Best Books For 20-Somethings: Did They Leave Any Out?

newyorker.com:

But sometimes the grimmest stuff provides the best fodder for novels, and sometimes being in the midst of the struggle allows for the best reading of those novels. Here are a few that aided us in our twenties.

Read the whole story: newyorker.com

Comments

[c-tom]

01:43 AM on 08/21/2010

"It set us thinking about the books that speak to the predicament of youthful instability" So not books that would resolve that problem but books about it. Blood Meridian could maybe fit (young man takes off for the territories) but Varieties of Religious Experience not so easily.

[David Keith]

12:22 AM on 08/21/2010

I'd mention Zinn's "The People's History of the United States"
and Stilts "The Mayor of Castro Street" for non-fiction.

Palahniuk's "Fight Club" and
Daniel Suarez "Daemon" for fiction.

Well I can think of a ton great novels for young folks but these two popped into mind first.

[naschkatze]

08:28 PM on 08/20/2010

I would have picked Madame Bovary over the other. Flaubert is supposed to have said, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi," and that is the reaction I had when I first read it at 19. Almost any young woman would have had that response in my generation. We were raised to be Emma Bovary, and hopefully young women and society have changed somewhat over the years. The House of Mirth, well, excellent choice. I wonder if men respond to these two books as women do.

[naschkatze]

08:46 PM on 08/20/2010

I forgot to say that I would add Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. This trio would make a good study for young women, and, maybe young men would be interested too.

[Gabe Habash]

07:55 PM on 08/20/2010

If you're gonna put Portrait of the Artist on there, you might as well mention Ulysses, since it's more of Dedalus's exploits.

[eric14]

06:11 PM on 08/20/2010

So many books already written. So few can be read. A Huffpost rolling list of books recent and older might be useful. Also a campaign to have all books out of copyright free on the internet with easy access through one site. If it already pls exists tell me. I never reach the promised land.
My recommendations:

1. Novels of Boris Akunin
2. Alexiad of Anna Comnena
3. Varieties of Religious Experience, William James
4. The Cotton Kingdom, F. L. Olmsted
5. A People's Tragedy, Orlando Figes
6. The Norman's in Sicily, John Julius Norwich

Narrative history, unlike many a novel of recent years, tends to expositions of the linear kind and are easy to read now and again. I am rather tired of novels that keep jumping around from place to place and character to character like a cheap thriller but dressed up as serious by being about intellectuals or people with money, or god help us, the marginalised.

I tell you this because I am vulnerable, iconic and laden with a suite of clichéd special needs.

[naschkatze]

08:23 PM on 08/20/2010

I read The Varieties of Religious Experience when I was in my twenties, and it has had a life-long on my thoughts. I always tell people that if I were doing the Dewars scotch ad, that would be my most memorable book.

[naschkatze]

08:29 PM on 08/20/2010

life-long influence