Topic: K-man educates himself on classic literature. Come bear witness

[K-man]

Losing both my parents in the past 7 months has been hard.  In addition you may remember that I lost my best friend from suicide around 18 months ago.  Long story short, it's been a very rough year and a half for me.  I've somehow managed to not get bogged down in dark thoughts and depression, instead using these experiences as a lesson.  The biggest lesson is to live life with urgency.  We've all got things we'd like to do if we "had the time" or "was in the right position to do it".  Well, one of mine is to read a bunch of classic literature.  I am woefully deficient in that regard.  I have accumulated some throughout the years, and plan to obtain more as time goes on.  I figure reading will help my other major endeavor, which is to increase guitar proficiency and start writing songs. 

Feel free to add any recommendations.  My first book is "A Catcher in the Rye".  I'm roughly a third of the way through it already, and it is a pretty easy/quick read so far. 

[gpw11]

Great idea man.  I'd suggest Catch 22 and Watership Down.

[Quemaqua]

Shit, where to start? And by "classic", what exactly do you mean? American lit, British lit, Irish lit, poetry included? Classic as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Lord of the Flies, or A Clockwork Orange and Naked Lunch? Are you interested in modern classics like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Foucalt's Pendulum, The Book of Daniel, Homer and Langley? Noir-y stuff like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep?

[K-man]

To give you an idea, I have the next few books lined up.

1984
On the Road or Dharma Bums.  haven't decided which.  ultimately both, probably.
The Fountainhead

[Quemaqua]

That doesn't really help. I mean, I get you're looking for classics, but I don't know how far afield you want to go from the stock stable. If you want to stick to high school and college required reading stuff like you seem to be (I don't mean this derogatorily, as most of those will be great reads, and likely all better experienced at your stage of life anyway), you can easily find more of it than you could read in 10 years without ever asking anybody. But if you want something tailored to your taste or interest, or to narrow down the scope a bit, that's another matter.

Anyway, I'll just throw out some stuff at random:

Kerouac is essential, despite being way, way overrated. Burroughs is more fun (Junkie, Naked Lunch, and maybe The Soft Machine if you want to stretch your legs). I'd highly recommend some Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 is the go-to essential, but The Illustrated Man is up there (short stories). There's This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby for F. Scott Fitzgerald, though there's no reason to neglect Flappers and Philosophers or Tales of the Jazz Age if you like short stories. For Rand, Atlas Shrugged is obviously a big one, but honestly, she's boring as hell unless you've got a lot of patience. I got through AS and The Fountainhead, but they're not exactly what you'd call page-turners. H.G. Wells's The Time Machine. Anything Hemingway. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, or Light in August. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. J.G. Ballard's High-Rise and Crash if you want to get a little more modern. Some might scoff, but I say Stephen King's The Stand should be required reading for anyone looking at classic American literature. Poe's short stories for more definitively classic horror, along with Lovecraft, obviously (Poe only did one novel, of which I'm not a big fan and I'm not sure about its "classic" status, so he and Lovecraft would just be short story collections). Would also highly recommend Arthur Machen's short stories for horror, and definitely Robert W. Chambers's The King in Yellow. Moby Dick for Melville (one of my all-time favorite books, and probably the most quotable book I've ever read).