Behind the cover of box 2 we have - George Saunders.
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. A multi talented man in other words. Since 1997, Saunders he is also teaching creative writing for the Syracuse University and its MFA program. I have read his A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, which is an interesting novel, where he analyses some of the great, classic authors. He also wrote Lincoln in the Bardo, of course, which I still have to read.
Saunders has a vivid Substack account, where he talks about reading and writing. One part is The Story Club. Recently, there was a post titled: How Much Do We Need to Read to Have a Chance to Be Good? To be a good reader—or writer—I assume, means having a solid foundation for your reading. Take a look at the article; it's interesting. Among the comments, you’ll find suggestions for people’s favorite reads from each century, spanning from the 1300s to the present. Ultimately, it’s up to you and your own favorites. There are certainly more of mine that are missing from the list.
Here is my list:
1300-1350 Divine Comedy (Dante) - The Decamerone (Boccaccio)
1350-1400 Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
1400-1450 ?
1450-1500 ?
1500-1550 The Prince (Machiavelli)
1550-1600 Hamlet (Shakespeare)
1600-1650 Don Quixote (Cervantes)
1650-1700 Paradise Lost (Milton)
1700-1750 Gulliver's Travels (Swift) / Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)
1750-1800 Candide (Voltaire)
1800-1850 Anything by Jane Austen / Anything by the Brontë sisters / Frankenstein (Shelley)
1850-1900 Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) / Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche) / Heart of Darkness (Conrad) /Madame Bovary (Flaubert) /Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) Moby Dick (Melville)
1900-1950 To The Lighthouse (Woolf) / 1984 (Orwell) / The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) / The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) / Gone With the Wind (Mitchell)
1950-2000 Fahrenheit 451(Bradbury) /To Kill a Mockingbird /Harper) / One Hundred Years of Solitude (Márquez / Lolita (Nabokov) /The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) / Lord of the Flies (Golding) / The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) / The Bell Jar (Plath)
2000 - Wolf Hall/Bring Up the Bodies/The Mirror and the Light (Mantel) / The Sense of an Ending (Barnes)
Which of your favorites would make the list? Let me know in the comments! Also, if you have any suggestions for the 15th century, I’d love to hear them.
If you are interested in reading my Substack account, The Content reader newsletter, you will find it here: https://thecontentreader.substack.com/ (when asked if you want to subscribe, click 'No thanks' and you will enter into the main page, where you will find a sample of my earlier newsletters. I mostly write about travel, history, art and culture and everything that makes life fun. I do hope you will subscribe. It is free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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