Catcher in the Rye
Blackboy
Native Son
The Old Man in the Sea
A Separate Peace
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
Fear of Flying

All of the above are very good and not difficult to read. Take your pick.
Heart of Darkness is difficult for native speakers. Also avoid Faulkner.

I agree with Kate; Heart of Darkness is a very difficult read even for a native speaker.

I think Kate meant "The Old Man AND the Sea".

yep, it is definitely AND.
Notice I mentioned both Hemingway and Faulkner, two reknowned alcoholics. Freudian slip?

I can also recommend
Roots by Alex Haley
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Or if you're just looking for a way to improve your conversational English, try Sidney Sheldon or some chick lit. Very easy to read.

To Kill a Mockingbird
Catch 22
some novels by Howard Fast might be good reading, but many are quite long

(nice list, Kate)

@wpr
My dad taught American Lit in High School. I'm not incredibly well read or anything.

a pleasure to see someone mentioning richard wright...

i think Gore Vidal is easy too, something like
Julian

kate's is an american list...

@Kate: We had to read The Jungle in 11th grade history class. It's gut wrenching, and well written. Also a book called Old Jules, which everyone thought was incredibly boring and I don't think a single student ever finished.

Unterstütze wpr bei "Catch 22". Absolut Spitze! Aber Film und dt. Übersetzung sind Mist.

@judex: Hallo! Ich hab den Film noch nie gesehen. Das wollte ich mir nicht antun...

Tu es auch nicht!

Don't forget Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies.
Also Kidnapped and The Railway Children

Don't bother with Moby Dick -yawn yawn

I liked Catch 22 too, although I can't really remember it. Isn't the humor a bit difficult? but like I said, I don't really remember.

Now that we've given FyahFlya way too many titles to choose from, maybe we should vote on the best one.
I recommend Black Boy.

Read Fantasy (Robert E. Howard) or SF (Lovecraft) or Poetry (Wordsworth) or Comics (X-Men)!

thank u guys for all the recommendations! i'm curious for ur vote :)

am i right, that most of the literature by now got its roots in america? no disrespect, but whats about the classics from uk? charles dickens (oliver twist),Jonathan Swift (gulliver's travel), daniel defoe(robinson crusoe)? are they readable for a non native?

@boris: im not into this hole SF/comic thing anymore, but i read the lord of the rings.

best,

Wenn Du ein Mädel bist, dann empfehl' ich Dir Jane Austen...

>am i right, that most of the literature by now got its roots in america?

Ne, ne, da hast Du was falsch verstanden. Das kam hier im Faden deshalb zustande, weil die umfassenden Listen von Kate sich auf amerikanische Literatur bezogen haben und die anderen dann nicht noch so viel mehr hinzufügen wollten, damit es am Ende nicht 50 Vorschläge gibt. Wenn Du aber klassische englische Literatur suchst, dann würde ich empfehlen:

The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest (ist ein Stück)
Vanity Fair
alles von Jane Austen
Charles Dickens' Bücher sind gut lesbar
Dubliners von James Joyce ist auch gut lesbar (anders als Ulysses ;-) )
Gulliver's Travels
Frankenstein
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland und Through The Looking Glass
Lady Chatterley's Lover
1984

Einen Teil davon gibt's hier:
http://www.literature.org/

Try Google with search terms "reading lists classics" (or possibly "reading lists literature"). You'll find lots of lists of classic good books, broken down into various categories and selections.

Look at the historic selections from these award series for books in English:
Pulitzer Prize for literature
PEN/Faulkner Prize
Man Booker Prize
Nobel Prize in Literature

Also, for the older books which are in the public domain (copyright expired), check Project Gutenberg. (Note the spelling: Project. This is the English Project Gutenberg, not the German Projekt Gutenberg.) This has many electronic books online, available for reading or downloading.

Look at the Oprah Winfrey Book Club selections at http://www2.oprah.com/obc/pastbooks/obc_pastd... . Oprah Winfrey (who is universally called simply Oprah) is a very popular and respected American talk show host. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey). Since 1996 she has been recommending books. Because the show is so popular, her recommendations immediately become bestsellers.

All of these can easily be found using Google.

Something you may already know: You can go to Amazon.com or Amazon.de and find lots of reviews / ratings by Amazon customers. They're written by all sorts of people, and are obviously not all reliable, or people's taste may differ from yours, but they're often a good way to get a quick initial sense of what a book is about and what people are saying about it.

I seem to remember 'Heart of Darkness' being relatively difficult when I read it for school. That said I'm not sure whether it was because of the language, or because of the plot / subject material. I've really enjoyed the Joseph Conrad books I have read since then, and thumbing through the couple I have here I can't find any particularly difficult language. They are certainly not 'old english' although the vocabulary is probably a bit richer than some offerings.

The subject material might be more of a problem - to understand Conrad its helpful to have a bit of knowledge about British ideology/psyche/tradition, colonial history, and seafaring. I would definitely keep 'Heart of Darkness' on the 'to read' list, even if not right away. There's quite a few Conrad books at Project Guttenberg (www.gutenberg.org) and, although Heart of Darkness is not amoungst them, you could have a quick look at some of the others to get a feel for the language he uses.

David, I second what you've said about Heart od Darkness. Even though I am not a native speaker, I didn't think the language was overly difficult.

BTW: Once you've read it, you should watch "Apocalypse Now", which is based on the subject matter treated in Heart of Darkness. That's one intersting adaption of a book... ;-)

I see that the white male writers guild is still alive and kicking with a few honorary members like Richard Wright and Jane Austin. While those are all great books and well worth reading, to balance things out, other less mentioned by equally worthy classics (here mostly by US women) include:

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Awakening
The Yellow Wallpaper
To the Lighthouse
Sula
Love Medicine
Corregidora
Dessa Rose
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Annie John
Adam Bede

Most of these (with the possible exception of To the Lighhouse and Adam Bede) should be fairly easily accessable to a non-native reader. Annie John is youth literature, but still well worth a look.

Lolita also deserves an honorable mention if you are looking to be wowed with beautiful language.

Heart of Darkness is worth the work, just be prepared to have a dictonary at hand and perhaps the Cliff notes for assistance.

Actually, there's a very good film by Nicholas Roeg ("Don't look now") featuring Tim Roth as the protagonist and John Malcovich as Kurtz.

It's made for TV, but that only means it's longer and more complete.

An interesting, if obvious, fact & one that so far has not been mentioned:

ironically, Heart of Darkness was written by a non-native EN speaker....

I like Conrad a lot, but I would say that his style is not the easiest, even for a native...and that this is especially true of HoD which, in places, has a slightly "clotted" abstract, metaphysical style.

Some of the suggested "classic" alternatives so far suggested are equally difficult however; from Nica's list I would say that only Dubliners has a relatively simple style. George Orwell is also a good option as his style has great clarity. The same goes for Robert Louis Stevenson, though his work sometimes features Scottish dialect of course.

My vote? F.Scott Fitzgerald - a modern classic with a generally pretty clear style. You could start with some of his short stories as a taster and then move onto one of the novels, though I wouldn't necessarily begin with The Great Gatsby. The Last Tycoon is very good but has the disadvantage of being unfinished.

And what about Jean Rhys? (as a dead white female alternative!)

No time to suggest anymore unfortunately..

Das Grauen, das Grauen...
... und ich dachte schon, mein Englisch ist zu schlecht.
Es ist schon interessant, daß ein gebürtuger Pole ein Englisch schreibt, das auch für native speaker nicht so einfach ist.

Wie wär's mit Mark Twain?
Ich lese gerade seine Reise durch Europa (allerdings auf deutsch).
Find ich sehr lustig, auch wenn es über 100 Jahre alt ist.

https://dict.leo.org/cgi-bin/dict/forum.cgi?a...

...with links back to all the old threads.

Not always about books, but there are enough recommendations in there to keep you going for a lifetime!

The same applies to Lolita, which is on my "top ten books of all times" list, but was also written by a non-native. What a comand of the English language though, it's enough to turn a girl green with envy.

Sehr nett fand ich auch Jerome K. Jerome "Three Men in a Boat" & "Three Men on a Bummel". Gibts wohl auch zusammen in einem Band für wenig Geld oder bei http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/j#a173 .

Written for children, but great for adults too:

"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster

Quite simply, one of the best, most creative, imaginative, intelligent and delightul books ever written. I've recommended it to my father, my brother, the daughter of a friend and to a non-native EN speaker, amongst many others; they all absolutely loved it! You will too!
It's full of hilarious wordplay, but the style is in no way difficult.

wow, im speechless. i really need a lifetime to get through all the books, but it will be an "Ansporn" for me... :)

ok, so i will give HoD a try (after having finished the ulysses in german). Next "Lolita"; sounded intersting too, because of the "beautiful language". Thats what im looking for and what fascinated me when reading "the god of small things".

Thanks alot nica, eric, david, and LK for the links. man this gutenberg project thing is ja der knaller! Already started to ransack these. BTW is there something similar for german books?

May we suggest some german books on the other hand? What r ur favourits? Talking of beautiful language my vote goes to "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" by Robert Musil....

"What r ur favourits?"

Mainly the ones that don't look like Prince lyrics.

I've not read through the thread, but did you know
that F.F. Coppola constructed the movie "Apocalypse now" after this book
from Joseph Conrad?

@Markus Göttmann - Well, those of us that read the thread have known since Christoph told us Sun Sep 10 18:44:44 2006.

:)

@Calixt,

I think you'll find that Don't Look Now, although directed by Roeg, has nothing to do with Heart of Darkness. The film stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie and is about a couple recovering from the death of their child in Venice. Apocolypse Now is the film based on Heart of Darkness and stars Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando (directed by Coppola). Don't know where you got Tim Roth from.

@neilo: I'm well aware of the fact that "Don't Look Now" is not based on the Heart of Darkness, but rather on a story by Daphne du Maurier. The title was given merely as reference, so people would know where to put the director.

The film I actually meant was named "Heart of Darkness", that's why I didn't bother mentioning the title. This, quite probably, made you think I was confusing the two.

BTW, Don't Look Now is one of my all-time favourites, so rest assured, I would know it from a Heart of Darkness movie.

@neilo: seeing as Calixt hasn't made the point very clearly, I will!

S/he is referring to a different version of Heart of Darkness:
namely, the 1994 TV version directed by Nicholas Roeg.

That's where Tim Roth - and, indeed, John Malkovich - come from.....

@LK: Thanks for clarifying it even more.

By the way, it's "he" ;)

Just a small hint: For most texts that are older than 90 years, the author's copyright is no longer valid and they become public domain. Thus, most classic literature is available for free somewhere on the Internet, a search with title, author's name and something like 'online' or 'e-text' should lead to results quickly. Glued to a screen is not necessary the most agreable way of reading a book, but it should allow you, FyahFlya, to have a look into most of the books that might interest you before deciding to buy them...

Actually, if you're looking for above mentioned works, search for "Project Gutenberg", which is a collection of these works, often in many different formats.

Hi FyahFlya: Here are some suggestions for British authors.

I think you’ll find Dickens rather hard work at your present level. He uses a _lot_ of adjectives and a dictionary will be indispensable. I don’t think you need worry about “old English” too much unless you go as far back as Jane Austen.

Instead of works by Dickens, other (late) Victorian novels you might consider are “The Card”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Card
and “Anna of the Five Towns”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_of_the_Five...
by Arnold Bennett. They’re set in a provincial industrial town in the Midlands and chronicle the characters’ lives. For a rural setting, try Thomas Hardy, e.g. The Mayor of Casterbridge or Far from the Madding Crowd:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy

Coming forward a bit, if you like social history and the chronicle type of novel, try R.F. Delderfield’s “To Serve Them All My Days”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Them_Al...
about a young man returning from WW1 and his subsequent life, or
“The Dreaming Suburb” and “The Avenue goes to War”. The two together are a saga about people living in a suburban street between the years 1919 and 1945.

H.E. Bates’ “Fair Stood the Wind for France” and “The Purple Plain” (WW2 novels), “The Darling Buds of May” (humorous 1950s novel):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.E._Bates

Novel Shute wrote adventure novels, often with an emphasis on technical matters (he was involved in the development of the R100 and R101 airships). Try “No Highway” (about aircraft), and “A Town Like Alice” (set in England, Malaya and Australia).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevil_Shute

Last but not least, anything by Graham Greene. I particularly like his books set in the Cold War which have something of the spy thriller about them. Try “The Human Factor” and “The Third Man” (on which the film starring Orson Welles was based. Greene also wrote the screenplay for that). I also enjoyed “Our Man in Havana”, “The Quiet American” and “The Heart of the Matter”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene

All of the above are considered to be *good* British authors and the earlier ones *classic* (I don’t know how long an author needs to be dead before he/she qualifies for *classic* status;-)). You should be able to read any of the above and at least get the gist of what’s going on without looking at a dictionary too much.

Now you only have die Qual der Wahl...;-). Have fun!

Du musst "Heart of Darkness" nicht kaufen, höchstens ausdrucken.
Da den Link niemand genannt hat:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/526/526.txt

(Habs zweimal gelesen, und bin manchmal über den Handlungsstrang gestolpert. Einfach fand ich es nicht)

Und um noch einen dranzuhängen, die Top 100:

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top

Meine Empfehlung:
Sherlock Holmes.
Nicht wirklich schwer, viele Kurzgeschichten und ein Schreibstil, den ich sehr mag. Und außerdem "very British".

You are the love of my life. We have been so close, yet so far apart. No matter where my life takes me, my heart is set on you. Like a blossom growing, our friendship gets stronger everyday. Hanging out everyday has drawn my attention to you, feeling safe and closer makes a part of me happier than the other. All the laughs we have had together have become a part of my life and you will always remain in my heart forever.