Moshkiae

Rain
... Hence, I've recently started reading Shelley's Frankenstein in English for the first time in my life. Up next, obviously,  Stoker's Dracula ...

 
BEFORE, you read Dracula, you gotta reas a couple of things around that time, that are really quick reads and kinda tell you how Mary Shelley came to write her book. You gotta read Polidori's "Vampyr" and then Sherida Le Fanu's Carmilla. Along with The Castle of Otranto (Walpole) this was pretty much the beginning of "gothic literature" that was eventually furthered by the French Revolution and its gory public'ness.
 
There is a novel, by some guy whose name I can never remember, called "The Missolonghi Manuscripts" and it is about the week or two that these books were written by Polidori and Mary. And it also gives, although in a fictionalized way, a nice picture of those days and nights! Marvellous reading.
 
There is a critical book, called "The Romantic Agony" that is a magnificent write up about the literature that started that era.
 
 

 
Thank you, Mosh! :) I'll check these out.

sharke
I've just started David Byrne's "How Music Works." It's early stages yet but it is shaping up to be the most interesting book on music that I've ever read. 

Please report back.  I have that book sitting in my to-read stack, but it's never bubbled its way to the top.

Beagle
EXCELLENT list!  I have read most of those.

Well, if you had only read most of the list how do you know it's an excellent list?

Hey Rain, I don't know if anyone mentioned it yet, but no list would be complete without The Adventures of Don Quixote. :)

dmbaer

sharke
I've just started David Byrne's "How Music Works." It's early stages yet but it is shaping up to be the most interesting book on music that I've ever read.

Please report back.  I have that book sitting in my to-read stack, but it's never bubbled its way to the top.

I'd be interested too.  I've had this one on my Amazon Wish List for a while.

Maybe a bit modern and even Greene himself discribed much of his outputs as "entertainments", but i dont think the collection would be complete with out some Graham Greene.
 
Of the considerable output I would probably pick.

• The End of the Affair
• Brighton Rock
• The Ministry of Fear
• The Quiet American

Most have been filmed, I have always much prefered the book to the film.

Why is it no one mentioned Archie comics?

 
They have a band too.

sharke
I've just started David Byrne's "How Music Works." It's early stages yet but it is shaping up to be the most interesting book on music that I've ever read. 

Yup...my best friend gave me this for my birthday, knowing I'd probably never read it. Seems after a lifetime of voracious reading all I read now is trade journals, manuals and science tomes. But, lo and behold, I had to take my car in for a lengthy service recently and I sat in the waiting room and read a good bit of it. Interesting, yes, but less so as it goes along. However, I'm determined to read the whole thing just to prove to myself I still can, so who knows, maybe I'll clue into it yet again?