This man is bloody brilliant. Read it, read them all.
It made me think of what books I'd recommend to teenagers, especially my own. I'll list them. Now, I'm assuming a certain amount of willingness, a certain amount of intelligence. And my list will probably be more acceptable to boys. What I want are novels that will be enjoyed, but are nonetheless well written, let's say a bit classy. For what it's worth, here it is:
1. Brighton Rock by Grahame Greene. Catholic guilt by the seaside. Greene was full of shit, to be honest, but if you're a juvenile starting to think about meaning, but still like a few razor murders, this is your book.
2. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Jaundiced rewrite of Coral Island. We are all 'born in sin and conceived in iniquity'. Can't argue with that. Compare with The Wild Bunch.
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Beautiful child's-eye view of the liberal lawyer in the racist Deep South defending a black man on a charge of rape - what else? Spawned the film, that gained Gregory Peck an Oscar, the accolade of America's favourite cinema hero and inspired a million Americans to study law.
4. Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Has to be on the list, doesn't it? Self-indulgent, alienated teenage crap. They'll love it.
5. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. 'Them as dies'll be the lucky ones. Haha, Jim lad' - or is that the film. Give them the video at the same time.
6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If they like this, who knows, they might move on to Great Expectations. I choose this because it's short and seasonal. It probably invented Christmas as we know it. By the way, don't tell them it's written in verse.
7. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Or, Farewell, My Lovely. Or, best of all, The Long Goodbye. Chandler's plots are incomprehensible and you never remember the ending, which means you can read them over and over and just enjoy the style. I think even Jane Austen would have smiled secretly at the line, 'She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.'
8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I wasn't going to put this in, but why not? She's readable, she's witty, she's ironic, she's stylish, she's great. She's also bloody frightening.
9. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas. Short stories, vaguely autobiographical, and it doesn't come much better. When a great poet relaxes, the prose just flows. After this, get them to listen to Under Milk Wood, and, who knows, they might even think Fern Hill is a bit special.
10. The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. As long as they don't expect a convoluted mystery or blood and guts, they might like this wonderfully observed depiction of a gentle, mature African lady, making her way as a PI amongst the easy-going traditions of Botswana. My latest enthusiasm.
11. Harry's Game by Gerald Seymour. British agent infiltrates Republican Belfast. Spare, simple, tragic. Seymour wrote lots more books, longer and more detailed, always well-researched, but this one is clean and sharp. And nerve-wracking.
12. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre. Le Carre has tended to be a bit preachy recently, but he is a very good novelist, for all that he is a genre writer, so-called. Tinker, Tailor . . .is wonderful and A Perfect Spy is a genuine masterpiece. Start with The Spy . . .and you'll be hooked.
13. Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard. This is the one Tarantino's Jackie Brown was based on. I think of Elmore Leonard as being superior pulp fiction (appropriately). As is -
14. Jim Thompson. If you can get it I recommend The Getaway.
15. Right Ho, Jeeves! by P G Wodehouse. I fear that the upper-class twenties ambiance of the Wooster stories might be off-putting to today's teenager. And Wooster's slang could come across as just plain silly. Nevertheless, the intelligent teenager deserves the chance to read these beautifully crafted, intensely funny stories. I have heard it argued that Jeeves and Wooster are a comic version of Holmes and Watson. Which brings me on to -
16. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. The first Holmes story and the first long story (It's hardly a novel). I recommend this rather than The Hound of the Baskervilles because there's too little Holmes in the latter, although it has the moors and the hound. Then there are the sets of short stories. I've always thought the best is Silver Blaze, which does not involve the all too frequent exotic creatures, Australian secret societies and hopelessly incompetent 'Napoleons of crime'.
17. Shane or Monte Walsh by Jack Schaefer. Along Oakley Hall's Warlock and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, these are two of the few novels set in the Old West which have literary pretensions and are also enjoyable and informative.
18. Riotous Assembly or Indecent Exposure by Tom Sharpe. Depending on your taste, Sharpe is either outrageously offensive or hilariously funny. Either way, a good choice. These two books are savage satires on South Africa's apartheid regime. Sharpe got himself deported.
19, 20. More comedy: Peter Tinniswood (I didn't know you cared) and David Nobbs (The Fall and Rise of Reggie Perrin). Both intelligent, affectionate and funny. And how they love the English language.
21. The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh. Not a novel, but written with the verve that Wambaugh brings to his fiction. It's the story of a robbery that goes wrong and its effects on the cops and criminals involved in the torturous legal process which follows.
22. C S Forester is still worth reading. His Hornblower novels, especially A Ship of the Line, are preferable Patrick O'Brian's Napoleonic Wars naval stories, because they carry their expert knowledge more lightly. I always feel I'm being lectured in the architecture of sailing ships by O'Brian. Of course, that might appeal to the more nerdish.
23. The War of the Worlds by H G Wells. I know nothing of modern SF and choose this because it was written before the advent of the genre and the cult and is therefore more human.
24. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck's reputation is lower than when he won the Nobel Prize, but this remains a modern classic. An angry book, that never gives up on human nature, it transcends its left-wing bias.
25. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. A nice short introduction to the great man.
1 comment:
It's a pity that citizens of Botswana like Mma Ramotswe can't download and listen to the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency audio books. It's called audio Apartheid and it sucks.
Some of the other titles you list are also excellent! Go for it!
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