I feel like what I’m about to ask for is a bit esoteric. But I’ll give it a shot. I’m looking for literary books that might not be so well known. My favorite books off the top of my head are: -Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy -Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad -Dune, by Frank Herbert -Neuromancer, by William Gibson -Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. Even though all of these books are challenging in their own right, they are still fairly pedestrian when it comes to literary works. Most readers have at least heard of many, if not most of, these books. I’m looking to expand my horizons more. Look somewhere a little more under the radar. Do you have any suggstions?
Giovanni Guareschi: Don Camillo -books Desmond Tutu: Hope and Suffering John Keegan: A History of Warfare Dawkins: The Selfish Gene Wurmbrand: Tortured for Christ Baron-Cohen: About the Male and Female Brain Forester: Hornblower and Hotspur Solzenitsyn: all Feynman: Pleasure of Finding Things Out, What do You Care..., Surely You must be Joking John Truby: The Anatomy of Story Allen: Winnie the Pooh on Management Adams: How to Fail in Almost Everything and Still Win Big Tom Sharpe Westlake Gerald Durrell Bible Richard Pawson: Unlocking the Bible Parkinson: Parkinson's Law Gilbreth: Cheaper by the Dozen Blackmore: The Meme Machine Taleb: The Black Swan Leon Uris Astrid Lindgren: Pippi Longstocking -books Cialdini & al.: The Small Big James Herriot Rex Stout Terry Pratchett Farley Mowat: Never Cry Wolf ....
Ha! nice endeavor, Erowid! Truth be told, most literary (canonical) works are still known because they have something which the academia deems worthwhile of preserving, so some of the ones you listed are quite well-known (at least in academic circles, for whatever that's worth). With that being said, in the last few decades, most universities are trying to 'rediscover' forgotten works, so what you COULD do would be to browse university websites for their reading lists and to pick some from there which you don't recognise immediately. Personally I would suggest, among some of the lesser known ones, Nadja by Andre Breton (a surrealist novel), Murphy by Samuel Beckett, Marius the Epicurean by Walter Pater, The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen, or even some of Virginia Woolf's lesser-known novels (Between the Acts, Night and Day, The Years). I think George Eliot's Romola is also not particularly wide-spread, despite the fact that her other novels were all best-sellers and are quite popular to this day.
If you like a bit of brooding, slow-burn atmospheric horror, look no further than Stephen Gregory's The Woodwitch. His prose is, in my opinion, as close to perfection as it's possible to get.
Have you read gothic novels? Sure, there are the famous ones like Frankenstein and Dracula, but many other strange books were written in the genre too. Their literary merits might not be stellar, but they can be oddly entertaining, like The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk by Matthew Lewis. If you're looking for something actually well-written, Yvonne Vera's works are pretty interesting. For example Butterfly Burning and Without a Name.
