WOW! I can't believe anybody on this board actually knows Pynchon!!! Good for you, Mr Underhill (nice name!). If anyone wants to read him (do it do it do it!) The Crying Of Lot 49 is a good book to start with as it's quite short and easy. James Joyce is a different case altogether; while you're free to try it, remember that this is very, very difficult stuff. I study English lit and some of my professors have been in a reading group for 20 years, half of which was spent trying to figure out Finnegans Wake!!! This is perhaps the most difficult book by him, but if you're up for a challenge anyway try the classic (Ulysses). Does anybody know Iain (M.) Banks? I definitely recommend him! The books written under the moniker Iain M. Banks are SF (but not like any SF you've ever seen before) and the books without the middle name are 'regular' literature. For an instant shock-experience, try reading the Wasp Factory...DON'T flip over to the end first!!!! Hmm... I think I'm drifting farther and farther off-topic with non-fantasy books, but what the heck... if only one of the people on this board reads one of these books and finds it has changed their lives, I can die happy
What about my own favorites? Prepare for a long list... no I'll just name a few
A.S. Byatt, Ch. Marlowe, Shakespeare (corny I know but READ HIM), Keats, Poe, Chaucer, Wilde, Yeats, Banks, Atwood, Eco, Donne, Milton, Anthony Burgess, and some fantasy I like: Tolkien Eddings Pratchett Some random books: Brontė's Wuthering Heights, Goethe's Faust & Leiden des jungen Werthers, Beowulf, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Avalon series (anyone read the new one yet?), Byatt's Possession, Burgess's Earthly Powers
Oh, they guy who says Aleister Crowley books are hard to come by: not at all! Just check Amazon.co.uk and there're numerous titles, also a lot of good bookstores sell him but I don't know where you live. If you're into his stuff, a good book to read would be the biography 'The Beast Demystified' which does precisely that it's fun to read!
God I love books
Oh, all the books mentioned here are recommendations which you can safely read
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