The Good Life: Tuck Into a Good Book

When I was living in Japan in 1993, I eventually tired of visiting the local bars with my Japanese colleagues and decided instead to start reading all those books that I was supposed to have read in college but didn't. As it turns out, the works that I had missed or passed over were some of the best books that I have ever read.

With fall approaching, and a warm fireplace and chair at the ready, I want to pass along my reading suggestions, with notes I have collected over the years about the authors. I chose the selections based on a primary criterion: These are books that are assigned in most college literature courses, but unlike some of those heady selections, these are fabulous reads.

If literature is not your thing, don't despair. Pulp has its place, and with that in mind, I've scraped together a few mainstream titles that are good reads.

But first, the "Didn't Read in College" list:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ernest Hemingway spent some of the 1920s in Paris and chronicled his outings with Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein in his memoir, A Movable Feast. Already a drunk, Fitzgerald shows up smashed at a Paris bistro to meet Hemingway and he tells him that he's just written one of the world's greatest novels. Fitzgerald was correct. The tale of Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan is relentlessly entertaining and a very quick read. Like many writers of his time, Fitzgerald's life was tormented by booze and a bad marriage. He died in Hollywood in the apartment of his mistress on Dec. 21, 1940. He was 44 years old.

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Hollywood has yet to do this masterpiece justice. Regarded by some critics as the greatest novel ever written, Anna Karenina is the classic tale of a woman who leaves her husband for her lover and, alas, meets with brutal ruin. Don't be intimidated by the novel's length. This book is a beautifully written page-turner that is eloquent from the first word to the last. Too bad none of Tolstoy's biographers say the same of his life. In his early years, Tolstoy lived life with gusto and was treated for venereal disease more than once. In his late life, he decided to be a moral guide to the world and gave away his fortune to wander Russia. He died Nov. 20, 1910, of pneumonia at a remote railway station. He was 82 years old.

Greatness Celebrate the fall with a great book

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The tale of Catherine and Heathcliff is so intense that it is difficult to put the book away once it's begun. This is an intense novel, but it is so beautifully written that you'll be disappointed when it ends. Perhaps there was no better person to write such a story of doom than Emily Bronte, her own life being such a sob fest. Her mother died when Emily was 3 and most biographers tend to depict Emily as sheltered and lonely. Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis on Dec. 19, 1848, one year after Wuthering Heights was published. She was 30 years old.

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

No author had the wit and cattiness of Oscar Wilde, whose plays are both delightful and downright hilarious. You won't find much levity in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the only novel that Wilde wrote. However, it is brilliant, beautifully written and masterfully brief. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854, Wilde quickly became noted for his wit, which has maintained its timelessness. Of the U.S. he once said: "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Bedeviled for most of his life by his homosexuality, Wilde was eventually sent to prison for two years on sodomy charges. Wilde died flat broke of cerebral meningitis in Paris on Nov. 30, 1900. He was 46 years old.

5. Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

The life of Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen, is fairly well known after Meryl Streep portrayed her in the 1985 movie, Out of Africa. Fans of the flick may forget why Hollywood made the movie in the first place. Dinesen, who published Seven Gothic Tales -- her first set of stories -- in 1943 at age 49, introduced a whimsical style of prose that was intense and haunting. Seven Gothic Tales was largely hated in Denmark when first published but Dinesen quickly found an audience in America. Later, Dinesen became well known for her memoirs, which chronicled her adventures and struggles running a 1,500-acre coffee plantation near Nairobi, Kenya, from 1914 to 1931. Twice considered to be a favorite for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 and 1957, Dinesen lost both times. She died of malnutrition on Sept. 7, 1962, at her family estate in Rungstedlund, Denmark. She was 77 years old.