Here's a list for you Erik ---
"She," "King Solomon's Mines," and "Allan Quatermain" by Sir Henry Rider Haggard. The first is the greatest and stands as an all-time classic.
"The White Company" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This, by the author of the Sherlock Holmes canon, defines the essence of Medieval romance.
"For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway. This is not highly regarded by the admirers of the master, but many think it is the best war story of modern times. It includes the best accounting of gun fighting that is known.
"The Dance of the Dwarfs" by Geoffrey Household. This is a fantasy involving the possibility of a curious evolutionary development of natural chemical warfare.
"Beat to Quarters," "Ship of the Line," and "Flying Colors" by C.S. Forrester. These three adventures relate the career of Captain Horatio Hornblower in his time as shipmaster. If you want to know what life at sea was like during the Napoleonic Wars, you will discover it better from Forrester's work than from any historical account.
"The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien. These constitute the ultimate in epic fantasy and are generally lumped together as "The Lord of the Rings." Tolkien is so great that he constitutes a world by himself, and a world well worth exploring. The despairing struggle of good versus evil is better portrayed here than anywhere else in literature, and Tolkien's lapidary prose is worth reading by itself as a lesson in the use of the English language.
"The Brave Bulls" by Tom Lea. The fiesta brava is not for everyone, explaining as it does the elegance of grace under pressure and man's triumph over fear.
"Aphrodite" by Pierre Louÿs. This may be called elegant Victorian pornography, though that may seem a contradiction in terms. Eroticism entertains most people, and French translates surprisingly well into English.
"The Long Rifle" by Stewart Edward White. This is the definitive adventure novel of the westward movement, following one man's saga through adolescence to maturity, as father of the "Boone Gun" which opened the frontier.
"The Big Sky" by A.B. Guthrie. This is something of a companion to Stewart White, done with a bit more narrative artistry but covering the same subject with main concentration upon the mountain men between Lewis and Clark and the Mexican War.
"And A Few Marines" by John W. Thomason. This may be considered something of a specialty for those who understand and appreciate the tradition of the US Marine Corps. It is marvelously well written and, as an added treat, it is personally illustrated by an author who knew whereof he spoke.
"Fancies and Goodnights" by John Collier. This is a collection of fanciful anecdotes. Collier's stories are great fun, as well as being jewels of technique.
The King James version of the Old Testament. This is pretty much necessary if one is to understand how we got to where we are and what we should do about it.
The complete verse collection of Rudyard Kipling. Kipling's verse is better than his prose, but it is all good, and all very enlightening.
"Reminiscences of a Ranger" by Horace Bell. This is Bell's account of life in Southern California in the period between the Gold Rush and statehood.
"Meditations on Hunting" by José Ortega y Gasset. This is the Old Testament of the hunter, and it explains completely just where hunting exists as a core of western civilization .
[ 09-21-2002, 08:28 AM: Message edited by: trask ]
