119232

"The Great Gatsby", by F. Scott Fitzgerald...possibly THE "Great American Novel"; subtext is about class differences and the hollowness and futility of the "American Dream".
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743273567/qid=1120174562/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4709848-5119232

"Lolita", by Vladimir Nabokov (or anything else by Nabokov, for that matter)...though Russian by birth, Nabokov wrote some of the most brilliant and beautiful English prose I can think of. It's almost poetic.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679723161/qid=1120174591/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4709848-5119232

"The Name of the Rose", by Umberto Eco (or, as for Nabokov, any of his other novels); great and entertaining, and Eco has a deep and assured grasp of the mediaeval world he writes about. The English translations of his works (he writes in Italian) are quite good.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156001314/qid=1120174614/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4709848-5119232

"The Illuminatus! Trilogy", by Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea - a great, sprawling, hilarious and uncategorisable blend of conspiracy theory, fantasy, alternate history and much else besides...it's rather "political", in some ways, but certainly doesn't beat you over the head like Ayn Rand tends to (oh, and it makes fun of Rand, too...one of the characters is the author of a book called "Telemachus Sneezed", obviously based on "Atlas Shrugged").
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440539811/qid=1120174643/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4709848-5119232?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


"Erasure", by Percival Everett - a brilliant satire, sort of a literary equivalent to Spike Lee's "Bamboozled"; the main character is a black university professor and author whose books are "too academic" and not "black" enough for his publishers. He's not too happy about the fact that American culture encourages stereotypical depictions of blacks, so he writes a savage satire of a "black" novel...that becomes a best-seller, and creates quite a few problems for him.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786888156/qid=1120174672/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4709848-5119232?v=glance&s=books&n=507846


I can think of quite a few more, but you're getting enough suggestions that I'll stop here.

Edit to provide Amazon links, so you can take a look at some reviews...

[terrya]

16. Absolutely add "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

A must read, IMO.

[Book Lover]

17. More than politics here

To supplement the above (all great choices, no excpetions), I suggest:

The Wreckage of Agathon by John Gardner (OK, slightly political there...)

Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny

On Literature by Umberto Eco

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

and a few links related to the care and feeding of your library:

Care, Handling and Storage of Books - http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/books.html

A Simple Book Repair Manual - http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Epreserve/repair/repairindex.htm

[I Have A Dream]

19. "The Prince" by Machiavelli...

just so that you can see how the other side works.