Hm. I've got Purgatorio out of the library now. I'm planning on reading it over semester break. And I've already had to whack a friend to keep him from spoiling the ending to me. Basterd.

Y'nno, Since it's his writing under discussion, shouldn't it be Mark Twain, and not Clemens?

Habits instilled by perfectionist English professors die hard. But yes, I suppose you're right.

Double posting, (BAD! BAD! I know.) But this point had to be made.

you'll find he has two basic plots and five or six basic characters that he renames, changes the species of, and puts in slightly different circumstances. Great for one or two books, but ten is more than pushing it.

I suggest you get a hold of Loamhedge sometime. Jacques esentially takes the young hero archetype and turns it on it's head. The regular fans seem to hate it with a passion though. ^^;

On that note of trampling on convention, does anyone else have a serious problem with Dickens? Everything he writes starts out wonderfully but ends up being so insanely dry by the end it's extremely hard to really enjoy the story overall. (Lookin' at YOU Copperfield. I couldn't care less about Trot as an adult, he really should have cut the book around childhood.)

And let's not even discuss Two Cities, melodarma and obvious symbolism killed the first book for me. Really, the only enjoyable part was the middle aged catfight in the later half and the famous ending. (I'll admit it, it survived for a reason)

I get that the things were written in serial format, the problem is, it's hard to adapt reading it into novel format.

...It's not a trilogy if it's only two books...

Well, it is NOW. :P (lol sry. couldn't resist)

Oh, and I don't know.. haven't read Dickens.. I should. ..

Oh sorry for interrupting your discussion but I wanted to put in some literature

1. Dracula(for me personally it is just amazing) by Bram Sroker

2. Anne Rice- Vampire Chronicles, The New Tales of the Vampires etc...

3. Charles Dickens- Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol etc...

4. The Importance of Being Earnest and anything else written by Oscar Wilde

5. Emma and of course all of Jane Austen's work

6. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

7. Shakespeare

8. Turn of The Screw by Henry James

9. Ernest Hemingway

10. Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett

11. Roald Dahl- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda etc...

There are much more, but I can't name them all and of course you've named some amazing ones already

If you're a fan of Dahl, I highly recommend his 'adult' short stories. They're really quite good but very different from what he's commonly percieved as. (One story was even about two men who were constantly 'swapping wifes' *Cough* without either of their counterparts knowing about it.)

James Thurber is also a riot and the style of the two authors feel similar.

Hmm....interesting. I will look into that. I had no idea that Dahl wrote anything like that. I'm going to start looking for these short stories, espeically that one about those two men swapping wives.

But I defintely agree with you about James Thurber. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is one of my favourite short stories by him. It was one of the few short stories that I studied in my Literature class. And we only studied things such as that and The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe.

But in the case of short stories some of my favourites are: The Lady and The Tiger, Two Bottles of Relish(lovingly bone chilling ending), An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Most Dangerous Game and The Raven.

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