Monday, February 14, 2011

Novels with Insight

My list of novels with special insight on human nature continues to grow:

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd; A River Town by Thomas Keneally; The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Conner; Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry; The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope; David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; The Warden by Anthony Trollope; Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres; Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo, and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Please feel free to add to the list.

3 comments:

Steve Layman said...

Would you consider The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy or Trinity by Leon Uris? S

Michael Wade said...

Steve,

I have not read either of those but I'd say they are definitely in the ballpark.

Michael

Dan Richwine said...

The Devine Comedy
all of Shakespeare (ok, not a novel, but still...)
Moby Dick
All the King's Men
A Tale of Two Cities

Of course, if you want to get really serious about insight to himan nature, go no further than Proverbs and Eccesiasties. My path to real wisdom freed from the shackels of the current age's fluff began when I seriously started reading those two. However far along I may be now those two are still my go to books for furthering it.