Book Recommendations!

Because I'm an incorrigible dork. Last random post, I promise!

I've just been reading so many good books lately, I thought I'd list them for those of you who are literarily inclined. Mostly short stories and poetry, but amazingly good, and I tend to be picky with the poetry I like:

Zbiegnew Herbert, Mr. Cogito (may be out of print, but his other stuff is good too)
Yannis Ritsos, Parentheses, Repetitions (trans. Edward Keeley)
Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (can't believe I hadn't read this already)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych (re-read it, it depresses me every time)
Jack London, "The Shadow and the Flash" (re-read this one, but it was just as amazing as the first time)
Saki, "Sredni Vashtar"
various Ambrose Bierce short stories
more Guy de Maupassant short stories than I can count, after I found an online database of all his work
and some others I'm forgetting. I'll post as I remember :-)

Right now I'm in the middle of Roberto Calasso's Ka, pleasure-reading and research for my Karna story. Very richly written. Also picked up Adrienne Rich's--

Holy shit, I forgot to mention! Adrienne Rich was here to give a reading last Thursday, and I went and heard her read, and it was amazing. I loved that when she walked to the podium, she was assisted by a friend and used her cane, but after she got her book out and had cleared her throat, she threw her cane down and said, "We don't need this now, do we" or something like that... she was very subtly theatrical, in a good way. I picked up a copy of her Collected Poems and got it signed, and I was such a dork I thought I would swoon when I standing in front of her. SIGH. A friend who went with me was petrified but I managed to stammer out something like, "Thank you for all your work," and she sort of smiled and said, "There are things you have to do." It was amazing. I love this city so much.

Anyway, so I have to read through that book of poetry now, and I also bought Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Cinnamon Gardens, Garcia-Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, and (here's the big project for the semester now) the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. And let's not forget Pomegranate Soup for the little book club I've set up with Dartmouth friends. Did I mention that I like pain? Because I'm going to suffer like no other with all this reading and writing to do. Gives new meaning to hurts so good.

Yay literature!