Ten Novels to Re-Read: The Great Gatsby, et al

As beach-reading season is winding down, we thought we'd take a look at some great, vintage novels which are worth of a second, third or even a fourth look.

Many of these novels are listed in the Modern Library's best novels.

Here is the list:

1. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) #2 on the Modern Library list

2. "Lord of the Flies" by William Goldig (1954) #41 on the ML list

3. "The Black Book" ("Kara Kitap") by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey. 1990. English version published in 1994)

4. "Less Than Zero" by Breat Easton Ellis (1985)

5. "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

6. "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerny (1984)

7. "Deliverance" by James Dickey (1970) #42 on the Modern Library List

8. "1984" by George Orwell (1949) #13 on Modern Library List

9. "Franny and Zooey" by J.D. Salinger (1961)

10. "Catch 22" by by Joseph Heller (1961) #7 on the Modern Library List

http://www.modernlibrary.com

http://www.malaprops.com/ (Indy bookstore in Asheville, NC)

http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/ (Indy bookstore in Durham, NC)

http://www.boulderbookstore.net/ (Indy bookstore in Boulder, Colo.)

Casualties of Modern Technology (12 of 12)-Paperback Novels

We conclude our long-running series on Casualties of Modern Technology with an ode to the paperback novel. Though it still exists as a media and entertainment form, the paperback novel is increasingly being voted off the island in favor of electronic reading gadgets, such as Kindle and The Nook.

It was a common practice for the cover of a paperback novel to be tied into a film if one was being made of the novel, as was the case with Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (pictured). My late grandmother in South Carolina actually gave me a copy of this novel with the the image of Jack Nicholson, but I have no idea what has happened to it.

There also have instances when a film became a book as was the case when Steven Spielberg penned his very own novel version of his 1977 film "Close Encounters of the third Kind."

In some incarnations, the paperback novel was known as an airport novel, which were usually fast-paced novels that a traveler could read while flying Air France from Chicago to Paris.

Earlier editions of the paperback novel were the dime novels, which originated at the outset of the 20th century; some of these works were actually sold for fifteen cents.